Letters from the past, nearly illegible but not nearly illegible enough.

So, I've talked a lot in here about how I like to write. You've probably noticed that the idea of writing professionally is starting to coalesce in my mind once again. Of course this isn't the first time my thoughts have swung that way. I remember a time when I was all about my various notebooks full of scribbled song lyrics (my band was never going to take off but obviously someone would want to buy the shit I'd been writing for their band: it was gold dust!).
   Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
   Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
   Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
   I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
   The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
   So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).

Creative Non-fiction

So, I realised I'd nearly forgotten to write something today and was casting around for a topic. I had this in the pipeline but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a while yet. I guess there's no time like the present though and I've got nothing else so it'll have to do.
   Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
   Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son

I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
   That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
   They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
   Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
   So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
   Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
   Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
   It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.

Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.

Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
   Well, that's a whole other story.

=

Well, it's only day three of my write-something-every-day challenge and just 36 hours since I really put the pressure on with a melodramatic outburst on why it's so important that I keep it up and I've only just noticed that I've written nothing today. I'm the king of poor follow-through but this was nearly a dismal failure by even my generous standards.

   So, in my haste to fire something out in the 57 minutes remaining of today, I've had to pluck a topic out of nowhere and I'm going for equality. Weighty stuff for midnight on a Saturday but its something I think about a lot. I've always had a passion for justice and fairness, and there's a couple of related stories/events at the moment so I thought I'd talk about one or two.

   So first things first, I consider myself a feminist. Yes I'm a man, yes you could just call me an egalitarian if you want, but this is where I'm coming from. I may be quite a bad feminist at times, as I shall recount here, but I am a feminist.

   One equality-related thing happening at the moment is the Women's Football World Cup. I've always been a staunch defender of the women's game against a barrage of sexist comments from people I'm slightly ashamed to call acquaintances and friends. Women's football is not the same as men's football but it's no less entertaining. Sometimes it's better to watch, even if you might be able to make a case for the standard being lower. Anyway, there are obvious potential challenges to my claims of feminism here. I often find myself thinking something bad about what I'm seeing. I actually made a mental comparison between women's football and "real" football earlier today and I was not happy with myself about that, I can tell you. Of course, having these thoughts doesn't make me a complete chauvinist arsehole. In fact, acknowledging my own faults and trying to address them probably makes me a better person in the long run but still, I'd rather not be prone to such slips in the first place.

   The main problem with trying to be a male feminist women's football fan though is trying not to think very bad thoughts about the endless parade of very aesthetically pleasing women on show. I wrestle them down most of the time but thoughts like these trouble me still. Can I really be fair and equal in my treatment of people with these thoughts in my head? Can I truly be a fan of the game I profess to love? Or am I merely a worthless letch? Fighting myself here proves I'm trying but does the lack of total victory mean I'm not trying hard enough?

Titles are Hard, part 2 of 2.

Part one here

   Last time I mentioned that I'd be trying to write every day, just to see if I can get any good at it. I'll be honest, that piece went on longer than I expected and I never managed to wrestle it towards its intended subject, so I inserted a break at what seemed an appropriate point and split it in two. I'm undertaking this writing on the advice of a far better writer than myself, who thought it might help. Unlike the man in question, I haven't the ability to write fiction (now anyway, hopefully it will come with time) so I'm just typing to see where it goes.

   Anyway, the second and third part of Sir Terry's advice concerned becoming a good writer, which I don't think many people asked for advice on, more commonly they wanted to know how to make as much money as he had so these other pieces of advice are less widely published. The second part was this: read, and read a lot, if you read enough words they start to overflow and you'll find yourself writing, if you've read good things and read widely about all sorts of subjects, you'll have a lot of material to draw on.

   This, I suspect, will be my downfall. Back in my teens I could read two books in a day and if I'd spent that time broadening my horizons I'd have probably ended up reading everything in the universe, but I'm a notorious re-reader so my horizons stay stubbornly narrow. There's a nice eclectic mix in there but new things are rare and these days they seem to take months to get through. However, a glut of new books recently entered my life and hopefully I can take some good things from the experience.

   One of these was actually written by a family member and I'm proof-reading it for him. Through a twist in circumstance I'm not entirely sure he knows I'm proof-reading, it could be he thinks I'm just reading it, which presents me with the dilemma of what to do with the points I notice that need or want changing. I've no idea of the etiquette in this situation and I'm really reticent to give the book back with my little scribbled notes all over it.

