Blog On The Motorway

I’ve a couple of mega busy weeks at work that have left me too knackered to do much, so I haven’t done much in accordance with my knackeration. But now, I feel compelled to write and tell you all that I am in mourning, albeit a temporary state of bereavement. Yesterday I had to go and see my friend Laurie at T-Mobile and hand him my shiny lovely HTC phone. In return all he gave me was a dull and lifeless battered brick of a Motorola, which has clearly been a courtesy phone to so many people that I’ll be utterly shocked if I don’t contract the Hanta virus just by holding it up to my ear.

It’s been less than a day and already I fell like I’ve lost a limb. I know that to the vast majority (i.e. all) of you this will sound very silly, but I’ve become very dependant on my phone, although I rarely use it as such. It is my RSS reader, my portal to Twitter and Facebook, my music player and my podcast reader. It is a portable search engine, my bus timetable, my reader count, my calorie counter, my exercise tracker and more besides. Even though I sit and write this at a computer which has the internet, without my phone I still feel a little bit adrift, cut off from the wider world. This is due to continue for another two weeks. Hence, sadface.

But let us not dwell too much on such hardships, let’s face it in the grand scheme of things this barely even registers as a problem, so I shall move on, albeit whilst simultaneously glaring at my replacement phone like it might bite me at any moment. Last time I spoke to you I was about to install Ubuntu and it was a staggering success. It’s a lovely operating system, although it has taken me a few weeks to recover all my old files from the old Windows set up. The best thing about it is that it now has Chrome browser which is staggeringly fast, the applications do everything that’s been asked of them so far (which is not a lot, admittedly) and the move from Word to Open Office has been very easy. But the best thing of all is the speed. Switching on my PC with Vista was the sort of thing you used to have to do in stages. Turn it on, go and make a cup of tea, come back, log on, go and do something else for five minutes, come back, hit the browser, go and make a Sunday roast and hey presto the computer is ready. All told the whole process could take up to 15 minutes. I timed it with Ubuntu the other day and from hitting the power button to having a web page open and fully loaded took 32 seconds. And my computer is so much happier, no longer roaring at me liked a wounded bull staggering on its death march, but more like a happy cat, purring lightly. I love it. If you are having problems with Windows (ie if you have Windows) I heartily recommend making the change. It’s really easy too.

Other than that the big thing that has happened is the wedding of my two good friends Laurie and Clara. It was an absolute belter of a day, and Rosie managed to make it (almost) to the end without any problems, although we paid for it for the next few days with her sleep routine being shattered. And it seems as though weddings are the ‘in’ thing this year, as my oldest internet friend (and phenomenally talented writer) Lis got married to the also excellent (and prodigiously talented writer) Jay, which I was very moved to get an invite to but very disappointed not to be able to attend. Also, my old friend Emma and her fella Laurence managed to elope in some style and get a Vegas Wedding, replete with Elvis impersonator. Very pleased for all concerned.

Other than that I don’t want you to think that I’ve been completely lazy, as I have been working on BOTM (stop sniggering at the back) as I got about 9000 words in and then decided that I need to have a rethink, and have decided to move away from a single 1st person narrative to a more traditional 3rd person narrative. Obviously this is daunting and somewhat irritating to do this far in, but which is definitely the right move, not least of all because it allows me to move to multiple story arcs. I was starting to worry about what I have but this has really resparked the fire. In truth I was basically working with stuff I wrote over a year ago, and it felt a little stale, and I was struggling with the story. Traditionally I am more of a suck-it-and-see writer, which is all well and good for a first draft but when you are serialising online you have to realise that your first draft is going to be a final draft. I really need to plan the whole thing out, or at least come up with a general plotline.

This is definitely new territory for me. One of the things I most enjoy about writing fiction is that part when you are writing and what you write surprises you. It’s great fun and that is to me when you know that your characters are taking on a life of their own, when they start to make decisions that you wouldn’t take. But I’m also aware that this method of writing is very hit and miss and considering this is going to be pretty much the first time my writing has ever really been read, I don’t want to find myself building up a readership only to box myself into a corner plotwise, which is always a real risk. I’m never going to be the kind of writer to plan things out in meticulous detail plot wise, I still want to go on the journey with my characters, but more structure is definitely going to be the way to go with this. I’m not sure how I am going to implement it, and I still need to sort out a time to sit with Jonic and talk about the design but things are most definitely progressing. Incidentally if there are any writers out there who know of any good support software for detailing all your thought processes, plots, characters etc, I’d love to know. At the moment everything is spread about in various Open Office documents, and it would be nice to play around with a new toy.

Anyway, it’s nice to be back, and here’s hoping the good people at the HTC factory send me my phone back ASAP.