You Can’t Keep a Good Book Down

You should always read a good book twice.

The first time around, of course, everything is new. Well, it should be, provided the plot hasn’t been spoiled for you in any way. It can be a little daunting, especially, I find, in works of fantasy, to be introduced to new characters, new ideologies, and sometimes whole new worlds with expectation that you are able to keep up. But in good books (the term ‘good’ here is down to the reader’s discretion, of course) you will eventually find that moment where you comfortably slip into the world, and the rest is history. Well, unless you’re reading sci-fi. Then it’s probably the future.

The benefits of reading a book for the first time, of course, are that you’re in a constant state of speculation as to what happens next. Mysteries presented to you are mysterious, plot twists surprising (if done well), and tragedy heartbreaking. I’m currently starting a new series which I will disclose later, when I’m safe from spoilers. It’s been a while since I picked up a new book (as I’ll detail later) and I’ve found it very refreshing to not actually know what happens next. And, to be fair, it is a pretty damn good book. So far.

Reading a book the second time holds, I believe, just as much merit as reading it for the first. It’s a different reading. When I was younger I used to find it boring, as I already knew what was going to happen, but I discovered that once I’d left it for a few months or years, when it was no longer fresh in my mind, I could revisit the book or series and discover not only a story half-forgotten, but a story enriched by the foreknowledge of what’s to come. Foreshadowing became juicy, inevitable betrayals tasted tantalizing before their harvest, and tragedies were all the more bittersweet. Such foreknowledge allows a peek at the machinations of the author. What’s more, I find that on a second reading I’m no longer rushing to see what happens at the end, and am therefore free to explore the text at a slower pace, noting intertextuality, symbolism, and the occasional typo.

Of course, revisiting a book or a series more than twice is perfectly good, too. You may pick up on even more than you did on the second reading, though I do think that the second reading is where you’re most likely to make the most discovery regarding the craftsmanship of the fiction. If anything, on your further readings you’re probably likely to take away different messages from the story depending on where you are in your life. I just finished re-reading Darren Shan’s Demonata series for the fourth(?) time and took to heart messages about maturing and doing things you don’t want to have to do in life. (Perhaps not specifically the need for squishing heads, though coursework can sometimes incite such feelings.)

Speaking of which… reading past young adult fictions that you loved as a teenager, but from an adult perspective, is something I wholly recommend. I recently binged on all of Darren Shan’s works from my childhood, starting with the Larten Crepsley saga, working my way through the Saga of Darren Shan and then through the Demonata series. As an adult, I’ve been more readily able to appreciate narrative techniques used throughout these series and have thoroughly enjoyed refreshing these stories in my mind. As mentioned in the above paragraph, I also took away life lessons as I would from any other book, making this even more worth my while. And also, they’re just cracking good stories, to be honest. As an adult, I’m encouraged to read stories about a newly wed couple in the sixties nervous about getting down to business on their wedding night, but sometimes all I wanna read about is a scorpion demon popping eyes and laying eggs within, or about the war between two clans of vampires and the inevitable end of the world. Does that make me a child? No. Perhaps it just means that I prefer “readerly” fiction to “writerly” fiction, as Barthes would deem them.

So go read a book! Or re-read an old one! You may learn something, from both. Or you may just enjoy staring at blotches of ink on paper for hours on end.

Musical Time Travel

Sometimes, when you listen to a song you haven’t heard in years, you find yourself transported back in time to the last time you heard it, remembering with new-found clarity how you felt at the time. Of course, this happens with other senses too, with sight (visiting a place from your past), with taste, and most potently, of course, with smell. But I personally find that music is the most common trigger, as it’s not everyday that I smell a loaf of bread and find myself in a bakery from 2004.

