Bristolcon

A long drive down the length of Wales, north to south, today, because I'm here at the Ramada hotel in Bristol for Bristolcon. The festivities begin in earnest at 10 on Saturday morning, but I've already had a look at the programme and I am bursting with anticipation. Two streams of programming goodness and a wonderful art show. Can't wait!

Brighton

I'm down in Brighton right now, enjoying my first visit to Fantasycon. It's all very exciting, especiallyThursday night when those of us staying at the Queens Hotel were rousted out of bed at 3AM by the fire alarm. Its a bit nippy in late September on Brighton prom in the early hours, but the hotel staff were good, they have obviously drilled for this, and they moved us into the Foyer of the Thistle, next door, to keep us warm and out of the way. It seems there was sparking from a small convenience store next door, nothing too dangerous. Last night, though, I slept with my coat and shoes by the door, just in case.

It's a terrific view from the bedroom window, and we share it with some of the local seagulls as you can see below. We watched this one for hours, taunting it through the double glazing with biscuits. It was payback for its Cornish cousin who mugged Sarah for a pasty in the summer. There again, maybe he knows where I've parked the car. Eek!

Went to some good panels yesterday, especially one on the benefits or otherwise of blogging. It reminded me I haven't done anything here for a while hence the mindless waffle about seagulls. The consensus was that book review blogs are valuable, while author blogs tend to be read by very few. I don't do reviews because, when I'm writing I don't read much fiction. Too dangerous; too much risk of accidental plagiarism. So this is an author blog with nothing of substance. Can't even talk about this week's exiting new story sale because I haven't had the contract yet.

So there you go. 250 words about nothing - because I want to get back to the fiction. I have a whodunit (with robots) on the go right now, and I'm loving it!

Scary Morris

We’re staying in Buxton for a few days. It isn’t intentional, and to see how it happened there is a fuller account in my Travelling in a Box blog. So today (or yesterday by the time I find some internet) we walked down into the town and you can’t move for Morris dancers. It seems there’s a festival going on. Now, I’m a bit ambivalent when it comes to Morris dancers. I really don’t know what to think. Grown men, often with grizzly beards, dancing and skipping about with bells on their ankles and hats with flowers. It’s all very English, but... why?

I’m fine with the music, I enjoy a bit of folk music. And when they beat each other with sticks I’m thinking, okay, this is more like it. But it’s the bells and the skipping that I can’t get my head round.

So it was refreshing to find the Morris dancers from hell (actually they were from Sheffield) giving it loads in Buxton today.  These guys (and a few scary girls) were dressed all in black apart from their faces, which were blue. Some had silk undertaker’s top hats, and there was a real Goth look about them all. And when they started beating each other with sticks they did it with attitude. And they were big sticks. It was fascinating to see, because there was no doubt this was real Morris, but it was Morris that might have young children waking in the night screaming for their mums. Hell, it might be me screaming tonight. So well, done to Black Crow (I think that’s what they’re called) of Sheffield. Very entertaining. Very Gothic. Very scary.

And there’s got to be a story in this. Got to be.

Building Teams with Nails

I went on a team-building course with the day job. I won’t reveal, publicly, all my thoughts.

But there was one exercise that taught me a lot about myself.

In teams of five or six we were given a block of wood with a hole in it, a six-inch nail stood in the hole. We were also given ten other six-inch nails and told to balance them all on the head of the one nail in the wooden block.

Go.

What we were told at the end of the exercise was that the task was designed to develop and highlight certain aspects of our personalities that would eventually result in our solving the problem. At first we would organise ourselves and pool knowledge to see if anyone in the team knew how to do this. Next we would try to work through the problem, together, logically. After a certain amount of time the moderator would feed us clues from which we would be able to build on the knowledge and complete the challenge.

A colleague who had chosen to recuse himself from the exercise told me that when he first did this task his team completed it in three minutes.

Here’s what happened inside my head:

My first thought was – we do this in two minutes or we fail.

I knew the solution had something to do with cantilevers and getting the centre of gravity down below the nail head. I offered this and nobody in the team seemed interested. They were working on the assumption that they could magnetise the nails by rubbing them on their sweaters. So I realised I was working with idiots and decided that if I was going to solve this thing I was going to have to go it alone. So much for team-work.

