Author: hamishmacdonald

Q: Why do we find movies about aliens compelling? (Even bad ones.)

1. Because reality, which for most people means sitting at a desk all day, can be pretty boring. (In space, no one can hear you type.)
2. Because alien movies are an exercise in imagination, and in an age where everything is shrunken to fit a prevailing science of materialism, we long to spend time in the vast space of imagination.
3. Because these movies give us the cathartic release of seeing our social structures destroyed or transcended, when so much of our time day to day is consumed by the careful maintenance of our existing structures.

I’m at the pub, having escaped the house, where I was quickly getting mired again in over-working a web solution for a very nice web design client I really shouldn’t have taken on: Every moment I spend on someone else’s project is time I’m not spending on my own work.

I know this, but it’s so hard to say ‘no’ when people ask for help with things that I know how to do. I often see the potential in people’s projects, and I feel compelled to give my help where it can make a difference. (Though I know it’s not my fault that I’ve bothered to learn these things that other people haven’t.) Even when they pay me to help them, every task always, always winds up taking at least five times longer than I expected (more like twelve times longer). It’s just not worth it, financially or in terms of advancing my own commitments.

It’s also really easy to use those sideline tasks as a distraction, a way of avoiding the more involved, more personally demanding activities of my personal projects and work for my main client.

So I got totally lost yesterday, but today I’m taking a different tack than usual: I’m not bad and wrong for having got lost. I’m learning.

Each of these experiences gets me a little closer to the experience I’d prefer — if I’m mindful about what happened, if I pay attention to the lessons I’m getting, versus being unconscious and claiming frustration when I’m actually getting wilfully lost, because I know there’s a better alternative, and I know how to get there. Lately I’ve been able to actively get myself back on track, even when it’s scary, by taking a step back and looking honestly at what’s really going on.

(I’m still working on my little “box of focus” internet-antidote project, which I’ll show you when”¦ well, it exists.)

Meanwhile, I’m at the pub, and I’ve been doodling — an activity from childhood I still love. When I take the time to draw, I feel like I’m doing something I should be doing, something that belongs to me, just like when I’m deep in good writing.

So today I drew the “bochle” who frequents the pub where I work:

Back home in Charlottetown, we would have said “townie” for “bochle” — you know: one of those characters you see around town who’s a little bit scruffy, a little bit crazy.

This particular fellow is someone who’s been in the public eye a lot, complaining about, well, everything. He’s never worked and is a big advocate of “self-medication”. The real challenge for me about this guy is that, other than the drugs thing, I’ve agreed with every opinion of his I’ve read. He ran for local election, and joins all kinds of committees, then complains about hierarchical power structures, then drops out. But at least he’s trying, which is more than I can say for myself: I’m too frustrated about politics to go anywhere near them.

Here’s the other doodle I did:

Bunting zig-zagging down the High Street in Wick! For the Queen’s Jubilee? No, for our annual Harbourfest!

Okay, it’s time to do the work I’m paid for. But this is where my head’s been at this morning.

“The mainstream hasn’t been paying attention to all the changes in our culture during the last fifty years. The major ideas of our time””developments in medicine, the importance of space exploration to advance our species””have been neglected. The critics are generally wrong, or they’re fifteen, twenty years late. It’s a great shame. They miss out on a lot. Why the fiction of ideas should be so neglected is beyond me. I can’t explain it, except in terms of intellectual snobbery.”

-Ray Bradbury in The Paris Review

I half-agree with Bradbury here. I love that term, “fiction of ideas”. I’d like to think that’s what I write.

And he’s right about intellectual snobbery — in many cases, that’s all it is. There are, however, lots of SF books that are all about the ideas at the expense of characters who might help us care about what’s being discussed.

The other danger is falling in love with technology, which is inherently empty, a cipher that reveals our true commitments. I recently had to write some copy about a book by an entrepreneur who claims that in the future technology will make everything in our society better. What he misses, though, is that we could already solve all of the problems he mentions””if we weren’t so damned smitten with money and business instead of people.

1. Coffee frapputhingy in front of me: check. (One teaspoon instant, coffee, five ice cubes, one banana, two drops of French vanilla stevia liquid, equal parts soy milk and water.)
2. Bowl of granola with yoghurt: check.
3. New batches of soy milk and yoghurt in their respective makers: check.

My hippie 2.0, DIY, work-from-home routine is restarted.

