Seagal!

I've got a confession to make: I have a soft spot for a little film called On Deadly Ground. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, it is the second best film starring Steven Seagal, that stalwart of really, really bad action movies(the first being Under Siege).

Now, as a red blooded male, I suppose it's only natural for me to enjoy the odd action film with very little plot, and On Deadly Ground is no exception - it makes very little sense, has a very silly plot, and is really a disastrous attempt at making a shoot-em-up film with an ecological message - its all about oil rigs and Eskimos in Alaska, you see. Thankfully, the film is saved by a somewhat staggeringly brilliant cast: Michael Caine is the bad guy, John C McGinley (Dr Cox from Scrubs) is his henchman, R. Lee Emery is the leader of a group of mercenaries who obviously cannot stop just one man ('cos that one man happens to be Seagal), even Billy Bob Thornton makes an appearance. and, yes, at the end of the day, there's just a lot of fun to be had watching one man take on every other single person in the film and blowing things up.

It's a little annoying to realise that action scenes are so much easier to envisage in films (or television) than in books. I find action scenes the hardest things to write, which is annoying when you consider that my books are typical good guy vs bad guy material, and how my first two books end with your typical confrontation. I'm planning to have a great big battle scene in The Witch Sister - a battle scene, for crying out loud! Once upon a time I toyed with the idea of being a writer of thrillers, a la Clive Cussler or even (what was I thinking?) Ian Flemming. But because I felt I was so bad at writing action scenes I realised that it was pretty ridiculous to try and keep this going.

Oh how I wish Seagal was a decent writer. Then we could all send him our ideas and say, "Yo, Steve, how should I end this scene? Should he jump over the side of the boat or should he blow everything up with a match and a line of petrol?" Ah well - we should always stick to what we're best at, as Seagal has found - though all his recent films haven't even been half as good as Under Siege or On Deadly Ground. In fact, god forbid, they've been ten times worse, and not in a good way! Still, at least he tried something new - even Seagal takes creative chances!

Snow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, just when I get the house back to myself, to really exploit the peace and quiet to concentrate on getting on with some writing, I open my curtains this morning to find the world literally covered in a think layer of the cold white stuff - and I ain't talking vanilla Ice Cream. Cos, you know, that would be kinda weird.

I love snow! Love it! I have made a whole-hearted attempt at making a half-hearted looking snow lump - it's not the kind of snow you can make a whole person from right now. I have thrown snowballs, I have made great big footprints in the garden...

Adult? What adult? I'm 8 again!

Laters!

Writer's Block

It's a funny thing, writer's block. Not funny as in ha ha that's hysterical, ow my sides funny - more like hmm, this is in danger of fast becoming shallow and pedantic type of funny.

The thing is it can hit you whenever wherever, no matter how good you feel about what you;re working on, and then - this is the real killer r- it lasts for random amounts of time. It could be over by the afternoon or it could take up to six months to really finish messing around with your head.

I've found the latter to be the case continuously, especially with regards to The Witch Sister but also, weirdly, with the simple art of writing a cover letter to send to potential literary agents along with my synopsis and first two chapters of Where Wild Things Grow. How weird is that? I got writer's block on an administrative form! That's gotta be worth a place in history, surely?

Oh yeah, and I've spruced up the blog as you can probably tell. Nothing too fancy, just felt the need for a change. Hope none of you find it too shallow and pedantic (I love that phrase!)

Laters.

Dazed And Confused

Recently I went through some tough times in my personal life. I mentioned in an earlier blog of my recently failed relationship - it actually only lasted a month. It's been nearly a month since the break up itself and what really annoys me is that most of the time I feel fine, yet I only need to see something or hear something and I'm instantly transported back to my friend's study where the deed took place. Not once do I return to any of the (few) good times we had together.

What worries me is that this is exactly what happened last time, and that relationship had been a lot more serious, lasting almost 2 1/2 years. There were different circumstances surrounding that break up of course, but it destroyed me completely. I was stuck in my University during my first year and, due to a mixture of my own stupidity and other factors, I had at that time few friends. I would have hoped that being here at home surrounded by my friends I would not go through a similar pattern. Sadly, annoyingly, this has not been quite the case.

However, these things help: Madonna and Guy Ritchie - split. The episode of Frasier I'm watching whilst writing this - Ros has just been dumped after confessing her love for bloke. Oh, and I have one more New Year's Resolution to fulfil. I have to. I need to. I'm completely insane to do it, but right now, at this very moment, I cannot see any other choice. I'll let you all know when it happens, as it ill probably the last blog I ever write. Ha!

