It’s been seven months since we last spoke properly and that’s my fault, I went and got a job and it meant I just didn’t make time for you. That said, I got made redundant in February so I haven′t really had an excuse for the past four months. I guess work put the strange notion in my head that you need something to write about before you start writing (check any posts on here and you’ll see that′s obviously not the case).
My first confession on the writing front is that I am not a novelist. If you’ve been eagerly anticipating NaNoWriMo updates since I wrote about it in October, you’ll be disappointed to know that what was meant to be a 50,000 word novel written in 30 days became 1,386 words abandoned in two weeks. Maybe if I’d documented this more at the time I might be able to tell you why, at a guess I’d say my usual lack of motivation mixed with post-work fatigue and a shot of self doubt. Nonetheless here’s the first couple of sentences and likely the only extract you’ll ever see.
The popping veins on a tensed tan arm danced before his eyes and, as Dreck focused, slowly morphed into the cracks on the nicotine-cream ceiling above the bed. At least he could still see, standing up, though, was going to be another matter entirely.
Besides a three page novel fragment I’ve also been writing reams of inane employment-seeking prose.
With experience on the news desk of a regional daily newspaper I am used to meeting tight deadlines in high pressure environments. I am well suited to office based jobs that require computer literacy and would love to expand my journalistic expertise or explore public relations. My close work with the public and ability to adapt, along with a history in retail, mean that I would also be the ideal candidate for a far broader range of jobs.
Gripping it ain’t.
The only writing of note isn’t even anything new, it’s a version of a Septermber post, How to Be Broke. Edited by Nancy Bennie, styled by Antonio Roberts and on page six of this Lost in The Wood zine.
I can’t say I’ve ever listened to the show but based on the frequency of blog posts around here it’d be advisable for you to read their zine. Here’s a PDF version in case you’re not a fan of the Flash gimmickry above.
This afternoon I move from Stoke-on-Trent (a city I never wrote much about) to Peterborough. Maybe I’ll be better at blogging there.
Some people say I haven’t been doing anything, I say my work is everywhere.*
Since I started this website in November two things have surprised me about blogging. First, how many people read my posts. In my head scribbleboy.co.uk is a dust covered tome tucked away in some corner of the internet bookcase read by half a dozen close friends. In reality hundreds of people paw over these pages in a forlorn search for Megan Fox’s breasts. I don’t have them. Nor do I have Alesha Dixon’s legs or Abbey Clancy’s ass. I am not some kind of pervert butcher. Those who aren’t on a quest to discover the choicest celebrity cuts, or at least pause in their search, seem to enjoy what I write. Sometimes they even leave comments.
The second thing that surprises me is that people don’t just read my words but are influenced and inspired by them. Maybe Gingell said it best when she said;
Scribs was the first (and only) person I knew to maintain a blog about nothing…which went some way in to convincing me I could start this one.
Frosty, who documented our adventures through Asia last year, is back in the blogging game with Work Hard Play Hard, a blog that takes a few pointers (and plugins) from this very site. Unlike last year’s thoroughly comprehensive travel blog this one will be a selection of edited highlights and will continue to document the adventures of Frosty long after he has returned to the UK.
Here’s an awesome time-lapse video of a Malaysian sunset that Frosty filmed. There’s plenty more footage, photos and observations like this on his blog.
A blog where my touch is at its most obvious is TWKM. It’s a blog about a guy trying to improve his life by completing challenges suggested by readers, or as Stanford puts it;
It’s a blatant rip off of scribbleboy, but I don’t care because it’s a good one.
Have a read of Stanford’s challenges here and suggest one of your own. He’s already suggested one for me to complete;
I challenge you to regularly answer an ad on gumtree, craiglist or similar websites, be it serious (which can lead to expanding your skills, social circle, or jobs) or funny (asking to swap a hexopus (an octopus with six legs) for a wii remote for instance).
Post results (with anonymity kept) for all to see.
Restriction is that it shouldn’t be rude or destructive to the ad poster.
I’ll be trying to do this weekly myself, depending on how realistic it is.
I will get onto this challenge (challenge 21) soon and blog my results.