Yesterday I sent my copywriting in at a ridiculously early time and caught the bus to Inverness. l’d seen a “digital publishing” workshop listed in the local paper and figured I really should go to it. I wasn’t sure why, because I kind of already know how to do all that. I saw it was being put on by two guys from Blasted Heath Press, a digital-only imprint, and hoped it wouldn’t be a “selling from the stage” session about their services. Plus I just didn’t get the value in introducing that intermediating layer of traditional publishing back into an era when you don’t need anyone’s permission or assistance to get your work out in front of an audience.

The bus ride took a few hours, during which l read some of Philip K Dick’s Ubik on my e-reader (struck — and honoured — by some thematic similarities to my own book, Idea in Stone). As the guy who used to buy e-books then print and bind them to read offline, I am now thoroughly sold on the value and convenience of this new form, which has easily trebled the amount I’m reading — and by that I mean reading, not ‘screening’ or skimming or whatever we call that activity that’s not really reading which we do when we’re rapaciously consuming data from the web.

The other participants were a neat group of people who came to the event from a wide range of backgrounds and for different reasons. I suppose you could call it “networking”, but it was really about community. These were all switched-on people with their own wealth of experiences, and I genuinely hoped I might be useful to them by sharing what I’ve learned — though I was quite conscious of not wanting to be the know-it-all jerk at the back of the room constantly piping in with, “Actually, I think you’ll find that”¦”

And that wasn’t really necessary here, because it quickly became apparent that Kyle and Allen, the two leaders of this event, really knew every facet of this as-yet-unpaved frontier, and their most winning quality was the honesty with which they readily admitted everything they hadn’t figured out yet — most of which no one has figured out, either.

Funnily, ironically, or whateverily, my distinguishing feature throughout the day was that I make physical books. (I’m really glad I brought a few!) It was great to be able to evangelise, not for me, but for this as a possibility for independent authors — the one piece most writers think isn’t available to them without a traditional publisher or a complicated arrangement with a print-on-demand company. Getting to contribute that perspective restored my energy for doing that work.

Speaking of energy, that’s what ultimately sold me on the notion of presses like Blasted Heath: I have limited stores of energy when it comes to strategising and taking action on the “front stage” part of my writing career. Aside from what this press offers authors in terms of proper editing and cover design, they’re working to keep abreast of all the different requirements and terms and tactics for working with organizations like Amazon, and for creating a marketing approach for a new title. That’s the part I’m worst at, where there are major cracks in the pipes that would carry ‘steam’ to that
essential aspect of my business.

While readers need filters for discovering work they’d like in the vast sea of options, both traditional and independent, I can see this model working well for authors who don’t want to learn to do every single thing themselves, or who want a team of experts to help them deliver the best product and to do it effectively, upping their chances of success. I definitely recognize ways in which I scupper my chances by not doing what I ‘should’ or shying away from the parts that make me feel queasy.

Yet the event truly wasn’t an advert for what they do; they were very forthright in showing us every step of their process, and even doing a hands-on session about how to build an e-book and list it on Amazon.

The books I write are quite different from the titles they’re representing, which are mostly crime — a mainstay of Scottish literature — so I felt very comfortable talking to them throughout the event and over a pint afterward without worrying about schmoozing. I also met the person who put the
event together, as well as a couple of other authors whose compelling backgrounds I got to chat with them about.

It turned out that this publishing event was an addition to a well-established film and music development festival called GoNorth that’s been happening in Inverness for several years. I even got a “swag bag”, which I assumed would be full of of future recycling, but contained some CDs and a DVD of Scottish short films that I’m actually quite looking forward to checking out.

So rah for community! It was nice to get back amongst like-minded people who are up to the kinds of things I am. Perhaps that’s as, or almost as, important to an artist finding an audience.

P.S. I composed this on the typewriter. Gosh it’s nice to do one thing at a time.

I’m reading The Shallows “” or trying to, because the author seems to be making his point by making you read about every effing thing from the invention of the watch to the invention of type to”¦ everything in the universe that precedes his point. Me-smells an article that’s working hard to be parlayed into a book.

That said, I do want to cultivate mindfulness, deep thought, and sensory experience/first thoughts over skimming the world. But sometimes a lack of patience is warranted!

In-between bouts of copywriting, I’ve been working on my novel.

I know, I’ve been saying that for more than a year. That was research, and it was important; I couldn’t have got here without that.

This is different. This is working on a book, like I remember it.

