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 Originally for the 30-Day Blog Challenge. Now just a blog about a flailing mermaid |
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The 30 Day Blogging Challenge ..... lets see how far I get... Pretty far it seems! Winner (1st place) for the July 2013 "30-Day Blogging Challenge" Second place for the September 2014 "30-Day Blogging Challenge" |
| Weirdly, Iâve often wondered what it's like to be with me. I mean, I know what itâs like to be me (not recommended). But I donât know what it is like to date me or live with me. Back in the day, I used to think it must be horrendous. But I think that might have had something to do with the people I was with, rather than me as a person. Letâs face it, some people bring out the best in you, and some people donât. Donât get me wrong, I have qualities that even I would find annoying. Such as: - I wake up stupidly early in the morning. Whilst Iâm very quiet when I get up, when other people wake up Iâm a bit too chatty because Iâve been awake so long. - Iâm controlling when it comes to freezers and suitcases - I spend money on books and stationery that I donât need - Iâm very picky about bedding - Every so often I go on decluttering rampages - I am horrendous at making simple decisions⌠but not too shabby at making big ones - Iâm so competitive that I occasionally declare that âI winâ, even though no one else knew they were competing in anything But other than those things, I donât think Iâm too bad to live with. I like to think Iâm incredibly low maintenance. I listen to my friends talk about their relationships and, quite often, my response is âgive the guy/girl a breakâ. You know when the other person is both too clingy and doesnât give them enough attention. No, screw that. I may be a Gemini, but even Iâm not down with that level of ridiculousness. My standards are quite clear: love me, be my partner, but donât be needy. Done. We all know where we stand. Iâm also an incredibly cheap date. I expect nothing but am delighted when I get something I love. You know, you see these posts on Facebook gushing over the diamond watches they got for Christmas (my sister-in-law does this). Hell no, you get me a diamond watch, and Iâll be mad (unless thereâs meaning behind it). Expensive gifts just for the sake of it are overrated. The price of a diamond watch could pay for a lot of socks, pens, books and chocolate⌠get me one of these, and Iâm over the moon. Chris once went to the shop to get dinner (you know, just a little convenience store) and before he left, he asked me if I wanted anything. I said, âSure, get me a giftâ. He was gone a really long time, so I called him to check where he was. âIâm still in the shop looking for a gift for you.â I laughed and explained that I meant a can of Coke or a chocolate bar, not an actual gift. Now, yes, you could argue that I could have just asked for a can of Coke. Youâre not wrong. But for me, a gift is just something that I might like, even if it costs 20p (Coke does not cost 20p, but you get the idea). Iâm also very organised (Iâll always know where your passport is), Iâm good with money, and Iâll [usually] let you watch whatever you want on TV (Iâll even encourage you to watch sport - but draw the line at cricket). So, yeah, all things considered, Iâm a catch. Iâll definitely date me. Prompts âśď¸ |
| For the past 10 years, I have lived across the road from a guy with three cameras on the front of his house. No, no, itâs not because he is security-conscious. Theyâre not pointing to any area of his house or land. If someone wanted to, they could easily walk down his drive undetected. Instead, they are pointed at the road directly outside my house. Why? Because he doesnât want anyone to park on the road (either on his side - which they canât because he gets his wife to park there - or on my side). How do I know this? Because I once pulled up for 30 seconds while my mum pulled her car off my drive and he came to his door and stared at me until I moved. Britain didn't invent CCTV, but weâve adopted it the way other countries adopt a national dish (probably because fish and chips doesnât quite cut it). Apparently, we are, per capita, one of the most watched populations on Earth. Although I should say that a high percentage of our cameras are private rather than state-owned. We've made peace with being watched by deciding cameras are basically honest, and it's good to know which dog is pooing on our front lawns. As a nation, weâre probably more likely to trust a blurry Ring Doorbell clip of wheelie bin theft than we trust our own government. So, what happens when we can no longer âtrustâ video because AI is taking over? First, AI isn't actually as new as we think. Obviously, as a widespread colloquialism, it feels like itâs around two years old. All of a sudden, everyone is talking about AI: either because it is really great or really bad. But remember Clippy? You know that really annoying paperclip that bounced around your Word document in 1997? Well, they marketed it as something that would âlearn your habitsâ. It actually didnât, but we all thought it did, and we were okay with that. Secondly, because AI as a tool (because it is just a tool) is so widespread