My favourite example of musical time travel is my personal experience with the band Gorillaz. I bought their self-titled album when I was very young (because of the cartoon cover of course) and, as their particular genre of music didn’t take hold of me at that age, the reminiscence was all the more strong when I revisited them in 2012. I fell into listening two particular songs which complemented my then-maudlin state of mind: Gravity and Starshine. Their album Demon Days was also a nostalgia trip for me back then, but rather than listening to Feel Good Inc. and Dare over and over as I had before, I fell into listening different songs on the album such as November Has Come, All Alone, White Light and the narrative masterpiece Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head.

Now, I’m not telling you about these individual songs just because I like them so much. Here’s the point: Gravity and Starshine reminded me of a childhood long past, and transported me around eight years back in time, fueling the fires of nostalgia and triggering memories that had long since faded. The Demon Days songs listed, however, were new to me at the time, as I’d only really listened to the first half of the album before. I listened to all of the above songs at the same time in my life. Now, if I were to go back and listen to them again it would be another nostalgia trip, as it’s been so long. This time, however, I’d be remembering events that took place in 2012, when I went through my last phase of listening to them, both the new and the old. (It’s also worth noting I’ve not familiarised myself with the first eight tracks of Demon Days since my childhood, and therein lies a potential nostalgia trip back to those times.)

Music is the same as anything else; too much of a good thing dulls your appreciation to it. The aurora borealis is beautiful, even as a picture, but make that picture your desktop background and within a week it won’t hold the same awe that it used to. Remove yourself from that picture for a few months, however, and the next time you make it your background it may once again be beautiful… for a few days, at least. But the thing with music is that, at least for me, it can capture your thoughts and feelings like a snapshot, and becomes a sort of time capsule after your appreciation for it wanes, waiting for your taste to swing back its way in a few years time to barrage you with the echoes of your past state of mind.

The nostalgia that old music can bring is a blessing, but the way it is automatically overwritten in the mind – or at least, I must stress, my mind – is saddening. I feel like I have a limited supply of music left I can use to transport myself back into the very earliest depths of my past. Linkin Park’s teenage angst was revisited a few years ago, as was Nickelback’s… distinct… sound. I figure I have the first half of Demon Days, Coldplay’s first few albums and, because it’s just stellar music, The Simpsons’ Yellow Album left until all of my earliest nostalgia is overwritten with modern associations that the subconscious must so relentlessly pursue. On the other hand, I’ve not listened to The Killers since my few months of binge-listening to them when I first started University, and some of Avenged Sevenfold’s albums are probably due for a revisit. Alternatively, I could simply keep finding new music, leaving a trail of nostalgic albums in my wake, growing more potent in their power of reminiscence by the month.

It only now occurs to me that if I’m the only one who experiences this sensation, the last 700 words may well paint me to be a madman. I hold confidence that I’m not alone, though. Whether I mean I’m not alone in the musical sense or the insanity sense, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself!

Man the Artillery Cannons!

From the distance comes the dull thud of a faraway explosion.

“Mayday, mayday!” a voice calls through the mist. “All hands on deck, all hands on deck!”

“Private!” roars one of the crew. “What’s happening?”

“The deadline, sir!” the fearful young man replies. “Coming hard and fast!”

The lieutenant curses under his breath. They’d already fended off two of the damned things; this third one caught them off guard. This is bad. He frowns, shakes his head. “How many words do we have?”

“800 and counting sir!”

“And how many do you think we’ll need?”

His eyes grow wide and fearful. “Thousands,” he whispers.

The lieutenant stumbles backwards. “We should have been prepared for this,” he mutters, shaking his head. “We should have been prepared!” he roars.

Another explosion sounds, this one closer.

“Sir… what do we do, sir?”

The lieutenant grabs the private by the collar. “By all the gods you believe in, boy, face all attention span dishes forwards! Do it now!”

“Sir! Yes sir!”

“But sir!” rings a new voice, panicked and fearful. Another private appears through the mist. “Sir, it’s Tuesday!”

“What of it?” he growls.

“We… we have no blog post prepared…”

The lieutenant swears under his breath again, then stops to consider a course of action. “We’ll have to leave it,” he mumbles eventually. “We have to prioritize.”

