Feb
20

Heat engine

There is less me in the world than there was the last time I blogged.

I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while now. Last year I tried, based on gym membership and generally trying to eat less, but too little avail and somehow wound up heavier towards the end than at the beginning of the year. My own fault: deep down I know what works for me but put off doing it because of…well I guess not being ready. As I documented here I have overcome that obstacle by getting myself a fold up and integrating rides into my daily commute. Combined with watching my calorie intake based on some simple equations around BMR I am now seeing results.

There’s a lot of nonsense talked about weight loss. A great deal of pseudo science. What I’ve noticed in trying to do this, and reading a lot around it, is that it basically comes down to energy in versus energy out.

It reminded me of an interview I listened to with Brian Cox in which he discussed why if he believed in life after death* he would have to rethink how fridges work. His point was that the human body is basically a heat engine that conforms to the same physical rules that hold the universe together, some of which are quite well known like thermodynamics. Now, I don’t necessarily think all of those laws are understood or indeed that those that do sufficiently describe the human condition or the relative experience of reality for this to be a logical counter argument to either religion or belief in life after death but you shouldn’t ask a physicist for those kind of answers**. You need a hybrid scientist/philosopher to have any hope there and working across neuroscience, physics, biology, chemistry and probably quantum physics. I digress.

You see what I notice in controlling my calories, and trying to move more, is that my body really is a highly evolved heat engine. Slight changes in either part of that equation produces changes in how my overall body behaves: too little and everything starts to slow down; too much and my body starts to hoard for a fast that in my privileged Western world is not coming. Most weird of all is just how predictable it is once you plug the numbers in and stick to them. I am a typical heat engine it seems.

As to why I am doing any of this? It might be said it’s my forthcoming nuptials but truthfully I think it’s more about making sure the engine works as long as possible. After all, no machine lasts forever.

* It might have been god or religion. I am paraphrasing based on memory.
** I say this as a card carrying Atheist. There’s a lot of bad arguments made by scientists including Dawkins, and they don’t do us any favours however well intentioned.

Feb
06

Back in business

Where I writeThings went quiet.

I try to take some time to recharge at the end of a long draft. If I write anything during that time, it’s usually short stuff as an exercise rather than with any intention of trying to publish. This time round I had an altogether different project in mind. Long term readers will know I have been slowly renovating my house over what has felt like a glacial timescale. When we first moved in, and after our disastrous first twelve months, G kindly painted over the pink and yellow motif that decorated the study* but as we had rewired, plumbed in central heating and had the existing carpet disintegrate under foot, this was very much a temporary measure. As we moved through room after room we never did get back to it. There always seemed to be just one more thing to do. Until this month.

My reward for finishing the draft was that I would finish the study.

In between a trip back to Wales, and work, we have been working on sorting it out. This weekend I finished laying the floor and now the furniture has gone back in, enabling me to write this at my desk. The really funny thing is as soon as I sat at my desk, for the first time in a week or so, I wanted to write. Psychosomatic or just psycho? :) You decide.

I’m just delighted to have my space back.

* The previous owner had used the room as a child’s bedroom.

Jan
25

He rides again…

Yesterday was my first day on my new commute.

I haven’t changed jobs. After several years experimenting with commuting by train, and alternatively by foot, I finally decided that the only viable solution was to combine the two thus eliminating the wasted time walking at either end. It also increased my choice of trains, reducing waiting times, by fifty percent.

Before we moved out to the suburbs I cycled all the time. The route from Bow to Soho is perfect for this: a light half hour ride on a relatively simple route and considerably faster than the train. I was in the best shape of my life and I loved it.

Two things changed that: I got severe bronchitis that took me out for about ten weeks (I coughed up blood – but not like I used to as the joke goes…) and we moved two zones further out. When I attempted the commute from Abbey Wood I found that my fitness level had dropped too far, 26 miles a day, five days a week, proving beyond me if I wanted to remain conscious for the evening. Periodically, I would give it another go but the same thing happened every time: it just wiped me out.

Anyway, the commute by foot and train gives me the chance to read but it takes forever. There’s a fifteen minute walk to the station, the train is never on time so there’s a wait, the train takes forty-five minutes to an hour depending on delays, and then a twenty minute walk. Evenings are worse. Sometimes my boss, who lives in Bristol, gets home before me. I couldn’t carry on like that. The fold up was the obvious solution.

After my first day I can report the following:

1. It is indeed faster.
2. I should not cycle without coffee inside me.
3. Fellow commuters frown on accidental headbutting due to forgetting to remove helmet.
4. If I do not zip up my pocket I will lose stuff (I already learned this lesson the hard way when I commuted from Bow but apparently it didn’t stick).
5. Fellow commuters look at you like you’re some kind of three headed freak for bring a fold up on the train. At least I think they do, it might be worse: they might think I am a geography teacher.