now, it's easy to get caught up in the idea of untrustworthy evidence and forget that fakes and forgeries have existed for an incredibly long time. In the 1920âs, Joseph Stalin employed several photograph âretouchersâ to smooth out his skin because his face had smallpox scars. But during the 1930s, this basic retouching scaled to a whole new level when they started editing people out of photographs completely and falsifying reality by replacing people with water (source ). And this was before Photoshop as we know it today, let alone AI. The truth is, criminal courts have never been able to trust evidence at face value. They have spent centuries trying to safeguard against unreliable witnesses, forged documents, coerced confessions, dodgy fingerprints, and doctored photographs. Courts have always (or should have always) asked where evidence came from, who touched it, and whether the chain of custody (from event to courtroom) had any gaps in it. The biggest difference is that video has just been much harder to fake than everything else. Not impossible, though. The new MacBook I got last month came with a pretty hefty video editor pre-installed, and I actually know how to use it. So, if I wanted to, I wouldnât need AI to edit a video. Back in the day, faking a photograph required a darkroom, patience, and a rather large budget. These days, faking a video of the British Prime Minister confessing to a crime requires only a laptop and a few hours. So, the difference isnât necessarily that courts canât trust things any more, because in reality they never did. It is more that faking things has become cheaper and easier than defending against it. In February 2026, British law was changed - in part - to tackle the use of deepfakes in specific circumstances. It is now a criminal act to even create non-consensual deepfake intimate imagery. This is included in our Sexual Offences Act, and extends the duties in our Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to proactively detect and remove certain categories of illegal content. So, the British legal system has already started filling in some of the forms (we Brits love a form) and checking some of the boxes, without having a crisis of trust or truth. All they need to do is extend it. Because right now, this change in law doesnât necessarily answer the âhow do we knowâ question. How can we tell whether a video is real? How do you know if something (anything) is real evidence or a fake? Well, in my opinion, the question hasnât changed. Only the technology has changed. And while it changes quickly these days, I find it hard to believe no one saw that coming. So, courts and legal systems have just gotta do what they do. The mechanisms courts have used for decades (chain of custody, expert authentication, and corroboration of evidence) simply need to be extended to cover more pixels and data points. They donât need to reevaluate the meaning of truth; they just need better technology to find it. Of course, there is the argument that such corroboration perhaps cannot scale to match the volume or speed of AI-generated fakes. But, like it or not, the corroboration doesn't have to only mean a human doing it by hand. There is a high chance that AI detection tools would be used in conjunction with human judgement. So the mechanism stays the same as it always has been (corroborate all evidence), but the technology to do it will probably be AI itself. If we treat video as just another witness, weâll realise that witnesses have always needed corroboration. Prompt âśď¸ |
| In the country of me, my national animal is a mermaid. Want to debate whether a mermaid is an animal? Sure. A mermaid is half fish, half human. A fish is an animal, and so is a human. Done. Letâs move on. Why would my national animal be a mermaid? It has nothing to do with wanting to be a princess like Ariel. Although, I do have wobbly legs like her. So, maybe I am more similar to the famous cartoon character than I thought. I am the mermaid. The mermaid is me⌠flailing or otherwise.* I looked up the symbolism of a mermaid, and I thought Iâd give you a bit of a guided tour of me whilst showing you what a mermaid symbolises⌠I think this will make sense in the end. Weâll see. In case you're wondering (you wonât be), I left out the bit about vanity and destruction because in the country of me weâll have none of that, thank you very much. Duality Mermaids represent a balance between the conscious mind and deep emotional or spiritual realms. Iâm not sure about the âemotional or spiritual realmsâ, but I definitely have a duality to me. Wait, is that a thing? Sure, why not. I am a Gemini. Now, ordinarily, I pay no attention to star signs. I donât read them; I donât go around asking people what their signs are because, in reality, Iâm not sure I even know what all the signs are. But I am definitely 100% Gemini - there is no other sign I could possibly be. Especially the twin thing⌠sometimes, I genuinely feel like two people at once. I donât mean that in a split personality way. I just mean in a âI could argue with myself about this all day and get absolutely nowhereâ kind of way. It can get genuinely exhausting. There have been times when Chris has asked me a very simple yes/no question, and Iâve just stared at him because in my head Iâm saying, âyes, no, no, yes, no, yesâŚâ In the end he has said, âyou want to say yes and no at the same time, donât you?