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

Don't mind me...just trying something :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/test2628443

...I think you might well be able to paste text to the pop-up window in this, and have it come out in the full Entry. If you click on the link and scroll down through the black stuff, you should find the window.

I can paste into it, but there's no way that I can see to make it come out in the entry. Never mind. You can collect from here - A2643536 and I'll wipe it once you've got it.

I'm not at all happy with Rome, it's clumsy, but I'd rather get on with Paris and redraft later.



I hope you come back to the UG. You had just about converted me to elitism...

N

You don't need converting. You demand standards of yourself that few others can aspire to. You achieve outcomes that set you apart.

It might not sit easily with your egalitarian notions, but you're an elitist already, nadia.

I'm still around. I may or may not come back to the talking-shop, but I'm committed to the important part.

This is good. You're right to leave it there and move on. Later, the Rome part (and the rest) will pare down, but there needs to be a whole structure before a self-supporting frame within it becomes apparent.

I'll post more myself soon. I have some very short, disjointed pieces. If I can't link them up soon, I'll post them anyway.

Pin (just back from a lovely couple of days in Glamorgan, btw)

shucks, you charmer.

It is odd, for me, to be working without a structure. Ususally I nail that down first. But this is good, and the right way for this to work. The arranging is going to be fun too.

Whereabouts in Glam and what doing? I do hope it wasn't Barry, highest per capita crime rate in Europe. Again. My home town sucks.

N

West Glam. Port Talbot. Steelplant stuff.

Structure comes first, then? So that's where I've been going wrong all these years.

Pah, as if you've been going wrong. I phrased that badly. I meant the structure is usually in place before I start writing. Though I have written a few pieces where a structuring device that I wanted to try out came first and I found ideas to fit after.

I'm back in work so I won't have anything to show for myself before Sunday. So, how do you find time to write and do steelplant stuff?

N - not juggling life very efficiently

Time for both is not so difficult. Head for each can be, but work and writing are good catalysts for each other. They tell me it's left brain/right brain, but I just think a change is as good as a rest.

South Wales has grown on me down the years. Once, I loved North Wales and dismissed the South as a lost place, disfigured by slagheaps. Nowadays I know that a spirit is still there.

If you really want to know how someone mixes steelplant and a writing hobby, just look at your own land. You could just as well ask why pitmen sing like angels. Or even how come props and three-quarters play the same game.

You should be proud of your home, nadia. It's nobler than most are born to.

And I do go wrong, all the time. I'm fascinated to learn that you start with structure. In that case, you're even more gifted than I thought, because it doesn't show in your work. With me, if I follow any kind of conscious model, I get a specimen instead of a story.

Pin

(Hello to fattylizard. I've been omitting her, which is rude, and I'm sorry)

I have no doubt that steel and writing mix well. Coal mining is all over the creative life of Wales. And I am imensely proud of my country it's just my home town I hate, and with good reason. It's a grim place and I have nothing but bad memories of it.

I don't know if we're using the word 'structure' in the same way. Like I said, it doesn't have to come literally first and a lot of my short fiction has an absolute minimum of structure. But by the time I start writing I usually know exactly what I am going to write and I write it in the order it ends up in. I've never written a piece by myself that was done out of order which is probably not a good thing. Starting points shouldn't be evident in the finished piece, structural or otherwise, if they are it either hasn't moved on enough or it was a hell of a starting point. But there is no right way to go about constructing a peice, right. Isn't that why writers collaborate? We all want to push ourselves.

It's odd to hear you call writing a hobby. I never got that vibe from you. Do you really think of it like that? That sounds less confident than I'm used to hearing you sound. I really admire your writing Pin. I read something like Gorgon or Gunson's Ride and the only thing I can think is wow. Your writing certainly doesn't say 'hobby'.


N

It was irony, calling it a hobby.

The Weddell and I had a nice little discussion the other day, on the subject of my 'hobby'. She chose the word to annoy me, but only after I'd claimed that I knew what childbirth felt like, because I was a writer

Actually, it's probably somewhere between the two.

I think I see what your 'structure' means now. Starting at the beginning is something I trained myself out of. I hardly ever do it any longer, in fact both the pieces that you mention were begun last, so to speak. And last of all with me comes the title. That borders on superstition. It's as if the title freezes the flow of ideas.

Oddly enough, I'm still seeing the first bit I posted for FFMS, the scene in Morison's rooms, as the beginning of FFMS. You're right, it's going to be interesting arranging it. I'm always surprised by how many telling-orders might work with such things, and how they all reveal slightly different possibilities.

If you habitually start at the beginning, you might be older than I guessed. That's a paper-and-pencil habit, not a keyboard one.

