Is Xbox bad for writing?

We got an Xbox One for Christmas.
It was a surprise present for the girls, who had no idea it was coming. Seriously, you should have seen their faces. L didn't know what the hell was going on. E jumped on me and grabbed my head so hard she nearly snapped my neck. Took half an hour and a whiskey to recover.
Yes, alright, it was kind-of sort-of for me too.

It looks like this guy is about to punch me in the face.

He's actually hanging very still in mid-air. It was weird.

The worry was this: the games would be too big a distraction and the writing would suffer. I've had enough problems getting the words down in the last few months as it is.
Perceived wisdom states that videogames stifle creativity, that it takes over the brain, that it turns people into inactive slobs, that it teaches people how to kill (this last idea is so mental I could laugh - and if it's true, then I will be an awful murderer, because I can't shoot for shit).
Every last one of those little pearls is wrong. You will be a slob if you want to be a slob. It's perfectly possible to enjoy games and still have an active life physically and mentally. Games really are like anything else - great in moderation. Too much of one thing will always end up being negative. Like Ritz crackers and Dairylea cheese - that's a very good thing, but it makes your belly surprisingly round (seriously, you should see it - like a bowling ball).

Same applies to the idea of killers, by the way. People end up in very dark places for a complex variety of reasons, not simply because of one trigger. The urge has to be there in the first place, and it's there for deep-seated reasons. You moral crusaders want to take away games, you leave movies. Take away movies, you leave music. Take away music, you leave books. Take away books, you're left with your own stupid ideas, and those of your stupid friends.

Here's the thing: this month I've written more than ever. Five or six pages a day has become normal. In October and November 2016, I had to drag five lines out of myself screaming, and even then they wouldn't sit on the page right, like they'd run off the second I looked away. I'm almost at the end of my latest novel, Two Doors Down (a title that is not going to stick). This is a novel I started on the way to Italy in July 2015, and has stopped and started ever since (in fairness to myself, I wrote 2 pages on a train then put the story away until the beginning of 2016). I've even started this blog up again. Whether that's a good thing or not isn't for me to judge.

This is me getting fired off into the stratosphere again.

Happens far more often than it should.

I think it's a combination of effects. The games themselves tell a story. I don't just mean the campaigns in single player. I mean the multiplayer stuff too. Running around with your team, taking on the enemy - great little stories full of mad little moments.
They're interactive as well, which can actually really liven up the brain. It's well documented that gaming is great for eye-to-hand coordination, but when you've got to spend a bit of time thinking on your feet for a prolonged period of time, making split-second decisions over and over again... Yeah, it's great. Even when an Ewok drops a rock on your head when you're trying to line up a shot.

Also, it's a fun hobby to have. Trust me, it's good to think about something other than writing. Too long spent dwelling on the story can kill the story. When you're stuck? Do something totally different. The down-time will most likely give your brain a chance to find a solution on its own.
Pretty much every single time I finish a game, I get straight into some more writing. Which is nice.
However, I really, really need some outdoor active hobbies. My excuse that it's January and that January sucks is probably a tad feeble.

So there you go. Xbox is good for you. Fact.

Or perhaps I wrote this whole thing just to keep my wonderful, beautiful partner on-side with the whole games console thing, so that she never ever considers removing the damn thing from the house. Who knows?

This kind of mess happens to me a lot in games.

I'm in there somewhere.

If you happen to see a MacPliers running around in odd circles in Star Wars Battlefront or Zombies in Spaceland, that'll be me.

Just remember, people. Moderation. Leave room in your life for everything.

Laters

A Book Left Behind

I have abandoned writing 'A Graveyard Visible'. It's the first time I've turned away from a novel in about ten years.

And I'm okay with it.

In January I started writing a sequel to a comedy about a young mad scientist (a book only our Erin has read so far, but by jingo did it make her laugh), and it's flying along, over a third done already. A Graveyard Visible might come back to life (ha ha) after this, it might not.

I'm okay with that too.

Now bear with me for a moment here: this will all come together very soon. Our Lucy came up with an answer to the question of how she always had room for ice cream. Her food goes into separate compartments, so when she says she's full at dinner time, what she means is that the 'main' compartment is full, and it's time to move on to the dessert compartment. (It gets weirder - each compartment is manned by a full staff of little people who make sure each food is delivered to the correct section - by the way, you never want to be demoted to the bowels.)

Let's replace the stomach with my imagination. It used to have lots of compartments, lots of rooms with different stories and ideas in each. A Graveyard Visible had overflowed. It had blocked up all my compartments. At the start of writing (and this is usual for me) I had a big room set aside for AGV, some space for knocking around new ideas, a sunny area where I could forget about writing new material and do some promo work for Macadamian Pliers (just published with Black Rose Writing). Imagination was a lively factory with plenty of inhabitants. But as the Graveyard grew in the book and the intensity of its issues increased, so it spilled out of its holding pen, and eventually everything else moved out. And AGV kept on pushing at the walls.

It was making me unhappy. So I flushed it out. (I hesitate to use the phrase 'novel enema' because that sounds a tad unpleasant - so I won't even mention it.) And I had all these rooms, all these compartments standing empty, with workers in desperate for something to do. The ideas flooded in. I was writing again. And I was happy about it again.