â Yes, yes I do. Freedom and Independence Mermaids embody a life lived outside of conventional societal rules. I actively stand out as someone who is different. Not necessarily because I have a very obvious - cannot be hidden - physical impairment (although definitely that too), but more because of what I do with that. When my parents found out I was disabled, they were basically told that I wouldnât be able to do much. But I was taught to be fiercely independent, and Iâve carried that on through my entire life. In fact, I think I even enjoy the challenge of finding new ways to do things. My problem-solving skills are pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself. Iâm also very patient. So I don't mind spending two hours putting together something that would take the average Jo 5 minutes. Anything to be independent and free⌠and hugely fucking stubborn. Feminine Power and Allure Mermaids represent both the beauty and the dangerous, unpredictable forces of feminine energy. Iâm not sure Iâm very alluring, or feminine for that matter. So, I donât think I quite fit into these in a traditional sense. But I can definitely lure someone into answering a question they didn't want to ask themselves, which tends to mean they have to actually deal with the thing they've been avoiding for six months⌠even if I donât quite know what Iâm doing myself. Transformation Mermaids symbolise personal growth, adaptability, and change. As I said before, Iâm a problem-solver. This means Iâm incredibly adaptable: kinda have to be, I suppose. Iâm not opposed to change, for the most part. Obviously, I prefer positive change (who doesnât?). But I do pride myself on my ability to see the other side of the coin. If someone comes to me with a problem, I can nearly always offer a different perspective or way of dealing with it that they havenât yet considered. Iâm also a big fan of personal growth. I donât believe we ever stop learning, and I donât think anyone should ever say they know everything there is to know about something. Whenever we feel that, we need to look harder. *If youâre lost at this point, look at the name of this blog. Prompts âśď¸ |
| Yesterday, in my discussions about freezer and suitcase art, I missed something: bookcases. I am very good at fitting more books than youâd think onto a bookcase. This post will feel like it is about bookcases. But it is about much more than that. It is about taking something completely logical and making it illogical; either by accident or on purpose. Either way, I judge it harshly. To warm us up, Iâll give you a quick example. Letâs say you have three drawers (there are those drawers again): the top drawer is pens, the middle drawer is misc (because it is the biggest and thereâs always a misc drawer), and the bottom drawer is Post-it notes. This is logical. Itâs not the law and has no basis in etiquette. But it is logical because you know where everything is. Therefore, an illogical action would be taking some pens out of the top and putting them in the bottom drawer to make room for some Post-it notes in the top. If youâre thinking that would never happen because it's so illogical, youâd be wrong. I digress⌠back to bookcases. Iâm very fortunate to have quite a few bookcases in my house. At this point, it might surprise you to learn that Iâm not a massive control freak about how I order my bookcases (massive is the keyword here). The one in my lounge is alphabetical, whereas the one in my office is organised loosely by genre. So, you know, as long as logic is applied, Iâm breezy. The amazing thing about books is that the logic is automatically handed to you on a silver platter. Itâs all there for you: author, titles, series, genre⌠Itâs all there. Magical readymade logic. The downside of having an alphabetical bookcase is that if you want to add more, you need to shift books around to do so. So, I tend to let new books stack up, then do one big shift around all at once. Ages ago, it was time to do the big shift. So, I got someone to help me move the books around. Obviously, it didnât need the order changing: just up or down according to which new books I needed to add and where they fell in the alphabet. It was going really well until I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. But I thought I must have been mistaken, so I let it go. But then I saw it again. I noticed my friend swapping around one or two books here and there. When I asked her what she was doing, she said that she thought certain books looked better next to each other because they âlooked like they kinda had a similar vibeâ. âSure,â I said as I smiled and nodded. But in my head I screamed, BUT ONE OF THEM IS IN A SERIES! (also, the "vibes" were very different but that's not the point) Not only was it in a series, but the spines had the series numbers on them. In my opinion, you canât get a much finer definition of readymade logic. 1, 2, 3⌠honestly, itâs as easy as A, B, C. Itâs just there. Choose any order you want⌠by genre, book size, author, title, vibes, colour (but not colour or 'vibes' in my house, at least), I really donât mind. But blatant disregard for things that are clearly already logical, then making them illogical, is unacceptable. But then I wonder if I should just chill out⌠Prompts âśď¸ |