For those of you wondering: it reduced my evening commute from an hour and a half, on average, to 1 hour door to door. No prizes for guessing what I am spending the extra time doing…

What are your top commuter tips?

Jan
21

Weird

It’s midnight. We are in bed. There is the sound of hollow rumbling from the sodium lit, wet leather, street outside.

I look across at you. The dark gleam of your eyes tells me you are awake.

“What’s that?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

I swing up to the edge of the bed, my knees protest at the hard wood rim and spread the blinds with my fingers. There is a man wheeling a bin down the road as if he were just pulling a bike along side him, never mind that it is the middle of the night, or that he appears to be not taking it just a couple of houses down – perhaps correcting a mix up – but taking it the entire length of the road. Each house in our street has three bins, one for each category: blue lid for recycling; black lid for rubbish; green lid for organic waste. His gait is defiant as if to query his intent is weird when in fact the reverse is surely true.

“He’s wheeling a bin!”

You crawl over to look before flopping back down bemused. “Why would anyone wheel a bin down the road?”

“Drugs?” I  suggest.

“A body?” you offer.

I nod. “Could be? I think I heard a car, perhaps he was moving it.”

You stare at me across the bed. A question on your face. Something of so much import it over-rides all other considerations. “What colour lid..?”

Jan
19

Finished

I have just finished the first draft of my current work in progress.

The project was/is a contemporary fantasy set in London but also featuring period pieces in Alaska, Boston, Nagasaki and New York. It’s about how long relationships can really last, the nature of love, obsession, fanaticism, non-direct uses of fusion reactors, the nature of reality and whether you can ever really know someone.

At least that’s what I think it’s about right now.

It’s also got plenty of action and a fair bit of London gets wrecked in the process.

Technically, it’s my second draft but I rewrote the entire story from scratch, using a new story design, on the grounds that there were several structural issues with the first version, it was too short for its market and I had left it so long since I wrote the first version I was a different person. I did this because a) I liked the idea but hated the first draft I wrote and b) I needed a project last year that required little research to give me room to research my next project.

Constant readers may have worked out it is the project called (at the moment) Forever.

In a couple of weeks I will begin the next draft by reading through the current version (the time gives me some distance) and begin the structural changes I feel I need to make before swinging into the detail work of polishing up the draft (line, dialogue, continuity, length, etc.). But for now I am done. It’s a nice feeling knowing I can still finish a full draft, that I can get into a rhythm of writing every day and hold a story that size in my head for the time necessary to write it while working.

Pass the beer.

Jan
17

State of the writer

This will be brief.

I am in the final stages of the draft of my current work-in-progress. In fact, I just finished writing the final set piece and now only have the dénouement left to write, with a following wind this should be finished in the next few days but as you can see I’m over on word count. At this stage I have no idea whether this draft has any merit, is better than the aborted previous draft, or anything. I just want to finish it.

Plans after that. The manuscript goes in a digital drawer for 2-3 weeks while I write some short stories in a completely different setting. Once I have some distance from that manuscript I will go in and do my second draft consisting of: read through, structural edit, character edit, line edit and final read through. My test readers then get a look. I try to go as fast as possible on editing or it becomes death by a thousand cuts.

Now: dénouement. See you later.

Jan
07

That Friday feeling

Ah, it’s Friday.

My writing routine did survive the first week back in work, a test not to be underestimated, and the book is now entering that rather fabulous stage where the words come fast as it builds to the final big set piece. Indeed, so well timed is it with the weekend I may press on and try to finish the draft this weekend. It’s all about balance though: too much writing and not enough living gets done to fuel the words.

In the real world, the big set piece of the year is, of course, The Wedding. Planning is going well, we had the first wave of proper administravia today and I think we’re both glad to have it out of the way. I’m also looking to sort my study out properly once the current draft of my work-in-progress is completed, it’s the last room really to redecorate (G kindly did a fast repaint a while back as a stopgap) and I’m keen to make better use of the space. Today, however, I have a day off and so I must away to writing of fiction, reading and later: cinema.

Have fun whatever you are doing.

Jan
04

Systems

It’s been a bumpy ride over the last twelve months. I really struggled to juggle writing with other stuff and this led to some frustrating months where very little happened but as I mentioned elsewhere on this blog I seem to have finally settled down into a rhythm that is actually sustainable.

For years, like every other beginning writer, I have been drilled on the need to write every day and like many I have ignored that advice. I am a binge writer I have scoffed, always have been and always will be. Time, I just need more time and everything will be fine. Difficult if you have a job, if it’s demanding and you’re going through a pretty unique recession it’s a fucking pain in the arse. I have now written every day for getting on for three months.

How did I make this seemingly impossible mental leap?

I did less.

