The Space

I had an energy drink to help with the marking hell yesterday and then I had a business idea while out with my Boy getting chocolate on a walk whilst my Lovely took a driving lesson and the Girl to her own drama group.

Anyway, yes, I saw an empty building on the town high street, the business of people walking around, and heard the noise and the frenetic nature of the errands being run. And it got me thinking. What if you owned a business that was mostly automated doors, maybe a couple of private pods, and then simply sound-proofed them, removed signal for phones and wi-fi and charged by the minute for the use of the space? In somewhere like London, Manchester, Leeds, New York or Singapore you might get a bit of passing trade as people looked for somewhere quiet to be alone.

What would they do in there? How would you prevent abuse of the facilities? Well, CCTV, obviously, with monitoring. Wait! I thought, why CCTV? Why not a webcam to broadcast live to the internet? Then you could have a pay-per-view online. The rent for the space would cover the rent or lease on the building and the pay per view would provide a profit. Do it right and it would go viral too.

Then you could add another floor. What if you could rent beds by the hour? It may work out cheaper than a hotel in some of these locations. Add some cameras and you have a whole new area to exploit for money. By this point the beds would be pure profit as would any extra proceeds from the pay per view website. It would capitalise on our love of voyeurism and reality TV as well as play with the notions of privacy (people renting a space to be alone knowing that they are being broadcast on the internet but with no way of checking what they look like). And whilst it would probably work as a business idea I think it would be fascinating as a fiction project.

So, here I am planting the idea in my blog. I hope to start writing something to do with it soon.

If you use it for business or for fiction, let people know you got it from me, that's all I ask (though if you make money and want to send me royalties, that's nice too).

Rabbit in the Rain

The Old Road when it was new. Looking North.

Another section of post-apocalyptica. I don't think this is going to turn into a project just yet, I have too much on, and I've got side-tracked (as I do) by language and how it would have changed since my imagined apocalypse without making it too difficult to follow and understand. Also, trying to remember slang from places of my youth actually proved more difficult than I thought it would be. If ever I do something with these sections then I suspect I may need to revisit the setting and maybe change the Old Road to a route that crosses the Pennines and ends up somewhere in Yorkshire.

Anyway, I tried to write a proper discussion and I'm reasonably pleased with how the rhythm works even if the exact wording is a bit clunky, it is a first draft with little in the way of revision written solely to keep my hand in whilst I wait to be allowed to continue marking. Oh, and it may even help to pass the Bechdel test while not being overtly 'breaking the mould' in a way that would put people off.

The Old Road heading south when new, from the air.

As ever, analysis supplied by the brilliant www.750words.com


Rating: PG (violence[?])

Feeling mostly Affectionate, and concerned mostly about Eating and drinking - well, obviously.

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

29 minutes at 38 words per minute

The Old Road

This is something that just sort of... popped out of my head. I was musing about post-apocalyptic fiction, as you do, when I thought about the fact that most of what I know about it has a male protagonist. Also, it focuses on the very male aspect of survival. One thing that I tried to write with some friends at University featured my own character, a man who was obsessed with the need to avoid relationships with others to allow him to commit the unspeakable acts that would have him starting a war in the climax. All a bit Boy's Own Adventure really.

So, with that setting firmly in mind, I though about exploring the world differently. Writing a different kind of story within what I still feel is a pretty well constructed and well-known world. Well, well-known to me at any rate.

As ever, I am the queen of self-analysis and so I thank the makers of 750words.com once more (if you write, this is like word porn):


Rating: PG (sexual content[? - I do hope not])

Feeling mostly Affectionate, and concerned mostly about Family - well, it is a mother and daughter

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Uncertain - Feeling

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Sight; Us and Them: Us

22 minutes at 49 words per minute

Fire, wisdom and Bechdel

I confess that this entry was a hard one. It has been quite a while since I wrote anything at all, so it was always going to be odd coming back to it. Nevertheless, I return to my prehistoric story and find that I am writing something that I never planned. I wanted to write about music in the mountains and communities of itinerant men on journeys sharing skills and ideas but, instead, I found myself writing about tribes and women in nests.

Before anyone gets going, it's not about women being home-makers. At least, I hope not. It is centred on a meal though, because in my experience anything worth anything is centred on food. If I write about anything without food then that is when I am at my least realistic. It was partly inspired by reading some posts and blogs about women in history and how they tend to get ignored. How our perceptions of the modern era seem to inform what we consider to be realistic and authentic in SF and Fantasy novels.

