Last night I braved a downpour so severe I could barely make out my own headlights on the road ahead to make my way towards a modern building in an esteemed seat of learning, and found myself sitting in a classroom for the first time in over a decade. I was surprised to see that even in such surroundings as the starkly modern physics building of the University of York that they still resort to chalkboards. It was oddly comforting to be in such an austere high ceilinged room, reminiscent of all those lecture halls I failed to attend when I was at university proper.

I was back in the academic world for the first class of my creative writing evening class, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages but which only got decided on a whim a week ago. I’ve mentioned before that the more seriously I take my writing the more I realise how lacking I am in certain areas. Due to an idiotic decision to take English Literature at A level rather than English Language (actually I should have done both and dropped stupid Media Studies) I really have very little technical understanding of the fundamentals of writing, beyond that which I have picked up through trial and error or osmosis over the years. So here I am, back to school, trying to be better.

The class itself was great fun, and got me really quite excited. The module is very much introductory, but I’ll be learning about poetry, scriptwriting and prose, and getting a better grasp of the fundamentals. The group seemed a good mix, from a clearly very talented 18 year old with a keen eye for poetry, a shy girl with a lovely turn of phrase, a novice starting out on his journey, a few people who seem to be regulars of the creative writing courses and the old lady whose polite manner hides a burning political anger. The first session saw us introduced to ‘Fast Writing’ where we’re given a riff (think of a place and imagine yourself there) and then given five minutes to write as much as you can. For some reason my mind went straight to sweeping up the bar of Certificate 18 after the drunk metalheads had vacated and when we all read them out my piece seemed well received, which was nice. There was some lively debate on the nature of creativity and overall I left with a tangible sense of excitement about the whole thing.

As well as taking the step back into education, last week saw the first Demon Pigeon staff meeting in nearly a year, sparked by the impending renewal of the domain name. Seems we’re all really keen to pick it up again, who knows how long it will last but I did my first proper review in ages this week (which you can read here) and have a rather silly but good idea for an article next week so it seems it’s all systems go on that front as well. I’m making a real effort to find a few nights a week to sit down at the laptop rather than the telly, and the writing seems to be flowing really well. Tonight it is back to the novel, and I think I’m going to try and get some work done on sorting the plot.

On an unrelated matter, the picture you see at the top of this post is a rather lovely word cloud of all the ‘tags’ (ie genres) that I have listened to over the past few years over on my last.fm profile. For those of you who don’t know, last.fm is essentially a service which logs all the music you listen to and then makes recommendations based on your tastes, with the added bonus that stupidly geeky people such as myself can pore over the logs and lists and get lost in the detail. But I thought this was a really nice visual, and is a nice accurate description of my tastes. The more bands I listen to in a particular genre the larger it is, and it’s no real surprise to see the domination certain genres have achieved, even if it does rather put pay to the idea that I have a varied and eclectic music taste. Oh well, I can live with that. If you’re on last.fm why not add me as your friend!

What has actually been a pretty bloody good day has actually turned rapidly into a pissy and irritable mood this evening, through nobody’s fault in particular but my own. Incremental bits of annoyance have built up and left me feeling, well, pissy. I was going to spend the evening writing stuff for Demon Pigeon, because it has been way too long, and I actually have a load of stuff I want to review, but I’m in a mood that is too full of pissy melancholy to do any of them justice, or indeed summon the vitriol that is required for some of them. Oh well.

Weird what will do it though. I had a really good day today until I was on the bus home. As I listened to the rather excellent new Glassjaw Ep ‘Colouring Book’ I started taking some random photos on the bus in case something happened to be good enough for the 365 photo for today. There’s a bar I set pretty fucking low, let me tell you.

I remembered that I had to go through all the shots I took in February that I liked but which hadn’t made it as 365 photos. I did this in January and set up a folder on Flickr called January Spares. This way I can look back at the end of the year with a fairly comprehensive look at my year, not just thee sometimes quite abstract 365 ones.

