This post is a little delayed, but that’s a good thing as my NaNoWriMo project this year nearly got caught in the Technology Trap™.

The Technology Trap™ is where seemingly productivity enhancing tools aren’t actually productive at all. This can be through misunderstanding of the purpose of a piece of technology, inappropriate training or education for a piece of technology, or through design flaws and errors in technology.

My problems were the latter, I wanted to be able to write on my phone and on my PC. Surely there must be an app for that right?

Congratulations there was, a nice simple little app called My Writing Spot on Android. It had word counts in the file list of the app, and in the Web application on the PC (the latter being better as it gave you word count per file and for the whole project). The website is My Writing Nook. It’s very good in theory, you write in a series of text files (which means no complications from unnecessary functionality at this stage of writing and if you’re worried about spell checking, most browsers handle this natively, and auto-correct on your phone when it’s not in a DAYC mood will take care of spelling there), when you click save the file is stored on a protected area of your Google account and is ready for your other device to pick up when it syncs. Now syncing is the best way – but it’s also where My Writing Spot falls down in its current version – the syncing is imperfect and at points you could be syncing over and over until the file moves from your phone to appear on your computer screen and vice versa. You nervously delete it from one, and hope that works, you make umpteen copies just in case.

All this lost time, and concentration becomes a distraction from writing. I finally gave up on it when one night I ended spending a several hours trying to sort it.

Since then, I’ve switched back to good old trusty Microsoft Word when on my laptop on my mobile where I still want to write I’ve gone with QuickOffice which allows me to work on the same file and I could easily view and add to my Excel tracker for NaNoWriMo.

That’s fine with me, except I don’t want to be emailing files several times a day, it’s too inconvenient. So I signed up to Box, they are already integrated into QuickOffice, but they also have a plug in for Office so I can in effect open from and save to my account fairly fast, and then do the same from my mobile.

Even there though was a Technology Trap™, early on with QuickOffice, it crashed while saving to my Box while the signal was a bit intermittent. Lost a few hundred words (I should say this for My Writing Spot, I never lost any actual words just time). Since then I open the file save it down locally and when I’m ready for the PC I save it back to my Box. Haven’t had a problem since of that kind and it doesn’t really take much time more..

QuickOffice isn’t perfect, it doesn’t handle Swype well, but I’ve changed Android keyboards since which I’ll come on to shortly.

So to summarise the majority of my writing is done in Microsoft Word with stuff during commute and breaks at work is handled on QuickOffice – it’s worked for me for the last half of NaNoWriMo.

Another thing that’s made a big difference to writing on my phone has been Swype, it was a lot faster than typing – though it could get annoying at times not recognising what I was trying to say. When I was using My Writing Spot this wasn’t too bad, as I could press the Swype button and it would offer alternatives. The button doesn’t work like that in QuickOffice which was annoying, (it does do this automatically when it’s not sure first time – the issue is when it thinks it got it right and didn’t).

I have since changed keyboards to one called SwiftKey which uses Natural Language Processing to predict based on your historical typing what words come next, a bit like T9 and its derivatives but predicts further ahead. It means you can say more with fewer key presses. It’s taken me some time to get used to typing rather than swiping my way across the screen but it’s actually pretty good at what it does, (however since the most recent update of QuickOffice it annoyingly doesn’t work as well, with several faults in interaction between the two).

I’ll see how it does at writing fiction later, but it is doing okay with blog posts and text messages. Though, as I mentioned, there are a couple of issues with QuickOffice since the most recent update of the software.

Other tools I’ve found invaluable are covered below split between mobile, PC, and real world tools. Some of these may have been mentioned in the planning post, but I list them here as they are also vital to my writing process this NaNoWriMo.

