Rivers of London, Wizards dealing with Bureaucracy

  After struggling to think of a blog entry I realised two things. One, I wanted to get back to the subject of writing and two I just finished reading a book so a review is a perfectly respectable thing to add to my blog.

  Rivers of London is a story told from the point of view of Police Constable Peter Grant who is brought to the attention of Inspector Nightingale when he claims he’s waiting to speak to a ghost. As it turns out Nightingale is the last Wizard in England or was until he takes Peter on as his apprentice. This isn’t really a story about him becoming a fully fledged wizard so don’t let your mind jump to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” It’s made clear that a Wizard’s education can take up to a decade so don’t expect to see many flashy spells.

  The book juggles a main plot of trying to figure out who or what is possessing innocent people of London in to violently attacking people close by and a sub plot about keeping the peace between the Father and Mother of the Thames. Peter Grant has a consistent sarcastic and humorous tone which makes the book all the more enjoyable to read. That and the journey of seeing the crimes unfold will keep the pages turning.

  I managed to put my finger on what it is I like so much about the book. We learn that Peter Grant is mixed race with an African mother that he mentions quite often. This for me means I’m seeing London and the events from a unique perspective whilst at the same time I’m treated to his down to earth opinions that I find so relatable. So as any good “How to Write” book will tell you, Peter Grant makes a perfect hero.

  Rivers of London is the perfect mix of the mundane (Peter telling us the ins and outs of the Metropolitan Police system) and the fantastic (ghosts, river spirits and magic spells). In this world vampires don’t sparkle (Peter Grant says so himself) and magical beings are irritated by the mention of Harry Potter. I find it amusing how many books squeeze the words “Harry Potter” on to the front of books to sell more. On the front of this one is the quote “What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz?” Now I don’t fully agree with this. Characters with dry English wit and magic spells are just about the only things the books have in common. Personally I think the style puts it closer to a book like “The Vesuvius Club” and its sequels than any Harry Potter.

  The only thing that I felt a little disappointed by was the lack of much background to Thomas Nightingale, the last Wizard alive, though I have been assured that this will be resolved in the sequel, “Moon over Soho”.

I was robbed by twooo men

  I posted that title as my facebook status and no one seemed to get the joke, I think partly because I did it in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a quote from this amazing example of Japanese education, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf-C8gGSnBE

  A large amount of time was suddenly freed up today and I promised myself I’d get some more of my novel written but because it’s been a week since my last blog post I thought I’d better write something for here first.

  I have a few blog posts half written (one about the credits after films and the other explaining my beef with Ben and Jerry), and some ideas for a little project (something to bring the subject back around to writing). But screw these ‘cause I was robbed by two men!

  On Friday evening the small manager Lindsay (I’m not being petty, she’s pretty short), my tall co-worker Adam and myself were all waiting around to shut the shop. The shop is a small supermarket, think of something similar to a co-op. We had 20 minutes left and Adam reminded me of something I still had to do. So I popped in to the office, grabbed what I needed and turned around to see something dark travel in to the shop. At the time I thought someone was throwing a bag but later I discovered it was actually robber number one. I could then hear the second robber shouting to the others to get on the ground.

  I must have still been moving forwards and I think I even popped my head out briefly but as soon as I realised what was going on I disappeared back in to the office and locked the door. I had been seen, because a second hadn’t gone by and the second robber was pounding on the door. Thankfully the window and the door remained solid. I took the key from the door and threw it to a chair. It was time for some kind of action.

  I hurried to the phone and here there was a problem. You see in the office are two phones, a regular one and one attached to a fax machine. A couple of days before the normal had been unplugged because apparently the number 2 doesn’t work. So in my haste I went for the phone I assumed we were using. I dialled 999 and waited. I heard nothing. I hung up and tried again. Nothing. Damn.

  Outside the office, while I was trying to find a phone that worked, the two robbers were ripping apart the cigarette stand and Lindsay and Adam were crouched on the floor nearby. Back in the office and I moved on to the next phone. I picked it up and was about to dial when I heard a voice. I don’t know how but clearly dialling one phone had affected the other.

  The normal thing to do in this situation is to, well, explain your situation. Now I’ve had to ring police before now and always, always forget the first “threshold guardian”. The person sat in a call centre whose job it is to ask you one thing. “Police, ambulance or fire department?” And my forgetting this leads to the irritating situation of shouting down the phone “I’m being robbed, they’re armed, help!” followed by “yes, but what do you want police, ambulance...”

  I understand why this person is there and why they can’t just assume what you need but it still annoys the hell out of me. I just want to scream “The coastguard? What do you think I need?!” Also my hope in these situations is that the police will arrive while the robbers are still around but the sad thing is it’s just not likely. Especially since the days when robbers asked for tills to be opened is gone. It might sound strange but in my experience robbers don’t go for cash. They go for cigarettes. The most expensive packs are near enough £7 and it’s far easier and quicker to fill a bag with those than go through the trouble of asking frightened staff to open the tills.

