A Quick Word... On Podcasts

I sometimes feel like people are ashamed to listen to podcasts.  We're quite happy to talk about movies, television, and music - perhaps a little less so about audiobooks - but podcasts? Surely no-one wastes their time with those! 

I do of course, and I think that - if you don't already - you should too.  Perhaps there is something about the perceived lack of complexity in listening to radio shows that people find lesser.  Actually, radio offers an exciting challenge to the imagination, and for me podcasts are followers and company - on walks, drives, or just while doing the washing up.  Podcasts turn the necessary into the interesting, and they can teach too.  So if you're keen to discover something new, here are a couple of my favourite podcasts to help you catch the bug:

1. Judge John Hodgman

Some of you may know John Hodgman as a reporter for The Daily Show, a comedy actor, author, or the PC from Apple's famous advertisements.  What you may not know, is that he also occasionally performs in his own judicial court as a thoroughly unqualified judge.

The 'Judge John Hodgman Podcast' is a weekly event in which people may post their gripes and grizzles to Judge Hodgman and hope for a trial where he will finally decide who's righteous.  Examples include a group of college freshmen arguing over the rules of 'beard chicken', and long term travelling companions who can't agree on the appropriate time to disembark a plane.  The more minor the gripe, the more fun Judge Hodgman has, and the results are hilarious.  For those who like their comedy nerdy, this is seriously worth checking out.

Link: http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/judge-john-hodgman

2. Writing Excuses

"Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry - and we're not that smart!"

So opens every episode of 'Writing Excuses', a weekly writing podcast which acts as a round-table about writing, featuring Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler and Dan Wells.  Being only fifteen minutes long I've been slamming these out in the last couple of weeks, going back through previous seasons to try and catch up.  The advice is really thorough and useful, and they manage to slip in a writing exercise and book recommendation each episode too.

My favourite so far has been episode 6.18, featuring Lou Anders on the 'Hollywood Formula'.  Lou describes in very short form some of the crucial elements of the classic Hollywood story, including a fascinating deconstruction of my favourite film, 'The Dark Knight'.  This one's particularly for writers, but there is plenty to learn even for just an interested reader.

Link: http://www.writingexcuses.com/

3. The Ricky Gervais Show

I was tempted not to put this one in, because both of the other two podcasts I've listed are free, and I think it's a great idea to let you discover podcasts without having to pay for them first.  Unfortunately, it's simply unavoidable that 'The Ricky Gervais Show' is probably the funniest podcast on the internet, and deserves mention accordingly.

This one comes out pretty sporadically, and features Gervais, and his friend and co-creator of The Office and Extras holding discussions with their former producer, and current 'round-headed buffoon' Karl Pilkington.  Somehow Karl manages to turn a topic of almost any level of inanity into a long and strange tirade of almost unfathomable ridiculousness.  Fans of Gervais and Merchant's work will lose hours of laughter and hilarity to this one.  Now made into an HBO cartoon series (see clip above), you can experience it that way too, if my podcasting talk has still not seduced you.

Link: http://www.rickygervais.com/podcast.php

4. The Moth

And finally it's 'The Moth', a series of trues stories told live and without notes.  It's amazing what people will say when they just get up in front of an audience to tell the truth of their lives - sometimes it's incredibly funny, sometimes it can be devastatingly sad.  It's always inspiring though, and changes the way you see the world.  I really love listening to 'The Moth' - it rips right into the heart of things.

Link: http://themoth.org/

Have favourite episodes of these, or other radio shows you think deserve listing? Let me know in the comments!

A Quick Word... 'For The Ladies' (Clarion Writing Piece #1)

This is my first piece going up for the Clarion Write-a-thon.

If you'd like to buy a piece yourself you can do so for $5 (all funds going to charity).

Read about it and donate here.

This piece is not dedicated to anyone.

FOR THE LADIES

(Picture courtesy of Flickr: dizfunkshinal)

Hello. My name is Johan. I'm a 41-year old male looking for the woman of my dreams.

I used to say on here that I liked going for long romantic walks on the beach, but this is no longer true. Going out with Susie (who was nice enough in terms of personality, but lets face it only about a 6 when it came to looks) she insisted after a few Bacardi Breezers that I fulfil this essentially empty cliche of a promise. And so we walked along the beach at 8pm on a Tuesday night. It was seriously goddamn cold. The wind picked up spray and chill over the waves and I was shivering the whole bloody way. Then I trod on a jellyfish and it stung me. I tried not to, but it really freaking hurt, so I cried on the drive to the emergency room, and she told me afterwards that the evening was "perhaps a sign that maybe we didn't belong together". I've refused to go to the beach since, because it stresses me to go barefoot, and I don't like getting sand in my shoes.

I also try not to go on dates to restaurants anymore, because the food takes too long to arrive, and you don't know what they put in it. It's much better to make things at home. If mum's not home I can't really cook much, but when I do beans on toast I kind of cut the bread into big thick slices, so it fills you up more, and it sort of looks like something from a restaurant anyway, you know?