“But sir… we haven’t missed a Tuesday for months, bar the scheduling incident…”

The lieutenant wrestles with himself for a moment, and then spits. “Fine!” he snaps. “I’ll spare you less than 300 words. But be hasty!” he adds. “Be hasty, lest we all sink to the pits of damnation!”

“Sir,” the private replies, shaken. “Yes sir.”

The private leaves. The lieutenant marches ahead. “Onwards!” he roars.

***

Alright, yes, I know, that was dumb and cheesy. I apologise for this blog post being what it is, but sometimes, we need to prioritise. Blog posts will continue as scheduled from Thursday onwards.

A New Approach to Writing

I wrote 308 words today.

308 words. It’s not a lot, is it? And yet, it is. It really, really is. It’s the first 308 words of fiction I’ve written for months. The deadline is in a week and a half. And here’s the kicker: I can’t write stories which I started months ago. By then, I’ve played it all out in my head, I’ve told people about it, it’s done and I’m bored and I want to chase another dog’s tail.

Up until today, I’ve had an obsessive approach when it comes to writing. I’ve had to be in the perfect mood at the perfect time with no interruptions, and then I can just blitz over a thousand words at once. And typically, when I’ve written it all down, I’ll feel great for about… half an hour? And then the doubt sets in, deep and unrelenting. I read it back and, you know, it really isn’t that great, it has a lot of flaws and it needs a full rewrite. But by then I’ve already told the story, I’m bored of it. And so I let it rot in my stories folder until I come across it two years later and go, “Hey, that wasn’t actually so bad. What a waste.”

Blog posts are different, of course, because they’re non-fictional. You don’t need to think up plot, or characters, or a narrative. It’s not nearly as challenging, right? Except I used to approach blog posts the same way too, remember? One blog post every month and a half, not much in the way of editing, no working to deadlines; all natural.

And then I made myself write two blog posts a week.

A blog post will typically hit around 500 to 750 words, sometimes more, and sure, sometimes I don’t feel like writing them. But I’ve given myself a deadline, and I’ve committed to it on a public platform that I use as an example of my capabilities of a writer, so it’s a real deadline. And so far I’ve not missed a day in four months, besides the time WordPress failed to publish a scheduled post, and that came the day after. So why should writing fiction be any different?

I have been attending a university course about writing professionally (although many would argue that’s not possible), but I’ve still been approaching it as a hobby. Something that I only do when I really, really feel like doing it. And that not only leaves long stretches between the times that I write, it also doesn’t give me any time to get used to a particular style of writing or to really pledge myself to a piece of fiction. This latter point is something I have real trouble with, but as I’ve gone over in my gaming blog of all places, I’ve found that I’m slowly regaining the ability to focus on one thing and shut out all the others. It’s a little difficult, but it’s so much better.

I’m able to write hundreds upon hundreds of words and create worlds, and bring people into them. It’s a gift. It’s the one thing I’m remotely any good at, and lately it’s been like… a small aspect of my personality. I’ve been afraid to discipline myself into pushing that ability, in case I… what? Stop enjoying it? In case it becomes work? Well, aren’t you supposed to do what you love for your work? I admitted earlier that sometimes I don’t feel like writing these blog posts. And yet, when we truly get down to it, I’m not going anywhere. I love doing this, and I savor every reader. I may not exactly have a huge following, but this place truly does give me a sense of purpose, and it’s fun to tweak my brain for arrangements of words and topics.

Education has allowed me to break down other works of fiction, pick up on intertextuality, on subtle foreshadowing, extended metaphors, and it has enriched my experience of the world. There are times when this feels more like a burden that a blessing, but really, when it comes down to it, this deep-seated feeling of stagnancy and lack of purpose is probably born of my failure to sit and grab these threads of inspiration and write them down, even if it feels like work. I’ve been waiting for some shot of inspiration to come to me before I start writing, but I feel like sometimes it’s the other way around; you need to try before the inspiration comes. Write shit. Publish it proudly, then hide it away a year later. But do it often, and be relentless. Everything I’ve been avoiding.