| I can be a control freak about certain things. But only because I know Iâm highly skilled with these things: an artist, if you will. Namely suitcases and freezers. I genuinely believe that I am better than anyone I know at packing suitcases and freezers. Not anyone, ever. Just anyone I know. I feel physical fury when I open a suitcase or freezer someone else packed. My husband is used to the words âwhat exactly was your goal here?â⌠although I swear he does it badly on purpose now because he just laughs at me and walks out of the room when I start fixing the copious amounts of errors. The second I see him reach to open the freezer door, I say, âNo, leave it. Wherever you think you were about to put that, it doesnât go thereâ. I know I should chill out and let him put things wherever he wants. But I canât do that, for two reasons: - You should never mess with an artistâs process - This would lead to unnecessary chaos in which nothing else will ever fit Over the weekend just gone, we had a friend come to stay. In preparation for our friendâs arrival, Chris went food shopping. The minute he drove off, I knew I should have gone with him because our freezer was already full. It was full because we use Too Good To Go way too much (if you donât use this app, you should give it a go). A few hours later, Chris walked in looking all proud of what a great shop heâd done. As Iâd expected he might, heâd bought three big frozen pizzas, some frozen desserts and a few other bits for the freezer. I knew it! When I say our freezer was already full, I really do mean it. But, ever the charmer, Chris said, âWell, you like showing off your skills. So, I thought youâd appreciate the opportunityâ. It was 10 pm; I genuinely did not appreciate the opportunity⌠okay, maybe, secretly, I did a little. So, I set to work, pulling everything out, repackaging stuff, giving things a little jiggle⌠swearing a bit. And about 30 minutes later, having fit everything in and left a sliver of extra space, I held my arms up and genuinely said (out loud): And that, my friend, is art! To be honest, Chris looked at me like Iâd lost my mind. But when I showed off my efforts, he was nonetheless impressed⌠unless he was just playing on my need to win at these imaginary little games I have. Itâs hard to tell these days. The key to a well-packed freezer is freezer bags. Not boxes. Boxes are a total waste of space. Take as much as you can out of its original packaging, put it in freezer bags, squeeze out all the air, then freeze it as flat as possible⌠You can thank me later. When it comes to suitcases, I have been known to unpack apparently full cases that just wonât close. I have been specifically asked to come and repack suitcases for people⌠Iâm not entirely sure this is a skill to be overly proud of. Some people can create vaccines; I can pack suitcases. But we have to go with the hand weâre dealt. Perhaps I should monetise the skill because when I do repack them, the owners tend to discover they still have half the case left to play with. See, art! What is the answer to suitcase artistry? It's fourfold: never underestimate the corners, work from the edges, not the centre, leave a square in the centre for a wash bag, then fill the gaps with socks and pants, and fold, not roll. The last one is particularly important. Iâve seen so many âhack videosâ that say that rolling clothes is space-saving. Thatâs absolutely ludicrous. Rolling clothes in a suitcase is absolutely not a space-saving hack. This is a hill I am willing to die on. Folding, done properly, uses the suitcase's actual rectangular space. Rolling uses cylinders, and cylinders do not tessellate. Ask literally anyone who's tried to pack a box of tins. There will be gaps. More gaps than you could ever fill with socks and pants. In other words, I donât have an answer to âwhat is art?â but I am capable of writing over 700 words about packing freezers and suitcases. Prompts âśď¸ |
| I am very much a âtreat the person first, not the condition firstâ kind of person. A few years ago, I had severe back pain. For a while, I was taking morphine and all sorts of things because it was so debilitatingly painful. Just for context, before I go on: I have cerebral palsy, so my muscles donât stop moving unless Iâm asleep, and they donât quite work the way they should due to brain damage. Blah blah blah, itâs a whole thing. So, I had spent about 18 months trying to get someone to help me with this pain. In the end, I was sent to this guy at the pain clinic (where youâre sent when they donât know what to do with you). I immediately disliked this doctor because he basically didnât listen to a word I said. I am confident that he decided, the second he met me, that the pain was a psychological response to having such a depressing life. Therefore, his first response was to send me off for some mindfulness exercises and to chat to someone about what hobbies I could take up to distract me from the pain. I had one session of both before being discharged from the services because it clearly wasnât what I needed. After much back and forth, the guy decided he wanted to inject something into my spine. From what I could decipher, it was some kind of placebo-esque injection designed to make you feel like you feel better. It doesnât matter what it was; I had different reservations. Nevertheless, I went along with it. I checked in to the outpatient clinic a few weeks later to get my âcureâ. Thankfully, my guy wasnât able to be there, so I got a different doctor. When the doctor walked into my room, I looked her in the eye and said, âWell, this should be interesting, shouldnât it?