Some time ago I promised that as I had read so many books on writing that I would have a go at reviewing some of them on this site.  The idea was that by sharing my experiences of the good books others could avoid the bad.

Of course since I wrote that promise I have had a P.E., a lengthy hospital stay and a large dose of pneumonia.  These events kind of disrupted my plans…but no more!

In starting this review process I looked for a good candidate that offered the best starting point and I really think I found it.

Becoming a Writer

I think it is true to say this is the single best book on writing I own and has definitely been the most practical use as a beginning writer.

This book was written before all the current trends for political correctness (1934) and offers helpful, pithy advice to a writer that is starting out.  It is because of the books succinct, direct style that I recommend it without reservation.

The printing I received is a small book of a mere 192 pages, yet it is packed with useful information.  Ms Brande shows a great understanding of the psychology of writers and puts that knowledge to use in a friendly, but strict manner.  I truly regret that I will never get to meet her, or attend a writing class of hers.

Amongst the good news the book offers is the fact that anyone can become a writer, it is just that we have varying degrees of ability.  This fact must surely come as a delight to anyone that has been told that being a writer is somehow an innate ability and make the book worthy of purchase on its own.

It needs to be realised that the book is not about the mechanics of writing.  There are a great many books that are about plot, character, English usage etc. and I will be reviewing some of them over later weeks.  This is book is, as the title states, the process of becoming a writer.

I won’t spoil the book by commenting further on Ms Brande’s advice, except to say that it is most worthwhile following the advice she gives and performing the exercises.  Don’t buy this book if you tend to read a self help book and then leave it on the shelf.  Ms Brande would not approve!

If you are a writer wannabe, like me, buy this book!

Becoming a Writer

Tags: Creative Writing, Review, Writing

Panspermia, or the idea that life could be spread between planets throughout the galaxy by travelling through space, has been generally discounted in the serious scientific community for a long time.  The reason for this is this is that it has been generally believed that no organism could survive the harsh environment of space.

Recent experiments by the European Space Agency might have recently forced a rethink on this belief however.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM72XRJR4G_index_0.html

Not only can some lichens survive long exposures to the vacuum of space, but also some simple animals and plants can too.  The key appears to be that the organism must have a low water content.  In addition to these findings experiments are currently underway to look at the survivability of micro-organisms in space like environments, although the experiments are currently being conducted on Earth.

Now don’t let these findings disturb you too much and make you start reaching for your copy of “Day of the Triffids” or “War of the Worlds”.  The current problem preventing general acceptance of the Panspermia theory is the extreme heat generated by the friction of re-entry through atmosphere.  No organism has yet been found that can survive that – although experiments to investigate this are due next year.

There just has to be some good SF stories in this…

Tags: Space, Writing

Chess clothing?  Say what?

For anyone that has never heard of such a thing I assure you it exists.  Although chess clothing is not quite the same thing as clothing for many other sports eg Karate.

I tend to prefer to dress casually, T-shirt and jeans type casual if I am given my choice, although I do possess three suits and some other “normal” clothing.  Every now and again my girlfriend looks at my *ahem* selection of clothing and goes mental; telling me that some treasured family heirlooms t-shirts and other stuff must be thrown out.

As I suspect that she has a better grip on this thing called “social reality” than I do, I tend to give in and jettison some clothing on condition I can replace it like for like.  It was under this detente process that I recently went looking for new t-shirts and came across a really great website called Endgame Clothing.

I am 6’5” and pretty long in the body for my height so sometimes t-shirts resemble belly tops on me, especially after a few washes.  For this reason I e-mailed the company to enquire about length, received a polite reply and have since placed my order. Although it is quite unbecoming for a guy at 40+ to be excited by such an order I admit that I am…a little.  The t-shirts look really good and most American T’s I have bought last really well, not at all like the low quality stuff generally sold in the UK (2-3 washes and throw it away as it is so far out of shape).

I ordered four T’s but to save space here is an image of one of them:

When they arrive from the US I will post again and let you know if I am still as impressed.

Tags: Chess

It must be love.

I am lucky to have my girlfriend.  I know this to be a fact, as she tells me so regularly!   (Sorry Jen. )

Anyway, to be serious for a second, she was off shopping with a friend in IKEA the other day as saw something with my name on it – literally.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/00120818

A laptop table called Dave!  I mean how cool is that?  (If you happen to be called Dave of course…)

Even though I have proper workstation in a home office upstairs I tend to do the majority of my writing on my laptop at the moment.  It is a habit I got into while ill and it will probably continue a fair while as it has forced me to get used to the keyboard etc.  So now you know on what my laptop rests and very comfortable it is too.

By the way dear reader, yes she was out shopping but no wallets were hurt in this production.  She paid for it herself as I am a poor writer with no income remember?