I was also struck by Bechdel and that thing about women who talk together and don't talk about men. I have failed in that regard because the child of the piece makes reference to the male of the story in her petulance. This vaguely upsets me. However, I have, apparently, found a way around the female nomenclature - we have Falcon and Leaf on the Breeze as names. I dunno, they kinda work but I'm still not completely satisfied, they don't break the mould as much as I would like given my Moon Dancer and Shadow of the Stag names that came out of nowhere and instantly seemed to fit.

So, to the analysis provided by 750words.com as usual:


Rating: PG (violence[?])

Feeling mostlyself-expressive, and concerned mostly about food and drink - figures, given the setting

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

34 minutes at 43 words per minute

So NSFW it's untrue

I recommend that you don't read this at all if you are in a place that would track your internet usage. I haven't written for a while, work stuff, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things. I also wanted to get back to St Avril and, obviously, that didn't happen. Since when do I write what I actually set out to write? Instead I ended up thinking of the Prehistoric setting and trying again to get into the head of my female protagonist. I think I have Moon Dancer now and I think I know how he works and what I would like to do with his part of the story, at least insofar as I understand what the story is.

No, with the females I am less convinced. So... I wrote my very first sex scene. Well, no, not quite. I wrote one at the age of 16, when on exchange in Germany, and as angsty teen it was was unrealistic and ended in a murder. The woman kills the man, just because. I never did work out why, it was brutal and angsty and... well, I was a teen. Anyway, it turns out to be really difficult to write feelings in sex in actual words. I did my best.

Rating: R (sexual content, violence[?] and swearing[?]) The first I get, the rest I don't.

Feeling mostly upset(?) in a dead heat with happy, and concerned mostly about religion

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

37 minutes at 44 words per minute

Group Dynamic

Well, despite having some big discussions with some friends in real life concerning the non-existence of left and right in aboriginal tribes; the harmonics of circular breathing when playing the saxophone and Turkish having two past tenses for events seen by oneself and events that were not, I ended up writing the next section of St Avril.

In my original story there was a single protagonist. However, one of the main issues that story always had was the boredom in the beginning despite the threat. For reasons that will become patently obvious, the threat could never be too close, and so a sense of urgency was lost. The mystery was not enough to carry the early scenes on its own either. Also, I once ran the story as a form of role playing game with some friends, who theoretically gave me more characters to play with. In the spirit of using my writing time to play with things a little more I decided to expand the character list for this piece and came up with this. It follows on from this post.

I have no idea if I have managed to maintain that post's strength of voice.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com.

Rating: PG (sexual content) - well, probably yes.

Feeling mostly upset and concerned mostly about success - interesting.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking (but only just in each case, apart from thinking)

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch (no option for smell then); Us and Them: Them

41 minutes (39 actually typing) at 39 words per minute

First Draft: An Attack

I was feeling a bit dry tonight for my nightly attempt to write. So, I started up some Shamen and East 17 (yes, so sue me) and tried to write what came to me. The strange wolf-suited people came back and... well, let's just say that this is probably my worst writing yet on this project. I think I have a handle on the relationship between my female protagonist and her companion better now, but trying to avoid cliche and the modern trappings of gender roles was... more difficult than I thought.

Really struggling with names too. I don't want 'feminine' names per se but I also want to stress the differences in roles within the group. We know that my males have a coming of age where they choose a new name, what about females? I suspect that 'first blood' would be the coming of age... I think I need to write one of those and see what happens actually...

It's been relatively easy to write a more sensitive male character - I just go through ideals - but writing female characters that have agency in the midst of an attack is hard without making the female characters fit tropes for male characters. The little I've read of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has warned me off that as a means of writing 'real' females. Equally, in avoiding fighting and showing awe and fear at the command of fire in this scene, it seemed as though I was writing women that needed saving - which was not the point.

Why is this so hard?

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com - who probably deserve a bit of money from me by now...

Rating: PG - violence (check)

Feeling mostly upset, with anxious following, and concerned mostly about relationships

Mindset: Introvert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking
I think if the last one had been Feeling I would have nailed this

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: Them

29 minutes at 37 words per minute.