Mobile apps (on my Samsung Galaxy SII with Android 2.3):

• Thinking Space – mind mapping software for Android with a rough around the edges file syncing system. Most of my planning was stored in Mind Maps, meant it was easy to find and reference the information I stored there, navigate my plot plan and get my story roughly back to it. Thinking Space is the only Mind Mapping software I’ve tried for Android, but it does the job very well. It’s a lot easier to use than PC versions I’ve tried.
• Fake Name Generator – based on criteria you select it generates a random name and identity information. It generates a lot of points of information such a national conforming phone number, email address, date of birth (gives you age as well if you’re not interested in DOB), occupation, fake credit details, fake website, and vital statistics like height weight and blood type. I have spreadsheets with thousands of fake details like this but it’s handy having an app that generates and does so by gender, ethnicity, and language. I tried two or three from the market this one worked best for me. It does require an internet connection to generate but you can save the identities you generate to access later without a connection.
• Task – a generic app that came already installed on my, however I used it to craft an initial timeline based on my Excel forecasting as to when I would get to particular sections, and notes to remind me to do things when I did. However, after the first few chapters I gave up trying to divide my work as I went, and decided to do chapters in editing. However this was no fault of the app, and I will use it again because it has a relatively simply to use interface. I’ve looked on market, it’s not there, but there are alternatives.
• Dolphin Browser HD – There are a lot of options for a browser, but if you’re writing in the wild, it’s handy to have internet references in the wild, and I find I get less distracted by the inconsequential when on mobile phone than when I’m at the PC. However there quite a few options for non-stock browsers on Android, I choose Dolphin Browser HD not because it’s the fastest, or because it does the most, but because it’s a good all rounder and handles complex sites fairly well. I also appreciate the interface most of the time, the sliding menu and favourites bar for instance are handy most of the time, unless they accidentally pop out at random.
• QuickOffice - Which I’ve already mentioned, it does everything I need, except work consistently with custom keyboard technologies. However even those problems aren’t insurmountable.

PC applications and websites (on my Dell Inspiron Duo with Windows 8 Developer Preview):

• Microsoft Office 2010
  • Microsoft Word – I’m a long time Microsoft Word user, I remember going way back into the days of DOS. I’ve grown up with it, I was educated on it, and have educated others in it. So out of all the free versions out there, I’ll still opt for this every time. I say this to admit my bias when I say this is the best Word Processor available bar none. Everyone however is entitled to their own view of this, but I like the things Microsoft does well, and better than the competition, and I like the idiosyncratic things they don’t. However to summarise it in an unbiased way, it accepts words in a variety of languages, has custom dictionaries, can do macros if you like for to automate common functions (I like having a short cut for adding page breaks), the newer versions have the ribbon, which I hated initially but have grown to enjoy for the most part, especially with a touch screen.
  • Microsoft Excel – For all your spreadsheeting needs, there’s nothing better. I am however a power user, and fill spreadsheets with macros, and charts many of them created or customised by me.
  • Microsoft OneNote – I use OneNote to store all my more detailed notes, web page clippings, random notes, and samples
• FreeMind – is a free Mind Mapping software for the PC, which works with files from Thinking Space on the android phone. I mostly use it for reviewing on a larger screen what I’ve done on the mobile.

So there you have it, a brief over view of the tools I’ve used for NaNoWriMo 2011. I’m going to try out a different set of tools, and some different methods for going about my writing, to give me something to compare to. Also, while I acknowledge my favourites here, I am open to something better being out there, as long as its a tool that works with the whole process with minimum fuss.

I’ll do another post in the new year to let you know what I’ve chosen to try, and how it has gone. In the meantime, suggestions wouldn’t be unwelcome.

I’m sure you can guess why, if you can’t, or even if you can because I want to show off, as of Sunday 13th November I hit 50,000 words (50,443 to be precise). Can’t validate until the 25th November, but still after falling short two years running, to hit a second week finish feels great.

I can tell you, it was quite a buzz to hit the 50,000 mark, and I didn’t stop there. Week three saw me push on with the aim of hitting 75,000 words, including “The end.” Want to know how that went? Well I did that too. Though, it was a bittersweet second victory, someone I loved dearly passed away on the Saturday, and I contemplated on just stopping with 8,846 words still to go. That wasn’t the memory I wanted to have of someone I love passing, and though it was a slog, I finished at 75,114 on day 21.

