Monday, January 3, 2011

Wisconsinite-isms

I'm guessing that some writers dwell quite a bit on life and what makes it up. All the facets, the ins and out, the theories. Some include the human element in their characterisations. They study the past, try to figure out the present, while some go beyond, attempting to offer visions of the worlds of tomorrow. Rarely is paradise done quite as well as dystopia.

I read a lot in my childhood. Books were more a part of life then. There wasn't the many distractions that there are today. I liked writing early in my schooling, praise for my neat handwriting glowed in my ear. It was more for the way I wrote, as opposed to anything I happened to compose.
Writing, reading and soccer filled in any idle hours, until the latter teenage years seen the writing and reading make way for more important matters.

In recent years I got back to both. I read mostly now from the writings of people who philosophise about many things, life included. Biographies of interesting lives are also a favourite. I write fiction, but hardly read any at all. If I was to follow many of the writing blogs out there, I'd be concentrating more on the marketplace and honing any skill I had toward a specific genre and trying to 'break in' that way. Blah!
The guts been good this past year. Hard to explain that, and definitely would not want to change it. It's OK to read and wise oneself up on many things. I came across this article earlier in the New Yorker. It puts a lot of perspective on a lot of things, most notably that it may not always be best to believe in everything you read, especially if it gets the green light from the self serving elements of academia.
The further scientists delve into the make up of human life and condition, what motivates us, what causes all the conflict, I sometimes come to the thinking that any study is merely pushing us further away from something that may not be ever understandable.

Yet writers try, in their own way, when drawing from individual lives and perhaps borrowing from the lives of others, and indeed maybe from science itself, in trying to form some understanding about what is it all actually about. I'm sure Stephen Hawking's mind works as a constant ticker. I agree with his sentiment when asked about why his IQ was, when he replied that he had no idea, and that people who boasted about their IQ were losers. Hawkings has delved into the bigger picture, offered more than most, so he's entitled to his own whitisms. Or is that a religion?

People see the world in different ways and at different stages of their existence. Each experience like a snow flake. Unique, similar yes, but always different in many ways. I could never see the world through numbers, formulas and equations, i admitted defeat to all that before I finished school. Sometimes the simplest thing, is just trying to make sense of it all as we go along.

I've decided to put off the first draft of my second book until the day after the launch of my first. No set date, but hopefully toward the end of the month i will have an idea. I will benefit from all I learned the first time around, and the preparation I have put in so far will also serve me well. In many ways I'm looking forward to writing something different. Something a little darker, written a different way and more plot driven. It's coming together pretty well, but I know what I am like, and once the writing begins in jest, the mind wanders off in many directions that are not on the planning board. That's when a certain buzz kicks in. That's when the hard work and effort pays off in terms money simply could never buy. And the book is not entirely set in Ireland either. It will be good to get out of the country for a while...Before I leave for good.


I'm glad I didn't put the print-run money on the prediction from earlier. 'Jackpot' took the title by 7-5. He rarely looked in danger of losing after torpedoing his way to a 9-dart finish in only the third leg of the final. Still, I wasn't to far away. It must be a nice feeling to reach the top of your game, on a Monday too.

Which leaves me with a little gem from my favourite resident in Wisconsin after Red Foreman.
I wonder if the academic crowd got together and did a little study on this, how long would it take for people to look at the dreaded day in a different light, if people went about the early hours of their Monday morning pulling Hollywood faces and using borrowed dialects from their own choosing to recite the words.
I used to detest Mondays. Now all days feel the same. That was a welcome discovery when I turned to writing to fill the voids left by other things. So, over to you guys...

'Go ahead, make my Monday.' ~ Clint Eastwood and Beth Matter.

Classic!

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