#imadethis 21.04.14

Sanctuary by Michael Edwards 21.04.14

Computer game addiction and the love of lists. 19.04.14

I had a really good day last Sunday.  I was productive.  I went to town to get things I needed.  I got some computer games swapped at a second hand electronics shop that proved just how awesome they were by continuing to be awesome.  I came home and did my washing, cleaned up the house and did some work on an art project.  I accomplished all of this in a few short hours and was incredibly proud of myself.  I like to feel productive in and out of work.   Everyone needs some time to be lazy sometimes and do as little as possible.  Most of the time though, I feel like I haven’t done anything when I waste time like that, so my aim is always to do as much as I can.  I may have previously mentioned how much I love a good list.  I'm a huge fan of lists (mostly, because I have a terrible memory so if I make a shopping list – and look at it –then I come home with what I need or list what I need to do in a day, I get a huge positive-attitude-boost from ticking things off as I complete them.  It’s how I roll). 

Part of The Artists Way by Julia Cameron is to complete tasks within the week, write every day and complete a check-in each way to see how your week has gone.  Since completing the book and having no prescribed list of things to do in my free time for the next seven days, I had to start making my own.  I rewrote her check-in questions to reflect my New Year’s Resolutions for 2014 and included a goals and targets section for each week.  The idea of this was to make sure that I didn't sit around on my laurels doing nothing.  Despite knowing that one of the things I want to do most is write, if I don’t set it as my target for the week, I don’t get it done.  There are a great many things that I wasn't to do – little, silly things, like go through my clothes and towels and get rid of the shabby stuff - that because they've not occurred on my check-in goals, they haven’t been done.  It doesn't always work that way but, for the most part, without a list, I'm pretty much lost.

Just re-read what I did last weekend… Done?  Good.  Now re-read the title… Done?  Good!

Despite having a set, prescribed list of things to do this week, something went wrong.   Not “wrong” but not as planned.  Part of the reason I stopped playing computer games last year was because I realised, long before I discovered how much I love to make lists, was that they stop me getting as much done.   That said, I have been conflicted of late; there are so many things I want to do with my time, having a job stops me doing a lot of them, like back-to-backing the whole of Breaking Bad in a matter of days or watching the last few seasons of Dexter, or watching all the Harry Potter films again.  I have to make a choice about what I do with the time I have.  I’d started to find I was hardly watching anything any more.  I don’t do well any more with writing and having something to watch on in the background.  I used to be.  But not any more.  Such is life.  I was starting to make myself feel bad for watching my beloved Once Upon a Time; it wasn't working on my short stories or writing a blog or finishing a book and that was bad.

Wait a minute.

Is it wrong to enjoy doing things?  No, Michael, of course it isn't.  If I'm enjoying doing what I'm doing and not sat staring out of a window is that so bad?  No, don’t be daft!  Why are you making yourself feel bad then?  No answer came my reply.  The internal thought process didn't go exactly like that, but it wasn't far off.  Why should I feel bad for doing something I enjoy doing?  There isn't any hard there at all… Surely?

Wrong.

I have an issue in my life with balance.  Sometimes, I can be a bit – what phrase works best? – “all or nothing”.  That has been the problem in the last week.  Given the title and the paragraph I drew your attention to, I'm sure you can see where this is going.  I have been obsessed with Fable 2 for the last six days.  When I haven’t been at work, seeing my family or making tea, I've been playing Fable.  “Where’s the harm in that?” I hear you cry!  Is there anything particularly bad about completing a game between Sunday afternoon and Saturday morning?  No.  Course not.  The Devil is in the details.  I've been going to bed later and later all week.  Anyone who knows me at all knows I don’t do well with less than my needed amount of sleep.  Last night, I got home from a day out close to 10 pm. I loaded up my Xbox 360 and shut it down again six hours later at 4 am. 

It makes me a little sad at 27 I still haven’t managed to get the balance right in my life that allows me to watch movies, write my stories and blog, listen to music, make art and read books, along with anything else I might like to do.  This is relatively new to me though.  In the last six months, I've come to a big appreciation of what I enjoy doing with my time.  That in mind, I suppose it’s only natural that the balance between them all goes “wibbly” from time to time. 

Borrowed without permission from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/439452876112477645/

At this very moment, I can see Batman: Arkham City looking at me reproachfully, almost begging me to start it.  In light of everything I just said, I think it’s better for all concerned (mostly me) if I just move it out of my line of sight for a while.  After all, I really do want to finish reading that book and writing that short story… I don’t know when I turned on my TV… or when I turned on my Xbox… Oh, here we go again!

Authors Note:  After I finished this, I made a cup of tea, finished my short story I've been working on for far too long, edited another blog which I've posted today, finished the book I wanted to and edited this blog.  I can be productive when I put my mind to it!

