YOU CAN’T SAY THAT

Are there topics that shouldn’t be discussed or used in fiction?

If you think something is off limits, is it really or do you just think it is?

It’s one of those ‘stock’ complaints that seems to appear very quickly in opinions, ‘You can’t say anything nowadays without being called politically incorrect.’ What tends to follow is tenuous complaint about not being able to be somehow derogatory in any given way so it would be far too easy to have your eyes rolling even before the sentence is finished, but could there be stuff that you can’t go near?

If you wanted to write a book on any possible topic or situation, absolutely being given utter freedom to write in or around anything that your heart desired, what would you choose?

I wrote my fist book with that in mind because that story was the one that I wanted to see the most. It was a story that spoke to me so I wrote it myself. Set in the real world but with some monsters and magic to boot.

Now pick something that’s wildly controversial as a theme, or event, and now create a story inside that.

Now pick something that’s wildly taboo, could you create a story in there?

The Holocaust is a festering stain on all of humanity but Schindler’s List is a huge piece of work inside it. Roberto Benigni stars in another film set within that awful time but it’s a film with warmth and humour sparkling like jewels in the rivers of shit which was concentration camp life. JoJo Rabbit and The Producers too.

Mel Brooks also gave the world Blazing Saddles, a film if edited for TV release before the watershed would likely be about eight minutes long. Four Lions was hysterically funny, as was The Life of Brian.

All of these stories carry with them something potentially poisonous, but they’re able to make the messages they carry get through because they’re not holding the horror up as the thing to be celebrated. Schindler’s List is a story about the struggle to survive and Blazing Saddles is perfect at holding up a very large mirror regarding racism. Neither effort suggests that Nazism or White Supremacy is the correct standpoint but they use them, those nuggets of evil, to build a story to make their point. Bigoted and unpleasant characters are then held up as clowns to be laughed at or ridiculed rather than being paragons of virtue but that makes them even more useful as a storytelling tool because they can go on a journey of understanding.

Heading back to the first idea of not being able to say anything these days, what that seems to convey when it gets used is that ‘you can’t say today that which was acceptable yesterday’. Societies move ahead in any and all directions and what was acceptable before may not be now, in the same way that we may all find something to be ‘wrong’ now, but in a century it could become common place.

Every topic is fair game, but it’s still something we have to be responsible with. We can’t just dive into a taboo topic because we just want to be as insulting as possible, that’s just lazy. We all need to understand that for each and every topic out there, there can be a story to tell and recognise that that can help us understand ourselves as a people, even if it comes about from potentially offensive locations.

Happy thinking all, and stay safe.

WHO DECIDES THE MEANING?

My wife Jo and I had a conversation recently about understanding of meaning in art of any and every kind and it was a real head scratcher.

If I paint a picture, I’m creating something to get a message across. The message could just be that I saw a pretty landscape and wanted to show others, but art isn’t always just a photo realistic version of the real world. If you consider the work of Jackson Pollock for example, what do they say? He himself said that they didn’t have any objective meaning and it was the act of looking at them which made you feel what it was you felt so they did what they were supposed to.

Now consider if an artist were to create a similar explosion of colour which had no meaning outside the viewing, but someone comes along and says that they see the work as actually a burning scream for the implementation of eugenics? Our artist says that he didn’t do that and he doesn’t believe that at all. Critic then argues that that just highlights that he’s actually sending the message through unconsciously, so this further reinforces the idea that that original thought from the critic is accurate.

I appreciate that this an extreme example but it was just a part of the trundling my mind went through when I kicked it about.

I wrote my novels to say certain things, but each person could read the books and take very different elements from them. We are the sum of our own lives so may interpret things slightly differently to anyone else but where should we draw the lines in terms of owning those interpretations?