Laters.

Back To Black

Well, hi there! Long time no blog, lol, despite my earlier insistence over two months ago, ha ha!

A lot has happened within that time period. I've been in and out of a relationship, I've got a brand new job working as a barman in my local golf club, I'm rehearsing for a play with my local amateur dramatics group that has a LOT of lines to learn. And, perhaps most interestingly of all, my writer's block concerning The Witch Sister has finally broken. The problem with this book is that, due to certain events which happen, the plot is very twisted in both structure and story lines. I think there are more characters in this book than in any of my last two.

Where Wild Things Grow, by the way, after yet another brief edit, will be sent to several agents by the end of this month. I just need to get my head round the cover letter that needs to go with everything else that has to be sent. It's typical, actually - my writers block breaks on one project then decides to settle nicely on a perhaps more immediate one. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Laters.

So, yeah...whoops

After all that exctement last Saturday on finally finding a label for Saturday, my work has taken its toll. Because of the FYP and essays that are still being finished as I write, I haven't had any time to take on my story writing challenge. Much hanging of head in shame. I hope to impress you all with both better writing and better time keeping skills next week!

Laters.

And The Work Just Keeps On Coming...

So this is officially the maddest fortnight in my entire educated life here at the University of Winchester in terms of the workload. The deadline for the Final Year Project is getting ever closer, and the deadline I set for myself for the Final Year Project is getting ever more closer!

What hasn't helped this week is the two essays I have somehow had to find time to write and hand in over this last week. But I'm not complaining too much, especially about the first one (finished and handed in on Wednesday). You see, one of the modules I'm currently studying is American Crime Fictions, which is not actually an English Studies module - it's American Studies. However, to cut a long story short, this essay was really more of a film studies essay than anything else.

Now for those who don't know - which may be all of you, I can't remember - when I started learning here at Winchester I started doing a fifty/fifty degree with a combination of English and Film Studies. Obviously, English was a subject I've had a lot of experience with, but Film Studies was, at the time, incredibly new and incredibly exciting to me. And, to a certain level, I wasn't disappointed. I got to watch some fantastic films, most of which I doubt I would have ever watched if it weren't for the course.

But the work was another matter. I found the essays, though interesting to research and write, tough going, and the marking incredibly strict, much stricter than English. Another thing that really got me annoyed was the level of competence in some of my lecturers. Not that they didn't know their subject - man, there are some smart people teaching here- but I do remember writing in my notepad during one lecture that it was taking three grown men ten minutes to work out how to use a DVD player. Erm, ok, maybe a Film Studies teacher should be up to date on the simple aspects of today's technology?

For those reasons I decided that Film Studies wasn't for me, and so dropped it in my second year to concentrate on English full time. And yet, it was really refreshing to go back to Film Studies this week in order to write this essay on crime films properly. I can't help wondering that, maybe, if I had a had a bit more experience with university work before staring the course, I might have done better on it? I guess I'll never find out. One thing's for certain, though: it never, ever killed my passion for film. I wonder what's on tonight?

Laters.

Guess Who's Back...Back Again?

So this week I returned to Winchester for the remainder of my last semester studying English within these hallowed halls...or something like that. The term actually starts up again next Monday, but I needed a week back here to get my head together around my FYP and the other wonderful essays I have to write for my lovely subject. Plus I had run out of food. And I need food to live.

Not to sound too melodramatic, but I am getting sick and tired of English. Not writing - that's a different matter. Last term for instance, as a break from essays, I used the opportunity given to me by the director of a production the my local young theatre group are doing to write a scene for their new play, called This Bird Has Flown. Basically, it's all inspired by the songs that John Lennon wrote whilst he was in The Beatles. My scene was set in this asylum where some of his weirder creations - the Walrus, the Egg Man, Mean Mr Mustard, etc - are "residing". It's all a coma-induced dream of our hero, of course, but it was great fun to go totally mad with it. As a reward, I've been given both the cameo roles of the Walrus and John Lennon - both times I get shot, the former with a tranquiliser dart, the latter re-enacting Lennon's murder. I bruised my knees a lot falling on the hard wood stage. Ah, the things I do for my art.

