Writing

PANDEMIC! What’s going on…

~ Purpleanais ~ 2 Comments

We are in the middle of a storm and yet it’s so calm out there. Thoughts on the pandemic by Tom – please go and like the original post, thank you.

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.” Albert Camus.

What’s going on? One minute we’re clamouring for less time at work, the next we have so much time at home that we actually want to do some DIY, only we can’t because employees at homeware shops have been asked to stay at home. Now we can’t go there’s an almost palpable desire to attend work, so much so that employers must be wondering why they’ve been paying anyone. The world is upside down, or rather paused while its populous search for the TV remote down the back of the Atlantic. Parents have bought trampolines large enough to land helicopters on, and watching the Irishman becomes a good idea.

Only a few weeks ago shopping was something you did as vague necessity; a sort of blur in the side-vision of life. Now it’s of upmost…

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Lock-Down. How to Self Isolate…

~ Purpleanais ~ 7 Comments

Self-isolating is no joke, people – but it doesn’t need to be miserable either. I loved this by Tom – we’re in desperate need of humour right now. Please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.”  S. Kelley Harrell

*do not follow this advice. Or indeed any in this blog, other than the swimming bit.

Be careful what you wish for. Here we all are. All working from home due to Coronavirus, which my spellcheck already recognises. We are housebound like we’d prayed for every Monday morning since we started working; all those prayers for an extra day in bed have been answered. But, how will we survive? It’s all very well wanting time at home because you’re too hungover to pick up the post from the doormat, but sober? What do we do with all this time?

For most writers this is sort of self-isolation comes naturally, although having government-sanctioned marksmen on rooftops with L115A3 rifles trained on front doors to prevent you from leaving probably puts a different slant on staying at home to nail…

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Never Give Up on Creativity.

~ Purpleanais ~ 1 Comment

Most creative people are plagued by self-doubt, the trick is to be aware of it and keep at it when a draft is not going well. It is equally as important to – understand and accept – when your doubts are more than just the usual crisis of self-confidence – when you feel deep in your bones that what you’re working on is going nowhere. Good blog by Tom on this – please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“Always stop with a victory.”

Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

What is it with starting things? We are constantly told how we should be doing more. And advice in leading fuller, more enriched lives invariably concerns starting something. Apart from cars. If they’re not starting you may as well buy a new one, they’re like kettles these days. The pressure to start something far outnumbers how to finish something 10 to, well, I’m not sure actually, I started that statistic with no idea how to complete it.

Every journey starts with a single step – before going back for your phone charger – but when should we stop? A journey might start on the London Underground’s Circle Line, but if we don’t get off we’re just going around in circles. Well, in fact we’re not because it isn’t really a circle, it’s more the shape of a small…

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Vapour Trail

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I really enjoyed this – Sam did a great job capturing the paranoia that follows the outbreak of a possible pandemic. Please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Up All Night

Cover your mouth when you sneeze.

He sneezes again.

Cover your fucking mouth.

And again. And one more after that. He’s a big guy, looks weird. Voluminous hair, and a wide, elasticated hair band, making his glossy, black bouffant splay out from his head, long and straight, in all directions. He’s wearing multiple layers of loose-fitting, brightly coloured clothes, accentuating the bulk of of his chubby frame.

I guess he’s around thirty.

But I can’t figure him out. He could be a musician. Probably a songwriter. There are a lot of rehearsal studios round here, and he’s got the of air of an amateur performer who thinks he should be famous. Slouched over, his shoulders roll forward even when he hikes himself up and casts a frown around the room, scowling and scratching, and demanding attention.

Or maybe he is famous, and I’m sitting too straight.

Across the table from…

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Why do Writers like Walking..?

~ Purpleanais ~ 1 Comment

Another blog by Tom – please go and like the original, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now and we don’t know where the hell she is.” Ellen De Generes.

BBC radio is currently hooked on programmes about walking, which can only be assumed were recorded at a time of year when rambling is a good idea, as opposed to February where the pull of the nearest pub or cafe marks the furthest reach of any expedition, unless you enjoy swearing at the rain.