I went through and picked the ones I liked, which this month seemed to include a lot of really cute Rosie photos, and sent them to upload. Then I decided to make room on my phone by deleting all the February shots, having saved all the ones I liked. But of course I had forgotten that the Internet does not work by fucking fairy magic and that the ones I was uploading were still doing exactly that. Except now they weren’t, because I had deleted them all. I managed to upload three in total before I idiotically erased them all from the phone’s hard drive, then spent the next fifteen minutes hurriedly trying to recover them, to no avail. Above is one of the three that survived.

I know in the grand scheme of things this is decidedly small potatoes, but it is this kind of idiotic mistake that you cannot blame on the failings of anyone else that can really rather poison your mood. Oh well. I think I may instead just use the best two anti-pissy-mood devices I know. Beer and Nicolas Cage movies.

For the most part I’ve been taking December as a ‘month off the Internet’, save for the occasional pop round the door of Twitter or Facebook to say hello, or tell crap jokes which then get ignored or scorned upon. It’s been refreshing, and I’m not really sure how much I’ve really missed it, but that has as much to do with still being burned out by Nanowrimo as it does with the Internet itself, I suspect. Nonetheless, given that it is the end of the year I feel somewhat compelled to come back and pester you with some half formed thoughts about the year that has gone by.

First of all, I’ve decided not to burden you all with the standard top ten lists malarkey this year. Unless you are really very good at them and your opinion carries some weight then let’s face it they are by and large a big heap of Gillian McKeith. Either you list a load of stuff that everyone’s already heard or seen and come off as being too mainstream and boring, in which case why bother. On the other hand if you try and go for more obscure things then you end up looking like a shallow scene wanker trying to point out how cool he is by listing a load of stuff you’re not cool enough to have heard. Over at Demon Pigeon Dan and the others lampooned this pretty effectively, so I’m just going to say there are a few albums this year which have blown me away, if you’ll spare me a moment’s indulgence I will tell you what they are.

Firstly the new Dillinger Escape Plan album, Option Paralysis, blew me away in March and has rarely been off my stereo since. It manages to be both the melodically adventurous and poppy metal album I’ve ever heard, and conversely the most brutal as well. There’s only one word for it, and that’s bewildering. Other metal albums I’ve really enjoyed this year have been the new Knut album, Wonder, and the excellently named Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza’s third album. I reviewed all three for Demon Pigeon so if you want more on them by all means click on them there links. I quite liked the new Misery Index album as well, even if it is a bit generic it’s a good laugh.

As for non-metal I’ve loved the Joanna Newsome triple album Have One On Me and the new Sufjan Stevens album Age of Adz. The latter especially is a lovely bold move by Stevens, incorporating digital effects and even auto-tune and vocoder without ever sounding generic or bland. These are by no means the only albums I have enjoyed, but they are the ones that stand out. As for gigs, well it’s been a bit sparse but the excellent Damnation Festival was a great day out, and Richard Herring’s Hitler Moustache was probably the best stand up I’ve ever seen.

I’ve only been to the cinema a handful of times so I feel ill-qualified to talk much about this year’s film crop, but rather predictably I loved Inception and HP7a. I’m sure Social Network would have made me very happy with its mix of being geeky/being written by my favourite writer/being directed by David Fincher, but I never got to see it, so I am now left to wait impatiently for the DVD release. Not being able to see many new films has not stopped me from getting addicted to the Kermode and Mayo podcast however, and hello to Jason Isaacs if you are readong. Which of course you aren’t. I’ve been watching far more television this year, and it’s been a bumper bonanza of goodness in that regard. I was mentioning to Ellen the other night how it’s felt that this year British Sci Fi has taken over again from its glossier American counterparts. Consider the quality of the second series of Being Human or Misfits, or most strikingly the new Stephen Moffatt helmed Doctor Who and contrast that with the rather stale reimagining of V, or flashforward, or any of the other Heroes clones wheeled out to fill the void left by Lost and Battlestar. Long may it continue, although the news that the new American based Torchwood is being mainly done by ex Buffy writers may mean American Sci Fi goodness returns next year. In non sci fi I think Any Human Heart was about as perfect as TV drama gets, just a sumptuous feast of excellence.