Computer games have narratives which run through them but it’s very easy to recall stories of the moral panic surrounding violence in games and TV shows warping the minds of young people. Music is questioned because ‘someone’ misunderstands or ignores what the artist is trying to say in the work and creates their own story instead and more and more fingers are pointed, truth be damned. In relation to a story of this kind, “It seems to be quite straightforwardly a case of an octopus just being an octopus.”

Everyone can take anything they want out of the art works that they consume, we all do after all, but as an author, I know what I wanted to say when I wrote my books. An outsider may utterly disagree, thinking I was saying the opposite, but just because someone says they think I meant something will never mean that I actually did.

I suppose you then ask about the one making the outlandish claims and have to consider the idea that their individual life has led them, as mine has me, to the point where they see certain things a particular way. After all, ‘To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail’.

It’s an interesting consideration to have, who decides what it is a work actually means, and to those works of which the creator is no longer available to confirm, it all falls down to a discussion of opinions.

If in doubt about my stuff, please feel free to ask.

Stay safe all.

DID GOLDILOCKS HAVE A POINT?

I think it’s fair to say that she overstepped a great many boundaries in her casual exploration of a home that wasn’t hers, but Goldilocks maybe does show that we have to consider conditions for the best results.

I’m a sports fan and it’s not exactly a new suggestion that how many different things link together can have a huge effect on the outcome of any game or match. We see it regularly in Wales when there are international rugby matches being played in the Principality Stadium and there comes the choice of should the retractable roof of the stadium be open or closed?

If the roof is closed, the weather outside stays outside so any wind or rain which would otherwise come bundling down are taken out of the equation. If the roof is open, all the weather, good or bad, comes to play as well. If you’ve set up the way you want to play around there being very little expansive passing and running and it be more of an attritional slugfest, the chance to have the roof open and the rain pouring in is a must, but if the opposition are looking for that kind of game, then keeping the rain out could gave you that slight advantage of running the ball about.

Tennis has different court surfaces, racing reports on the state of the ground at the courses and any number of other examples of ways the activity outcome is more than just the individual are everywhere in sports but it’s everywhere else too.

Anyone need to turn the radio down when you’re parking so you can concentrate? Have you got to have a certain pillow to get the best sleep? Have you got a particular shirt you have to wear on a night out for the best ‘results’? Are you able to get work done with the radio on?

I can’t write without there being background noise.

I enjoy having music playing but I can be out and about at a coffee shop and the background hustle bustle can be enough to keep me ‘in the zone’. I suspect that it comes from the fact that since I left college, all of the jobs that I’ve had either in the fitness industry or in recruitment, meant that I was always functioning in an environment where there was loud noises going on. Add in that I used to cycle to work so grew used to the huge road noises and it just grew that I was used to being concentrated under certain circumstances.

Goldilocks tried out options until she found the one that gave her the best results and she was able to sleep with a full belly and maybe that should be something that we all embrace. If we’re doing anything, if there are modifications that could give an improved performance, shouldn’t we always be looking for them? Try things on for size and keep the stuff that works.

We’re all looking for the best way to go through each day and get the best possible outcome, even if we don’t think we are.

Here’s to the best for all of us.

Stay safe all.

WELL DONE

Those are pretty simple words, well done.

Two words. Eight letters. Easy to say. Simple.

Odd, then, that it doesn’t get said as much as it could be.

I’m creating a huge power system in ‘The Circle’ series where everyone has to deliver in their role under the very exacting eye of the people above them and I had to work hard to create this world where people at each strata in the society did their duty because they not only believed in the cause but because they have a real fear of those above them. Every day, the various different people going about their business behind the scenes within the story carry on but under the fear of what a potential failure could mean for them.

Can you imagine doing that?

You don’t hear anything positive about what you’re doing on a day to day basis, it’s just the expectation that you do what you’re paid for perfectly, and if you’re just doing what you’re supposed to be doing, why should you expect anything to be said as thanks? That then leaves you in the position of only having anything said to you if you’re less than perfect in any way.