It was news to me that writers even like walking. I thought they preferred thinking about that sort of extreme sport, rather than participate. But it’s good to hear that a harmless pastime is now identified as another symptom caused by compulsion to write join words together. I can see why writers might enjoy walking, as  like skydiving it’s hard to write while you’re doing it, yet it is…

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The Golden Hour

~ Purpleanais ~ 3 Comments

I really enjoyed Sam’s post – follow the link to visit his blog 🙂

Up All Night

It was bright and sunny in February. I loaded up camera and tripod in the front basket of my ¥15’000 standard Japanese commuter bicycle, the kind everyone rides to the stations in the morning, and dropped down the steep roads north of Tama River, then hit the elevated tarmac by the side of the waterway, and headed east.

It was late afternoon by now, as I’d let myself be delayed at home, by nothing other than my own procrastination. I had a sense that delay might turn out to be a good thing though, depending on how far down the path I was when the sun started dipping low in the beautiful, clear blue sky.

All I knew was that I was cycling in the direction of Tokyo Bay, and Haneda Airport, and, on the other side of the river, Kawasaki and its vast, waterside industrial zone.

And I was…

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How Important is it to be well-read?

~ Purpleanais ~ 4 Comments

This is a really fab blog by Tom about being well-read – I adored it! Go read & like the original post, folks 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

My mother is probably the wisest person I’ve ever known. She’s not schooled, she’s not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons. –  Gene Simmons

How well-read you are has been a standard measure of intelligence, social kudos and pulling power since the written word was invented. In fact, it’s hard to resist conjecture that it was invented simply to impress other people. And this lingers, despite a digital age of commuters watching TV box sets on public transport, or publicly declaring how moronic they are by playing pointlessly additive games such as the ubiquitous Candy Crush. These activities are for unplugging the mind, not engaging it. Of course in some circles to have concluded the Eggsteroids level in Angry Birds is greatly admired, but it isn’t quite the same as being well-read. Not yet.

Being well-read is a…

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How important is Writing Blog Posts to Novel Writing…?

~ Purpleanais ~ 3 Comments

Please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“It is named the “Web” for good reason.”
― David Foster Wallace

I can’t believe I’ve now been desperately thinking of things to blog about for four years. When I started I had little idea what blogging was really about, and now I truly have no idea. I think blogs exist mainly so you can get annoyed, and then say rather pointedly to yourself that you’re going to bloody blog about it, because there’s clearly a readership out there for articles on drivers’ inability to park without taking up two bays. Of course unless you do blog about it within 2 minutes you’ll have forgotten all about it and probably driven off anyway. Blogs are the modern equivalent of writing to the Times.

It’s like all those notes in your phone that were Pullitzer prize winning novels, but now read more like a free-associating dead-head in 1960s San Francisco mumbling…

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No rhyme, no reason

~ Purpleanais ~ 39 Comments

Bikini body in the sun, half-cocked gun, a summer weapon, a sassy siren sensing and inviting desire, it was a wave rushing towards me, I was riding the crest, eyes closed beneath my shades, heat spreading between my legs, 

but suddenly it all changed, no rhyme, no reason, what the actual fuck was going on, my crazy brain switched moods randomly, I’ve always been my own worst enemy – it was

a senseless dream starting with a less than vague promise of sex and ending with

Van Gogh penniless and in despair trying to drown himself in the deep sunflower fields—which had long haunted him—their colours and shapes having intensified his misery.

What does it all mean? 

I woke up tangled in my sheets—

I had too much to dream 

last night

What IS it about Fashion these days..?

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PLease go and like the original post – thank you

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

Ooh fashion
We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town
Beep-beep, beep-beep

David Bowie. Fashion.

What do our clothes say about us? I don’t mean when they’re crushed together in the laundry basket wondering who’s next to be washed, and cursing the current favourite top that barely lands before being whisked off to be cleaned – although I can see that as the next Pixar movie. No, I mean what do they announce about ourselves to the world that might otherwise stay silent. I don’t just mean band tee-shirts that marked some final tour in 1978, the one that’s not had the good times rinsed out since.

You can complete character profiles based upon little more than the type of sandwich someone habitually eats, so clothes are a dead giveaway. That there’s more hashtags for yoga pants than there is for yoga itself tells you all you need…

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