So, the last step of the immediate NaNoWriMo process is to validate your win. And I did.

So there you go – I officially win this year’s NaNoWriMo. I have a badge to prove it.

However, I have decided that there is more to NaNoWriMo than simply writing 50,000 words though – that’s goal number one, with a couple of sub-goals that are worth noting. Below I’ve listed important steps in the writing process as I see them right now, (I reserve the right to grow as a writer and evolve these later*).

1. Write a 50,000 word novel (or the start of a novel), in the month of December. Achieve that one day moment – one day I’ll write a book.
   Be inspired – be creative, imaginative, and push your comfort zone.
   
   • Partake in a vibrant community of local and international aspiring and published authors.
   • Finish your novel – if it’s precisely 50,000 great stuff, of it’s not use the momentum to get you there whether it’s by the end of November, or December, our however long it takes.
     
2. Learn to edit after you’re finished – if you edit during you’ll be lost in no time, even if you make it to the end, you’re edits may be wasted when you properly edit.
   
3. Decide where to go from here – if you think your manuscript is good enough, do you try to submit to publishers, try self-publishing (which is a lot easier with fewer risks these days with e-publishing), do you share it with the world online, privately with friends, or keep it just to yourself. Basically, review, research, decide.
   

I’m completed stage 1, and I’m enjoying 1A, and hopefully will still do so after November is over, and of course I’ve completed 1b.

I’ve found of late how I write and what I write has changed a lot. Not just big changes like the conscious decision to plan this year, but down to the dropping of attempted dialect and accents, little things like marginally improved use of the English language as well. However, I don’t generally finish stories before I run out of steam, disappear, then come back and write a new idea. This year has seen a change in that, I made it through an extended story to the finish of that story, with the marginally improved English (except for random paragraph breaks in the middle of sentences, and words my phone’s autocorrect gave up on and so on), better structure through planning and things like that. So, if I’m to continue the process of evolving it’s time to look at stage 2 and edit the damn thing.

Okay, in fairness to myself I’ve tried editing before. It’s usually what I do when inevitably I’ve gotten lost with what I was writing. I basically do it too early normally, and it’s to change things to get it going again (which it doesn’t because then I lose all momentum completely). This time though, I’m going to try and do it right. I’ll go into details in a subsequent post on here, as to how that right will actually work – at the moment having hit the end of the story I’m on a break. I need some time to deal with things, and also to read a book called How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. It’s a good book, there are things I wouldn’t do anyway, but there are also things I’ve decided I don’t want to think about before or during writing, but as a guide of things to change in my project during editing it is going to be invaluable. Especially if I decide to go down any form of sharing route once I make it through to stage 3 after editing my novel.

Anyway, editing won’t happen until around the start of the New Year. Give me a break from the novel, and will allow me to read mistakes, and not read over them while what should be there is still fresh in my mind. Instead, when I’m feeling like writing again, I’m going to make my way through a couple of short stories (maybe 25,000 words each, but depends how they go), one of them is a new project I came up with during NaNo, the other is one I’ve restarted twice already. The old project I’m really going to work hard on nailing, as I think it’s a fascinating little piece, and deserves finally getting a finish to it.

2011 has been a mostly shit year, and continues to be – but I’ll always have that win, and hopefully I’ll always have at least a few of the friends I’ve made on doing NaNoWriMo this time round.

But before I go… here’s a ridiculous complex chart of my various targets and progress through NaNoWriMo this year:

I’ll do a proper stats post later; I have stats coming out of every pore right now with NaNoWriMo. This one contains all the salient information really in one place. If you know what you’re looking at this is a handy visual guide to how NaNoWriMo is going for you. A quick explanation:

The dark green line is the 50k target of NaNoWriMo originally, the bright red line at the top is where it switched to being 75k once I’d hit the 50k.