At the end of the most turrbulent year in politics that I have experienced in my adult life, I now strangely feel I have nothing to add. This may be because i think everyone is now so much more engaged with what is going on around them that I have nothing to add to the reams of available information or commentary, or it could just be because I couldn’t possibly put anything better than my favourite blog of the year Enemies of Reason, which has grown month by month into the most authoriative and correct voice in my feed reader. If you don’t already read every single word that Anton Vowl puts out, then I highly recommend you do so. But please don’t judge me for having the same wordpress theme as him. All I will say is that having supported the Liberal Democrats for all of my adult life on the grounds that they were a little less interested in power and more interested in their values it’s quite staggering the extent to which they have sold those values out for a modicum of power. 

On a personal level, I think I can call 2010 a good year overall, although financially it’s been an absolute nightmare. But Ellen and Rosie and I moved into a proper family house in May, I am close to passing my driving test, I launched Demon Pigeon which has turned out to be reasonably popular, although I am not under any illusions as to my own responsibility for this success given the excellent assembly of writers that are now doing the words. On top of DP I wrote a lot for Blood on the Motorway (still hope to launch soon) and wrote the first draft of another novel. On the flip side after a very successful first six months the Year of Health experiment turned out to be a pretty catastrophic failure and I am back up to the weight I was at the beginning of the year, and that’s before even the indulgence of the next few weeks to go on top of that. I have managed to give up smoking however, so that one goes firmly in the win column. As for the weight I am going to try again in January, but one suspects this will be a battle I will be having with myself for most of the rest of my life. I say most, because I plan on not caring when I get to pensioner age. I have taken the YOH site down now since it was being spammed to a ridiculous level, but all the posts are now floating around in here, so if you missed any of it feel free to try and work out where they are.

As for next year, well I have other news that I cannot share at the moment but I think it’s fair to say that 2011 is going to be a brilliant one. I will share more when I can, but that might be a few months away yet. As for you lovely readers, if you’ve managed to make it through this most sparse of years, where my average post count has never crept above one a week then I must say a hearty thank you, and I wish you all a lovely Xmas and a Happy New Year. I leave you with a video from my favourite album of the year, because nothing says Christmas like a buff man shouting over tech metal.

Merry Xmas you beautiful bastards.

It’s amazing the kinds of things you cook up to get yourself through the day sometimes. The other day I listened to all the 6 Music Mercury music Nomination podcasts, half an hour for each band, even the ones I didn’t like, just because at the beginning of the day I decided that that was my challenge for the day. Those of you who know me know that me sitting through a half hour of Paul Weller is to most people like climbing Everest. Today, I decided on the bus that my challenge was to listen to 100 songs in a day. Don’t know why, but I do like to set myself a challenge.

This year it feels like all I’ve been doing is setting ‘me’ challenges. Obviously the big one was Year of Health, although that didn’t quite go through to the end, it was still interesting. Then there is Demon Pigeon, and myriad other little tests that I set for myself. I think that as I settle into my third decade I have replaced the listlessness that so defined my twenties has been replaced by a need to make something of myself, despite my previously crippling laziness. I’ve also realised that the best way out of this self-imposed cage of inactivity is to trick my brain like you would a dog, by setting challenges, albeit sometimes impossible ones, to spark that motivation. I’ve always had a problem with people telling me what to do, and it’s as though I need to try reverse psychology on myself in order to kick-start my sense of purpose.

The main point of all the challenges that I set myself for this year was to get writing again. I wrote my first short story when I was 14, after listening to a song by Carter USM. For some reason I sat down and a fully formed story just poured out of me. Before that moment I had no desire to write, or do anything like it, and it was a shock to my young self to find that I had this thing within me. I still think it may have been the best thing I ever wrote. I wish I still had a copy, so I could tell if I was right or not, although in reality if I re-read it now I’d probably be shocked by just how awful it was.

But nonetheless 16 years later and it’s still just about the only thing I want to do, although in truth I’ve done shockingly little to actually achieve this dream. I have always called myself a writer, but the truth is I’ve never actually submitted any of my creative work for review or publication, except to an online magazine that subsequently went broke. It is a matter of confidence I suppose. I know I can write in a journalistic manner, seven years of blog posts and all the other writing I have done over the years for newspapers and magazines will attest that I don’t have the same shyness when it comes to non-fiction.

