BenPaddon.co.uk

Last week I forgot to do a Ficlet Friday, so this week you get a double-bill. Opening line, brief blurb, etc.

Raison d’être - Dec 17th
He didn’t know how to play one.
It’s about a guitar. I don’t know where this came from as I can’t play the guitar myself.

Routine - Dec 18th
Every day, Robert’s alarm clock would go off at precisely 6:00am.
This is pretty much how my mornings go these days, save for the radio. I have an iPod alarm clock now, so more often than not I am woken up by Muse, Gorillaz, or the Feeling.

The Voyage Home - Dec 19th
“So, if Zapp Brannigan promoted Kif to Captain at the end of ‘A Flight to Remember,’ why is he still Zapp’s PA in subsequent episodes?”
I wanted to write something geeky. I also wanted to write a very short road trip story. This is what my mind vomited up.

The allusion of illusion - Dec 21st
One day, you’ll remember. You’ll recall everything that has occurred here with lucid clarity.
This one started out as another attempt to write a future-tense ficlet.

Read Me - Dec 21st
UNIVERSE v8.5.2 WIP #9 (12.21.2007)
Regular visitors to the Jump Leads Forum will recognise this one.

Journey of the Sorcerer (sequel to Later, In The Common Room At Ten Faeries’ Den Hostel by Howie Amourscow) - Dec 22nd
“This is your task to undertake, and yours alone. I bid you good luck.”
Howie’s ficlet is a sequel to my previous story, But Wait, There’s More. This is a continuation of the same thread, and an idea which popped into my cavernous cranium during a long walk. What if Gerkyn was able to sell one of his crappy quests?

The Plea - Dec 26th
I made a promise to you. I didn’t keep it. I’m sorry.
An apologetic plea from someone to someone else. I don’t know where it came from.

[Minimum Length Challenge] Hesitation - Dec 27th
No opening line here, I’m afraid - it’s my shortest ficlet to date.

Do You Want To Know A Secret - Dec 27th
He hadn’t slept in days. Ideas didn’t sleep; why should he?
A story about unrecognised genius. Named for a song by Alvin and the Chipmunks because it amused me to do so.

Killer Queen - Dec 28th
She’d long since had enough. Grabbing her rocket launcher, she climbed the stairs onto the roof of the building.
Inspired purely by the title of the Queen song it’s named after.

The Sleeping Giant - Dec 31st
There is a trick that cat owners, when moving home, can use to help their pet become familiar with their new surroundings.
It’s not actually about cats. It’s probably not about giants either, to be honest.

Rap II: The Rappening - Dec 31st / Jan 2nd
Oh, drat! Another rap, just like that! What am I thinking?
Y’know, when I was in High School I used to rap a little. Never when anyone was about, of course. I would probably feel ashamed about it were it not for the single important fact that it was what I now know to be called Nerdcore Hiphop. After writing that horrible little rap about my name I just got the bug to write another one. I started it in 2007 and finished it in 2008. I apologise, world.

Sequelitis - Jan 1st
“I don’t get it.”
I’ve had a couple of requests from readers to write sequels to some of my ficlets, which I feel rather defeats the entire purpose of a collaborative writing website, but there we are. I started writing this dialogue between two people to vent my frustration about it, but by the time I’d finished the discussion I actually came to realise a possible reason why people weren’t writing their own sequels or prequels.

Background Music - Jan 2nd
Dan sat on the couch with the controller in his hands, the marvelous environs of Super Mario Galaxy rendered on the TV in front of him, and Gorillaz’ “Demon Days” album playing on the entertainment system. Greg appeared pained by this.
A brief conversation between two gamers, based on something Amy used to do that really bugged me.

Damien Gallant: Secret Agent Extraordinaire -  Jan 3rd
“Quickly!” said Damien Gallant, Secret Agent and habitual womanizer. “We must defuse the nuke before Vile has a chance to detonate it!”
I was hit by the urge to write a really cheesy spy/action story. This is the end result. Fun Fact: “Vile” was the name my friend Ryan and I gave to the bad guy in the RPG we were making in High School.

