Fatal Flaw.

We all have them right, each and every one of us has at least one flaw which dicataes our lives.

Last night i started to think a little about mine. Laziness. No matter how passionate i am about something. Or how motivated i am. I can never seem to shake off the laziness that, it seems i've had for longer then i originally thought.

I figured it started after my redundency back in 2004, i took a year off work and lived on my redundency money, i would spend days. Even weeks doing nothing but watching TV and or DVD's, during that time i gained a little weight, which i still have, and no matter how much i talked to myself about starting to exercise, i never did.

But that, ithink, wasn't where it began, as a kid, i would get home from school and instead of doing my home work i'd play video games or sit watching TV, no biggy right all kids do that, but even then i'd still sit watching crap because i didn't what to do the home work. Now even though i have tons of writing projects to do, i still feel like i'd rather just sit watching TV/DVD's.

Back in 2004/2005 i decided that i wanted to write film scripts, if i'd put in the work back then i'd have at least 10, maybe 15 finished scripts. But how many do i have in stead, well i'll tell ya, exactly 3, and the first one i hated so didn't even think about doing a rewrite. The second is in rewrite limbo and the third is collecting dust waiting for me to do something with it.

In the beginning, i didn't write very often because i never really believed that i could sell one, so subconsciously i suppose i thought "whats the point" so not writing very much wasn't really that big of a deal, i never had the confidence, but later, when i found it, buried deep inside me i used my old  unconfidence self as an excuse to cover the real problem. Laziness.

A few months back i decided i was going to writing 4 blogs. Go to my profile page to see them.

This one, i was going to write a few a week, just a "Whats on my mind" thing. The second 'Fisky's Movies Review', i was going to add one a week, reviewing films i liked or disliked, it didn't matter, the third 'Doors of my Subconscious' is a series of short stories, i've written three so far, but even they are over a year old and i haven't written one sinse then, and the fourth is a company one 'Fisk Film' where i'd write about what the company is doing, which at this point is nothing. I wanted so many blogs because i thought it might force me to do them, but then i have no obligation to, so why should i? Laziness Strikes Back.

And over the last few weeks i decided i was going to write a Novel, which is suffering from the same tired routine, i'd just rather sit on my ass and watch TV/DVD's.

Now, i know what my fatal flaw is, its Laziness. I also know how to over come this flaw, i need to stay busy long enough to develope a routine of writing, get to the point where i just do it, not because i need to, but because i what to. The past has shown me that when i'm busy i can work all day long, no problem. In fact i profer to work hard all day then sit on my ass doing nothing. Of course having no work to do when i'm actually at work isn't helping matters, i use a Mac at home and a PC here, the Mac will read the PC files just fine (.doc) but the word processor i use on my Mac (Pages) isn't recognised on PC's, so i have to convert everything to Rich Text Format (rtf) files so i can transfer and open files on both computers, but i loss any formatting i have. For scripts i use Final Draft (fdr) which, unless i buy a new PC version of Final Draft i can't open at all on the work PC, and using RTF, is out of the question because the format is important. I have done it before but spent hours reformating it in Final Draft, which is more trouble then its worth, not to mention the time wasted.

Summary: My flaw is, Laziness. to over come this flaw i need to force myself to work every day until i fall into a routine.

Cover Art

I had the crazy idea that i could write a novel and recently i started to write it, a book, novel, novella i'll decide when its finished which category it fits into. I started by getting familiar with the characters and so set about writing character bios for the two main characters, plus a little research on the subject matter, to which i have already, in a previous blog, mentioned that its a Spy Thriller that has a complex sub-genre. 

I've written half of the first chapter, which i was eager to start so i used part of a bio i wrote, just to get started and today i designed the cover art work, of course this may change, but for right now its all i've got. Yea i know, its a little dark but it does fit the story floating around in my head, which changes from time to time, like earlier today, i was completely convinced i knew the plot, but on the way to my local chip shop i saw a Crow on the grass and things started to change, the Crow just gave me a simple change, but it got my thought processes going and i started to think more about the shady parts of the story, the more complex stuff, and then decided on a significant change to the plot, i love writing, i love the way it evolves in my head, happily it happened before i wrote it.

Write what you know...?

I'm reading a book by Stephen King, no not that kind of book, its called 'On Writing by Stephen King', the first hundred or so pages are basically a brief biography centred around how he became a writer, and the rest are his thoughts on how to go about becoming a writer.

Don't get me wrong, he's not saying, Do what i do or Do as i say, he gives a rough guide to those of us who are aspiring writes, those of us who believe we have something to offer, he gives a starting point, he also tells us how he goes about the writing process, preferring to sit and start rather then spending time in character development or writing up plot guide lines, he said that if he is wrting a suspence thirller and he isn't exactly sure of what is going to happen next, then neither is the audience, i guess that makes sense however daunting it may seem, to start a book of roughly one hundred thousand words or more and not know how its going to turn out, but i guess thats what being a writer is all about. Take this blog, i had no idea what i was going to write, i just sat down and started. I have a character and a situation to solve, or not, so i have a starting point, and tonight i'm going to start the first chapter of my book.