To give you a little bit of context, Stanford is one of Antonio’s friend whom I met at Annabel and John’s New Year’s Eve party (I make the briefest of references to the party here). It was one of the most civilised parties I’ve been to in a long time with dips, fireworks and champagne at midnight. An indication of how classy it was is that Stanford’s pictures are in black and white. To gain a greater understanding of who Stanford is and the mind behind TWKM I recommend reading his about page. I also recommend reading the nine blog posts he’s made in just over a week. I don’t recommend comparing his output with mine, that will just make me look bad.
The penultimate blog I’m going to take a look at is FeatherQuest. This site is written and maintained by Holly, who you might remember made me eat apples all through April. Holly’s blog is about… well, I’ll let her say it;
This blog is based on the idea that I need to shape my life a little better. I need more control other than just random drifting and I had an idea that maybe my friends could set me challenges. Things I could do to improve my life or become a better person. I also aim to do reviews and general stuff to further my writing.
I have challenged her to get some of her written work published and to share the stages of her creative process with readers. This ties in nicely with the freelancing challenge I have set myself (challenge 1e).
I’m going to wrap this up with the most literal example of me inspiring a blog post;
This is a portrait of me by Antonio of hellocatfood.com that I’ve been meaning to post for a long time. You could read his blog but I wouldn’t recommend doing it too quickly because he updates even less regularly than I do. Before I sign off a few quick shout outs to blogs that are not tainted by me but are still worth reading;
Life Through God’s Sunglasses – My former housemate Baines’ site. What with her leaving and Gingell going out so much I have been forced to strike up conversations with inanimate objects. Will be worth keeping an eye on this page for updates of Baines’ adventures in Nepal.
Wheels on Fire – Ally keeps a record of how he is ritually humiliated and beaten by his girlfriend his training, sometimes this involves Gingell. I know I plugged it before but it’s come a long way since then and you can get a better idea of his weekly routine, plus it now has pictures.
Night,
Scribs
*If I was God this is the kind of thing I would say.
Last week I started work on a set of icons to represent each of the challenges on this blog. Since you last saw them I’ve taken note of your suggestions, played around with them a little bit more and even drawn some new ones. Over the next few days I’m going to be posting each icon, my reasoning behind its design and a progress report for the challenge.
Turns out I have a lot to say about my first challenge so this one gets a post all to itself.
A simple concept but one that is difficult to represent using an icon. My first thought was to interpret the circle as a full stop but out of context this was meaningless. Then I considered turning it into a single quotation mark but this suggested conversation and would probably have ended up as a poor imitation of the Vodafone logo. I thought of ink blots, the end of a pencil, the ball in a ballpoint pen, weirdly shaped nibs on fountain pens and discounted them all as antiquated or meaningless out of context.
A screwed up piece of paper was the best idea I could come up with and as you can see I played around with a number of variations. I’m not sure any of them work, after staring at them for this long I wonder why I’ve created buckets of oversized popcorn.
The challenge itself, with its various subsections, has become overly complicated too. Let’s recap.
let’s just knock this one on the head, I’ll blog as and when I feel like but no less than three times a week, unless life gets in the way, which undoubtedly it will.
1b. Hook the blog up to Facebook. Done.
Depending on my mood I turn this off and on but it does bring a lot of traffic to my site. Illogically, there are certain posts that I’m happy for strangers to read but not comfortable with my friends on Facebook seeing. I guess this is a combination of knowing that people who have taken the effort to read the blog genuinely do care and a realisation that my Facebook friend list is stuffed with people who I’ve forgotten I’ve added and the overly-sensitive.
1c. Install the Visual Bookshelf on Facebook. Done.
The reason behind this was to encourage me to read more and overall I think it’s worked. So far I have read and reviewed Twilight, New Moon, EclipseandBreaking Dawn by the incomparable Stephenie Meyer.
The Further Adventures of a London Call Girlis another book that I have completed. In fact I read this one first, obviously discounted prices and pictures of a scantily clad Billie Piper in some way inhibit my ability to read the word sequel properly. Like the first time but not as tight is both an accurate micro-review and a rather obvious innuendo.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay is a book with a great sense of style and dark sense of humour. You’ll enjoy it either way but if you’ve watched the tv series it’ll add an extra dimension to the characters you already know and make you realise how faithful they were to the original text on screen.