The FYP is, as it so often has been, coming along slowly but surely. I'm writing this blog entry whilst sitting in the university library at the moment, as I intend to make the most of the fact that there's only two other people in here besides me...make that three, someone else has just walked in. But still, what freedom! Don't get me wrong, I love people. I do - people are great. But there's something about a nearly empty library (make that four and counting) that just screams of perfection. Ask my mother - she's a school librarian, she'll agree with me!

It's the same at my house. We're not really all together at the moment, though this will probably change over the weekend. But still it's nice to sometimes be the only one in the house. It gives you time to relax and unwind. Don't get me wrong, as soon as term starts, I'll be back to doing all the work I love to do with my CU, with other people, making sure I have time for my housemates. But sometimes it's just good to be alone. Yeah, there's a danger that the loneliness could kill you eventually, but I'm more than an expert now at this to know my limits. It's great that I can say that, isn't it? makes me sound like a regular party animal.

Laters.

Zzzzz...

It would happen, wouldn't it? On one of the busiest weeks of this semester for CU - Missions Week - I end up being struck down by my rather troublesome problem of insomnia. I had no sleep last night at all, and I cannot for the life of me think why this was the case! I am going to have to make sure I have copious amounts of coffee so I can stay awake throughout the cafe today and also my afternoon lecture.

Anyone else see a problem here? I'm just looking forward to getting home this evening, where hopefully - and this is a huge hopefully - we will finally have received the equipment needed to set up the wireless Internet at our house. No more having to go into the uni library every time to check my e-mails and hastily write my blog entries before a library official comes over and sneaks a peak to see if what I'm furiously writing is in fact anything to do with the rather complicated theoretical texts that I have grabbed from one of the nearby shelves. I hope, anyway.

Oh, and in case you were wondering if I had forgotten in my state of slight comatose that today was Film Tuesday, I haven't. In fact I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time the other day, and I shall provide a suitable review later on in the week. Again: I hope.

Laters.

Finally, Some Writing

Conscious of the fact that the title of this blog is Trials Of A Struggling Writer, I thought today I would just update you all on what is going on in the paper-and-pen world of Jack Hardgraves. I know Wednesday's are usually Music Wednesday, and in fact I had planned to download the new Radiohead album and give you my verdict on it. But we still have no Internet at my house here in Winchester, and I don't think the library would be very pleased with me if I downloaded it here.

You may recall me saying that, during France 2007, I began writing what I hope to be a departure from the Green Ash books: a more grown-up, moody piece about real people and real life. This has been both uplifting and very annoying to attempt, and I admit freely that, as yet, I am no where nearer to finishing it. But late last week one of the main problems I was having in writing the book, working title Maria, was solved in perhaps the simplest of ways.

I'll try and explain. Last year I saw a documentary programme on BBC Three over here in Blighty which deeply affected me. It was about a small group of people who suffer from a mental condition where they feel that they are hideous, despite the fact that they actually look pretty normal. It is often mistaken for vanity, attention seeking, even OCD which it stems from. I had never heard about it before and was enthralled by the stories of these people on the programme. Immediately the seeds were sown for this new story. Although it has featured in a couple of fiction books, this illness affects 1% of the population of Britain alone. It would therefore, I thought, be good to use it as a plot device in order to educate people about it.

But a week or so later I had completely forgotten what the name of the illness was. In frustration I spent the last six months, whenever I had a spare moment, trying to find out more about it and what it actually was. I looked in psychological encyclopedias, medical journals, even dictionaries. But, obviously, not knowing what it was actually called really slowed me down.

And then, last week, a breakthrough. In a last-ditch effort to find information, I went to the BBC Three website. And there, after two or three licks, i found it. The condition is known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD. There were lots of handy links on the website, a link of which you will find here.

There is of course an argument that the only reason I'm using BDD is as a simple plot device, to get people interested in the book who might not be otherwise, to make it a piece of, if you'll pardon the expression, "grief porn". I swear to you all reading this now - that is not my intention. About 25% of all BDD sufferers attempt suicide because of this illness, because people just don't understand what they're going through. There needs to be more knowledge of this illness, and this seems to me a good place to start.

By the way, this hasn't stopped the Green Ash series. My plan at the moment is to write two Green Ash books, then a "serious" book, and so on and so on. I left my list of literary agents at home whilst away on holiday and the next time I go back is in November. So until then Where Wild Things Grow must rest in its digital status on my hard drive.

Here, then, are my trials, and, as you can no doubt see, I am indeed struggling. I hope now to be treated like Ronsil: I do exactly what I say on the tin.

Laters.