Finishing, Outlining, Drinking Pop

Recently, a little system has been discovered regarding getting small sessions of writing done. It’s all about location, device, time of day, and no more fukken Bic Fine longhand. It’s hard at the moment to imagine starting another book afresh from new. It’s sound advice to get crackin’ on the next as soon as the bottom line is starting to dry on your last but it’s also good advice to stop being a saddo and go get a life. The void can fast approach after a self-satisfied ending so it’s handy that other things needing to be done are already well underway and have been so for years. The beginning is not the hardest part but it requires big ideas and motivation. During other sticking points, you can draw on what you already have down in ink. 300 words a session now, in the last phase, is not at all too shabby. Little consistent building blocks, baby. 500+ is a bonus.

All the notes and outlining for this book amount to a couple of pages of A4. (Jeffrey ‘Loves Beaver’ Deaver spends up to nine months outlining before he writes a single word! Er, hello! Is he for real or what man? Imagine him prepping for a bodybuilding show? The winner would be cashing his cheque before ole Jeffrey had ironed his posing knickers! Too many twists define commercial tales. Too many twists, not enough risks, at least 500 pages, and twenny quotes of praise from periodicals you’ve never heard of in the front matter). Not hatin’, just sayin’. The best goal a book can achieve is to make the reader forget they are reading a book, agreed? An excess of formula is a constant reminder.

Where were we? Oh yeah. An essential trick is the spider graph. Learned this during high school revision. A couple of these with half a dozen words jotted around one keyword in a cloud in the middle can produce enough gas to charge through a whole fat chapter. Following a direction feels safe. Knowing exactly where you are and where you’re going does too. It’s when you detour into pure sentence-by-sentence make-it-up-as-you-go-along scenes when the surprises appear. Your imagination burps up some random nuggets. The good news is that there’s no such thing as a wrong turn. Not sober, anyway.

If you don’t surprise yourself you can’t expect to surprise anyone else. All writers are making up the same stuff. Lots of geezers are thinking the same thoughts. Loads of folk say today’s pop scene is dire. They slate the performers. Now that’s propa negative hatin’ coz there’s no appreciation or respect. Have you seen any recent pop videos lately? Like, dude. They’re sick. Too many shots, too many costume changes, too much eyelash fluttering, but artistically and visually, they’re kinda hard to beat. Think of a good idea right now on the spot and the pop vids are probably ahead of you. The choreography and cinematography in some of them are truly ill.  We’re all in a collective consciousness, big fish and small fish alike, a network of backbones all linked. Most have got internet access, but their modems ain’t on...so to speak…as in Smart TV, Thick Owner. Get me blood? It’s a race to get the best ideas first.