  So the robbers left, but not before dropping some of the vodka they were trying to take. Adam appeared at the door and I opened it. We checked we were all ok and soon after the police arrived. The police took statements did their usual thing and eventually left over an hour after what would have been closing time. We were told to leave the mess that had been made so as not to ruin any evidence forensics might find.

  Since the shop is my dad’s and I live with my dad this means I live above the shop. So I went upstairs and awaited the arrival of C.S.I. Trust me this wasn’t as exciting as television makes it out to be. C.S.I turned out to be a singular middle aged man with a torch who made even more of a mess of the tills by chucking black powder everywhere. He also seemed very bored by the whole proceedings. I know he’d already been at a robbery that night but come on, at least give us a smile.

  For me the worst part of these events is usually the cleaning up afterwards, made even worse because my dad is away on holiday leaving me to deal with a lot more than usual. And of course it never helps that usually after these sorts of incidents sleep is taken away from you by a brain that just won’t shut down. A brain that insists on replaying the events over and over like it’s trying to burn them in to your eyelids. Then it shows you what could have happened if things went wrong. What if I hadn’t locked the door in time? What if he’d broken it down and come after me? Then for my own amusement it replays the events except I have Jean Grey’s psychic powers, meaning I can leave the two men hanging in mid-air until the police arrive.

  In these situations it’s important to find the funny side, such as the fact one of them left a very clear footprint on a nice clean bit of paper that happened to be on the tills. I bet C.S.I. man loved that. Or even better that when the second robber jumped back over the tills, he fell flat on his face. The idiot.

Making Colin Firth giggle

  I watched the Oscars last night and yes I know I’m a couple of weeks behind. As a UK resident I have the choice of either staying awake until about 4 in the morning or do as I’ve done and download that bitch. After all I still have to sit through all the sponsorship messages, which always seem odd as they’re voiced by the same announcer who covers the entire show. So from a deep intellectual “This is Colin Firth’s first academy award and second nomination” to the same voice saying “Diet Coke, add some surprise to life.” Okay so I can’t remember the slogan but it was something equally horrible.

  My dad never watches award shows. He’s a big fan of comedy so I thought he might like to know the winners of the British comedy awards and still he felt the need to tell us his hatred of these events. And I can see why. As someone who is interested in films and did a Media Production degree I like to do my best to keep track of who’s important at the moment and what films are being awarded. But there is a very large amount of patting backs. Patting your own backs, patting the backs of fellow film makers and patting the backs of actors whose last film was 50 years ago. Actually let me correct that, kissing the arse of an actor from 50 years ago.

  This sort of attitude is no more rife than in the Oscars, because Americans always love to take things to whole new levels. Yes, awards shows are for giving recognition for a job well done and rightly so. But for the Oscars this isn’t enough. Oh no. Because if you get an Oscar, apparently it means being a permanent guest. “Gone with the Wind”, “Titanic” and “The Lord of The Rings” were all given lengthy mentions and applauded for the 1000^th time.

  Then the Oscars themselves get discussed.  How it started, when it started, who hosted it in ’63. There’s also this overwhelming need they have to make a show out of everything. Last year it wasn’t enough to simply play sections of the nominated scores, they had to have dancers prancing awkwardly across the stage. It’s too much. Why not cut all the unnecessary history lessons and show tunes and actually spend some time, oh I don’t know, maybe giving more time to the people who are actually being awarded this year?

  There’s plenty to moan about when the Oscars come around (just the mention of last year’s “Best Film Editing” category is enough to send me in to a fit of rage). For example why keep separating Actors and Actresses? No other categories are split between male and female. I’d like to think we’re at a point in time where women can be seen as equals. In fact I have an idea. Why not put men and women together in an acting category but create a “Best Female Director” category, since the majority of directing jobs belong to men, it would be good for more female Directors to be recognised.

  But don’t think the whole event is a squeamish thank-athon it’s worth watching just for Kirk Douglas moaning at Hugh Jackman and making Colin Firth giggle.

Dear Japan

On its way is a review for Battle Los Angeles. A link should appear in the Helium section in a couple of days if my suggested title is accepted. But I thought I should at least mention the Tsunami that hit Japan. Such a thing shouldn't go unmentioned.

I work in a supermarket that sells newspapers and it was kind of depressing that "The News of the World" the paper famous for tapping celebrity mobile phones, didn't even mention Japan on its front page. And the Express only dedicated about 3 pages to the event. True it's better than NOTW but if one of the members of the Royal family had been caught up in it I'm sure it would have run for at least 10 pages.

