blog

Every drop needs squeezing from 140 chars. Let me show you how that’s done. Here are four tweets - all of which can be improved - from four Twitterers I follow: Jeremy Keith, Aegir Hallmundur, Simon Warrick & Jenny Rolfe. These four were in a block and I chose them at random to show that any tweet can be improved:

1. JK: Estimating the geek to civilian ratio in this pub to be about 2:1 right now.
2. AH: Ooo, much criticism of the BBC in #thebubble. They’re only getting one series then…
3. SW: Since when did celebrity gossip and apologies for their behaviour become the most important news item on the BBC? Tiger Woods is not news!
4. JR: hmmm. just super glued a paint brush to my tights. think that means it’s time to stop making stuff today.

Let’s start with Jeremy’s:

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Nettle roots go deep. Really deep. You never know how deep. They’re also rhizomic, which means they sprout long, tough underground stems - rhizomes - that seed new plants, and is the reason that they’re often found in clumps.

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Playing football last Friday I broke the little finger of my left hand. The bone has also twisted, meaning that I might need surgery to straighten it. This means my left hand is more or less useless. Just living simply becomes a chore. Anything involving water is particularly tough, the hardest two tasks are washing up and shampooing my hair. But more or less every activity involves both hands, I have sadly discovered.

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Whilst writing my first book Swindon Orbital earlier this year, I learnt something important about the act of writing. It was a crucial lesson, but not one I can share with you right now, because it went on to form the key idea around which my second book Blakes Road is being built, and to share it would be to spoil that.

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With the ever growing interest in the weekly session posts I write for FlashBrighton, last night I compiled the best of them - those written since early February of 2009 - into a pdf and added to it to the writing page of this site. You can find it here.

When I am writing, I am constantly aware of a contract that exists between the reader and I. It goes like this:

• Writer: I promise to write something that isn’t shit
• Reader: I promise not be a cretin

It’s a simple contract but works well because it leaves both parties free to pursue their goals whilst putting the onus of quality on the other, thus ensuring that they are both playing at the height of their game; and it also opens both parties up to criticism but only to a degree that is fair, with each party regulating for him or herself what constitutes ‘fair’.

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on the morning of monday 12th october 2009 i was invited down to the bbc’s brighton studios to take part in a live radio interview with bbc radio wiltshire’s mark o’donnell about about the book ‘swindon orbital‘. afterwards the whole show was released on the bbc’s iplayer and i ripped out the 10 minute section containing the interview for myself.

if you would like to hear it, you can find it here.

until today, this blog has been dedicated to the right angle and all its various causes & effects. whilst this still strongly remains a interest of mine it has, to my mind, become so deeply associated with this blog that i have found it hard to write anything else here, meaning that a plethora of what-would-have-been interesting posts have gone unwritten over the course of the last summer, and this blog has stagnated as a result.

i started the year seeing myself as a visual artist with an interest in the right angle but i seem to have changed into a writer with a broader set of interests instead. this was, i feel i should point out, unplanned but has happened and does seem to be continuing and strengthening, and it is only right that this blog reflect that.

so, whilst i plan to continue writing about right angles - as in the case of my ongoing and yet uncompleted history of the right angle - i am going to untether the sails and let this blog sail in the direction that it’s captain seems to be heading in: textwards.

i’ve been in swindon promoting my book ‘swindon orbital‘ that i accidentally wrote earlier this year and published in traditional form just a few weeks ago. i have only a short time online now, so i’m going to be super-brief and write more later. i’ve had an astonishing time in swindon, achieving more than i thought possible, and i will share this with you at the first opportunity.

for now let me just just link to the pdf of the newspaper article that jaine blackman - features editor of swindon’s local newspaper the evening advertiser - wrote and published in last friday’s edition. it was greater and more positive coverage than i ever hoped for and i was and am truly flattered, thank you jaine.

i’ve finally finished my essay ’swindon orbital’, which has taken 4 months to complete. for me it’s a major piece of work and  i’m happy with it, with some reservations (which i think is healthy). i’ll keep this short post because the essay itself is what’s worth reading. if you’ve not heard about it before and would like to know more, start off here.

once completed, friend and fellow writer james burt suggested it should be published in actual book and promoted in swindon, so i did. details of its promotion - including a bbc radio interview and a newspaper article - can be found here. if you’d like to purchase a printed version of the book contact me directly here (copies cost £5), and if you’d just like to download the pdf, you can find it here.

if you do read it, please come back here and add your feedback. i’d like to know what you think.