â She was momentarily taken aback before I saw the realisation hit her. After a few minutes of the usual introductory stuff, she said, âCan you keep still?â Nope. Long story short, she was horrified at the mere suggestion of having to inject someone in the spine when that person could not keep completely still. In fact, her exact words were: âI donât know why youâre here. Iâm not willing to treat youâ. Didnât think you would be. See ya. A few weeks later, I had a telephone consult with another doctor. He established that because of my cerebral palsy, the likelihood was that all the muscles in my back were in severe spasm. Turns out that he was absolutely right. In fact, it was so bad that the treatment left giant black bruises all over my back. Ta-da! Looking at the whole person meant the final treatment made sense. Iâll give you another example, while Iâm here. In 2005, I had reconstructive surgery on my foot, due to a sports injury. Nine years later, I fell and broke the same foot. When I went to the hospital, I asked them not to cast it because the only way they could do so would cause damage to the reconstruction Iâd successfully had done. The people I saw couldnât comprehend why this might be. So, obviously they went ahead and put a cast on. A few months later, during a follow-up, I told the consultant that I could now no longer walk properly due to the way my foot had been cast. In response, the doctor said, âOh well, thatâs okay because you use a wheelchair anywayâ. Now, this (as you can see) was not the first time I realised someone thought of me differently than I thought of myself. The first time was probably when I was about three. But it is a standout example of the idea that not even a doctor can look past the first thing they see. I established that because I had a nice wheelchair, he assumed I used it all the time anyway. But the truth is, prior to this completely avoidable charade, my wheelchair (as nice as it was) predominantly lived in my car. It was not a permanent feature of my life. The first thing this doctor saw was my reasonably expensive wheelchair. Therefore, if I spent money on a wheelchair, it must be a defining feature of my life. Not something like, âthis person works hard, earns good money and wants to look reasonably well put togetherâ. In both of these examples, none of the doctors asked me anything about my life or sought to treat my issues in conjunction with what I already had going on. It wasnât until a few years later, when I saw another doctor (about my ongoing foot issues), that my hospital notes were updated to reflect the person I am. While we were chatting, he discovered that I was a former athlete and went to great lengths to make a log of this. Because, he said, this indicated that I have a good understanding of your body - âcombine that with a life with cerebral palsy, people really should be listening to youâ. Fortunately, none of this counts as an illness or disease. Other than Malaria as a kid, and Chicken Pox as an adult (what a bastard), Iâve never really been properly sick. Nor do I, thankfully, have experience of anyone I love having a life-threatening illness. However, this lack of experience doesnât mean there arenât illnesses and diseases I would love for science to try and eliminate from the world; of course there are. Iâm not heartless; Iâm just not picking one. I just wish we treated the person more often, rather than just the condition theyâre presenting with. Prompts âśď¸ |
| I believe curiosity is something we should all use daily. And I would argue that curiosity has to come before confidence (sorry E.E Cummings - we disagree). If youâve ever watched the Winter Olympics for any length of time, this thought will have crossed your mind at least once: âHow do you realise youâre good at that?â The truth is, no Winter Olympian is immediately good at skeleton or jumping off a mountain going 80 MPH with just a helmet and goggles to protect them. In fact, I would say that most Winter Olympians are initially very bad at the sport they end up being good at. Theyâre going to be more confident about the probability that theyâll break a leg than theyâll be that the run will be a success. But what they will have is curiosity (and maybe enjoyment - give or take a broken leg): I am pretty bad at this, but itâs kinda fun; if I practised, could I get good at it? I broke my first World Record in the pool - at my first national competition - at the age of 13. I only learned to swim at age 12. I can assure you I didn't go into that competition brimming with confidence. In fact, I had no fucking idea what I was doing. The thing I felt most confident about was that I would be able to