It's very sad how the News Media works. Just watch Charlie Brooker's Newswipe and you'll realise just how off kilter the news can be. They have a tendency to focus on a running narrative. The example given on Newswipe was a news story about an African community hit by a flesh eating virus. However not very long after the same community was involved in a civil war. The war killed several times more people than the virus did but because it didn't follow a certain narrative it was given no mention in the news at all whereas the virus story ran for several days.

There was another example of this at Christmas time with the story of Jo Yeates' murder. I wondered why the story got the attention it did. Murders happen all the time so why was this one so different? The answer was that the parents of Jo had already appeared on the News pleading for anyone with information about her disappearance to come forward. So when her body was discovered it was big news, it was someone that people already knew the name of. I'm not saying that the story was undeserving of its attention, but you have to wonder if they would have even mentioned it if the parents hadn't been on TV beforehand.

So don't let the News pick and choose what you should know about. Read everything you can about Japan, donate to any type of Tsunami appeals such as http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Japan-Tsunami-Appeal and don't buy any newspaper more concerned with sex scandals than real human disasters.

Spare Change?

  You may have noticed the odd mention about a website called Helium. “So what is Helium exactly?” I hear you ask (I know you didn’t but let’s pretend).

  Helium is a website made up of a community of writers. I’m still fairly new to it but it seems a great place for anyone wanting to practice their journalism skills. There’s a creative writing section which I’ve not really ventured in to at the moment. This might be because every post is typically between 400 and 1500 words long. I’m currently 81,000 words in to my book so I don’t think it’ll have a home here, even chapter 1 wouldn’t fit.

  There are plenty of different areas within the website. If you’re an expert in a field then Helium will most likely want an article from you about something relevant to your field of interest. But if you’re an average Joe like me then you might like to try “Title Finder”. Using their search engine you can find titles to base an article on. I tried to think of something I know about that most other people don’t and the first answer that came to my mind was “3D”. The title “How 3D glasses work” came up and had no current articles written for it. So off I went, typing like the wind if the wind had fingers and a keyboard.

  There’s also a “Title suggestion” area meaning that you could write about pretty much anything. Though don’t confuse this with absolute freedom. One of my articles got sent back to me with a request to re-write it. Apparently one of the rules of posting was that the post had to be in second or third person and being the ego maniac I am there was the odd reference to myself, something as heinous as “I liked this” probably. I suppose the idea is that they want to steer their articles away from being too opinionated and personal. Hence the reason why I’ve decided to separate these from my usual blogs posts.

  The section that most people will most likely be drawn to in their quest for cold hard cash is the Marketplace page. Here publishers (including Helium themselves) offer to pay for people to write on particular subject. I posted two articles yesterday in the hopes of earning a lovely $2. I’m English and so would much prefer £2 or even £200 but hey it’s a start. If you post more and more articles and these articles are deemed worthy by fellow writers then you gain these fancy stars. I’m yet to earn my first but once I get it, it means that I’m eligible for certain marketplace posts that I wouldn’t be able to apply for otherwise.

  I’d certainly recommend Helium for anyone wanting to give article writing a try but aren’t quite sure what to do about it. It seems unlikely that you’ll earn living from it. At the time of writing the top paid job is $24 and second is $5. The front page promises this amount can be as high as $100 but if this did come up, chances are it’ll be for an article on the inner workings of a Romanian tractor or something you’re equally less knowledgeable about.

http://www.helium.com/

Twit Twot Twatter

  I’m a very cynical person when it comes to new technology. In fact take away the word “technology” and that sentence would still be correct (if a little grammatically questionable). When it comes to the new I become the equivalent of a racist granddad rocking in his chair and complaining to his kids about the foreigners who moved in to the house them nice Johnson’s used to own.

  My phone is a cracked hand me down. It doesn’t connect to Twitter or Facebook. It doesn’t have Spotify. It has the internet but it’s so slow and useless it’s barely worth mentioning. But I don’t mind. I don’t have this urge that everyone seems to have been infected with since the birth of the internet, to be in contact with everyone they’ve ever known at all times. I left my phone in my car for days on end once because I couldn’t be bothered to go and retrieve it. I recounted this story to someone and they stared in horror at the very idea of being without their phone for so long.

  I like not being texted and rung constantly. Though it helps that I have a boyfriend with a fancy i phone. A mixture of him having free texts and calls and the fact we share half of the same friends means that a lot of messages arrive to me through his phone. It’s like having my own secretary to pass message on to me. (Though I don’t think he’d like the analogy).

  Anyway back to the point. The whole reason of this little article was to announce my move in to the world of Twitter. When the website started I really didn’t get the point. I just saw it as an extended Facebook page where only people’s statuses are visible. Actually that’s probably a very accurate description. Millions of people updating their Twitter pages every time they leave the house or have a successful bowel movement (points to anyone who can find examples of either).