King also said that routine is important, and that you should write a set amount every day, and read lots of books, these of course stand to reason, but also that, for the beginner, imitationis a given. We all have our favorite genres, i for one like Horror, Spy thrillers and Sci-Fi, so i guess i'll be writing along those lines, i also like to read them and that my first few books would be imitations of what i have read, as i read this in On Writing i thought about my idea, which is an imitation, after reading that i felt a little better about doing it that way. King says to set a daily target like one thousand words, roughly 5 pages, to "shut the door" which i though was a metaphor for shut out everything including your family and friends, he said to allow yourself to shut that door, if you have a window close the curtains unless your view is of a brick wall, i guess to shut out all distractions, unplug the television if one is near so your not temped to turn it on and catch your shows, Television he says gets in the way of writing, finish your daily target then watch your shows. King says that he listens to loud rock music while he writes, it helps to block out any other noise that might encroach.

Write what you know, we here this all the time but does it really work that way, i think not, neither does King, a referrence he used was The Firm by John Grisham, about an attorney working for the Mafia, now, Grisham was an attorney at some point but, as King says, i'm pretty sure he didn't and never has worked for the Mob, but The Firm is a believable depiction of it. So even though writing what you know is a good idea, its not a rule of writing, writers can always pull on their imaginations, after all isn't that what fiction is.

Well, without knowing how this blog was going to turn out or what i was going to write in it, it turned out okay.

An Important Message from Taylor, by Geoff.

Today i read a blog that i thought was one of the best i've read in a long tme and wanted you guys to see it as well, and so i stole it from a website called Vloggerheads, it was written by a man named Geoff at some point today.

In the not so distant future a Niburan scout ship lands on the smoking husk of the planet once known as earth. Cool but not unfriendly eyes survey the empty landscape. Alien minds grapple with the puzzle of a species that showed so much early promise but managed only to destroy itself.

Xeno-cryptographers manage to translate a few scraps of electronic data, broadcast transmissions winging their way to infinity. Apparently a sentient life form known sometimes as matthawes, and other times as thenocturnalavenger, managed to weaponize plutonium and ... well, here the record goes dark. We may never know the story of earth's final days.

Atomic warfare blasted human culture and left it mostly in unintelligible fragments. A few coherent artifacts, the Rosetta Stone, the Complete Works of Sedona Leigh (but tragically only volumes XXXII through LXXI), and a blog post from something called a "Taylor," are swaddled in neutral gasses, sealed in transparent bubbles, and transported back to the Niburan home planet and installed in the Museum of Planetary Oddities (closed Mondays).

Dear Vloggerheads Community:

I am leaving you because I am bored. Trolling you, never a great challenge, has become so routine and repetitive that it can no longer stimulate my flaccid self-regard to even the slightest degree.

If just one of you had proved a worthy opponent I might have managed to drag this charade on for another decade or two, but no one came close to understanding my secret intent or comprehending the power I hold over you. I had high hopes for flophousepoodle. She called me a Turing Test once. While I actually am a human being, in my interactions with the site I rarely deviated from half a dozen fixed rules. I could just as easily be a machine, and a simple one at that. A mirror dangling a few rusty gears, a canyon echo hitched to a flywheel.

But the rest of you wasted your breath and wore down your spacebars speculating about whether I was Jeremy, Renetto, or PizzaBoy, or the weepy Alan Williams. You imputed to me motives drawn from the drama of the day and didn't seem to grasp how I embodied each conflict, sucked its juices, and then moved on to the next drama without a backward glance. I'm not going to tell you who I really am because it really doesn't matter. I have no fixed opinions or strong feelings--at least not where VloggerHeads is concerned. I could be anybody.

I was interested exclusively in creating the biggest ripples with the tiniest pebbles. That is my art. Sometimes I surprised even myself. I managed to drive InMendham crazy with a simple Yawn. To be sure that wasn't a long drive, but to see all that passion and intelligence laid low by the tiniest pinprick of disrespect... You may think that was a proud moment for me but it was actually the beginning of the end. For days afterward food lost its savor and even the green shoots beginning to bud in my window box seemed insipid. We all want success to come easily to us but not too easily. No one values what they attain without struggle. Don't put out on the first date.

You called me a troll, and of course that is what I am, but none of you took the time to really appreciate how I operated. Did I ever follow a user from post to post, smothering him with unwelcome comments? How often did you see me yawning on someone's home page? My insults were rarely as coarse as the insults I endured in return. I never went for the knock-out punch (to be honest I couldn't have gone toe to toe with some of your heavy hitters) but relied on the death by a thousand cuts strategy.

I had what Joseph Conrad called "the miserable advantage of having nothing to lose." (Yes, Geoff, I do read books, you condescending bastard.) I trickled like smoke between the fingers of those who tried to engage with me. My greatest joy--before it all turned to ashes in my mouth--was to goad the intelligent ones, the ones who should have known better. Their anger at me was fueled in large part by their anger at themselves for falling for my act--yet again. Do you see what I mean now when I speak of big ripples and tiny pebbles?

I simply inserted myself into quarrels large and small, championing and then abandoning Zen, Argent, Peri Urban, and Lima when they were at odds with the site. Or I poked around for weak spots and insecurities. How many times did I ask for citizenship and then withdraw, make complaints about being treated unfairly, threaten to leave? The sensible thing might have been to ignore me or at least to discount me. I think I even told you that on a number of occasions. That you never did would probably continue to fascinate me if I was still capable of taking an interest in anything at all.

I have admitted that all my dealings with you were calculated and insincere. That isn't entirely true. I honestly believe that Lima is adorable and that Phantom409 of Phantom409.com is a giant among men.

That's all I got to say. Have a nice day.