But neither does it give me the same joy. I love writing the blog, and while I may address it to you, the reader, in truth this is really only for me. I gave up long ago any hopes of garnering a ‘readership’ for this blog that would go along with giving it a shape or purpose. I have watched bloggers that I started off with at Livejournal go on to be hugely successful writers, but I actually like the fact that with my blog I am writing about whatever stumbles through my head. It is as much a journal or a diary or a confessional as it is a public forum. I don’t worry about what I say on here. Sometimes that has gotten me into more trouble than its worth, but I feel very attached to this place now.

But as for other writing, for the likes of Demon Pigeon or whatever, it just doesn’t hold the same amount of joy as writing fiction does. I enjoy it enough, and in the case of Demon Pigeon I get a lot of enjoyment from the administrative side of things, but it’s not the same love that makes me feel like that bewildered 14 year old who just sat down and had words pouring out him, as if from somewhere else, and couldn’t write fast enough to catch them as they spilled out.

So as I said, this year was all about getting me writing again, and in that regard it’s been very successful, as this has easily been my most prolific yet. I’ve written the first fifteen thousand words of a novel, countless articles and blog posts. Not bad, but I’ve been feeling lately that I’m spreading myself a bit thin. When I want to be writing the novel I’ve felt obliged to be doing something else. I’ve felt guilty about blogging when I should have been doing the novel, but then guilty when I haven’t been able to. My writing has (I think) improved quite a bit over the year, but I’ve been focused on too many things to really hammer one area.

Ellen and I sat up for quite some time the other night, going back and forth as we do, talking about what to do with our lives, and the more we talked the more it dawned on me that I don’t really want to be a journalist any more. I want to be a novelist. Far far harder, of course, and I have no idea whether I have even a shot at doing it, but nonetheless that’s what I want to do. And if that’s what I want to do then I am really going about it all the wrong way.

I am not part of any writing groups. I don’t write short stories, and as I mentioned earlier, I have had precisely zero feedback for my creative stuff since I was at school. But now it’s time for me to face my fears and put myself out there. Most authors don’t get published until well into their thirties, so it’s hardly as though I’m coming to this late, but what I need to do is focus on getting better, growing as a writer. I need to get into online competitions and forums, start writing short stories. Maybe take a few short creative courses. There are a few one day courses at York University that look interesting.

Of course the downside of this is that I need to prioritise. Last night I spent a long time talking to the Demon Pigeon guys and let them know that I’m not going to be writing for DP unless I’ve got something I really want to write about. No more feeling that I have to get at least one post up a week. I am still going to be involved, I think, but more as an editorial, organisational type. I can’t turn my back on it completely, I’ve worked too hard on it for one thing, and I’m too proud of what we’ve done so far. But as for writing, that’s going to take a back seat. I have already wound up Year of Health. I’m not going to stop blogging, because that serves a useful function for me. All this stuff has been buzzing round my head for a few days now, but it’s not until I get in down on the page that it feels concrete to me. Of course the downside is that then you have to read it. Sorry.

As for Blood On The Motorway, I am still going to go ahead with that. If nothing else it will provide a useful exercise for me. And I don’t think it’s entirely awful. (Way to big up my work there. Perhaps I need to work on selling myself a bit too.) I don’t know when it will be going up, but there’s no rush. I’d rather get it right than rush it, and I’m really excited about Jonic’s plans for it, so I want the design to be right as well.

As well as this I also have made another decision, and although it’s definitely a positive decision, it’s probably best I don’t speak about it in public, so there may be a password protected post going up again soon. Password will be the same as last time. And if you made it all the way to the bottom of this, then well done you!

Oh, and in case you wondered, I easily got to 100 songs (actually on about 120 now. The first in the sequence was Radiohead’s Exit Music (For a film) and the last was Isobel by Bjork. Thought you might like to know.

What do you mean you didn’t?