  I’ve spent years denying new websites and technologies because of my cynicism. However there is something else about me. I’m stubborn, but only for a while. I like to think I’m fair. I give these things a chance to put their arguments for existing forward, even if it takes a couple of years for me to listen. So after all this time in denying the social network age, I’m tagging photos on Facebook, starting a blog and updating Twitter to tell people I have a blog. I’ve even started browsing the Orange shop for a new phone, one with Spotify, e mails and a twitter update. So let’s hope I don’t meet Emma from the past or she may slap me in the face for conforming to the majority. Gawd Past Emma sounds like such a friggin’ hippy.

It should help

  Writing is lonely work. It’s just you and a laptop, or pen and paper, or shiny new i pad. So unless you are like two friends of mine who have decided to write a book together, you’re on your own. It’s you trying to carefully pry words from your unforgiving brain with a metaphorical fork and then you’ve got to type the words down and hope that your word processor doesn’t complain at you with that judgemental red line. Wait a minute, don’t panic, it’s set to the American dictionary, one quick change and you’re free to write the word “colour” as often as you like.

  At the end of the day (as my mother always says) writing is a very private thing. In fact even my two friends go their separate ways to write their respective chapters. And that’s fine. Except for one thing. It’s very unusual to hear anyone actually discuss the process of writing. For such a long time it was a mystery to me. I thought my favourite writers disappeared behind closed doors, sat down, wrote out a full book with a perfect structure, characterisation and no spelling mistakes. Surely a good writer doesn’t do what I do? Surely they can sit down and write perfection every time? But that’s not true.

  There have been a couple of times when I’ve managed to discover writers talking about writing. Which brings me to my first recommendation, “Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale” I urge you to get hold of a copy. And don’t worry, it’s not essential to be a fan of the show although a vague knowledge of the episodes discussed does make it more interesting. The book consists almost entirely of an e mail correspondence between Russell T Davies and the journalist Benjamin Cook. It really is an incredible insight in to the making of the show. Through these e mails we see ideas in their infancy, ideas that are grown in to something incredible or are even scrapped as actors come and go.

  The book doesn’t necessarily show the writing process but his writing process. And this distinction is important. It’s great to have those “oh my god I do that too!” moments, they help confirm that that strange thing you do as you type dialogue isn’t so strange and mental. But the greatest lesson this book can teach you is that everyone is different and everyone has their own way of doing things.

  I think as people start out with anything, be it writing, painting or whatever, they can get hung up on how their heroes do it. You have to teach yourself to not push away from what is best for you because “that’s not what J K Rowling does”. She might have been happy writing in a notebook in a cafe but don’t think that’s how you should be doing it.

  So I urge you once again, find this book, buy it from amazon, steal it from the library, anything to read a few of those insightful e mails from Russell T Davies. (Warning I do not condone theft). And I leave you with a few of his wise words, “The hardest part of writing is the writing.”

Nonce- sense

Okay so the last post might make no sense now. Originally I named the blog Emma the Writer Question Mark. But quickly decided that that was just plain awful. So I thought "hey I'll name it 'Write here, write now' but that's taken by some comedy writers forum or some such silliness. So I'm stuck with something equally lame. And I call myself a writer tut tut. Well actually I don't really (see previous post).

Punctuation

Why the question mark? Well I couldn't just name the blog, Emma the writer. After all I have nothing that's been published. I have a 60 page script and numerous shorter ones under my belt. But those were for University. Home work. I'm 80,000 words in to a novel but it's not finished yet.
  So when can you safely label yourself as a writer? Hence the reason for a question mark. I feel as if I'm more qualified than some to name myself that. I know my writing is good and I know I am in turn good at critiquing the work of others. If someone approached me and said they were a writer and then went on to inform me they'd written the first two pages of what was going to be a truly epic script, I'd tell them to go home and do some more writing before they call themselves a writer. But am I much different? Then again, I'm here writing aren't I? Surely this counts?
  A couple of friends of mine have written a book together. In an e-mail to them I recommended a few things to read or watch (something I'll touch upon at a later date). One was an episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe in which he dedicates an entire episode to having interviews with television writers. Writing tends to be such a private thing, that to actually hear people talking about themselves writing is an incredible thing. If a DVD was available I would point you in the right direction but unfortunately there isn't one. So I must do the next best thing and tell you to search Youtube. (For various reasons it wouldn't be worth me putting up the link but it is on there).
  Close to the end the writers are asked if they have any advice for budding writers. The first answer is "write. It's in the title, a writer writes." Then there's Russell T Davies' blunt but honest answer. "Finish it. If you've done two pages of a script and the rest is in your head, you're not a writer. No one is going to buy those two pages. No one is going to love those two pages. Finish it."
  So there you have it. I write as often as my job will allow. I've written fan fiction, original stories, articles and scripts for University. But until I've finished my novel I think the "?" will have to remain.