Back in January I alluded to my reading of The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. You should definitely give this a shot. Ignore that it’s chick-lit, ignore the film (I’m told they’ve changed a lot of things for the big screen) and just read this book, haven’t read something that has made me laugh so much in a long time (watch Rebecca’s letters to her bank manager grow more and more ridiculous as the book progresses).
Since then I’ve also picked up The Vice Photo Book (mentioned here, quoted there). I micro-reviewed it as “Between it’s hardback covers Vice Magazine spend 336 pages documenting the shit-stained, sex-obsessed nature of humanity in all its full-frontal full-colour glory”.
I’m also reading Love All the Peopleby Bill Hicks. Bill and Belle make strange bedfellows in my post about jogging. My penultimate read is Rebel Code by Glyn Moody. Yes, it’s a book about open source software, deal with it.
Finally, I am meant to be reading the Bible. I’ve discussed this before and even contemplated buying a New International Version. This Easter Baines bought me a pocket sized NIV (thank you) so now I have no excuse. I have decided that instead of starting from the beginning (again) I’m going to soldier on from Samuel I and attempt to get an overview of the entire book.
I have the official National Novel Writing Month book which means I know how to capitalise NaNoWriMo correctly. It’s now just a case of waiting for November and then attempting to write a 50,000 word novel. Somehow I think I’m setting myself up for failure here.
Summary: This challenge has been half completed. If you have any more writing challenges they’re getting a new number because this is just getting confusing.
Today I’ve been doing things that I should have done ages ago. Back in November I wrote about freelancing. Today I purchased the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2009 and in the next few months I’m going to being trying to get some of my writing published.
Back in December I complained about how my monthly Vodafone bill fluctuated wildly. Today I sorted it out (from now on I should only pay £17 a month).
In January it was my birthday, today I’m finally getting around to writing thank you notes to all the elderly relatives that sent me money.
I’m starting to research universities for next year and I’ve also been looking into work experience at the BBC. Below is a story I started writing in January. Unless your name is Gingell, Scribble or Baines you probably won’t find it very funny. Instead may I suggest this or, if you’re not on Twitter, you could have a look at this.
Scribs tended to get overprotective of the red wine
I’ve always thought of LiveJournal as a place where angsty teenagers who enjoy listening to Marilyn Manson can go and cut themselves in peace. I was wrong, there are normal people on there too. Well, maybe normal is an overstatement but both of my housemates have LJ accounts.
The other day Baines posted the following story on hers;
Trapped in Trentham… Little Red Riding Scribs…
The promise of fresh air and exercise was too much for young Scribble to resist, he bounded joyously to the car and strapped himself in eagerly waiting for Sai to get into the car and drive them, Claire and himself, to Trentham.
The cold air whipped through his hair as he bounded along beside Sai and Claire towards the lakeside, after stopping to sit in a deckchair for a photo opportunity they continued on this healthy calorie burning expedition.
His excitement at this intriguing ‘outdoor world’ was hard to disguise as he trotted along beside the pair, this strange new environment before him was begging to be explored. He listened intently as the girls talked of the monkeys that lived just beyond the fence on his right and the little ducks laughing at the lakeside to his left.
‘Fresh air smells odd,’ he thought as he walked through the gooey, mulch clad pathway. The forest closed in further making the pathway more secluded, the lake became barely visible beyond the undergrowth. Now and again the conversation would subside and he would be left to listen to their footsteps and the variety of small animals and tree sounds around him.
In a blinding flash of orange Scribble was thrown to the floor. Something large, an animal of some kind had knocked him several feet to the ground. He lay there for several seconds bracing himself for whatever was coming next. After thirty seconds of silent nothingness he opened one eye, then the other. Slowly he got up, brushing himself down. He found for some reason he was wearing a red hooded cloak and had a basket of shopping from Sainsbury’s on his arm. He fought the strange urge to continue to the nearest house with the basket and scanned the area for signs of the strange thing that had knocked him to the ground.
This is the second installment of Baines’ story, here’s how I would have continued the story;
The Further Adventures of Little Red Riding Scribs (A Modern Day Tragedy in Two Parts)
There, just amongst the trees, was the briefest flash of orange and, before he could tell them no, Scribs’ feet began to head towards it, a sandy path rushing to greet them.