Last night I completely rebuilt my e-books, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while now (especially now that I have an e-reader, and I wasn’t happy with how the old versions looked; I knew I could create a better, more “professional” product). In the process, scanning through all those chapters and scenes and seeing those old, beloved characters’ names again, I was reminded of what “writing a book” was like at its best–when it wasn’t about pressure or keeping up or proving myself or doing what I’m supposed to be doing, or any of that. It was about creating, discovering, having a conversation with my creative subconscious.

And now, this work has thrown me right back into the middle of that activity and that feeling–just as fresh as fun as it was in 1998, when I was writing my first book. Only now, and especially now that I’ve got over whatever was in the way and am into the work, I feel confident that I am more capable than ever.

I’ve worked out a lot of this story.

And just now, as an exercise to ease into the story, to give myself the freedom and permission to write just for myself, without consequence, I wrote a “missing scene” from the story. And you know what? It was easy. I mean, it was work, sorting out the beats of the scene, then writing it, but it was work I can just do.

Craig just got home from his Spanish class and insisted on taking me outside to see the sun–a giant ball of orange gelato sliding out of sight behind the neighbours’ slate roofs. Now he’s off to the shop for a minute and I’m finishing this. The sky out my window is still pinky-orange. Across the street, a gull sits nestled beside a chimney-pot. It’s a warm, kind day that feels like the start of summer, even though a theatrical fog is rising from the harbour.

All’’s right with the world.

A quick video demonstration of “fan-binding” the pages of a paperback book.

The last few days I’ve been stopping to catch my inner monologue and replace it with something less driven, more compassionate, more useful, more fun. What a joy! And why not? Why does the other monologue feel “realistic”, like I somehow have a responsibility to run that tape of wearying, demanding voices?

This afternoon, having cooked dinner and made pudding for my brother & his family while they drive up from Inverness, I sat on the couch. I lay down and napped for a while. I straightened up and read for a bit. Then”¦ I stopped. And looked.

It felt like waking up a second time. I looked at the plant winding its way up in the corner of the living room””three charmed, skinny wooden snakes with leafy headdresses, and I sunk even deeper into the moment.

This is the other thing I’m remembering in these moments of moments: the feeling of living twice by observing things through the filter of How would I write that?

As I transfer all my notes from last year (in my Gregg shorthand of the time””ack!), typing them out onto 3×5 cards, I look at the task ahead in writing this novel and I know that what I need to succeed at this again (can I say that?) is interiority. I want my inner life back. My attention. My original “Wild Mind”, as Natalie Goldberg calls it””she whose book of the same name first got me started on this writing path.

In that place, writing becomes something completely different. A line from Rumi comes to mind””which I think Natalie quotes in the book:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

It feels like a religious calling, a coming back to faith, because writing is the best thing I’ve found for helping me fully experience this world and feel like I’m engaged in a practice that takes me closer to whatever it’s about.

I’m on a break between deadlinedeadlinewriteitnow! copywriting assignments I’m trying to finish before my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew arrive, and, lost in some web-browsing, I was about to post the following in the comments for a blog article called “Holding self-publishers to account for quality”.

As my cursor hovered over the “Submit” button, I realized I really don’t want to get into any debates on the internet. I hate them, they do nobody good, and long, hard experience has taught me to steer away from that moment where something in me gets hooked and wants to pick a fight. So I closed the tab.

“¦but I did save the text to my clipboard. I might as well bleat my point here on my own little hill where it hurts nobody. (You can infer from the title the gist of the original poster’s thesis.)

You’re judging all self-published work here by a single bad experience. You’re not alone in doing that””it’s the default position: “Self-published work is shoddy.” Yet every traditionally published book I’ve read this year has contained typos””so, as they say, that dog don’t hunt. The argument may once have held, but now it seems to be the nasty refuge of writers with a hope-horse in the traditional publishing race.

What’s apparently being left out of the process on both sides is good editing; perhaps that’s because this is a human skill that hasn’t been””can’t be””commodified the way print production has. With a shrunken budget in either case, it gets skipped.

That said, editing is something I want to invest in for this next book. The price is generally ghastly, which I can understand, given how time-consuming it is, but later down the line I’ll be searching to see if editorial services are turning up in the wake of the indie publishing armada.

Suggestions welcome!

Yesterday my hubby gave a patient back his voice (using a little piece of plastic to attach to a tracheostomy tube, which cost £50 and the NHS fought him about buying). The same day, a young patient of his died unexpectedly.

I’m busy with my copywriting work right now, trying to work on the novel, to learn shorthand, and a do a bunch of other things. It all seems pretty minor in comparison, though. Not unimportant“”this is my calling””but the games we play have very different stakes.