It’s a small, but central point in The Circle books, of how an outsider recognises the life that is being led by others and tries to both fit in while also affecting change. I’ve seen similar happen in the real world so it became an interesting way of examining the human condition.

Each and every one of us knows just how good it feels to be told that we did something well, or that we’re appreciated, but it’s also something that I’m pretty sure everyone would also say that they don’t hear enough. Just being told that you did well in something is deeply gratifying far beyond just being about that specific task. It means that someone thought that you did well, like you proved your value, and chasing away any possible fears people have regarding their worth can be the very first step to helping everyone stand a little straighter and feel a bit better.

Each and every one of us does well all of the time, making some mistakes as we go but on the most part being good, but that fact so easily gets overlooked when we all just want to judge everyone.

Thanks for reading my thoughts each week, I appreciate each and every one of you.

Well done all.

I AM NOT A COMMITTEE

I’ve been writing away on my latest projects and it’s that steadfast problem that every ‘one man band’ has to consider is the utter lack of time to get everything done.

We all know the feeling of there never being enough time to finally complete all of the odds and sods that we have on our plate. It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in or what your life gives you, there’ll always be a time when you don’t have enough day to cover all of the tasks.

So what to do?

Get some help.

If you can find a way to offload some of the things that you have to do, say getting a trusted helper to look after all of the communications you get, it can give you more time to get down to the big creative stuff. All so simple.

Now what happens if the number of voices involved grows and grows?

A publisher could want to have a chunky say in how any narrative unfolds, telling the author what they want said. Film directors are regularly told by ‘the studio’ that certain creative choices have to happen or others have to not. Pop music can appear to be a merciless production line where the artist’s clothes, hair, attitude, and whole skill set are wedged into the mould of what the ‘top brass’ want to see and the central creative core of who the artist is gets buried deep down in favour of the expected.

Now this isn’t to suggest that all creative people are somehow being chained to work they don’t want to produce by cadres of brutal executives who are looking to wield their cookie cutter on everyone they see. It’s more of a way to consider that the media we all consume is very often the result of choices made by vastly more people than we think.

I’m a big fan of examining the work of others to see if they’re doing something which I can use. Years ago I went on more than one trip across the country to different sites in the company I was working in to see for myself what they were doing that allowed them to deliver better results in a certain metric than I was. I learned a lot. There were ideas that I thought were positive so I used what I could. In my writing, I listen to my wife, Jo, when she beta reads my stuff because she can suggest things that i may not have thought of, not seeing the wood for the trees.

But if the number of people giving their opinion just grows and grows, the meaning and heart of the work can end up being degraded by the sheer volume. If you add in the idea that some of those suggestions then can’t be ignored, regardless of their value or lack there of, the story is taken from the original creator and instead handed to a committee who will no doubt disagree on almost everything.

The creative process is tough to navigate at the best of times but having billions of voices crying out for their version of the thing to be the one to take precedence will ultimately leave a jumbled mess which just doesn’t work.

I’ll keep on creating stuff, and I’ll continue to have a smaller number of people who give me input to shape what I’m saying because I want to always make sure that my message doesn’t get lost.

I’m not a committee, you know.

Stay safe all.

IDEOLOGUES, ONE AND ALL

I’m trying to create a detailed character profile for someone in a future book at the moment and it’s something that I’ve done with everyone in my books. Making sure that I know who they are means that I can develop a consistency when I’m in the trenches of writing.

One of the things that I kept picking out that was always appearing in my planning was the idea beyond what the characters looked like and more around what they liked or disliked, what they believed in. It was never about finding the most minute detail to include, like their favourite fictional detective or if they thought the ball had REALLY crossed the line during the 1966 World Cup, it was there to help me have an idea of who they were at the very core of themselves.

In my page of information from The Circle of Fire where I made notes about one of the more central characters, I included details about their family, what was it that drove them to act the way they did? If they agree with one idea, does that follow that they must agree with the next five of that kind? It just gave me a fuller and more rounded picture of who I was writing.