The dark purple bars are my actual word count, while the red line at the bottom are the words per day I actually achieved. The light purple area at the bottom meanwhile is the words per day I originally scheduled for myself, (and rescheduled once I hit 50k).

The brown line is what I actually rescheduled for myself at the beginning of NaNo (and reschedules from 50k onwards). I’m happy to report, for once my over ambitious scheduling was somewhat more comfortable than I’d expected, especially after I had a sluggish start.

The turquoise line was my very first schedule, which was over ambitious at the start, I felt, but was designed to push me has high as possible early on, in case I lost momentum later. It wasn’t reforecast, and so stayed at a 50k end.

The blue line is the new goal after hitting 50k, which gives you an idea where you need to be doing the 75k each day if you actually spread it out over the month.

Last the grey line amounts to a trend, based on performance where I could have ended up had I not stopped and maintained the pace. This changed constantly throughout the month depending on good and bad periods. At the point I stopped, had I not stopped I should have breached 100k easily (indeed since I did 75k in three weeks, the extra week should have gotten 100k, with a couple of days left over).

First of there’s how I’ve done the planning. There are obvious tools such as the browser I’ve done online research from (Firefox on my PC, and Dolphin Browser on my phone), and then sites such as Wikipedia,  space.about.com, and news websites (for the latest science and technological developments and theories). Nothing ground breaking there, I’ve been using a lot of science based sites to flush out details I can populate my universe with, but some sites on the history of piracy, and 16th, 17th, and 18th century naval life.

That’s all great but once I’ve got it, whether it’s snippets or whole articles I need to store it so that I can access it again, preferably offline so I’m not distracted by the internet later on. For this I use Microsoft Office OneNote – something I’ve had for ages but never gotten round to exploring for writing. It’s good, I’ve two projects on there, one for all that juicy research, the other for character bio’s and scene/locales.

I’m also using an app on my phone called Thinking Space (I’m using the pro version, but the free version doesn’t restrict you other than listing some screen retail to ads). This is a mind mapping (or brain storming if you want to call a spade a spade) tool, it’s a lot lower on detail than one note but has the advantage of quickly summarising thoughts and ideas and showing how things are interconnected. It’s in Thinking Space I’ve also mapped out the structure of the story, so I can clearly see what each chapter needs to include to feed events four or five chapters further into the story, and ultimately the end. Hopefully it means no loose ends at the end, and if I can keep it up to date it gives me a to-do list of changes I need to make in editing if things happen later in the story that weren’t originally part of the plan and need supporting events.

Other basics in the planning stage include Microsoft Word, Notepad, and a calculator. Then there’s my Kindle, where I’ve been reading plenty of similar sci-fi, and piracy novels. They’d also a few travel guides on there as this is an interplanetary novel each location needs to be distinct but something that can be related to by the Earth found denizens of today’s earth. It helps to borrow from out countries, cities, and cultures to enrich my fictional universe, lest everything in the universe somehow looks and feels like Leeds.

Add into that Google Sky Maps, Google Translate, and we’ve pretty much got everything I need for a space based science fiction story.

These are the tools I’ve used fire the planning, and they’ll be reused in the writing stage, but added to by things that are geared to better improve my writing, speed me up, andkeep me going. I’ll cover those in a subsequent post dedicated to that subject. I’ll do one in January to show the tools I’ll use to edit this story. For other novels I’ll try different tools and review them.

I’m not talking about actua writing issues, I’m talking behavourial one. The one I’ve noticed most often has to be the tapping of keyboards. Not the keys themselves, but the frame or rest area, when I’m trying to think around a problem, or plotting my next move.

I also seem to  a very emphatic gesture when hitting the carriage return, it’s like every new paragraph is a victory. Also, it seems full stops too.

The other one I’ve noticed, though I’m trying really hard not to do this in public, is the chewing of my tongue during tense, or really busy period.