Fiction writing and playing the What-if Game, started 29.03.14

One of the things I like most about writing fiction is the opportunities it affords you.  You can be anything you ever wanted to be.  You can be everything you never wanted to be. You can play in a world full of things that haven’t existed for centuries, or in the future with things that haven’t even been thought of yet, except by you.

In my last post I wrote about the lack of infinite possibilities.  In the world of fiction, you’re probably closer to infinity than anywhere else.  You can play with the world and make it another way.  You can take people and make them different.  You can be thinly veiled.  You can cast your most hated colleague blatantly in your story and be mean to them in ways you never could in the real world – should you be of that inclination. 

I've just started reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.  The main protagonist, Cath, is really into writing Fan Fiction for a book series that sounds very similar to Harry Potter.  She found an idea she loved, characters and people and places that interested and intrigued her and she makes her own parallel world.  

I'm battling with a piece of my own fiction at the moment.  If any of you are old enough to remember Sliders the main characters spend the show lost in alternate realities, trying to find their way back home.  That’s what I'm battling with.  I'm re-running a real life event and I've picked the moment I want to change from my own life and run the rest of the events as fiction and see what happens.  It’s sort of life fan fiction… but no one has read the story because the story is my life.  I've never done it before.  To be frank, I don’t think I ever will again.

When I was in my late adolescence, I became consumed with the concept of “What if?”  It was an obsession.  I was studying philosophy at A-Level and discovered the idea of the Thought Experiment, and I was running these experiments in my head all the time.  The difference is, I wasn't Sartre attempting to explain the idea of shame proving the existence of other minds.  I was playing with my own life, wishing for things to be different and picking a point at which things had gone wrong, and making different choices.  I was deeply unhappy – probably depressed even – in my later teenage years and felt very out of place in my own life.   I turned meddling with my life into a game.  I referred to it as ‘The What-if? Game’ for a very long time and I was always playing.

Image borrowed without permission from http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2013/06/5-tricks-for-overcoming-writers-block-and-artists-block-too/

I think it was when I got to university and began to settle into a lifestyle I liked, found true friends and was enjoying my course that I began to realise that the life I had was the only one I was going to get.  This was before I even studied Sartre; he would agree with me later in my third year.  I can’t change the things that have happened to me.  Nor would I have had the fantastic experiences I was having then and have had since were it not for certain events that changed me and made me how I am.  I gave up playing the ‘What-if? Game’ back then and whenever the thought popped into my head, it was just in passing and I banished it, almost as quickly as it arrived.

But…

The problem is with fiction and writing it, you’re doing that over and over again.  You play the ‘what if game’ with people’s made-up lives and you make all the decisions.  If you don’t like the consequence of the game, you change it and make the characters play a different one.  If you like the conclusion but it doesn't fit, you rewrite the cause to give the effect.  The problem I have hit upon with this piece is that I have started playing the age old what if game with my life.   I'm making fiction happen on a keyboard based on life events of my own.  I've change the name.  That’s all.  He is me.  I can’t even think up names for the other players in the piece, so at present, they’re all as-per-the-real-world.  That’s a problem for editing. 

Why am I playing this game again?  Most specifically, I have been trying to figure out whilst I've been battling with this piece for over a month is this:

Why am I playing this game again when it’s so hard to give yourself the alternative you didn't choose?

I was sat at my keyboard trying to write an alternative life event for myself – its how I've come to write this post actually.  That was the question I had in my head as I walked away, annoyed at myself for not just letting me get through it.  I don’t like leaving things unfinished and I can’t move on to anything else until this project is complete, but I don’t want to finish it.  I had landed myself in a catch-22 and needed tea. 

As I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I was wondering how exactly I was going to make the alternative play out.  It was difficult to do and make it convincing to me – if I couldn't convince myself, I wouldn't ever be able to let anyone else read it.  How could I?  I knew they wouldn't believe the story.  No one picks a fiction book to read the truth but you do expect truth to be there.  Readers know when a story doesn't work; when the actions of the character stray from their motive, when the shark gets jumped and when the writer has just lost their own plot.  The kettle boiled and the answer to the question of why I was playing the game was answered. 

There seems to be a unilateral consensus amongst the writing and reading community that people should write what they know.  J.K. Rowling knew wizards?  George R.R. Martin got lost on his way to Tesco and landed in the Seven Kingdoms, characters posturing to take the Iron Throne?  Who knew!  Of course they didn't.  I picked fantasy to be awkward.  But what do these stories tell you about, really?  They’re both about family, friendship, betrayal, darkness in human hearts and what happens when people do the right and wrong thing.  All fiction is the what-if game. 

So, the answer to me of why I am playing the what-if game with one specific scenario?  I want to know what could have happened is the first answer.  The second, if I'm ever going to write something big, big enough to publish, how can I write a big enough what-if with people who aren't real, if I can’t even start with myself?

Self-discovery aside, doing it is another thing, and procrastination is calling my name – the washing machine is finished and I've just [picks up cup and drains it] finished my tea.