Now the thing that came along with each character, nestled beside all of the above, was the line that they wouldn’t cross or the belief they had that was unshakable, and it’s that idea that made me stop and think.

Do we all have that same nugget of who we are that will just never move and we’d never entertain anything which could threaten it?

Politics is an interesting place to begin considering such an idea so let’s dive in.

Are you a red voter or blue?

Brexit or Remain?

Personally, this is an area where I’d consider myself as being the ‘floater’. I’ve voted across different parties, candidates and propositions over the years and I’ve tried to at least give everyone a chance to make their point. I’ve certainly never just remained loyal to one regardless, yet there are so many people in the world who just ignore any facts that might get in the way of what they might ‘feel’.

How do you feel about vaccines? Big Pharma?

What about QAnon?

Do you trust the BBC?

Is the Earth flat?

Now I accept that these are at the more extreme end of the continuum but we’ve all met someone who had an unshakeable belief in, if not something from above then something else, a topic which they just know about.

Ask anyone about any particular global event, wars and the like, and you’ll likely hear some very weird thoughts. The issue comes, as it would from the above collection of ideas, when that person does everything in their power to spread their viewpoint far and wide.

Previously, the world wasn’t anywhere near as connected as we are today but now, someone shouting their particular thought can pick up adherents at a remarkable rate to spread like wild fire. In no time at all, we can have that idea oozing around the planet regardless of the truth.

We all have opinions on everything and we all share and discuss stuff with others but we’re all vulnerable to the effects of something which sounds all too plausible but which is actually garbage. Every one of us has it us to be an ideologue about any given topic so it really falls to each and every one of us to be sure we’re saying the right things but at the barest, we should be asking ‘Are you sure?’

Stay safe all.

Also, the Moon isn’t real, and anyone who tells you different is clearly trying to hide something!

IS IT ALL DOWN TO THE FIGHT?

It’s fair to say that the twentieth century saw quite the remarkable leap forward in terms of technology and how we all live, and I’d suggest that a massive force behind such change was coming from the two world wars that took place.

Bi-planes to the first jets in 30 years is pretty amazing stuff. Chuck in the tint extra detail of the atom bomb during the latter part of that same period and you get a really bright picture of the strides taken.

So why should it always come down to war being such an engine?

It boils down to need.

If your nation is involved in a massive planet spanning conflict, every possible advantage you can glean becomes vital. More spending on these topics means more brains on the case and advancements can happen more swiftly. After the conflict comes to an end, those who made said advancements could then make some money out of them by using them for the public. Arguably, the same situation came out of the vaccination program during COVID. The need was enormous so more resources went into finding the vaccine.

So why wait for the terrible thing to happen before we do anything?

There’s always work going on in labs all over the place doing important scientific research but if there’s no impending risk like a war, the need isn’t anywhere near high enough to justify the work increase. It’s not that the work isn’t being done, it’s just that it’s taking longer. When that need appears, it’s all hands to the pumps.

Think of it akin to not answering your phone when it isn’t ringing. You don’t need to.

And that brings me to my thought for the week.

It occurred to me a while ago that what the human race really needed to help us make the step forwards to more readily work together would be a shared, external foe, like an alien arrival / invasion / first contact. War of the Worlds springs easily to mind when considering the attack from outside but even the film Independence Day has everyone putting away their previous problems to fight the shared enemy. Tally Ho and all that!

But why should we only consider the idea of working collectively when there is the bigger external pressure?

We collectively only make the big choices when we have to which is understandable, but only ever doing something positive because we’re effectively being pushed into it seems to be where ‘we’ fall down.

There’ve been stories in the UK recently about comments being made by someone with political connections making racist and sexist remarks and seeing the powers that be do anything they can to avoid saying that they were racist, sexist, AND wrong has been remarkable. The desire not to admit to what was perfectly clear to everyone else was laughable when you know that the person in question was a donor to the party.

Maybe the point should be that ‘we’ should always be thinking in terms of humanity not the ever dwindling groups we find ourselves separated into?