I don't watch television or movies. I think they make you stupid. I don't like shopping because of the crowds, but It's okay because I write a list for my mum every Thursday and she picks up all the food and provisions that I need. It's an ideal system because I think she enjoys taking instructions and having something to apply herself to.

I hate bitchy women, I hate nice-in-a-fake-way women, I hate women who are just totally dumb, and I hate women who are arrogantly smarter than me.

Also, I am a hopeless romantic.

Message me,

Johan x

P.S - My name is really John.

A Quick Word... On Critics

Tomorrow I go to my first writing workshop session with uni, and someone will formally critique the short story I wrote for the course, Wild Heart, which will then be open to the class to comment on as they wish. I'm sure the experience will be valuable, but to be honest I'm scared. It's perhaps the first time I have been up for criticism so openly - 21 people all with their chance to say whatever they like about my work.

To be honest though, you've got to be ready for your critics, and it's good training, because sooner or later someone is going to challenge your work. No matter how great a writer you are, there is not a single book in the world that is universally loved. Even the ones that get close have vehement haters lurking around them. Someday, whether it's true or not, you're going to be told you suck. And you have to be prepared to take the criticism and not let it get in the way of your dream.

To prove this, someone posted the first page of their 'novel in progress' on Yahoo Answers, and asked for feedback. The page goes like this:

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. This is a cold room in University Administration, wood-walled, Remington-hung, double-windowed against the November heat, insulated from Administrative sounds by the reception area outside, at which Uncle Charles, Mr. deLint and I were lately received.

I am in here.

Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats and half-Windsors across a polished pine conference table shiny with the spidered light of an Arizona noon. These are three Deans - of Admissions, Academic Affairs, Athletic Affairs. I do not know which face belongs to whom.

I believe I appear neutral, maybe even pleasant, though I've been coached to err on the side of neutrality and not attempt what would feel to me like a pleasant expression or smile.

I have committed to crossing my legs I hope carefully, ankle on knee, hands together in the lap of my slacks. My fingers are mated into a mirrored series of what manifests, to me, as the letter X. The interview room's other personnel include: the University's Director of Composition, its varsity tennis coach, and Academy prorector Mr. A. deLint. C.T. is beside me; the others sit, stand and stand, respectively, at the periphery of my focus. The tennis coach jingles pocket-change. There is something vaguely digestive about the room's odor. The high-traction sole of my complimentary Nike sneaker runs parallel to the wobbling loafer of my mother's half-brother, here in his capacity as Headmaster, sitting in the chair to what I hope is my immediate right, also facing Deans.

The Dean at left, a lean yellowish man whose fixed smile nevertheless has the impermanent quality of something stamped into uncooperative material, is a personality-type I've come lately to appreciate, the type who delays need of any response from me by relating my side of the story for me, to me. Passed a packet of computer sheets by the shaggy lion of a Dean at center, he is peaking more or less to these pages, smiling down.

What you may or may not have noticed, depending on your own reading tastes, is that this is actually the first page of David Foster-Wallace's magnum opus Infinite Jest, named by Time Magazine as one of the last century's 'hundred greatest novels'. Whether you picked it or not, the people of Google Answers didn't. What is now being called 'The Internet Vs. Infinite Jest" is humbling but devastating reading. The most popular answer, as voted by users?

"You know your story needs more work, so you don't need me to tell you what you already know."

Other comments are just as cutting. "I frankly do not care where each person is sitting... If you took out all the unnecessary details you'd be left with about seven words."

My favourite is: "I recommend that you check out William Strunk and E.B. White's Elements of Style... That should clear a few things up."

THEY'RE TELLING DAVID FOSTER-WALLACE TO GO AND LEARN HOW TO WRITE.

You are always going to have your critics, no matter how good you are. That is an important message for both writing and life. If you truly believe in the quality of your work and the power of your story, chances are that sooner or later you'll find someone else who believes in it too. Learn to take feedback without feeling bound to it. People are entitled to feel and say whatever the hell they want about a text; that is the reader's right.

But you know what? It's a writer's right too.

So if you have to, fight for it.

A Quick Word... On Turning 21

I read once that Stephen King wrote every day of the year except his birthday and Christmas - and then a page later he apologised for being a liar and not wanting to sound like a dork - truthfully he writes on both those days too.

My birthday blog is becoming a bit of a tradition now, and one that I hope to continue. I don't know, there's a lot going on on the 31st of January for me, sometimes a writing break brings it all into focus. This year, it's come out as a poem. A gift for you. I hope you enjoy it.

- L

21

when I was born I was selfish.