There’s probably deeper reasons to me avoiding writing, stuff which doesn’t have anything to do with writing itself… but stuff ’em. To quote the logo of a certain company, just do it. Not that easy, sure, but if I sit here and wait for something to come to me then I’ll be the living incarnation of a monkey at a typewriter, and I’ll die of old age before Shakespeare comes to me. No. It’s time for a different approach.

I’ve written 308 words of fiction today. But this blog post is 914 words long, and New Year’s Resolve was written just an hour or so ago. So to hell with demotivation. You don’t need to feel motivated to continue trying, and if you don’t continue trying then you’ll fall into demotivation faster than gravity can pull your ass to earth.

New Year’s Resolve

It’s that time of the year where we all talk of how awful this year was and how everything will change in the next- wait, hang on a minute, we’ve done that one already. But viewpoints change over time, so we’ll truly start as we mean to continue:

Happy New Year! To some people, the turn of the year means nothing, but for the majority it’s a time of self-reflection and prospective planning. Last year I ragged on this a little bit, saying that people shouldn’t make themselves wait for the New Year before doing this, but in retrospect, anything that causes masses of people to find it within themselves to improve their lifestyle gets a thumbs up from me.

Last year, my New Year’s Resolution was to update my blog more frequently. In all honesty, I kind of forgot about this after a few months and it seemed that this place would forever be yet another writer’s abandoned project, doomed to the depths of WordPress save for the occasional, half-hearted polish. Resolutions are resolutions, however, because they’re a necessary improvement which nags at the back of our minds, and though I didn’t remember it to be a resolution as such, I came back on the 1st September announcing weekly blog posts across both my sites. So for once, I can actually say I achieved my goals! I don’t plan on halting the updates any time soon and I thank you all for reading my ramblings. To be honest, I’ve still only just started.

Personally, 2015 was a bit of a stagnant year for me. I didn’t really do anything new besides put effort into this blog, and I’m really not that much different of a person than I was the year before. It’s not exactly been a bad year (though it’s definitely had its lows), and it’s not been something I’ve disliked living in (apart from the aforementioned lows). If you wanted to call it a calm before the storm, then it’d be an overcast, chilly kind of calm.

2016… is going to be a decisive year for me. I finish my Creative Writing degree and finally have to face the world whether I like it or not. That may sound terribly cowardly, and it probably is, but it’s something that I’m going to have to deal with. I often remark that I still feel like a child at 20; well, if that’s the case, then it’s time to grow up and face responsibility. And when it comes to me, that is so, so much easier said than done. But facts are facts. If I’m the same person at the end of the year as I am at the start of it, then I’ll be in a very tough spot.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Whenever we wonder what we’ll be like exactly one year from now, we picture somebody who has grown in bounds, conquered fear and forged success; somebody who has become confident, found someone to live their life with, stepped outside their comfort zone and made the area outside it just as cozy. I envision this every year, and if you go back and read last year’s New Year’s blog posts, you may find them laced with that anticipation. And the troubling thought that crossed my mind is that, if you showed January, 2015 Kristian what January, 2016 Kristian was like, he’d lose all motivation and hope and consider the year a write-off.

On a less… morbid… note, I have here my new New Year’s Resolution, considering how splendidly the last one turned out! (Can’t believe I’m writing that without sarcasm.) After pondering a few ideas that ranged from fortifying self-confidence to accepting responsibility to gaining independence, I decided to fence them all into one word. My New Year’s Resolution is simply this:

Actualization.

I will write my dissertation. I will finish my degree. I will find a job and I will live with it and in it. I will write fiction, and I will work on a story, and I will learn to live outside of my comfort zone even if that currently scares me in irrational volumes. I have spent twenty years of my life hanging back, for multitudes of reasons, and it’s time to stop. And just saying it won’t make it any easier, or make me any less likely to fail. But it’s time to start trying to try.

And if I make this public, then maybe it’ll just be too humiliating to allow myself to fail.