Author: Gordon

Wings pull at the air as they launch themselves at the sky. Tiny black spots against the dipping glow of the evening sun, soaring higher and higher, cajoling and sniping as the nervous energy builds, pulling them up, up, up..

Viewed from a distance the birds coalesce; the shape shifting from blanket to ball, a liquid mass pulled by invisible forces.

In the air they seem one in thought and movement, wheeling and diving, governed only by instinct and the common heartbeat of their motion. On the grass below a couple stand, hand in hand, their gaze held by the swift curves of the flock overhead.

More birds arrive, racing from bushes and trees, diving into the wheeling and spiralling noise. Soft down feathers float to the faces watching below, the frantic thrum of a thousand wings a gentle staccato on their ears.

The shape above them turns, spins, dives, swoops; wide brush strokes daubing the sky. The couple, transfixed, sway gently in time as they unconsciously follow the movement.

The sun slides below the horizon and in one last surge the birds turn, sated and spent, and the edges blur as the murmur descends. The noise of wings rustling leaves as the sky empties.

I’ve been blogging for a long time, I keep an occasional diary – in Day One, a wonderful journal app – and have even shared some (very) short stories here. As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy the process of writing and I’ll admit that NaNoWriMo has always intrigued me.

In its 16th year, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has flitted in and out of my radar for several years now, with some friends partaking, and I even got close to entering it about a few years ago but decided to get divorced instead.

However, with time on my hands I decided to try it this year, I figured that I’d manage to write 1667 words per day, if not more and even had a couple of days earmarked to get ahead, bash out 5000 words or so to make sure that life wouldn’t get in the road and stop me completing the challenge of 50,000 words in 3o days.

In the end I submitted my draft and the word count topped 51,000 so there’s that.

At this point I would like to pause and thank Stephen King. Yes, THAT Stephen King.

In the lead up to NaNoWriMo I read a lot of helpful articles, offering all manner of hints and tips that would help me structure my storyline, map out my plot lines, ensure my character arcs were in place and more. Turns out that writing a novel takes a lot of planning and forethought, and I found myself questioning whether I wanted to do NaNoWriMo at all, suddenly it all seemed like a lot of work!

Enter Stephen King and his book ‘On Writing‘. I’ll fess up and admit I have three or four different books on writing a novel but have only thumbed through a couple of them. I’m not quite sure what prompted me to pick his book, other than being a fan (not his Number One fan of course), but I’m glad I did.

His premise is simple, to start writing a story all you need is an idea, a spark. After that, the story will be discovered to you as you start to write it and your characters start to experience it.

This was one of those lightbulb moments for me, realising I didn’t need to (as I’d read over and over and over) have the main points of my plot marked out, nor a good understanding of my main characters backstory and motivations, but that I could just start writing and the story would unfold before me was a revelation.

So I started writing.

What I’ve ended up with is a very rough draft of a story with a lot of holes, some confusion but it’s mostly there. I don’t fully understand all of the characters, and some parts of the story don’t link up properly yet but that’s ok, this is a first draft.

Case in point. I sat down one day to write a scene that would allow me to bring in my second main character. To do that I created a new character and, remember I didn’t have any of this planned, killed him off later in the scene. I would later go back and use the, now dead, character for some backstory but that was never the intention when I created him.

And so it went, the more scenes I wrote, the better I understood the characters, the more I figured out about the twists and turns of the story, none of them planned beyond a few key points here and there.

So from a basic idea – which involves a macguffin and the notion that the main character day dreams a lot – to what has turned into a cross between a Hitchcock ‘wrong man’ thriller and the Fifth Element, I have a first draft of a novel completed.

I’ve not looked at it since November, and I won’t until January which is one of Mr. King’s suggestions. It’s still percolating in my brain and I think about it from time to time but mostly I’m doing other things and writing blog posts is one thing that is helping divert my ‘creative’ brain (believe it or not).

I’m intrigued to see what I will find in January as, and this is hinted at above, I know that I tend to visual story points as scenes in a movie, visualising them and then trying to capture what I am imagining. I’ve no idea if that approach will work but I guess I’ll find out early next year.

So, it’s fair to say that after some initial jitters, and a couple of points where I was a bit stuck – thanks to Auburn for the suggestion of mapping out a timeline of character events – I enjoyed my NaNoWriMo experience and now that it’s a couple of weeks past it’s moved from ‘thank god that’s over’ to a growing sense of achievement.

I just hope that sense remains when I re-read the first draft in January!

It’s amazing how little you can fill your time with when you have nothing all that much to do, or at the very least no workplace to attend everyday.

Looking back over August, September and October, and even the first couple of weeks in November, before I started my new job, it was a whole lot of nothing.

OK, that’s not strictly true, I have managed to keep up with my Goodreads challenge and should manage to finish book 24 before the end of the year (currently a third of the way through book 23 – Wuthering Heights), and I did also complete NaNoWriMo after several years of promising to do it and not even managing to start it, ohhhh and I did setup my own limited company, get a business bank account and all that stuff but that’s mainly just filling out a lot of forms and I’m not sure it really counts as an achievement as much as a necessity. I managed to get new forums launched on the ISTC website which took more effort than I had anticipated but… those things aside, turns out I did a whole lotta nothing.