I'm pleased you love Wales. A person's country is what they are, like it or not. A home town is neither here nor there.

Pin (Sorry about that last sentence. For some reason, I couldn't resist it)

Did anyone ever tell you you have a really dry sense of humour?

I love what you did in the nss (though for an awful moment I thought you were going to try to kill her again). I adore that whale, and that song, though I've got Mama Cass stuck in my head now.

I don't know what you've guessed my age as but I'm 25, though I do write by hand quite often. I like to work in the garden when it's sunny.

Paris is up. It didn't come out quite as I wanted. I was going to have a limited range of strong images and repeat them obsessivley. I don't know if that would have worked anyway. Also the first two paragraphs are bitty. It's as much the result of writing between calls in work as as a deliberate stylistic chioce. The other concern I have is that it might be a bit mutch to put on here. See what you think. Oh, and I dated Rome as 1845. Should be 1843

N - sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Superb, nadia.

I've been trying to guess how you would pitch the different scenes. Here I had complex notions of intercutting Dadd and Phillips, the former believing that he was enacting a murder, the second confused and anxious over the strange but completely ineffectual bevaviour of his companion.

This does the same thing, far more simply and so with much greater power. And you're right; by this point in the story Phillips should already know that Dadd is dangerous. I love the blend of self-protective pragmatism and sympathy.

I've junked some poor stuff that was the beginnings of a collection of hindsight testaments. They were supposed to suggest a Pilate-like self-justification for people who left Dadd to his fate - 'I tried, but what could I do?' sort-of-idea,; hand-washing images - Morison at the doctor's basin, etc. With my own hindsight, I realise that I was avoiding the more difficult description of a descent into isolation through Dadd's own eyes.

It's obvious suddenly that you can tell it the right way, using a foundation in experience.

Dry? A seal? Only (equally wet) Trout ever tells me that, and then only when I'm trying to copy his real ability in that line. The one genuinely black-funny thing I've ever written was really thought up by my daughter. (You seen the Mr Men book?)

I hope people forgive me for the N-SS. Even Ben herself was pushed into ending it, I fear. I've unsubscribed now.

To move on, you have to finish and re-start. Things can only grow so far of themselves. In its time, I think the the N-SS took some important steps forward in collective narrative on hootoo. Previous attempts were fun, but people tended to just watch and gawp, or saw it as some kind of competition to be contested at the three-words-and-a-smiley level.

This time, most of the participants have grown. I hope they'll want to beat their own strange paths now, rather than waiting for some fishy charlatan to put up signposts.

I love Orchid too. I never intended to kill her; that was impulsive, spun off the creative cruelty of the Beast of Bahrain. She'll be back.

25, only born in the 1890s. Of course, I should have seen that one sooner.

Pin (off to try writing in the garden)

Don't be so quick to junk that idea. Yes it's important to get the inside view but I don't see why we can't cover the reactions of outsiders as well. It's another side, and no reason why we can't get both. But it should be done with sympathy, because that's hard too. Also it's more interesting if there are no easy options, for the reader or the characters. I don't know whose reactions you were going to cover but have you considered a letter or conversation between Phillips and Dadd's sister - whose name I have yet to find.

I like the Mr Men book, very funny. The sparseness really works well and I found I couldn't help but draw the pictures in my head. It reminds me of something our housemate did a while ago - the swear bears.

It's always sad to see something that has been so much fun end. I wish I had gotten involved earlier, or that I had given more to it. The lizard and I will certaily carry on playing. The 'cordially invited to' thread is our own fantasy adventure. We pick it up and play with it every so often. Bouncing off of other people like that is a fun way to write.

N - hating being in Cardiff today

You OK, nadia?
You're quiet.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Soon, then.
Pin

We're good, thanks Pin. Busy in work and busy at home so not much hootoo time. Once I get some more of the novel chipped away I'll come back to Dadd.

Enjoy the sun boyo

N

Mind if I cluck once a week?

Stop by as often as you like.

I know I've been neglecting Dadd but I haven't been able to do much at all lately. I've just gone onto medication so hopefully things will get better soon.

I'm glad you came back to the UG.
N

No worries. Just get yourself right.
I think I'm glad too, Miner-wise.

Thanks Pin.
New territory this treatment lark. Bit scary but it's long overdue.


N

It's "All Through the Night", yeah?

I never know whether such comments are helpful (tell me to shut up if I'm out of order) but I know just one bipolar disorder sufferer, in his late forties now.
He despised and avoided medication till a couple of years ago, but the modern stuff he's now on does finally seem to be a positive help.

I'll be thinking of you. Till the next cluck...

Pin

Yep, do you know the song?

Thanks for caring, it does help.
N