   You see, not only do I not know whether he's expecting any feedback or not, the feedback I do have is harsh and I've gone far beyond the remit of the proof-reader, for four reasons. Firstly, because if my relative is to go from self-published to just published, which I assume he would like to, he's going to need to get used to harsh criticism of spellings, punctuation, grammar, syntax and such (this, incidentally, was Terry Pratchett's third piece of advice: knowing your commas from your semi-colons is vital). Secondly, I've been harsh because there's a pretty good story in there but it really struggles to immerse you thanks to its presentation and making it easier to read will make it better. Thirdly, I love correct grammar (though my definition of correct may be looser than some others) and seeing it misused hurts me almost physically.

   The fourth reason is far less virtuous. Honestly, I'm jealous. I've always thought myself a writer, even if not a very good one and suddenly here is someone putting their skill into practice while I wait for an idea to strike, like some hunk of stone landing on my doorstep from which I might be able to hew a story of some kind. I've been wretchedly comparing what I've read in that work to my own efforts and while I believe myself to have the edge when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing, the author of the piece I'm half way through critiquing has me beat all ends up on imagination and story-telling. Together we'd make a fearsome team, though I'd never say it to him. Instead, rightly or wrongly, I'll just tear his first novel to pieces and try to be as dispassionate as possible so that what I'm saying comes from the part of me that's trying to help rather than the green eyed monster who keeps urging me to find any fault I can purely for its own satisfaction. It's a perilous tightrope I walk, over a chasm of despair and envy.

   On this high-wire of the soul I have one salvation. Knowing that the trick of the tightrope walker is to lower their centre of gravity to a point below the rope, I've fashioned for myself a heavy weight. This is why I write every day now, to keep me balanced. I've done nearly 1350 words today (and amazingly still haven't got around to the topic I originally had in mind) and the release I feel is not just down to the confessional nature of the last few paragraphs, although that will certainly have helped. I know that this burden, gladly carried, can save me from becoming the terrible person I've always suspected myself to be and if between that and improving my own skills I can't find some motivation to keep on carrying it then I don't deserve to use this keyboard for anything but facebook and gaming.

You Know What? Titles Are Hard. (Part 1 of 2)

That has bugger all to do with the topic for today. It's just a comment. I've come up with some titles I've been pretty happy with over my career but sometimes I just can't condense what I'm thinking of writing about into a concise enough sentence.

   My topic for today is in fact pretty much what it always is: my struggle to express myself through the medium of the typed word. (Yeah, I know, but there's actually almost a pretty good reason for once).

   In fact, yet again I've had someone tell me I write pretty well. This happens surprisingly often and I never believe it to be true. It seems more likely to me that people are humouring their friend. I don't say this to fish for further compliments, I'm simply stating the facts of the matter.

   Having said that, I was reading back through some of my favourite posts from this blog yesterday and thinking to myself that some of them were half-decent. This is clearly selection bias though: if I'm reading my favourites, of course I'll like them, I should try reading the ones I hate or (if it were possible) the ones I've deleted if I fancy getting a true measure of my ability.

   Anyway, that's why I'm here. Compliments motivate me to try and make myself worthy of them and practice makes perfect so here I am.

   Fair warning, this piece is about to go off on such a tangent you wouldn't believe it.

   I was mid-way through my annual re-read of practically everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote when the great man passed away (naturally this extended the splurge to include other of his books that I read less often). Amongst the things I took in this time around were the anthologies of his non-fiction and shorter fictional works. Between them, the notes he makes between each piece in those books represent the closest we'll get to an autobiography, which both gladdens and saddens me. It's unusual for writers to to autobiographies. Despite being the only people qualified to do so, they always have something more interesting to write about. Such was the case with Pratchett and I wouldn't swap one novel for an autobiography but from those notes in the anthologies of his work I learned there are scarcely any people whose own story I'd be more interested to read. It is all there in his fiction, anyway, once you know where to look.

   Writers are always asked what the secret is and of all the answers I've heard, Pratchett's is one of my favourites. It comes in three parts and the essence of the first and most important part is "You want to be a writer? No-one's stopping you, write something." He himself wrote at least four hundred words a day when he was starting out. If he finished a story within one night's session, he'd simply start on another story. A lot of those innumerable words might never have made it to print but that wasn't the point.The goal wasn't necessarily to be published (although I'm sure it was appreciated), he wanted to write, so he did.

   I've decided to take his advice and try to emulate him, as much as possible. Not that I expect that by writing a couple of hundred words a day I'll turn into the next Sir Terry Pratchett, he had certain advantages over me - such as a skill in the craft - but with any luck I might at some point become worthy of those compliments I've been getting.

My name is Daniel, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I've had a lager.

So, I discovered something today: 25-year-old me can handle significantly less booze than 15-year old me could. I think the first clue was when, after one San Miguel while ostensibly working on a project for a family member. I started slacking off, posting more facebook statuses in an hour than I have done in the previous month and singing Busted songs at the top of my voice. And now I'm blogging about totally random shit and I just can't seem to stop.
   I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
   Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
   What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.