see better if I wore goggles and a swim cap to keep my hair out of my eyes. When I wandered up to the starting blocks for the race that ultimately changed everything, I didnât do so with the swagger of someone who thought they were a really good swimmer. Hell no, Iâd just eaten a McDonaldâs for lunch. For all intents and purposes, I was pretty much winging it. What I did have, however, was curiosity about the knowledge I had to hand (helpfully, I knew the current World Record holder personally). So, while there was no way I went into that race thinking I could win, I did go into it curious about what would happen if I entered. As it turned out, that slice of curiosity went on to dictate what happened for the next 23 years of my life⌠so, maybe be careful what youâre curious about! Conversely, I do believe that the more confident you are, the more curious and spontaneous you can be with that confidence. This has to be true, right? For example, as a website/content creator, Iâm definitely confident in my abilities. I know for a fact that Iâm more willing to do things that may or may not work - compared to people I know who are less confident and are unwilling to deviate from the checklists they wrote 5 years ago. Because these people are unwilling to look past those checklists, they never give themselves space to be curious about what it is they are doing. I have no such checklists. However, in order to gain the confidence to try new things, you need enough curiosity to ask âwhat if?â and âwhatâs the worst that can happen?â Prompt âśď¸ |
Allow me to introduce you to the outline of my latest (ahem only) satirical novel. Title: Please Hold Tag-line: We dream of an afterlife that frees us from the weight of red tape. All you have to do is get through purgatory first The premise: Purgatory is a multi-tiered, colour-coded staircase system. At the top of the staircase is the promise of an afterlife everyone dreams of. But in order to transcend the staircase, you first have to file some paperwork. The colour-coded stairs relate to how far along your paperwork is. AKA your current bureaucratic issue. The colours are as follows: - Red: Urgent/overdue - the paperwork has been marked as a priority - Orange: Awaiting a second signature - there is no indication of who this signatory needs to be. - Yellow: Under review - unfortunately, it is well known that the review board hasn't convened in decades. - Green: Approved, pending processing - the paperwork is visually and technically fine. It's just waiting in someone's in-tray. - Blue: In transit between departments - it hasnât been âlostâ, but no one currently knows where it is. - Brown: You have a duplicate filing - the same form has been filed, and the system can't reconcile which one is real. - Grey: The form has a typo, and all forms must be mistake-free. Protagonist: Meet George. George spent his life as an office administrator - he loves reading HR guides, tuna and cucumber sandwiches, and following the rules. Opening: George died while waiting on hold with IT (the desk phone was still cradled to his ear when they found him). Upon discovering what Purgatory entailed, he was excited. After a lifetime of following the rules and being a stickler for detail, heâd get this done in no time. Inciting incident: After filling in his form, he is told there is a typo on the form itself. So, even though his form-filling is meticulous (blank ink, clear print, and triple-checked), he is punished for someone else's mistake. He proceeds to the grey stairs. First turn: After 8 years of trying to go through proper channels and getting nowhere, George begins questioning his fundamental beliefs in following the rules. We see him tempted into gaming the system instead of trusting it. Rising complications: George meets Tracey, who introduces him to the dark world of bribery, forged paperwork, and a black market in queue-jumping. Given his background in office administration and knowledge of HR, he becomes very popular. But this popularity costs him. Midpoint reveal: George discovers who is actually responsible for the typo on his form. It is a guy called Mike. It turns out the typo on his form was deliberate. It is all part of a quota system whereby some souls are kept in purgatory on purpose to keep the machine running. Worse complications: The black market catches up with George. Rumours spread that the forged documents he did for others are starting to get flagged. He is suspicious about his friend Tracey and is unsure whether he can trust her. Low point: George is, at last, moved from the grey steps. But he ends up on the brown steps and is arguably worse off than when he started because no one believes he only filled in one form. Climax: George realises that because of his âduplicate formâ, the system considers him two people. So, he uses his impeccable HR knowledge to keep one of his forms stuck on the brown stairs, which keeps Mike's attention occupied. Meanwhile, with the help of the queue-jump loophole his friend Tracey gave him, he uses the other form to move closer to the complaints office, where he files a strongly worded letter, along with his meticulously kept records of the quota scheme and Mikeâs involvement. Resolution: The letter results in Mike