But this all got me thinking about abandoned novels.

I've been reading Stephen King's The Plant. Not sure if it counts as an abandoned novel or not, but it's certainly an unfinished story, and might never be finished. It's great fun, and I got to wondering about what else might be out there.

I came across this fascinating article from The New York Times a few years ago. It's fascinating to read about Michael Chabon's difficulties writing 'Fortune City' - and makes me feel a hell of a lot better that five and a half years went into this novel before he turned his back on it. AGV took up six months. I'm certainly not comparing the quality of my work to his - but I think another five years (even off and on) with AGV would be the end of the writer in me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/books/review/Kois-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Look here as well to read about today's superstar writer John Green and the troubles he's had with abandoned novels : http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/7193828359/abandoned-books-2-the-desert-island-one

One more link to keep you busy: https://litreactor.com/columns/12-unpublished-novels-we-wish-we-could-read A never-to-be-seen book from Philip K Dick? Painful. But that one's because he died before finishing. So I guess he can be forgiven.

All of this has been fascinating to read, but what have I got from it all? This: sometimes we can put too much into something and forget why we were doing it in the first place. It should be done for the love of it, because from love we get joy, fun, security, happiness, and all that the soul needs. I'm now writing what I want to, and planning what I want next, and I've been able to enjoy a week's holiday with my beautiful family because I have all that's important, and I can see that I have it: joy, fun, security, happiness, love.

That might be a grand ending to this piece, but hey, I'm okay with that.

The gates have closed on the Graveyard. I think I've still got the keys. Somewhere...

Laters

Oh God, this BOOK!

Oh God, this BOOK!
What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
I don't understand what's happening, I really don't. This can't be happening.

Things couldn't be going better for my career as a writer. For a start, I now actually have a career as a writer. A publishing contract. 17 years down the line. Not with a vanity publisher either. No money going from me to them. They're publishing it, making an actual hold-in-your-hands book. What better validation can there be than other people wanting to take a chance on your novel? Surely this means that I can actually write, so I can take confidence in that. Yes. Of course I can.

So why is A Graveyard Visible dying on me?

The story must be in here somewhere.

The irony! That a novel about so many coffins should bite the dust! It's chugged and chugged and chugged, and now it has ground to a complete halt.

I know. I'm not the first this has happened to. I absolutely won't be the last. Doesn't make the situation any easier to handle though, does it? Some kindly soul pats you on the shoulder and says, 'Never mind, just move onto the next thing, eh?' It's at that point one looks at the kindly soul and screams 'I've written 37,000 bleeping words and you think I can just move on?' and then one rips the individual keys off the keyboard and bashes each one into their forehead and proceeds to type 'D I E I D I O T' over and over and over again.

If that sounds like an extreme over-reaction, then you are not an author and do not belong here. Please, move along. Go find some kitten pictures to stare at.

He's doing a better job than me.

Sorry. That was mean of me. It's just that this... situation makes one a bit tense. I'm sure you understand. If you don't? Then you are not an author and you don't belong here!

Sorry. Did it again, didn't I?

Here's where I got to in my stupid bloody novel. Caleb and Misha have just come out of a fairly spectacular showdown with a kid so bad you'll want to punch his head in. There has, in fact, been plenty going on, with certain events changing the relationship between the two leads, and the story now shifts gear. It is time for Caleb and Misha to talk. She's got something very important to say, something that will alter one of Caleb's long-held beliefs (the death of his mother always looms large, and it's been a major factor in forming his world-view). They climb to the top of the fort in the playground, lie on the roof in fine rain, stare up at the clouds at her instruction...

And nothing. She's got something to say. I know she does. It's important. It drives Caleb to make his next decisions. But I can't get her to say it, whatever it is. When my dumb, stupid writery instincts took me down this cul-de-sac they advised me that this was most definitely the way to go. Everything had been fine so far, hadn't it? It wasn't fine. Misha mumbled a little bit, pointed at the fat grey clouds above like she had something grand to say, and then it all came to an end. What's worse, for some reason I can't find my way back to the road that brought me here. It's become a sealed circle.

I had a novel die at approximately the same point about eight years ago. Shanty for the Soulless it was called, a pirate story taken off the high seas. The ship, the parrot, the captain's way of life was chopped out from under him in one single swipe, leaving him floundering to find his way in a harbour town full of people who remembered him from his last colourful visit. Captain Silus de Sansa was a great character, I had so much fun with him, and yet a powerful horror dawned on me as I hit 35,000 words. After a dramatic opening, nothing had happened. Plenty of talking in different locations, plenty of meetings with figures from Silus's past and reminiscing about events that occurred before the start of the novel.

It was dead out of the water.

What really killed it was the pull of another story. I let the other story take me over, promising myself I'd go back to 'Shanty' in six months and give it another go. I never did, never will. I think it's happening again here. With Mac Pliers landing a contract, I very suddenly feel a strong urge to focus all my attention on him. Maybe I'll come back to 'A Graveyard Visible' in six months.

Except I won't. If I drop it, I'll never go back. I love this story. I do. No. I don't. I hate it. I hate it!

The gates are closing...

So what on earth (or under it) do I do?

Laters. Maybe.