h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm just opening a place for us to keep on talking about my choir efforts and our writing activities without using space on the punk society thread.
If you need info about "Les petits chanteurs à la gueule de bois" (the little choirboys - or girls - with a hangover), how it works, what we sing, who we are and so on, just let me know.
Tell me about your writing, I'll tell you about mine.

This is way cool

OK, my writing. I've been writing all my life, or so it feels, but I actually only started at 14. My first published book deals with the friendship between a boy and a girl of 17, who have been mates since childhood, and the changes the relationship undergoes when her brother dies and her family is suddenly incapable to take care of her emotionally.

Another one I finished writing (but haven't revised properly yet) is about a group of twentysomethings, one of whom is a software developer and another one is a brain-damaged former most popular guy in the school. There is a subplot involving a virtual woman who seems to have acquired the ability to communicate with them through their dreams. And the usual stuff about growing up and the meaning of love and family and of having somebody to count on.

I'm working on a couple new ones, most notably one that is loosely based on the events that made 2002 the worst year in my life... ever.

You? Spill, spill!

After years and years of songwriting (mostly in English so far but 100% in French now), I started writing short stories (in French)in the late 90s in order to practice for future novels.
At this time of my life, in 98, my wife died and I went through a seriously horrible phase during which I used writing as a therapy. This is how I started my first novel. I'm still halfway 5 years later but never gave up. There aren't millions of pages, I'm just slow.
The working title is "La Cantine du Purgatoire" (I suppose your English and Italian will enable you to translate that) and it's one of these 2 level stories in which a more or less realistic story intertwines with a completely surreal one.
This is a first person text.
At level one, the main character (some kind of me) has a one day walk along the Thames while hearing voices and kicking other living creatures to death without showing too much emotion about it. As the story goes along, he finds himself accompanied by a talking teddy bear with genuine moving human eyes and wearing a dress and army boots constantly carrying an opened bottle of red wine.
At level 2, the same character (still using first person) tells about his past but as his perception of life is well f*cked up, he tends to describe all the scenes as if they were taking place during the middle ages. The whole thing, on this side of his world, is very celtic and faery-like.
The connection between the 2 levels is made by the existence and death of the witch/faery that he fell in love with.

This is obviously starting from autobiographic roots but it definitely is a NOVEL and strangely enough, humour is major feature of the story.

All in French. Yours is in Italian, isn't it?

I never had anything published apart from my translation work but feel confident that it won't be a problem once I'm finished.
What are your next ones going to be about?

Seriously big concept there. I'm not big on concepts. Usually it'll work like this: I'll be talking to somebody or watching something on telly and it strikes me, what if...? Usually, the "what if" develops into a story. Sometimes I finish it, sometimes I don't. Writing is a flow, and I'm completely unconcerned with dropping a project halfway through to start working on another one that I like more. (I actually have a whole folder named "aborted" in my PC). I write to entertain myself, although I also believe that writing is somwehat prophetic. A lot of the things I narrated have at some point happened to me.

I just like stories about people. I create characters and give them a life, a family, a background, and watch as they interact in an endless game of simulated life... well, storytelling and writing are my reasons for living. When all else fails, my writing will never leave me. I cannot being to imagine the devastation you must have experienced when your wife died. I have never lost anyone close to me, and I dread it. I often write about coping with grief as a way to exorcise it; I know that when it comes, I'll be totaly unprepared for it. The strange thing is, I have been told several times that my descriptions ring true. I'm only drawing on the closest thing to grief - heartbreak. Of which I have extensive experience, of course.

Funny that I used to write in English a lot, too, until a few years ago, then reverted to Italian, which is my mother tongue. I feel it better, and only resort to English occasionally now.

I sometimes model the characters on myself, but end up not liking them too much. Either they're too much like me, or they're too much like the person I'd like to be, which is actually not terribly likable anyway. Plus, I already know myself. Autobiography bores me to death

When it comes to bereavement and grief, it's true that imagination will often be enough to allow you to speak about it. It was like I imagined it. Just worse. I don't think it's necessary to have lived something yourself to be able to write about it. If writing is so fascinating, it's precisely because of the capacity of feeling things that aren't actually yours (wether you're in the writer's or reader's shoes).
My main character who's got a lot to do with the real me keeps on killing people and comments about it. I rarely do that in RL.