It turns out that one huge benefit of making your post a private one is that you get to see exactly who is reading it, because they have to contact you direct and ask you for a password. Which is nice. Thankfully quite a few of you did, and provided me with just the ego-massage that I required. What you didn’t do, by and large, was leave me any helpful comments. If you don’t know what I am talking about then by all mean feel free to email me, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll send you the password. But despite the warming glow of people asking to read something of yours I shall resist the temptation to ask you to do so again, I suspect I’d get far less of a take up than before.

I’ve been feeling a bit more productive again of late, and having pretty much rounded up part one of Blood On The Motorway it’s time to turn back to my normal blogging. Before we go any further let me do a little bit of whoring and point you in the direction of a piece I wrote for Demon Pigeon about Axl Rose and a bit of a moratorium over at the Year of Health. As well as this I’ve taken my first steps into the wider world of trying to get paid for writing things. I’ve signed up to a company called Suite101, which is a site that gets you to write short articles for them and then they pay you a slice of the Google Advertising revenue that you get from the article. On the face of it this is not going to be a particularly lucrative deal, but from what I can tell (and the proof will come if this actually happens for me) but most articles wont pull in more than, say, $1 a month, unless they get really noticed. But that’s not actually that bad when you consider that will be for 12 months. If I can crank out three or four of these articles a week, then it wont be long before I build up enough of a head of steam that the money coming in will be quite nice. It’s never going to be enough to allow me to survive on it (unless I get really lucky on it and have a whopping hit of an article) but it’ll be a nice bit of extra cash.

That is, of course, if it works as advertised. I’m still pretty sceptical about the whole thing, but the way I see it is that if it doesn’t work then I’ve not really lost anything save for a little bit of time. As well as that, it’ll give me an excuse to write some copy that I can then use in a portfolio, and broaden the type of writing I can show around. As much as I love Demon Pigeon, it’s hardly the kind of content that is likely to lead to a job. I really do want to start building up a decent portfolio, and as much as I’ve kept writing in public ever since I left the Asian Express, very little of it is usable for a portfolio, and most of the stuff I can use is about 5 years old, and a lot of that is not really very good. So even if this doesn’t bring in the cash, I can write about whatever I want, so I can use it as an exercise in bulking out my portfolio. But I do hope it does bring in the cash.

But that’s enough shop talk. I know this blog has become a bit of a procrastination station recently, but I really do want to take the whole ‘writing’ thing seriously, and as a result it’s pretty much all I have to talk about. Boooooring.

So what else have I been doing? Not a lot. Yesterday I appear to have agree to another web project, although this one is not particularly labour intensive, should be fun too, and will probably become more popular than anything else. We shall see.

Other than that I have been largely watching the repeats of Mad Men on BBC2 on a Sunday night. It’s divine, even though nothing ever actually happens in it. One of the episodes this week had a plot that actually revolved around some people going for a drink after work, and nothing happened when they did. I am utterly transfixed. I think it’s the world’s most expensive and brilliant screensaver. The real hook in it is the characters, which are brilliantly drawn and very well acted, but have the added bonus that the writers make no effort to ascribe them a goal or obvious motivation. They’re just people, complex and trying to get through the day. Marvellous stuff and I am very happy knowing I still have three and a half series of it at the very least makes me happy. Oh, and talking about the show this much gives me justification to put pic of the lovely Christina Hendricks at the top of this post. Yum.

Other than that I’ve been watching a lot of the Hurricane Katrina docs that have been on to mark the five year anniversary. I’ve only watch the first half of the epic Spike Lee doc ‘When The Levees Broke’ but it’s magnificent, moving, and bewildering. Can’t quite see how it’s going to stretch to four hours though. Oh, and we’ve been watching the original Swedish Wallander, which is excellent but bloody hard work, so much so that watching one episode puts you off watching the next one a bit, even though it’s really enjoyable.

So yeah, it turns out that all I’ve been doing is watching telly. No change there then.

To which they responded:

So now I learn that rather than the two days to resolve things that I was promised on the phone, it could now be as long as 28 days, which would conveniently take me out of my standard 28 period to cancel. And so I sent back:

To which they responded…. Well, they didn’t in point of fact.