Tags: IKEA, Writing

Writing can be a lonely activity.  You basically work alone even if you can generate your inspiration from others.  I guess this is why a lot of writers do Creative Writing courses or join writing circles or similar.  Although I am a quiet person, I guess in this desire for similar minded company I am no different.  What could be better than spending time on a Creative Writing course, with others of similar mind and actually improving my writing?

The only problem I have at the moment is actually finding one!  At this time of year the academic courses have already taken their intake and, as yet, I can’t find a local social course.  For this reason I have been looking on the internet and while doing so I came across:

http://www.hoopwriters.com/creative-writing-masterclass-1-ideas-inspiration/

This is a writers class, given by a published writer, in video format.

Excellent!

So far I am really enjoying the material and it is a nice substitute until I can find a real world class.

Dave

Tags: Class, Creative Writing, Video, Writing

When I was a child I occasionally played and enjoyed chess.  Of course a few kids took the game more seriously for various reasons and so when I played these kids they would win and crow extensively over their victories.  This was kind of annoying.  No one likes losing, but grace in victory makes the loss easier to bear.

Even as a kid I just didn’t understand the value of winning a game where there was no real world gain for a victory.  Winning a game because you had followed someone else’s instructions (from a book or personal instruction) seemed a bit hollow.  What I did understand however was that having someone practically go into paroxysms of ecstasy because they had beaten me with the assistance of some cheap prepared opening trap was frustrating.  I therefore resolved to learn more about the game and stop these displays.

It is the nature of chess that if you play enough you tend to get better.  By the time I reached 16 I was top board in the school chess team and had won a few minor regional competitions – all of it sort of by accident.

For various reasons this was my chess playing zenith. Other commitments meant that I did not play with regularity although I did make a small effort to address this by purchasing what was then a top of the line chess computer. Over the next few years even this fell into disuse due to a working week that was in excess of seventy hours.  Basically when I came home, intellectual exercise was near the bottom of my list of things to do.

Well, all this is over 20 years ago.  My memories of chess are positive and so I recently decided on impulse to buy a chess engine from Amazon while browsing.  Oh my!  How chess engines have advanced!  If I played against the engine on an unrestricted setting it would slowly crush me over and over again. Playing against it was such a shock I decided to go on the internet and research them.

Chess players in general are rated using the Elo system and it turned out that the engine I was trying to defeat had a rating (unofficial) of over 2900.  To put this in perspective, the current world champion is Viswanathan Anand and he is rated around the 2800 region (giving a precise rating is pointless as it changes frequently). Most top Chess Grand Masters (GM’s) have ratings in the 2800 range and certainly over 2600.

This monstrous playing strength of course explained my difficulties in defeating my new found chess companion. To make matters worse a short search on Google showed me that not only could I have downloaded a free and legal engine that was a stronger player than the one I had purchased (so much for impulse shopping!) but that these newer engines were playing in the region of 3200 Elo.  This Elo rating is truly amazing.

To help a none-chess player understand how impressive these ratings are:

A player facing an opponent a mere 50 Elo stronger might only be expected to win 43% of games.

A player facing an opponent 200 Elo stronger can expect to win a mere 25% of games

And finally,

A player facing an opponent 400+ Elo stronger can only expect to win roughly 8% of games played.

Remember a gap of 400+ Elo is a decent rough estimate of the current gap between the World Chess Champion (human) and the top chess engines.

So what is the point of all this?  Well, for a guy interested in the future implications of computer development and the human role in this process the vein is a rich one, especially in the area of near future SF writing.

For instance:  Can you imagine competing for a job in a cerebral environment when the best person in the world in that particular field can be out thought by a computer better than one in ten times?

Now it is true that there are those that will argue that chess is an extremely limited arena and is therefore easy for a programmer to deal with rules and variables etc. and thereby use the computers undisputed ability to number crunch and so extract a victory.  “Real life is different” so these folk say.

This argument can be basically summed up by stating that the world is massively more complex and the tasks required to live in it more diverse and so computer intelligence is no threat to humans except in limited areas of competition where the environment is simple and lends itself to reduction to a simple heuristic.  Further, that if computers do become better than humans in these simplistic areas then this can only be a good thing as it will relieve us of the boredom and drudgery of having to complete these tasks ourselves.

The only difficulty with this idea is that if you break everyday life down into a number of discrete tasks the performance of these many tasks becomes a memory/processing problem and is far from insurmountable in the longer term (due to Moore’s Law etc.).  We just need a better computer and that item will definitely come with time.

Well, whatever the future holds, I am back involved with chess and enjoying it for its own sake.  It is a real treat to play a game and win or lose be able to have GM strength engine go over the moves and check for blunders etc.  The availability of this quality of analysis is definitely rapidly improving my game and I can’t help but think that in the future when we will have not only more powerful computers, but hopefully artificial intelligence to assist us, this process will be even more effective.