Scribble knew he should probably miss his housemates, and one day he was sure he would, but for now his head was filled with exotic fantasies; exotic fantasies that involved spending a week in his dressing gown, using only one mug for tea for the rest of his life and never switching off the tv pilot light again. By the time his thoughts had turned to non-tessellating table arrangements Scribs was unable to contain his glee and he began to skip along the path whistling show tunes, a stupid grin plastered across his pale little face.
The twisty-turny path led little Scribs far away from the mist covered field and deep into the dark heart of the forest. Where there were once bunny rabbits and bluebirds there were now gnarled trees with claw like limbs and omniously glowing toadstools that were bigger than Scribble’s head. Soon he could no longer see the sky and, shivering as the bitter wind cut through him, he began to panic. Turning around suddenly Scribble realised he could no longer see the path and his footprints, sorry footwear impressions, had vanished. A big greasy raindrop navigated its way through the branches and slipped down Scribble’s back, provoking a girlish squeal.
It was at the exact same moment that Scribs began to curse himself for not leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that he walked face first into the wall of a gingerbread cottage. It wasn’t a bad cottage but Scribs could easily think of five frosting colours that would have co-ordinated better.
Rushing inside to escape the rain Scribs found himself in complete darkness, a pair of hungry looking yellow eyes staring back at him. “Red Riding Hood, is that you?” said a husky male voice.
“Nope, it’s me, Scribs.” said Scribs (okay that part was redundant).
Seconds after the last syllable left his lips something hard slammed into Scribble’s head knocking him to the ground. It was at this point that Scribble decided to turn on the lights.
An angry looking orange wolf squeezed into a pink nightie and night cap was propped up in a quilted bed by half a dozen pillows. At Scribble’s feet was a thick yellowing script, the title page reading “Raunchy Red Gets Down and Dirty with Granny.”
“That is not how it goes.” said the wolf, obviously put out. “I say ‘Red Riding Hood, is that you?’ and you say, ‘Why yes Granny, I’ve wandered through the big bad forest to bring you these goodies from Sainsbury’s.’” The wolf sighed, “It’s on page nine.”
Scribs was speechless.
The wolf continued, “Then you say ‘Why granny what big ears you have.’ and…”
“You’ve eaten both of my housemates and now you want me to take part in some kind of twisted cross-dressing inter-species role-play? Doesn’t something about all of this strike you as wrong? This is a children’s book after all.”
And with that the orange wolf opened his jaw wide and in one swift movement swallowed Scribs whole.
“Scribs Om Nom Nom.” said the wolf, whose second favourite thing in the whole wide world, after twisted cross-dressing inter-species role-play, was internet memes.
THE END
The moral of this story children is twofold; never trust a ginger and never go outside.
Four years ago today Hunter S. Thompson stuck a gun barrel in his mouth, sucked out the air and pulled the trigger. And with that one of the most important journalists of our generation checked out from planet earth.
It seems in recent years that writers cut their teeth on dismissing the Good Doctor’s work as the deluded ranting of a violent junkie and yet when the twin towers fell, and the news channels were feverishly looping the attack footage, a disease-riddled, wheelchair-bound elderly man wrote;
We are going to punish someone for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.
This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed – for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started a war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everyone, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.
Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job – armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses, and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.
Hunter’s writing was not only insightful, it was sharp, dark and funny as hell. Not only was what he wrote unique but what he did was unique too; no other journalists rode with the Hell’s Angels, no other writer thought to stay on the campaign trail for a year and no war correspondent, before or after him, has ever donned Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and accessorised with a cooler of beer before getting to work.
Reading his work made me realise that you could report what was happening in the world in a way that would still capture people’s imagination years after the events had taken place.
His writing is what got me on a journalism degree and one of the many things that got me thrown off (if it’s a choice between doing coursework and reading Gonzo Papers volumes one, two and three I would recommend you pick the former). Maybe I should invest in a doctorate in divinity like he did.
Born in Paignton, somewhat educated in Stoke-on-Trent and living in Peterborough. I am a footsoldier in the army of the unemployed and an occasional blogger. I spend my days applying for jobs and watching Glee.
I survive on caffeine, willpower and savings alone. This blog is a record of my successes and failures as I try and complete life-improving challenges suggested to me by readers.
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