Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Leading The Way
I found getting out of bed quite hard this morning. I just wanted to lie for hours but alas, it is a luxury I will have to wait for. It wasn’t a bad morning, in fact the weather was pleasant – the early spring seems to still be with us. The flowers around Leith Links are already coming through with yellow, though the purple and white is still to make an appearance. They seem to sprout earlier each year.
While I drank my morning coffee, I noticed on Teletext that St. Mirren drew Hibernian in the quarter finals of the Scottish Cup. I fancied going to support the Saints seeing as they were my local team when I was growing up, and the match is at Easter Road - five minutes from my house. The game is due to be played on February 26th, however, and I’ll be touring Edinburgh in my kilt that day while entertaining the Italian fans for the Six Nations Rugby match.
I’m falling behind on my articles. I’ve spent too much time planning them and not enough writing and spent a large part of today fretting about it. But then getting to shows to review them is proving more difficult than I thought. I wrote to the Entertainment manager at the QMU about covering the Red Lesbian gig next week and made a start listing all the libraries in Edinburgh I am going to hit with Hunting Jack over the next couple of weeks.
I arranged to go and see a band called 3 Men & Black on Friday. It’s a 2-Tone special tour The band consists of Dave Wakeling (The Beat), Roddy Radiation (The Specials), Pauline Black (The Selecter) and Nick Welsh (Bad Manners). The beauty of this tour is that it's and acoustic set, so should provide another new take on British Ska.
Click here for more info on 3 Men & Black
I started the re-write of Bill McCarthy. Much of the critique I received back from its first submission last August, contained many suggestions I have automatically improved on by way of experience. There were specific suggestions relating to length of passages, structure and the twist, that I now pick up automatically when putting together a story. So although this story needs a lot of work, it means I am learning at the very least.
There was an excellent article in Writing Magazine from a writer, who spoke about his process of writing a story – whether short or novel length. The same aspects are thrown into any daft idea that comes his way. Some end up in the bin and others have made it to full print. I am going to make a summary of the points he makes in the article and keep it somewhere handy.
The one thing different about Bill McCarthy to all my other stories however, is that it is told from 1st person pov. I think this may be why I struggled with it at first but I have done some work in this format since then and feel happier working with it. Coming up with a good twist has also helped and it’s going to look nothing like what it was when first subbed.
I made a total of $8.12 from Hunting Jack last month. This equates to £4.36 = 1 pint of Tennent’s lager and a double whisky in Clark’s. The change can go in the charity box.
I hadn’t a clue what to write as I started the momentous task of 13 HJ issues, and yet again I was amazed by what happened. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it constantly amazes me that even when I am in my darkest hour, literally a testicle hair from admitting I could be about to experience writer’s block - Jackie takes over and leads the way.