getting "reassigned" rather than punished, while the quota system gets rebranded rather than abolished. George finally gets his original purgatory form approved. All he has to do now is join the queue because the gates to the afterlife are currently grossly understaffed. Georgeâs Dating Profile Status: Deceased; It's complicated (bureaucratically) Looking for: Someone who understands that "just filing it wrong on purpose to speed things up" is not a real strategy, no matter what Terry from accounts says. I would also appreciate someone who won't judge me for the black market queue-jumping thing. It was for a good cause. There were spreadsheets involved. About me: I spent 30 years in office administration. I'm not ashamed to say I hit the peak of my career on the day I got the stationery cupboard reorganised by category *and* colour. I am innately suspicious of people who appear to like me. Currently: Residing on the Brown steps of Purgatory, which is a long story involving a form, a typo, and a man named Mike who I will not be discussing further pending legal advice. Likes: Tuna and cucumber sandwiches, correctly formatted headers, HR guides (the juicy ones), a well-laminated document, queues that move in an orderly fashion. Dislikes: Duplicate filings (allegedly mine, still disputing this), people who staple in the corner instead of top-left, unresolved paperwork, being on hold. Prompts âśď¸ |
| At some point in time, someone said âwrite what you knowâ as advice to wannabe writers. No one knows for sure who said this, and I have to wonder if thatâs on purpose. The person who said it realised it was horrific advice (with potentially dire consequences) and backpedalled so hard that they managed to remove their name from the record. The advice âwrite what you knowâ is generally attributed to one of two men: Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway. If Twain had genuinely written only what he knew, Huckleberry Finn would've been about a middle-aged Missouri newspaperman with strong opinions about riverboats. Whereas if Hemingway had genuinely lived by the advice, you have to wonder whether half his heroes would just be a guy, drunk in Paris, arguing about prose style and correcting people's wine order. On that basis, if you saw the book title âThe Jigsaw Manâ (by Nadine Matheson) youâd probably be hoping for a book about a guy that clears his kitchen table every Sunday morning so he can spend the day tackling his latest jigsaw. However, you and I both know that is not what that book is about. Therefore, if âwrite what you knowâ was good advice for writers, we would have to look pretty seriously into the backgrounds of crime and horror writers⌠even fantasy authors, if weâre being honest about it. Because, you know, cook-oo! To prove that this argument holds up, you need to look no further than the legends that are Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Agatha Christie. Stephen King The man has written a killer clown who lives in a sewer, a possessed car that reshapes its owner's personality, and a guy who buries someone alive under a repaved road. If "write what you know" holds up, we have some questions. Was King, at some point, chased through a storm drain by his own unresolved childhood fears? Did a 1958 Plymouth Fury once take an unhealthy interest in his personal growth? Has he ever spent a long weekend slowly burying a man under fresh tarmac while that man screamed for mercy? We may never know. What we do know is that King got hit by a van in 1999, badly enough that doctors debated amputating his leg, and his response to nearly dying was to write several more ways for other people to nearly die. Anne Rice In Riceâs world, vampires live forever and survive exclusively on blood, and Louis and Lestat's relationship spans two centuries, several breakups, and one house fire. Statistically, we'd expect Rice to have at least one very long, very complicated relationship on record, ideally involving arson. However, as far as I know, Rice had no such relationship. Sadly, Rice did have a daughter, Michele, who died of leukaemia just before her sixth birthday. As a tribute to her daughter, Rice invented the character Claudia. She gave the fictional Claudia the thing her daughter never got: eternity⌠but at the cost of never being allowed to grow up. So, technically, sure, "write what you know" is marginally relevant here⌠if what you know is loss (plus two hundred years of gothic drama to survive it). Agatha Christie Impressively, Christie wrote sixty-six detective novels, dozens of methods, and the murderer gets away with it every single time⌠until Poirot or Marple shows up. If any of the authors in this post deserve an actual background check, it's her. What we can say for certain is that she trained and qualified as an apothecary's dispenser during the First World War, handling real doses of real poisons. So, realistically, she didn't need to know how to get away with murder. She simply needed to know exactly how much strychnine it takes to kill someone, and she found that out at work. Taking the advice literally Could you imagine if we took the advice to "write what you know" literally? Geez⌠just picture the research process. I wonât go into detail ⌠you might have