An Employment Opportunity - Jan 4th
“Let me put it this way,” said the man behind the large oak desk. “Have you ever seen that Kirstie Alley movie, ‘Toothless’?”
This ficlet is based on an old idea that’s been floating around my head for some time now. I actually tried to write this idea as my NaNoWriMo in 2006. This is the first time I’ve written something of the concept down and been content with it. Fun Fact: “Toothless” is an actual movie, released in 1997. It’s crap.

I’m rather taken with Ficlets. It’s the perfect antidote to both my utter failure to even start NaNoWriMo this year, and my yearning to write something different. Yesterday I wrote An Undesirable Happenstance, which ended up going in a completely different direction from where it’d started, and today I have written Death of a Boring Callcentre Employee, which is based on an idea I had last night. Writing it was very edifying. It’s been online an hour and someone has already written a prequel. They’ve added something to the story that I hadn’t even thought of, and while it’s a little off-the-wall I have to say I quite like it.

My goal, and this is a goal I imagine I will eventually fail to fulfill, is to write one Ficlet a day every day. Let’s see how that goes, shall we?

Edit: I wrote another one. I’ve lost all self-control.

Oh, look at that post underneath this one. Didn’t I sound so confident about NaNoWriMo? Ugh - time has just slipped away from me this month, what with sorting out the print edition of Jump Leads #1, (which may end up getting delayed because the company I was using to print the thing are apparently a Consortium of Knuckleheads) and also preparing to visit England for a week (which is, itself, a week I will be spending Not Writing Things). It seems destined to not happen this year, so… it’s not happening. And I’ll say no more about it.

I’ve had a lot of feedback about my Tattoo plans, and I was recently told by someone about the Ten Year Rule, namely if you think it’s still a good idea to get a particular thing tattoo’d on you in ten years’ time, then get it done then. I then invoked that rule, reducing it to nine years because I’d been planning on getting this tattoo about a year ago, and then discovered that every other bugger on the Intertubes already has a Space Invader tattoo’d upon their personage. Hmm. I’ll have to rethink this. Someone - I think it was my sister - suggested getting a Jump Leads tattoo. This is not, strictly speaking, a Bad Idea.

I did have one concerned fan email me to make sure that Jump Leads wasn’t impacted by the Writers’ Strike here in the US. The concern is touching, of course, but no. No strike action here. The lack of a comic update today can be seen as a show of support for the Guild, if you like. It’s not the actual reason, but then there are people who think that the They Might Be Giants song “Birdhouse in Your Soul” is about God when it’s actually about a bird-shaped plug-in nightlight, so each to their own, I suppose.

I am working on other writing projects, though. Euan and I have resuscitated a collaborative sitcom project we were working on at the start of the year, which is looking promising now that we’ve broken away from some of our over-zealous On Rails outlines - we over-planned the pilot, so neither of us felt comfortable writing it because we didn’t feel we had any freedom. Now we have a vague shape of what we want to do with the pilot script in our minds, and we’re just letting it freeform. I’d love to eventually film it and get it online a la ./shutdown, however that would necessitate having access to things I don’t have access to. Like a store which sells both videogames and comics books at the same time. And possibly a car. And a driver’s license.

Right, I’m done now. I should really get back to pretending to do some work.

This year’s NaNoWriMo starts in little under a week, and this time I’m in the right frame of mind to actually focus my energy on it. Last year I started writing a story that had been on my mind for a few years only to realise that I hadn’t properly planned it out. I had no idea where it was going and I wasn’t able to stretch it out over 50,000 words. At the time I think I was also dwelling far too much on my then-recent break-up. This time though, I’m ready for it. I’m going to do it, and what’s more I’m going to succeed.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. As well as writing Jump Leads, which I absolutely love doing by the way, I’ve taken to transcribing some of my dreams into what I suppose could be called a Dream Journal. My dreams over the past year or two have been remarkably cohesive. The world my dreams take place in appears to have continuity and geography. I started drawing a map of that world last week, and this week I have begun trying to describe it in words. It’s difficult because parts of it are rather mundane - there’s a street lined with identical houses, for example, and for some reason there’s also a branch of Toys ‘R’ Us there that I have visited numerous times - but the centerpiece of that world is the beach, and the road leading to it. In some ways it reminds me of Hemsby, back in England, but it’s very different. There are a couple of restaurants near the beach, for example, and only one arcade which is closer to the beach, but once you’re on the beach itself it’s a real sight to see. It almost makes me wish I could paint it so as to share it with you. Sadly that’s not one of my talents…