There’s a few more, but those are probably my biggest crimes against the people around me.

It has led me to wonder, what are your annoying writing habits? Answers on a post card – however since I’m not giving you my address, probably best to answer in a comment.

Big thanks to Bargain Host for that.

Normal service will be resumed next week, and I’ll get some posts going again by mid-week. I’ll get some of the missing poetry from my daily poetry posted in a single post too.

I was getting a wee bit worried I’d have to rebuild my blog. I do have database back ups though, so somehow I would have saved my content (which probably isn’t great, but means a lot to me.)

I’m one of those writers that are blessed with hardcore imagination. Ideas come easy to me, anything can trigger an idea. There isn’t any work involved in shaping the imagination, if I let it just run wild, and I can reconjure an imaginar episode with just a few mental or physical prompts.

Of course if I want to shape this into a story I have to harness it, and that requires a great deal if force.

I imagine whole world’s in my head, a litany of characters, intensive situations, there’s detail o’plenty, as a character slams into a building, I’ll be stood at the bus stop opposite, I’ll see every half broken brick, and bits of mortar. As the protagonists of my imagination move closer for that all but inevitable kiss, I can see it happening, I can see the lines in the woman,s lips, I can see the guys forced face as he struggles not to go too fast, he wants to project a certain image with that kiss, and I see the car speeding towards them, the one who’ll brake hard, and speed away, the moment spoiled. The driver by the way has brown hair, a blue denim jacket, and was smoking – he’s actually fleeing the scene of a crime, which he had nothing to do with, but he’s got form and doesn’t want to go back to jail on a mistake.

The reason it needs to be strong armed is two-fold, firstly my imagination can run rampant at the worst time, I can easily switch between genre’s, decades (even centuries), and characters, it takes practice to keep it on track. The second reason is writing for a mythical readership, I love my imagination – most of the time it’s better than TV, but it’s to my tastes (most of the time, there are occaisionally things I can’t stand, and even offend me), however whether it’s to the taste of a reading audience I’m less sure. Therefore if I want to write an imaginary scene it has to be guided, and then censored and modified further as it flows from the pen.

There is of course another downside, an overly rampant imagination can completely change tracts, starting a whole new story when your only part way through the current one. This does happen frequently, and usually coincides with me losing the will to write. You put all that effort in, and lose the zone for that story, it’s a terrible thing, you’re not interest in the new scene unfolding – or rather not interested in writing. I have to find a way back to the original imaginary story, if I want to continue. That’s one of the things I had to learn during NaNoWriMo last year.

Most of the time, me and the left side of brain are usually on excellent terms, feeding things between us. Living the ideal life, the scary life, the exciting life, the romantic life, and the mysterious life.

The final great thing is I find it wasy to roll into an imaginary story details from research and such.I’m a sponge for information, and I can squeeze me out and spread them over my stories. So if I’ve read something about a theoretical form of space travel, and find myself in need of a mechanism to travel through space, (in my story, if only I could craft the real world as easily as my story ones), I draw through the details, and give my world a touch of realism that sets it shooting for wherever it needs to go.

My imagination is my most treasured asset as a writer, were I to lose that, were I to go in life without that – I honestly would rather be dead.

When I say ‘great’, I mean the kind of writing that is remembered as being up there, and out there, that historically will stand the test of time and will forever earn plaudits.

I’m not sure if there truly is an answer, as an aspiring writer I strive to achieve greatness, but due to a shortage of talent and attention span I don’t even achieve the lowest levels of the giant step before greatness, success.

By success of course I mean any combination of: completed works, published works, recognition, money, fame, notoriety, or even just self satisfaction. I have yet to achieve these internal or external accolades really – though I am a notoriously bad dresser.

To be great, obviously you need to have some semblance of a successful piece of writing, though which measures of success, I’m not exactly sure – I truly want to believe ‘greatness’ is greater than simple fame and fortune – you do of course need a finished piece if work though that people can see.