While the others wore holes in their sweaters I tried to figure it out in my head. And no way would I be sharing.

Two minutes came and went. The first deadline. I had failed! I sulked.

But there was still a chance of beating the other teams, so I grabbed the nails and tried to figure out an arrangement that would have them hanging off each other. Couldn’t do it. Got really annoyed at myself. I mean, fuming. This was my thing. I should be able to figure this out.

Then the moderator came and offered the first clue. At this point we were supposed to build on her advice. I threw the nails down onto the carpet in disgust. I didn’t want help. I didn’t want clues. I wanted to figure out the bloody problem myself. I withdrew. No point trying now, was there. If I/we figured it out now it would only be because we’d been told half the answer and how could that be satisfying in any way.

One of the other teams completed and now there was absolutely no point in continuing. Even though the rest of my team redoubled their efforts, I just watched them. What was the point now? We’d lost anyway.

So I learned that I am not a team player. I learned that I am not a collaborator. And I learned that when good advice is given I don’t want to know, I’d much rather figure it all out myself. What I didn’t learn was that when I fail at something I sulk. Because I knew this already.

Even now, a week later, I am still furious at myself for not figuring out the solution to the problem. I’m angry at being shown the solution, because now I can never figure it out myself.

This is not a healthy state of mind. These are not useful character traits. They reveal a great deal about why I am where I am.

I will try to change.

And in the interest of sharing (and as a spoiler for anyone else who might want to try and run this course) here’s a video of how to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVKsJ0hlMMI

I wonder how many of you will reach for a bag of nails before watching it.

The Ideas that get away

"Where do you get your ideas?" This must be the single most asked question that any writer has to answer. It's also one of the hardest.
For me I have a ready answer. Ideas are supplied by United Utilities, my local water authority, and a constantly flowing supply is plumbed straight into the house. Access is via the shower-head, and paid for as part of my water rate bill.

How is this?

Well, it took a little while to figure out but when you analyse it, it's obvious. I carry a notebook everywhere. I take it on the bus; I take it if I go out for a meal; I take it to work; I even take it to the toilet. I get ideas for stories in odd places, but it is a slow trickle. But the one place I cannot take a notebook is in the shower. It gets kind of soggy and the pencil cuts up the pages. And this the place where the ideas really flow. I mean, in the show there is a positive tsunami of brilliance. All my plot problems are solved in simple and intelligent ways.
And then they trickle down the plug hole.
I have a white board in my study and often in the morning I can been found there, naked and dripping on the carpet (not an image I would advise anyone to spend too long over) jotting down the few gems that survive the trip from the bathroom. On a good day I catch about 10% of them.
So imagine my delight, this evening, when my wife presented me with a surprise gift - a waterproof notebook. It can be written in using pen or pencil and it will survive any soaking. Brilliant!

So from now on, any time I'm short of ideas I can fling off all my clothes, dive into the shower, and plug in to the ideas reservoir. Woo hoo!

A Doll's House

Brilliant performances all round at Theatre Clwyd last night. Went to see A Doll's House (Ibsen). I haven't seen this play before even though it's something of a classic. Sometimes it's good to see these things with untinted vision. What a fabulous play. It must have sent massive shock waves through the theatre world of the 1870's when it was first staged. It's pretty powerful stuff even now.
   
Not much writing this week, I've been helping my wife set up a web site for her art. It's amazing how this cyber stuff can suck you in and hit you with time dilation effects. You start on a bit of html and before you know it you've skipped meals and you're late for bed. All done now, though, at least until we start changing things. I'll almost be glad to get back to the day-job for a rest. If there are any art fans interested, the web site can be found at www.sarahwoodart.com

Here's a sample of what can be found there.

Dead Man's Shoes

My short story, Dead Man’s Shoes, is now up on NewMyths.com. There are no robots in this one. No spaceships, no aliens. But hey, there are saxophones. Saxophones and cool cool jazz... Oh, and did I mention the shoes? No, not ordinary shoes. Not your every day common suede Hush Puppies. These shoes are, well... not very nice.

So why not pop over to NewMyths.com and see how it might be to step into the shoes of one of the giants of jazz.

But be sure they’re the right shoes.