Case in point, I bought an oven cleaning kit not long after getting made redundant, thinking I’d have plenty of time during my days; I had a holiday in September already booked so my thinking was I’d find work when I got back, giving myself time to deal with the shock of being made redundant and have a good look around at the alternatives so, essentially, I had August and the first couple of weeks in September to myself to do with as I pleased.

And, as it turns out, the rest of September, all of October, and most of November too.

After the first few weeks of largely not giving a fuck, sleeping in, staying up late, eating takeaway, you know, ‘coping/dealing’ with being made redundant for the third time, I gave myself a bit of a kick (with two other lovely ladies giving me gentle nudges as well) and tried my best to make sure I got out of bed at a reasonable time in the morning.

I did, rising from my pit between 8 and 8.30 most days but then, a little too frequently, that just meant that instead of lying in bed doing nothing, I sat on the sofa and did nothing by way of watching old episodes of Frasier and latterly the West Wing. Afternoons meant random noodling on the internet, chores, the occasional wander out for coffee or shopping, and some trips to the cinema.

A whole lotta not very much.

Fast forward to today and I’m in the second week of working full-time again and have to admit that whilst it’s been a bit of an adjustment, I’m feeling good, and I think I’m getting back to a version of my old self, probably because I don’t have quite so much time rattling about in my own head which is never a great place to be at the best of times.

My job is a lot less stressful than my previous one, I’ve a lot fewer responsibilities and, as I’m contracting, it’s pretty much gonna be 9 to 5 as they don’t pay overtime. The life of a contractor will take some adjustment too (thanks to those who offered advice!); I’m already finding myself biting my tongue so I’m not the ‘new guy who has come in and thinks he know better’, and I’m trying instead to be the ‘new guy who has experience doing this kind of thing and who has some gentle suggestions that might make things better for everyone’.

For now I’m just happy to be working – I will be very happy when my first income since July hits my bank early January – and I’ve got plenty of things to fill my spare time (two gorgeous partners not withstanding). I’m also looking forward to a quiet (cheap!) Christmas and New Year, the latter because the four of us have booked a lodge for a few nights of peace and quiet away from the usual New Year nonsense.

Until then I’ve got a few weeks to figure out how things work at my new place of work before an enforced two week holiday when the office shuts down over Christmas which, whilst it means I won’t get paid for those weeks does mean I might have time to finally clean my oven.

It may also mean that I’ll get back in the habit of writing here, although come January I’ll be revisiting my NaNoWriMo scribblings so I might still be a bit ‘worded out’, and there is the not small matter of my sister being due to have a baby!

It’ll be interesting to see how 2016 pans out. The only thing I’ve got planned so far is Glastonbury, but I’m sure I’ll fit in another holiday or two along the way.

2015 has been an odd year, but I finish it feeling lucky and acknowledging my privileged position. I have a job, a roof over my head, the support of my friends and family, and two amazing women who have been more helpful than they realise when I was getting my head around the redundancy.

Those of know me will know of my tendency to research things before I buy them. A lot of the items I use most often have been bought online after a lot of comparison and pondering, and it’s fair to say that not all of them have been a success; a lot of near misses but enough successes to keep me happy.

Two items in particular stand out. One I’ve had for a while now, the other a recently new addition, but both hit the mark when it comes to my criteria:

1. I am reasonably price conscious but not overly so, I’ll happily pay to get exactly what I want.
2. The items have to be of good quality.

That’s about it really. Nothing startling there.

I’m also a big fan of minimising clutter. It goes with my love of Scandinavian and Japanese design movements. I like clean lines, simple function in harmony with good features.

I use both of these items everyday and I thought I’d mention them here, given that we are approaching a certain holiday season and I think they could make good gifts for someone.

My wallet

I’d been searching for a minimal wallet for a long time. I found the Supr Slim wallet (originally on Kickstarter) but it was a little TOO minimal for me; it only has one pocket.

Not long after that, again on Kickstarter, I found Trove Wallets.

In my wallet I have my Glasgow Subway travel card, Bank card, Driving Licence, Credit, Cineworld, Nectar and Tesco Club cards. Notes get folded in thirds and take up the last available space. I’ve had this for a while now and every now and then someone will comment on it; ‘That’s your wallet?’ ‘That’s really neat’.

Yes it is. That’s the appeal. I was sick of lugging the typical multi-pocketed fold wallet that I’d have most of my adult life and, for me, sacrificing a few seldom used cards was well worth it.

My keyring

God how I hate keys, especially when set on a keyring. All those angles and pointy bits, ugh. I’ve tried many different solutions in the past but they all have the same issue. Bulk.

And then I found Orbitkey.

Aside from my car key, I have keys for front and back doors to the building, my letterbox and my front door. Held together with a simple screw fitting, the clever sprung washers allow the keys to rotate (the screw itself will click into a tiny notch on the mounting plate to keep it still).

Simple, effective, minimal. Brilliant.

Note: I have not been paid to endorse these products, I’m doing so because I love mine and every time I pick them up and use them, they make me happy. Hey, it’s the little things, right?

Ohhh and no doubt that the basic principles that both the above products rely on have been used elsewhere but for these I can attest to the quality of them, they are both well worth the money.