I wonder on the previous note though, how many works that would actually be great, have never been shown to anyone else? Unfortunately, obvious you can’t be great unless you share. I wonder how many people have a piece that is potentially ‘great’, but they give up, and never finish it?

Greatness though, is clearly beyond from success, there are millions of books published 206,000 in the UK in 2005 alone, (for an unpublished writer being published is a pretty common), measure of success, yet only a fraction of a percent can truly be considered great, beyond the moment the world first sees it.

Even then, we could debate endlessly what actually falls into the list if greats. This tells me this ‘greatness’ we aspire to, is subjective – in the case of literature, poetry, art, television, etc…, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder.

But wait, hang on a second that is truly unfair! I want to aspire to this, I want to believe that someday I can overcome my short comings and produce something great, therefore there must be some kind of arbitrary measure to set as a goal, some rule to follow to guide my path. How can I do that if greatness is simply a one on one relationship (one person thinks it’s great, therefore you can class it as great – because it’s great in a very specific category)? Sure if just one person out of a billion thinks it’s great, that is an achievement – but that isn’t satisfactory. I need more.

So, a bazillion people bought it, its right there number one for every general, and every relevant category specific best seller list non-stop for two years. Is that enough to call it a great? Nope, there could be a thirty pound voucher with each book, or a million pound prize give away that only book owners could enter for. PR, and controversy could make it sell, but doesn’t make it a great.

So what do I class as great? For me it would be when majority calls of greatness are achieved from, three distinct groups of people: Joe Public, Mr Snide Critic, and Professor Ivory of Tower. When there’s some sort of balance of uplifting feedback from these three (i.e. categorically more positive than negative), you’ve probably achieved some level of ‘greatness’. I would however advise it should probably take years to achieve this; your creative output should stand the test of time.

• If Joe Public is bored and forgets book easily you’re not there yet.
• Critics views, and indeed critics themselves change, Mr Snide Critic rarely lasts long. So a prospective ‘great’ must buck trends and be steadfast in the eyes of ever changing critics.
• As to the Ivory Towers, it is hard enough to get them to take notice, and it will probably rely on positive feedbacks from Joe Public and the Mr Snide Critic.

If after several years your book still sells (Joe Public usually votes with his feet, though these days, he also votes online – which is a measure to watch), critics don’t reverse a positive review (and the sum total of reviews is overwhelmingly positive – don’t just be measuring on a small handful of a favourable reviews),  and it gets attention from academics (ideally you want it to be required reading, or mentioned in some kind of syllabus (which isn’t about worst, or most mediocre books ever)), then I think, fairly you can class your own work as ‘great’, because likely, in the eyes of the world that’s where it stands.

This is how I would measure ‘greatness’, but the measure of greatness is subjective so many would consider me wrong, and have their own measures. Measures that are more favourable to some, and less favourable to others – likely as not, if I ever do achieve success, I might be more specific about what I call ‘great’, and how I judge my own writing. It is in human nature to revaluate our senses of achievement, because sometimes the goals we initially set, aren’t actually the places we are happy, (that and we’re selfish).

I think, having put these thoughts down, that general greatness is probably not quite achievable. Maybe it has been achieved by a select few writers, but I do wonder about the fairness of my views: can the likes of Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species be safely measured against A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, or J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter? Can an airport novel reasonably be considered against an historical biography?

My answer is no – blowing all my thoughts out of the water, the measure of ‘greatness’, even certain measures of success simply have to be subjective. Can you imagine how much work it would involve to compile a list of the greatest ever, if the category was “anything”? Even if you specify it to books, or poetry, or pieces of music – it would take a monumental effort to classify what is greater.

So my conclusion would be that ‘greatness’ is subjective, that hard and fast rules are hard to apply (though my impressing of three distinct groups could work, if each measured group is filtered to category specific sub-groups).