I don’t really think that I’m stretching it too much to say that you are hardly reaching your service level promise of a response within 48 hours if you send a generic automated response within seconds of receiving a complaint form.  If that were the case then where I work I would just stick my out of office response on saying ‘Hi, I’ve not read your mail, but I’ll get round to it eventually’ and I’d never get in trouble for not doing my work. Of course I wouldn’t do this, because I’m not a bastard, which is more than I can say for some media companies.

They have until the time I get home tomorrow to respond.  Oh, and thanks to everyone who left helpful suggestions on the previous post, rest assured they have been studied and will be held in reserve in case of emergency.

Other than that, the good news is the writers block is gone, thanks in no small part to the Virgin letter.  Since then I’ve put two posts up at Demon Pigeon, one of which went down so badly with my fellow members of staff that I have a nasty feeling I may get a visit in the night and the swift removal of my testes. To be fair though, it’s a terrible review of an awful album, but one which I inexplicably love anyway.  Oh, and I’ve lined up an interview with one of the most influential bands of the last 30 years too, so that’s nice.

So, one of the things I really need to do if redefine this place.  And one of the first things I am going to do is ask you, my loyal readership, for your opinion.  Firstly, what do you think I should do with this place?  I have had a blog far too long to get rid of it now, and yet I find it very hard to find things that would be interesting enough to share with you, my dewar and loyal readers, who are far too discerning and intelligent a breed to fob off with half formed thoughts and gibberish.  See what I did there? I paid you a compliment, now answer my question.

But before you do, I do have a second question, and this one is much more important. I am debating with myself the merits of taking on a further stupid project (not another website, don’t worry) this time in relation to Year of Health.  It’s something that ties in really well with what I am already doing, and will give me added impetus now that the initial stages are complete (I think it’s safe to say I am a non-smoker now.)  But what I have in mind will also require the selection of a charity to do it for.

But which one?  I do have a few favourite causes that I could do it for, NSPCC, Oxfam, Amnesty etc.  But to be honest the money I raise will probably be not very high, and certainly for these sorts of organisations nothing to write home about.  If I am going to do this (and I must stress I haven’t decided to do it yet) I would like it to be for a smaller organisation that would really benefit from the tawdry and pitiful amount that I will be raising.  I was really inspired by what Gray did with Twitterthon, doing it all for a small organisation that most of the people who donated had never had any cause to donate to.  The problem is that I have no real personal ties to any such organisation.

So here’s what I would like.  If you could recommend a charity to me, along with the reason that you think it’s worthy of support, and whoever does the best job of convincing me will be the winner.  Not particularly democratic, maybe, but that’s how I roll baby.  Ideally I am looking for something small, and maybe a bit out there.  But I leave it in your capable hands.

Having promised not to let my extracurricular activities preclude me from updating this place, the truth is that Year of Health and Demon Pigeon (not to mention the fallout of that business at the tail end of last year) have been keeping me pretty busy of late. Incidentally, both sites are now live, and I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the results, both in terms of the lifestyle change that Year Of Health has enacted within me, and in how Demon Pigeon has turned out, given it’s my first foray into the wider world of ‘doing the internet’ properly. If you haven’t done so yet, do go check them out.

But enough of the digital pimping, what else is new with me? Well, I’m in a new job, so that’s nice. Things are going pretty well at the moment, although I’m bloody knackered by the end of the day. Ellen got me the complete Buffy box set for Christmas, and to my pleasant surprise she’s really enjoying watching it with me at the minute, and we’re not even up to the bit in season two when it all gets really bloody good. You know the one, where the person does the thing? Yeah, you know. Don’t pretend you don’t.

I saw Avatar twice at the cinema, both times in 3d. The first time I was staggered by the sheer beauty of it, and the second time I realised that under all that brightly coloured 3d fauna there lay at the heart of it a distinctly average film. I’m going to be interviewing one of my all time favourite bands, and even if it is going to be via email that’s pretty bloody cool. Oh, and I’ve become a Gleek.

So I just wanted to pop by and let you all know that I’m still here, which I am, and that I fully intend to update this more often, well aware as I am that I owe you good people a lot of Cross Blogination posts. The fact that it’s my turn as well should spur me on a bit.

So how are all of you?