If everyone were to work towards the same end goals wouldn’t that mean that we all just get there quicker? If rather than everyone doing their own thing and bugger everyone else, we look around us and see what’s going on? Imagine a whole continent of countries all working together to share the strengths around and lessen the burdens of those under the most stress? You could go anywhere in the shared group and there’d be shared knowledge and prosperity. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

The issues tend to arise when people get involved, and start pulling apart rather than together.

I hope one day that we find ourselves in a world where we’re all going the same way but I fear that it’ll take the arrival of aliens to really do it and even then, there’ll be someone shouting that they won’t join in with everyone else because why should they?

Stay safe all.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO MEAN THAT

It’s been announced in the UK that the powers that be are making moves to deal with what is described as ‘extremism’. Sounds pretty good really, doesn’t it? No-one wants extremism bleeding through the country because it means that there’s real risk to the whole of society. Extremism is where all kinds of troubles come from. But how do you define extremism? The easiest image we could have will tend to be on the far ends of any continuum but the depth of understanding which can make the water muddy sits easier in the centre. What’s been called out as a problem in this particular instance is that the definition being made for extremism is so broad that it can cover almost anything. So words matter but their meanings are vital. We need to understand and share that knowledge with others to create value in those words. Cool is low temperature but is also a way to describe someone who’s interesting and well liked, or at the forefront of popularity. We’ve all used cool in the slang way and we all understand how it can be deployed, but if we had no knowledge of that slang, we’d be left scratching our heads why someone is cold as a being a good thing. Now words and their meanings change over time as they all get used and amended and that’s how evolution of language happens. The problems come from when changes of words usage and meanings are changed by force, which is at the core of what’s happened in this case. When changes happen through time, everyone has the chance to take on the incremental differences, but a leap is something which is pushed onto people and any amendments in meanings which came along with the natural method, the steps where people tried out the usages of different possibilities until the most popular stuck, meaning we’re using words without foundations. Forced usage of language as a means of control is very clear in 1984 as Newspeak is grown. The Party releases amendments to words and their meanings to control what and how the population think. In the book, there is also a method employed to make said changes appear retroactive. The old meaning was never in existence, the new meaning has always been there and if you think it hasn’t then you’re trying to subvert society and should be dealt with. And there is the horror of those forced changes to meanings and definitions. If a word can become something else outside of the usual methods of usage, how can we be sure of what we’re saying as being correct? And if the definitions are made too wide, then everything could fall under it’s use so it has no utility at all. Is it a hat or a helmet? Or a Cap? Or a Hood? A headdress? Doesn’t matter. All of those shall now be called a hat because they all do basically the same thing so we only need the one word. Why waste time and effort on anything else? Words are a central pillar in how we communicate so having nuanced understanding of how they’re used is crucial to our collective societal health. If we try to force changes or manipulate how and when our linguistic powers are deployed, we open doors to so much more than confusion. I for one don’t fancy ending up in the Ministry of Love. Stay safe all.

ARE YOU SURE EVERYTHING IS OK?

I was casually mooching about on You Tube the other day, not really paying huge attention to every video that popped up, but just letting them wash over me, when I stumbled over a clip from a legal TV show. The details of the clip don’t matter but one of the comments under the video did make me think.

Someone pointed out that one of the big issues with the show in question is that the characters could save themselves hours upon hours of worry by just being open and honest with each other and asking for help when they need it.

We’ve all been there.

Something happens and we can feel it in our bones that we want to just get the issue resolved without drawing any undue attention to it. We try to fix that which went wrong and despite our best efforts, things spiral and all of a sudden, everyone knows and are pointing at you. We see in stories, how characters try to fix something and their attempts to do so are what ultimately cause the biggest issue that everyone then has to fix.