I forced my way into the world kicking and screaming

and I stayed that way for as long as they'd let me

wailed and moaned until I got what I wanted

demanded attention to my every need

and was loved for it.

they lavished me with gifts and toys

they smiled and they held me

and they told me i was beautiful.

a little miracle.

and some days still i am that creature

and i demand to be praised

and i demand to be loved

and i am arrogant and stubborn and selfish again.

but like that baby who i recognise and yet do not remember

the world

my parents first

and then my friends

show me a love far more powerful than giving in to my demands

and teach me to be better than that.

now I fend my own way on this treacherous earth

and now i have become better than that baby in a hundred different ways.

i do not pretend to be perfect of course

that mewling infant is still inside me somewhere

caged though he may be

and sometimes still he rattles the bars

and i speak with his voice

and i judge with his eyes

and i turn friend into enemy with a careless tongue.

but i am learning to pacify him,

and while i don't deserve their friendship or help

my companions continue to lead me down the hard road of life

collecting me when i stumble

lifting me when i fall

guiding me when the path branches in directions i cannot fathom.

and the baby will perhaps forever bang his chubby hands against my resolve

but i will not yield and look back on my mistakes as righteous and bold

and my indiscretions as the proper course.

21 years is not long enough for learning all the lessons of life

and i know the road ahead will be steep and rocky

and that the shadows of darkness will always loom over me.

and maybe it would be easier if someone carried me

and fed me

gave me the praise and love i demanded

and told me that i was a little miracle

once again.

but the baby has had his years

and now it is time to be a man.

A Quick Word On... Handwriting

I've become really interested recently in people's handwriting. In the last couple of weeks I've looked at a few cards and notes, and watched how the letters curve and sit in different ways, the way people angle things if they have no lines to guide them - and occasionally the way they angle them even when they do.

You see, I've always been hideously self conscious of my own handwriting. People pick up stuff that I've written and their faces contort as if they are trying to decipher some kind of ancient code, or do one of those magic eye puzzles where you have to unfocus in just the right way to unlock hidden meaning. I can't write in beautiful notebooks anymore. I rolled one over in my hands today, a stunning fake leather thing, but I put it back on the shelf. For me notebooks are things that contain beauty, and it's only school exercise books that deserve my orcish scribble So it's always bothered me that my writing has lacked, for want of a better word I guess, elegance.

But then I started to look beyond what was written itself, and looked at what was 'being' written, and more importantly, by whom. The most elegantly scripted things I'd read often had the less profound messages, the importance and subtlety of the characters overtaken by poignance of meaning.

And now I understand. Some people can write with a natural eye to beauty, I don't know if they practiced their loops in primary school more than me, or what it was they did, but yeah, they can.

But it's time to stop being angry about that, because I can never compete. What I deal in is ideas, free-flowing ideas, and if I put a stopper on those thoughts to write with an eye to the beauty of the words on the page physically, I also put a stopper on my meaning. My brain runs faster than my hands do, always has, always will. To have terrible handwriting is not a curse, it's a blessing, because it shows that there is always enough going on in my head that there is no time to prettify what comes out, only to capture it as quickly as I can, the way a camera might catch a flash of motion, which may not be a beautiful picture of the blank dark, but which has MEANING.

I love the way my scrawl slashes and abuses its way across the page, it's what makes it my scrawl, and if i'm the only one who can read it until it's typed up on the computer - so be it. It'll be a whale of a time for someone who tries to decipher any notes I leave behind in my old age.

Some things we get, some things we don't, and neat handwriting is one of those things. I for one rather a hand that races with the brain it's partnered with, than a brain that slows down to beautify the acts of the hand. And fellow illegible scribblers, I reckon you do too.

A Quick Word On... Next Door (A Poem)

next door

they're fighting next door,

the daughter and her mother.

in typical fashion i can't hear what they're saying,

as one fights to be heard by shrieking louder than the other.

but their window is just opposite mine and i see them,

silhouttes in frosted glass,

jumping and fist pounding like cartoon characters,

comically pacing.

the door opens,

then closes again,

then re-opens,

and more shouting is heard as it clicks back and forth,

each woman fighting the other,

i'm leaving

you're staying.

i need to get out.

you need to stay in.

and then there is some thumping,

or possibly slamming,

and the house is silent.

i suppose i should be relieved,

it's quiet again now,

i can get back to my work,

relax,

resume hearing only motors obliviously winding along the road.

but it's not as easy as that,

and people will say it's my 'overactive mind'

or my 'sick imagination'

but i can't help but hate the silence.

people who shout come to resolutions,

people who stop suddenly rarely do.

and i feel the stirring,

the image growing in the back of my mind,

that someone might have said one thing too many,

that one of the thumps was half heavy object and half soft skin,

and that somewhere in that house so foreign,

and yet so familiar,

lies someone on the wooden floorboards i can just see through the crack in the door.

not screaming,

not even moving,

and the other has fallen to the floor to cradle her head,

perhaps even wipe up the blood,

and is wondering,

in that terrible,

terrifying silence,

what have i done?

-Lyndon Riggall