EYES OF A CHILD

I am not a child though I have been in the past. I suspect that you can say the same.

Can you remember the fun and games of being a kid?

The feeling on time with friends playing with action figures, marbles, stickers or any number of other possible things. The time spent riding your bike about and doing it because you wanted to just go really fast and explore the world further than the limit of walking. There was no feeling of having to do it to keep or get into shape.

Can you remember the bizarre scenario which happened on rare occasions where teleportation happened to us when we were small? We would be on the sofa, fall asleep, and then we’d be teleported away to our beds. I swear, Star Trek had nothing on being a kid.

I mention all of this because it’s good to spend a little time remembering good things that happened to you, at any age, but also to speak to the adults we all are from the children we all were.

Children see the world differently, and we need to make sure that we work with them as they learn to make the journey as smooth as possible.

Last week, I was invited to an event that I just wasn’t expecting in the slightest. I was visiting my mum and she was looking after my niece and nephew before my sister finished work for the day when my niece asked me a question. She’s seven and as she was coming to the end of the school year, there was going to be a story telling event at her school where all the kids would be showing books that they’d written and illustrated and they’d be doing some other fun and games to show the attending adults. Now the books themselves were four pages long so not War and Peace but all the kids had written the stories they’d made up and had drawn all of the pictures as well.

My niece asked me to if I could come on the day as well as her mum.

My mouth fell open and I’m sure that I stuttered a bit. I couldn’t believe she’d asked me to go along. I had absolutely no idea why she’d want me to be there but I was available, so said yes. It was only later that my mum told me that it’s because I’m an author. She wanted me to see her work and what I thought of what she’d done. She wanted her uncle Owen to see what was what.

When I walked into the hall, all the kids were sat at the front in rows and she gave me a huge grin and a wave when she saw me. During the performance of the songs and the like that took place, you could see all of the kids giving those furtive glances towards ‘their’ adults in the crowd and it’s not a rare event to see kids in school plays waving at their parents. I stood at the back of the hall with a big grin on my face at the festival of song and movement which unfurled and then read through the book with my niece when all the kids scattered into the audience.

Proud uncle moment, the book was great.

There were themes of struggle against adversity, of altruism and of the defeat of those out to do evil. There were also very cool drawings. She was beaming out smiles like you wouldn’t believe and when she jumped up and down together with her friends as they milled about at the end, she was happy to tell them that I was her uncle and I was a book writer. The other kids looked at me like I was some kind of sorcerer.

The stories that had been written, I suspect were the kind of stuff teachers have seen over the years but what struck me was the number of them that had the idea of a magic artefact being central to how they unfolded. There was a Magic Sticker, a Magic Sword and even a Magic Trident, and those devices allowed the kids to take the story anywhere. Kids don’t have the experience or understanding of the world to see things through like an adult would so they reach for tools they need to get the job done and that acceptance of magic is something which can be so easily ‘adulted’ out of us.

Magic isn’t real. As you grow up, we see more and more that magic isn’t real. If we want things to happen, we have to do it ourselves. Stories of good overcoming evil by always staying true to the best ideals aren’t the real world so we need to be ready to see things which wouldn’t fit in those stories. We learn through play as kids but when we reach a certain age, we just have to learn.

Kids do indeed say some daft things. Very often, you’ll catch yourself trying not to laugh when they swear that a particular detail is correct when it REALLY isn’t.

But adults do the same. An individuals experience can lead them to very wrong conclusions just as easily as it happens for kids.

Kids see the world in a different way than us grown ups do. The easiest to keep in mind is that their half our size. The world would have to look a very different way if you were just at waist height for everyone else, and my sister pointed out to me that I missed cobwebs high up in a corridor we were in when we were having a chat, and it was the kind of reverse for me. I’m taller than all of my family so my default is to always be looking down in some way.

We get used to exploring the world in set ways as we age and the sheer fun, exuberance, and utter joy of being a child can wither. We, as adults, need to make sure that we do our best to maintain that spark of wonder in kids as they age so we can fan our own at the same time. Losing all of that way of seeing things means a pretty boring time.

And, magic not being real?

I watched my niece explore storytelling and art but also performance to an audience after being asked to attend because she wanted me to be there. It felt pretty magic to me.

Stay safe all.

MEN ONLY

For those who don’t know, I’m a man.

A handsome beast if ever there was one!

Now in and of itself, that’s not the most interesting or important fact out there but it leads into something that’s been lurking at the back of my mind for years.

As a man, can I write female protagonists?

The book I’m writing at the moment has a female lead and the story is coming together quite well but there’s always been that little voice in my head that I may be getting the details wrong or doing something I shouldn’t.

When I started out on my writing journey all those years ago, one of the first tweets I ever saw claimed that men shouldn’t write women and vice versa and it’s always stuck with me, maybe just because I was so new to what I was trying to do, but still.

Now I’ve seen those posts on line where you get some awful examples of female descriptions and the classic, ‘ If men were described like women’ examples detailing throbbing bulges etc. and accept that there are some pretty horrific things out there, but that’s not the push of this post.

What I’m trying to do, as I’ve always done, is just write a character who’s going through whatever narrative is there and then find out the bits I don’t know as I go. I’m lucky that I have my wife to read my stuff as I go so she can give me input so I don’t end up heading off in wrong directions or missing things.