It’s a glib answer and at the risk of sounding like a Zen post I reiterate: I did less. Or less cryptically I committed to doing less and actually got more done.

This was my pre-October routine:

1. Commit to writing 2k per day and reading as much as possible.
2. No exceptions for anything.
3. Base all deadlines on this wordcount.
4. Do not measure editing.
5. Fail to hit the wordcount on most working days and engage in writing binges on the weekends in a vain and impossible attempt to catch up.
6. Beat myself up continuously for not maintaining the same output as other writers and missing deadlines.

Does that sound familiar?

It’s actually worse because this exercise in Catholic levels of guilt winds up in a lot of writer’s block very quickly. I knew by September that this wasn’t working for me, it had been more than twelve months when you factor in all the problems with the house and as noted my submission activity was in the toilet.

There are five things that changed my point of view on dealing with this:

1. I re-read an old article on Terry Pratchett and how, back when he was a PR man, he wrote to let off steam (exactly what I use writing for) and how he could only manage to produce regular books and hold down a day job by writing 500 words a day. That was his mantra. If he finished a book on word 450, he lined up the next book and wrote 50 words. That’s Pratchett…PRATCHETT…and I was beating myself up for not churning out four times that amount. How arrogant am I? I’m no Pratchett but perhaps I should pay attention to what he’d gone through while holding down a day job.

2. I saw Cory Doctorow interview Bill Gibson. During the interview Bill turned the tables and asked Cory what was the best writing advice he had received. Cory said it was the one piece he took longest to listen to which was to write every day. He said it didn’t necessarily make the work better but it did make it easier to get started, to pick up the story each day and run with it. Interesting, I thought but it would never work with my job.

3. I missed my deadline for my current project. The deadline was unrealistic, once I realised I couldn’t make it what was the point?

4. Real life got a bit unpleasant for a couple of months further compounding my issues with actually sitting down to write and I lost that particular vent to my stress. A vicious feedback loop.

5. G suggested I try to write less, reasoning that some is better than none. Anything to stop me moping around.

In the end I thought about killing my work-in-progress and starting again but by this point I realised I had too much invested in it and, besides, when I got writing I enjoyed it.

Rather than repeating the mistakes of the past where I would try to set myself ridiculous times to get up to write and ridiculous wordcount targets I established a series of lose rules that were designed around my working day and lifestyle. I make no claims as to whether it would work for anyone else but it seems to work for me. I offer them here in the hope they may help other people:

1. Write at least 500 words.
2. Generally this should be in the morning before work.
3. I may write more than 500 words but this does not contribute to subsequent days.
4. Do not talk about the system until it has worked for two months.

That’s it. I picked 500 words because I know, getting up at a reasonable time, that I can produce this in the time before I have to catch the train to work. Furthermore, if I miss this slot for whatever reason it’s a small enough amount that I can produce it in my lunch hour or in the evening without burning out. Also: it worked for Pratchett. Writers need egos.

I write in the morning because if my day goes wrong it and I want to veg out in the evening I can sure in the knowledge the project has moved on, even if it is just by a small amount.

I allow myself to write more because I enjoy writing and if I have the spare time, what the hell? But not setting a massive target does stop me beating myself up fruitlessly if I don’t have time because I have already done some that day.

It was hard at first. Some days I really didn’t feel like doing it because it felt like chipping a mountain with a teaspoon, and for the first few weeks I felt like I was having to stop just as I got started. But a funny thing happened after that, I began to start firing on the story much, much quicker, and then I started doing more.

I didn’t increase my target I just found I was going faster, enjoying it again and picking up the story in the quiet moments of the day. Being able to write in micro-chunks was so much better suited to my lifestyle. I now average around 750-1k during the working week and around 2.5k at weekends. I have even managed to write on days when I’ve had a migraine or been ill (rare but it is winter) simply because 500 is not a big enough mountain to keep me from the keyboard. My minimum limit is still set at 500.

So that’s my new system. I’m delighted. I just wish I’d listened to people sooner.

Jan
02

Last note on 2010

Some stats for 2010 in which I:

1. Read about 57 books. (Reasonable. This is exactly the same as the year before.)

2. Wrote about 123,000 words. (This is not as good as it should be. And way down on the previous year. Fudge.)

3. Submitted an embarrassingly low number of times but not zero. I still need to get into at least double figures this year or admit I’m a hobbyist.

4. Blogged around 70 times, and a far more respectable number than I had any right to respect. On the other hand, if I took away the number of videos posted I suspect this would be low. I need to be more consistent and useful here.

5. Published twice. One story from a previous year and one from the current year’s writing.

Overall grade: D +. A worrying dip mid-year but a strong rally in the last part of the year. Must and WILL do better next year.

Jan
01

Happy New Year

It’s 2011! Have a good one. And remember, the year is what you make it:

Check out that hair. :)

Go back to top