I believe that writing is my true calling, and that I can make a sustainable career out of it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jump Leads lately. Writing NaNoWriMo has sort of lit a few creative fuses in my head and while I don’t think I’m going to finish my NaNoWriMo, I have been inspired by it for new script ideas for Jump Leads. I t’d be even better if someone, someday, got to read/watch them.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that… well, I don’t want just anybody drawing Jump Leads. If anyone’s going to draw it, it’s going to be either me, or a friend. Someone I trust with it, you know? I’m not sure I want someone I’ve never met before drawing my characters (unless, y’know, JL reaches a state of popularity where people want to draw Fanart). I am constantly drawn to the idea of doing the entire thing myself, however I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with the end result and I certainly wouldn’t have the time to commit to doing a weekly update. I guess I’d draw an issue at a time and when it’s done, post it. New issues might end up being few and far between, but then consider how much time there was between issues of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do.

I’m also toying with the idea of actually funding and filming a pilot for a Jump Leads series when I reach the States, although I’d be concerned that I’d have to lose some if not all of the Britishisms in the script. Buggeration.

It’s been a weird day with a lot of lows, a few highs, and a tolerable takeaway burger from a kebab shop.

The first thing that irritated me today was having to get up, closely followed by having to walk into work. Now, the walk into work from here (my Mum’s) takes about an hour and ten minutes, depending on how fast I walk and how awake I am. This morning I made it into work at 9:22am, my shift starting at 9:30. I would’ve been a bit later but my work colleague, Zahid, stopped to pick me up around the corner from work. Which was nice of him.
The next thing that irritated me was working. Work work work work work work work. Obviously I can’t divulge any specifics, but working in a call centre really does affect your faith in humanity for the worse. Still, it was made slightly more enjoyable by the fact that seeing as I’m doing all of this additional work - taking escalations and so on - the company have decided to reward me for it. Which is nice. I’m getting a slight payrise as a result. Yeehaw!

During my lunch I received a private message at the Penny Arcade Forums. I had previously mentioned in a thread about gaming websites that I used to write for Game Partisan, and this message was from one of the Snackbar Games crew saying that they are always looking for new writers if I’m still interested in writing. I mentioned that I write for RealVG and linked him to a list of my editorials. Bizarrely he came back to me saying he didn’t mind me writing for two sites (Game Partisan took issue with this), even after he’d presumably read some of the garbage I’ve written*. I’m seriously considering the offer - Snackbar is probably one of the few gaming websites on the Internet I actually trust.
More irritating calls followed into the evening, then I had to walk home, stopping briefly at Amy’s to sort out the bill stuff and steal some of her precious, precious Fanta. Then I came home and didn’t contribute any further to my NaNoWriMo.

I’m beginning to think that I’m losing interest. I’ve stayed out of the “Write a novel in a month!” thread at the Gorum; even getting the link to the thread, I right clicked and selected “Copy Link Location” for fear of actually reading its content. I’ve avoided the NaNoWriMo website, the link in my Firefox links bar is glaring at me mockingly. It’s irritating as Hell. Besides which, I’ve hit somewhat of a creative wall, and I can’t feel anything spurring me to continue. Bugger. I really want to “win” NaNoWriMo. Maybe I should just roll up my sleeves and write any old crap that happens to materialise in my tiny, sleep-deprived mind. I’ve not even reached the 10,000 work mark, and we’re nearing the end of week two. Urk!
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* I am, of course, being modest. I like my writing. I’m awesome.