just eaten⌠but these are the potentially dire consequences I alluded to at the beginning. I want to write a fifteen-book series about a single serial killer. Let the research commence! Can you write what you know? Or do you need more? Above, I talked about three of the biggest names in fiction, and not one of them lived through the things they're famous for writing about. King never met a haunted car, Rice never dated anyone for two centuries, and Christie never actually got away with murder (that we know of). What they had was smaller than definite knowledge: grief, in Rice's case, turned into something that would live on. A job, in Christie's case, that happened to teach her exactly how poison works. Finally, an accident, in King's case, that he then converted into other people's experiences of death, because he had the material and wasn't going to waste it. But all of these things came after they started writing. Therefore, even in the broadest sense, they werenât writing what they knew. Instead, they used experiences to boost their imagination. The advice to "write what you know" feels like good advice because it is simple and sounds like discipline. But really, it is missing major parts of the puzzle: Imagination and empathy. Do I write what I know? Sometimes, yes, I do write what I know. I am fortunate enough to have had lots of experiences that lend themselves to good stories. But for the most part, as a writer and content creator, something Iâve actually had to unlearn is the idea that everything has to be based on absolute rock-solid truth. I donât mean that Iâve learned to lie. I mean my content ideas come from somewhere (knowledge), but to make them interesting, I have to take those ideas and mould them into something the reader wants to know (either for entertainment or to spark their own ideas). I also taught myself (during my degree, actually) that I can learn as I write. I found that if I tried to research everything before I wrote, I just got lost in words and half-formed thoughts. So I learned to simply write and explore what came out as I went. If what I wrote was absolute nonsense, at least I could get curious about it and explore exactly why it was nonsense. Prompts âśď¸ |
| Iâm currently learning how not to kill plants. It is very much a long-term project. My garden makes it look like I'm very good at keeping plants alive. Alas, however, I am simply very good at keeping weeds alive. Luckily, some of my weeds are actually quite pretty. I have been given a few plants in recent years. It surprises me greatly that four of them are still alive. Although being alive and comfortably thriving are very different things. One of the plants I have came in like a âbowlâ of three different plants, which I now assume youâre supposed to separate after a while. I say this because Iâm fairly sure the strongest of the three ate the weaker two and morphed into some kind of Frankenstein plant. To be fair, itâs actually quite impressive since it appears to have grown into itself. I used a plant-detector app to work out what it is supposed to look like. It looks absolutely nothing like it. So, kudos to me, Iâve developed a new plant species. My other two main plants are Peace Lilies. They were gifted to me with the promise that âthese are really easy to look afterâ. What a load of crap. They are so picky it's unreal⌠especially one of the buggers. Too much water, too little water, too much light, too little light⌠DUDE, what exactly do you want from me? During my very long-term âhow to not kill plantsâ project, Iâve learned about cutting off dead leaves in order to help the rest of the plant grow. What a game-changer. I mean, thereâs a metaphor for life if ever there was one. The other day, my efforts in this project were rewarded. Chris came home from visiting his parents, holding a mint plant. He said, âMum thought you might like this since youâre so much better at keeping plants alive these daysâ. Imagine my pride! Praise indeed from the green-fingered mother-in-law. Of all the things Iâd hope to be complimented on, my ability to become less bad at killing stuff has never made the list. Iâll absolutely take it, though. But then, you know, my successes in keeping plants alive have been taken down a peg or two. By ants. I mean, sure, I think we can all agree that ants are surprisingly smart - regardless of whether or not youâve seen the film âA Bugâs Lifeâ. Really, you have to congratulate the tiny critter for its ability to create spaces just big enough for them and their mates to storm your home as if it's a full-on battle scene from Game of Thrones. Fair play, my friends, fair play. Yet, it does make you question your place in the world. Iâm a 41-year-old, reasonably intelligent human who has only just figured out how to stop (kinda) four plants looking like theyâre being savaged by some kind of flesh-eating disease. If you compare that to ants, who have been able to farm fungi in the Amazon rainforest for over 60 million years⌠it just gives your life a rather harsh perspective. Although if I were to be hypercritical, Iâd have to say that fungi wouldnât be in my top five choices of possible things to start farming. Prompts âśď¸ |
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