May that day be soon!

Dave

Tags: Chess

As you may be aware I am still a writer wannabe.

The reason I consider myself a wannabe is that I don’t (yet) have a published book.  Obviously I write (you are reading this aren’t you?), but I don’t feel that I will be a writer “proper” until the first book is published.  Blog posts, short stories, business reports and graffiti on public toilet walls do not count!

Anyway, the book I am currently struggling to grind out is set in the near future where space exploration has basically been handed to the big corporations by the US administration due to lack of cash, drive and insight into what the program means for humanity.  This is contrasted with Chinese and European attitudes.  The idea is to show the absurdity of a US administration trying to regain “control” over the space program when they effectively opted out of it some years earlier, just like the United Kingdom did in the 70’s in fact.

The idea behind this was simply that historically the US space program has seen tax dollars wasted on a truly epic scale.  Items “for the space program” have had massively inflated prices (eg over $200 for a .97c wrench).  It therefore seemed more likely that a successful space program will come from business and not from government if the government will only underwrite the successful ventures.

Imagine my surprise when I read on BBC News that Obama really is cancelling parts of the US space program.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8489097.stm

I thought I was writing fiction, maybe not.

Tags: Moon, Obama, Space, Writing

What to say?  So long since my last post.

Admittedly when I started this blog I had some reservations.  I am basically a private person and find it hard to believe that anyone would be interested in my personal experiences and opinions etc.  At the same time, as a writer, any exposure that enables me to become better known is a good thing and a blog is a reasonable method of self advertisement.

While I was dithering, trying to reconcile these two opposing attitudes, I had a Pulmonary Embolism (P.E.) and was admitted to hospital.  This admission let to some complications and so, several weeks after the initial event I find myself still recovering.  I hope that a 20+” embolism in my leg, a PE along with several varieties of pneumonia can be accepted as a good reason for not posting more!

(Apparently not posting regularly is a major sin in the blogging community, but as a blogging newbie I hope to be forgiven…)

It is my hope that in the future I will be able to post about the events surrounding my hospitalisation, but I cannot at present for legal reasons.  Suffice it to say that my impression of the National Health Service has changed radically. I am suing the local hospital in an effort to get chief executives to change policy within the hospital and thereby hope to save a few lives, having nearly lost my own due to a stupid bureaucratic situation. Wish me luck.

Watch this space as they say, but certainly don’t hold your breath as legal cases tend to take quite some time in my experience and I cannot see a malpractice suit being any faster.

One thing that has changed due to all this turmoil in my life is my attitude to blogging.  Previously my intention was to keep this blog tightly focussed around writing. This idea comes from the “web guru’s” that tell you to “keep your posts focussed” etc.  Well, I am a human being and clearly life has some interesting plans in store for me – what better material than to share this stuff and in so doing hopefully help others in similar situations?

Another aspect that I think I will now include to a greater degree is my personal interest in things political. Some aspects of modern government leave me cold. A wiser man than I once said “All that is necessary for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing”.  I don’t intend to do nothing.

The reason of course to avoid politics is obvious; it causes division. A writer is trying to sell his work and so annoying half your audience is seen as a bad thing. My counter to this at the present time is: Yes, but the topics I intend to broach are humanitarian ones – if broaching these topics sends the heartless away, so be it.

Maybe my current attitude is due to looking at my own mortality over the last few months, or maybe it is just the medication! (Yes, I am still medicated as the pneumonia has still not cleared) Whatever the truth of the matter the world seems in need of some more straight talking instead of endless “spin” – maybe I am just stupid enough to speak it…

Best wishes as ever.

Tags: blood clot, NHS, Pneumonia, Pulmonary Embolism

Hello world!

My name is Dave Felton, I am a forty-something year old writer wannabee.  This is my blog.

Hello and welcome.

So, now we have the formal bit out of the way lets get down to business.  Why should you care?  I mean, there are many blogs you could read if you so chose; why read this one?  What’s it all about?

My plan, if there ever really was one, is to share some of the experiences that go into being a writer. The good and the bad.  Perhaps sharing these experiences could help others?  At the very least it should be good personal psychotherapy, if a little public!

One aspect of sharing these experiences that already springs to mind is that in learning to improve my writing I have read a large number of books on the subject. The Amazon.com reviews of these books seem to be always glowing, even if the book actually stinks and is almost useless. While I don’t think it is appropriate for me to criticise these poorer works, I can with clean conscience point out those books I have read and used that were genuinely helpful.

No doubt other purposes for this site will come up in due time but for now this is at least a useful start.

Dave.

Tags: amazon, Review, Writing