One way that this reluctance to admit to a problem is used in story telling regularly pops up in zombie tales. There’s always the situation where someone gets bitten but decides that trying to hide said fact will be the best course of action. The truth ultimately gets out when it’s far too late to achieve anything and chaos ensues. I’m writing something at the moment which uses this idea of hiding an issue and although it’s not about zombie bites, the general premise is the same.

In the zombie example, the characters very often recognise that they’ll need to be killed if they share the fact of the bite and thankfully, that doesn’t happen out here in the real world. We hope. In the good old day to day world we all enjoy, reaching out for help can be the first step to making a problem go away but it’s that act of reaching out which can be the toughest.

We see regularly online, at work, on TV etc. so many examples of encouragement to reach out for help if you need it but it can be the reaction that we receive which is the killer. Can you imagine phoning up The Samaritans help line and when you pour out your concerns the person on the other end just laughs at you or tells you you’re a prick for getting it wrong? I’m writing characters who have to face something along these lines and it’s that crushing of them following a problem which has caused them all so much pain and then shapes their behaviour from then on. The book I’m reading at the moment also deals with the idea of ridicule for people who’ve made a mistake of a certain kind.

And that’s the core message really.

We all make mistakes, and none of us can go through life totally separate from everyone else so the idea of accepting help from another can’t be so alien a concept that no-one thought of it. The reluctance to accept help comes from how that help makes a person feel. One of my characters shrugs their shoulders and just gets back on the horse, as it were, but for another it breeds a resentment grown from a shame they were made to feel at their own failure.

Characters then want to prove those who pointed and laughed wrong, they want their redemption, and it’s in that fertile ground we can grow either a hero or a villain.

Maybe we all just act a bit nicer to each other?

We’re all after some kind of redemption.

Stay safe all.

ONE SMALL STEP

I’ve just finished reading a book which dealt with characters having to take steps to change the far future following a message sent back through time. It was set in 1920’s rural England and didn’t hold all of the classic time travel decorations of vehicles to accomplish the jump and wild and advanced science. Instead, it was told on a much smaller scale with all of the action unfolding between at maximum three characters, and that size of story is something which appealed to me.

I’ve written books which encompass sweeping tales of good and evil, and massive scope for intrigue and peril, but stripping away so much of the superfluous information can lead us to a tighter and more accurate story.

The tale of changing the past to prevent some future catastrophe isn’t new. The idea of going back to kill Hitler before he got his head of steam going pops up a fair amount in books, film and TV, so much so that it tends to be as a throw away line to give quick explanation of what’s taking place at that point.

Dipping back into the past was embedded in Avengers Endgame and the scale was enormous. The Back to the Future films had the same idea but was more aimed in where our attention was focused but both these example had the characters seeing the time changes personally and then amending issues as they unfold.

But now consider that you don’t even get to see the problem yourself.

You’re told by the big booming voice from the future that to stop a terrible wrong in the far future you need to prevent a certain event now. You get a cursory overview as to the details but the rest is up to you. Could you trust that it’s for real? I suppose that would depend on the way things are presented to you but beyond the mechanics of time travel and the hard science of it all, the biggest hurdle to overcome would be the idea that just completing one miniscule task now could save lives in a thousand years.

It’s all too easy to just look at ourselves and what we do as being the tiniest speck in the grand tapestry of all of reality but even a single dropped stitch in that tapestry can have an effect.

I went to the beach today and had a wander about, getting some fresh air and I picked up and put down a few stones as I went. They just looked interesting and I wanted to have a look see. All good fun. But when I’d finished my assessment, I dropped them back on the beach, but in new positions. What’s to say that by me putting that stone where I did, I set in motion a cascade of events that means that in a thousand years it’s a fragment of that rock which results in the event which kills millions? If I hadn’t picked it up, no far off event?

We’ve all been told to see the big picture at some point but maybe we’ve been looking the wrong way? If any and all tiny events have the chance to warp the future, maybe we can see ourselves as being just that little bit more powerful, and by extension, that much more invested in the world around us.

Every action matters.

Stay safe all.