I suppose the question sitting over mine here is writing about people or topics you don’t have any experience of.

I could very easily write a whodunnit but the amount of research and planning I’d have to go through to actually arrive ready to start would be enormous because I don’t have detailed understanding of how the Police work, what and how they look out for, and most importantly, how to commit a murder and get away with it. But then again, those authors aren’t regularly uncovered as killers so they don’t have that experience either.

I’ve always written what makes me interested.

I’ve looked at the meaning of life and magic, dragons and space, to make compelling stories. I’ve written as different ages as well. I like to change the angle I view things from to allow me to see the world more clearly so I hope that means that I can write anyone for any story.

Despite what I put them through, I do care about my characters.

Stay safe all.

MEMORIES

Hi all, I hope we’re all feeling well this new week.

I’m going through a period of change at the moment after being made redundant from my ‘day job’ so there’s been a fair amount of reorganising and sorting of my home office while I get into the head space I need to really get back rolling and on the job hunt.

I’ve got a notice board put up, a white board, my computer work station arranged and I’ve been rooting through drawers to make sure I have everything I need to work fully from home at the same time as having as comfortable and well appointed a writing nook as possible.

Now I’m sure that we’ve all done it at some point in our lives. We’ve been carrying out a big tidy or you’re moving house, and you stumble across things from back in the day and then we marvel at what was.

You find an old childhood toy that you may have loved in your younger years but may then not have seen in an absolute age and all of a sudden, you’re back with the younger mindset. The idea of ever being without this item and using it every day is a clear example of heresy. How can you ever be without it? Why did you stop using it?

Now I haven’t discovered any old toys as I’ve gone about my actions but one thing that has popped up is an old notebook where I’ve written down possible ideas for future books and it’s blown my mind.

There are threads in there going back to 2014 and I’d forgotten all about them. I’ve been reacquainted with some interesting ideas and most importantly, have been reminded just how creative my mind can be. There are ideas dealing with science fiction, with fantasy, and with horror, which could all become full novels if I put my mind to it and that collection of ideas takes me back to a time when my fire for writing was at it’s brightest.

When we hold up something from the past, we get the chance to reminisce to those days when we were younger and it’s great to just get a view of a time when we saw things being simpler.

But we can also rediscover something which we may not have known was diminished or missing. Suddenly we’re in a position to just hold up a lens from a different time to view todays situation and can sometimes give us the chance to remind ourselves of a time where we may have felt very differently. We can get a boost or an idea just from the colouring applied thanks to that old lens and our mind gets a kick start.

We’ve all felt it in some way, even if it’s just the warm fuzzy feeling, but being given the chance to examine things in a different way means we could see something important we’ve missed before. Characters in books have had the same experiences because we do and it can feel very much that it can become just a ploy to advance the story but it’s not always the case.

Remember, each and every one of us has a deeply coloured history and we’ve thought and felt different things at different times. Maybe something from back then could give you just what you need today.

Stay safe all.

PROPAGANDA

I’ve spoken before about how the point of view you look at things from can affect what it is you see but there’s a great deal more to it than that when considering how you present things.

We all do it.

We do it all of the time.

When we speak to people, we always place the emphasis on the bits of the conversation we value or subtly slant things away from the bits we don’t. None of this is news really but propaganda is very often is just that. The news.

If all stories have slants placed on them then how can we be sure what we’re seeing?

No doubt we’ve all seen examples of posters from back in the day when, during war time, governments created campaigns showing the enemy as ghoulish monsters our brave and beautiful forces have to vanquish. People were told all manner of things to make the enemy seem less powerful, more comedic, more barbaric because it was important to have everyone aiming in the same direction. If there was a risk of there being any kind of sympathy for the enemy position, there appears a potential crack in the armour and then we have that sympathy spreading.

But the same process would be taking place on the other side as well, with the reverse situation daubed everywhere. Nazi propaganda during the run up to WWII was anti-Jewish but there were schedules of it taking place where the idea was to maintain the hate but also to make sure that the moves being made were seen as a good thing by the general populous. There was a need to have the population feel that they’d been lessened in some way following WWI and that they were being invaded by Jewish interlopers and it built up over years that there needed to be a taking back of control and making the country great again. To then recognize that Brexit was driven by propaganda without truth of the need to take back control and that Donald Trump was certain that the US of A needed to get back to a previous level which had been taken from them makes things very scary right now.

We see Fox News in the US and a growing number of voices in the UK (think The Daily Mail) who are now happy to rather than slant stories they outright talk cobblers. I found this examination of a clip from Fox News about legislation change regarding atheists and all that’s said is atheism has been added to the protected ideals list alongside religions. Pretty straightforward. What ends up happening is they end up jumping smoothly to ‘Why do atheists hate Christians?’

Thanks to LiberalViewer on YouTube

They end up talking about something which has nothing to do with the actual story and that hasn’t been said at any point but why let that get in the way of a good moan?

Propaganda isn’t just a Londoner having a really close look at something.

Propaganda is there to manipulate a story in a way that provides a desired outcome and it’s something that can be devastatingly effective at turning a kitten of a topic into a sabre toothed tiger. Being vigilant of the facts as much as possible is vitally important to maintain the search for truth and we all need to do our best to make every effort to find out what’s really going on.

Maybe the way to untie propaganda is to really have a close look at things after all?