Inside The Mind

Stephen King said he never keeps a notebook. He said a notebook is a good way of immortalizing bad ideas. I may agree with the latter but I certainly disagree with the first half. Yes, notebooks contain good and bad ideas and I guess, in a way, if you keep jotting down that bad idea you will eventually write a bad story but what happens if you simply forget a good idea? Yeah, sure, we always remember the ideas that excite us but what if we just...forget? 

I've had this idea for a long time and I've probably jotted it down maybe six or seven times in a different format, in the same notebook. Father and son in a boat, something happens, inspired by McCarthy and Hemingway - even though I haven't read him so not sure how it can be inspired by him. Anyway, I love notebooks. When I'm old and crepid and smelling of piss I will have a huge office stacked with my journals and notebooks. Journals and notebooks - like any sort of book really - harbor stories, they make us who we are. I have shit handwriting and not many people will ever understand what my journals say but that's my story, that's my little quality.

I will never stop loving notebooks, and spending my evenings doing what I do best - being a nerd and looking notebooks up online. Here's one of my favourites, by Mr. Guillermo Del Toro. 

Things I Appreciate Today

Imagine a world where you weren't in control.

Reminds me of James and the Giant Peach.

Of imagination.

A classic, right?

The next film I am very excited about.

Findings

New.

I was sitting on a bus today and I was thinking, thinking about a lot of things. One of the things I thought about was this blog or more, lack of blog. When I set out writing it I thought it would be completely about writing, about literature and yes, in a way it was, but as I was sitting on the horrific bus where enthusiastic American kids made me feel even more cynical and miserable, I thought that I could - and do - write about a lot more. Writing is a way of life so why not write about life? My life, people's lives, life as a whole? Writing is a way of making sense of the world, of understanding, so why should this blog be any different? I've thought of new ways I'm going to go at this blog. Neil Gaiman said that the key to a successful blog is consistency, good advice, I may not take it, I may do, we shall see. 

So, new background, new title, new ways of doing this thing. Here goes. 

'Can You Keep A Secret? My Life As A Submissive'

No, not me. Boredom crept up on me while I was wondering around Glasgow airport, aimlessly looking at the limited selection of books in WHSmith. Ammitiedley I had East of Eden in my bag, thirty pages in and it's blowing my mind, but I wanted something easy to read as a sort of break so I glanced over the 'buy one get one half price'. Looking up at me was a book called Can You Keep a Secret? My Life as a Submissive. It shamelessly had the colours of Twilight and the raunch of Fifty Shades of Grey but classed itself as a 'memoir'. I too, shamelessly, picked the book up - much to the disgust of the Scottish elderly shop assistant and the gurgling eyes of a passing woman - and read the back. The book was about an Irish woman and her life as she entered into the underground sex circles of Dublin, starting with meeting guys at a young age for sex and leading onto her later years to become a swinger and join in with forty or more orgies.

I opened the book and the passage that was in front of me described how a man was spooning the girl and slipped his penis inside her rectum - sharp stuff! I glanced further and noticed the font was huge, there was a mistake on page 122 and that the passages were badly written. But hey ho I had three hours to kill and was intrigued about the dirty sex circles of Dublin. I use intrigued as a word loosely as I know those reading - and those in Glasgow airport at that time - could think I was simply being a pervert. Not so. A writer who listens to someone's conversation isn't been nosy but doing research. I, myself, was feeding my academic mind and also my literary intrigue. But this isn't a blog where I defend but more explain.

So 300 pages later and sitting next to a very uncomfortable woman on the plane who peered over my shoulder to see what I was reading - a woman who I may add said to me "well if we crash it's all down to you" when I sat down in my seat next to the emergency exit, cheers - I put the book down and snarled. I snarled because the sexual paragraphs were so badly written that it felt like it had been swiped off a dirty conversation someone sent their significant other from Facebook. I snarled because the sex scenes - the threesomes, the gang-bangs, the virginity taking - were written with no class or interest but a splurge on the page, the hideous cliches that come when you write a sex scene. 

I've had to write some sex scenes for the short stories I've been working on for my project. One story I finished - originally called Savage, now called The Quiet Life - tells the story of a businessman and husband named Benjamin who is a sex addict. My lecturer read it and said "Tom, you write about loveless sex well." I took it as a compliment. I did not snarl, like I snarled at this book. Where I snarled because the entire book was so badly written it felt like a story you tell your friend the morning after a night out. I snarled because the main character - or the woman writing such a memoir - irritated me with her stupidity and lack of intellect. 

One sentence reads "the next couple of weeks, Kevin started being a dickhead" - there was no comma of course, that was missed. Another, "I felt..." - does this woman not know the first rule of writing - show, don't tell. But it wasn't just the bad writing that angered me, it was the fact that if it weren't for Fifty Shades of Grey such a book wouldn't exist. Now we have the Crossfire, the Eighty Days and Avalon books of the world - where are our East of Edens or Grapes of Wrath? 

I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey so the reviews I've had about the books bad writing and lack of plot I cannot comment on and wouldn't throw my nose up to such a book - do people not still read the Marquis De Sade? - but this book, this Submissive book was bad, just plain bad. I get that these books have become the "mummy porn" that the world needs but I just find it irritating that books like these are being published when others are not. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. 

Christmas

Once upon a time, a young boy with bad hair and an urge to read sat at his dining room table, littered with scraps of crackers and pieces of turkey, and thought about the future. He thought where he would be in a few years time, he thought what kind of Christmas he would have when he was older and had his own house, he even thought about life. Years later, at the same table, with better hair and more of an urge to write, the same boy thought about the same thing. He listened to Coldplay's 'Christmas Lights', sipped a glass of wine, glanced at the watch he had received for Christmas - 'nerdy watch' as his sister called it - and wrote about his thoughts. He heard his mother in the kitchen preparing the food, listened to crackle of the fire, glanced at the lights of the tree and thought "where are we going to be?" He thought it for a whole two seconds because the answer was obvious, "we don't know, we never know, and that's the fun of it." He thought that he would enjoy his dinner and read his book and maybe watch a film with his niece, and he would wait and see what was to happen, rather than sit and worry about it. He would ponder but not ponder too much. 

Enjoy and look out for the new blogtastic mayhem that is to come in the New Year! 

"Here's to the future!"

"No, here's to now." 

New Beginning

Once, I stood on the top of a mountain and looked. I saw the sun setting, I saw the blue and pink sky, I saw lights fighting their way against the colours, I saw cars whipping past, people going about their lives. What didn't I see? The confusion. I didn't see the confused people, struggling. That's something none of us see, or choose not to see. 

Once, I sat at my desk and looked out of the window. It was night and there were lights. I didn't see much but I thought about much. I thought about what makes good stories and good novels. I thought about what wins awards and wins prizes. I thought about what it means to love and be loved. 

My mind, as of late and as of current, thinks about food, alcohol, writing, books, the future and love. I'm sure some of these things fall into the same categories and others just stand alone. Alone. Something all of us feel but never really are. 

What a random post, you think. What is this? An attempt at a poem? No. This is me sitting in my living room, against the twinkling Christmas tree, listening to Admiral Fallow and thinking how I shall, in the new year, continue with this blog, my neglected, abused blog that contains my thoughts, my experiences, my dreams and my imagination. 

The weird and wonderful world of it.