We work very differently but again everyone knows what works with them. I wouldn't like to be told how to do it and I think I can reasonably assume that you wouldn't like it either.

Do you touchtype?

Touchtype, as in not look at the keyboard when I'm typing?

Sometimes . I taught myself to type, so I'm not the fastest or most accurate of typists, but I'm fast enough that I don't have to think about it when I'm doing it, and I can concentrate on forming sentences.

That's right, nobody should be told how to write. There are tachniques and things you have to know, but once that is automatic each writer has his or her own way of working. I write while listening to music, and I use it to set the mood and pace of the chapter I'm working on.

gotta go, gym in half an hour, must get ready...

G.

OK. More tomorrow.
Enjoy your gym.

Gym was good, but riding home on my moped I blocked the muscles in my neck, and I can't turn my head...

I'm getting anxiety attacks about getting my stuff published. It's become the only way I have to see my worth recognized... I want it for my self, but I also want it so I'l p*** all my exes off. I want to be a famous writer so they'll regret being horrible to me.

Don't worry, sure you'll get there...
I'm rather busy dealing with RL at the moment. I'll get back to you in the near future.

Same here Will get back to you as soon as I get the chance!

G.

I have not visited the site but found out that you will come up with something if you type "punk aerobics" on your search engine.
I couldn't help thinking about you as soon as I spotted that!

I bet When I'm training in my TARM shirt I'm the queen of punk aerobics!

I'm in a good mood today, shame about the work. This is a day to go strolling leisurely around town... not one to be locked in an office writing a report.

Apparently this site is about training on good music.

The weather here is not good enough to make you feel like being outdoors all day and, again, I 'm pretty lucky as I work from home and manage my own time. I find it a bit difficult in terms of self discipline but I would be a sad b****rd to complain.

I don't enjoy working from home very much, I'd really rather get up in the morning and go somewhere. It's just that I wish I didn't have to come HERE, of all places...

I used to find that the best place to do writing work was a cosy corner of my favourite drinking hole. You sometimes get disturbed but not so much. People are not that daft, they can see you're busy and tend to respect that.
Another good thing about it is that there's inspiration around if you dry out. You're taking stuff out while taking stuff in, if you know what I mean.

I wouldn't do that now because I packed up the booze, I use a computer and I don't live on my own but it's been a very good method in the past. I miss it now and then...

I love pubs for inspiration. A local pub, where you know everyone, is a micro-world in which everything is happening. There's nothing less than what you could find in the news or in a fiction film or TV programme.

And because of the drinking (thanks to?), your own and the other's, everything is exagerated, people are more sensitive, more talkative, more expressive, more vulnerable, etc.
Quite powerful really...

Bars take an incredible place in my life (even now that I don't drink booze anymore).

Do you spend a lot of time in drinking holes yourself?

No, not much... it's a Saturday night thing, when you gather all your mates and then go clubbing. Or I'll go to a bar if I want to have a quiet chat with somebody. There is this place called Iguana that I love, but I went there with all my exes (and all the guys I was in unrequited love with) and none of the relationships worked out, and I wonder what the connection is

I'm not drinking much these days, I don't feel like it and besides I'm always driving.

Work is getting me down today... I can't be bothered to do the report I have been assigned, but I have to... because it'a a job and I get paid to do it. Still, though, what a pain in the ****.

I'm trying to talk my friend Sara into coming with me to my favourite club the coming Saturday. It'd be good fun, she'd love the place. Got to make the most of her before she moves to Paris... which I just know she is going to do.

As for the writing, the last thing I wrote was a detailed account of last Saturday's night out, which I sent to Simon. Everything else is stalled, and I have an article to write by tomorrow (my own deadline, I don't actually have one.)

Off to my journal now.

Sorry for not being around much and not answering your posting.
I'm too busy sorting difficult RL stuff at the moment but will come back when I can.

Same here, Chan-Mick... same here.

Will be back at some point. RL is heavy now.

Chan-Mick... I've heard from Terri that thinks are not going well on your front, to put it mildly.

Just wanted to say that I'm in no way picking sides, and hope things will work out for the best for both of you.

Love,
G.