What does this mean for me? Well if I were to ever write anything good enough to be published – my aim would be for it to be the one of the ‘greatest’ in as many of the genre’s or categories it applies to. So if I write a romantic comedy, set in Berlin, during the year 2080, based on the dating life of an albino alligator, it would be one of the greatest romantic comedies, one of the greatest novels set in Berlin, one of the greatest future based novels, one of the greatest novels based on the dating life an alligator (and albino alligators). Of course you would have to practice some common sense, there probably aren’t that many books based on the dating life of an albino alligator after all, so unless you were really desperately to put “greatest” next to the blurb of your book, or your writing CV, you would probably not be quite that specific.

Of course, ‘greatness’ may not be something I’ll ever achieve – which is why my happiness at being a writer is not dependant on this measure. That isn’t the point of the story – that point is, I’m at my happiest if I’m trying to achieve ‘greatness’.

In Barrington Moore’s Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them, he says this of revolutionaries: “[...] He is corrupted by the very process of achieving power”, which I, being the romantic that I am, believe it for it to apply, it must apply in both positive and negative senses, therefore striving to achieve ‘greatness’ through scrupulous means leads me to happiness and satisfaction, before I even get there.¹

¹ Of course what Barrington Moore probably meant was you have to use unscrupulous means to achieve power, and therefore you are corrupted before you get there – I’m just a silver lining kind of guy, and wanted to finish on a positive, after setting the self destruct on my cosy little idea of ‘greatness’

I am definately feeling more committed to this blog than any other. That said, I have done a lot of little bits and bobs technically to get the site where I want it, which has distracted from actual writing things to go in said blog.

Well that changes now, I’m reasonably confident technically I won’t be making anymore changes.

I’ve now set the theme, and it won’t be changing for a while (well a few months, I’d like to have some kind of rotation system through the seasons – however with the intent of getting some content bedded in, this won’t start until Autumn).

I’ve also added an image gallery system, the native images system just had one folder – galleries let me break things down. When more photos are uploaded, I’ll add albums – so “Days out”, “Holidays”, “Admin”, “Friends”, that kind of thing. I think I also need to set myself a three month rotation of clearing up images, making sure they’re tagged, commented, and that sort of thing. I am however using the galleries here to replace my LiveJournal Scrapbook, just because I have more control here, and unlike Facebook, no one can remove the rights to my own photo’s from here.

My posts now automatically get ported over to my LiveJournal (unless I don’t want them to), this will hopefully keep it in my friends mind, and if they know people that would be interested in this blog, they can point them at it. Plus, what I post here was what I aimed to post there anyway – so it all works out.

I’ve added a Twitter sidebar widget – this hopefully keeps things a bit personal, because I don’t want to come across as just a blogger, this also doubles as my personal site in relation to the subject of creativity. Balancing the two is what’s important really.

Added a few links, but I really want to go through my vast bookmarks and pull all the relevant ones into a page on here, to share.

Added my Social Networking sites to the list – most of which I’m happy to add visitors to my blog to.

Added a plug-in that allows my site to have a different theme, and set of functions on a mobile phone. Makes for smaller, quicker (and therefore cheaper) page loads. I doubt there will be many people logging on to the site from their mobiles, however I do, I can write draft of posts using my phone, which is great for mobile blogging. This means I can use some of the time I spend travelling by bus each day to get some content written. It would only ever be draft, but they are things to build on. I’ve already started doing this, and it works.

There are more things I’d like to develop, but content is top priority, then acquiring regular readers (I can dream), and at some point in the future I’d like to do more work to encourage people to write (which was always aim of the now sadly retired aspiring.org (and writers-ramblings.com before that) forums. Maybe do a competition every now and again.

Anyway, that’s enough about what I’ve done, and what I’d like to do with the blog.

I’ll say this though, I’m very much impressed with WordPress, it’s a dream to write in, a dream to set up, and a dream to add extra functionality and design to. I think I’ll be using this for the other blog I’m intending.

That said, I was puzzled to find: 

Now, I’ve lived in this area (on one side of Primrose Valley or t’other), for about twenty years. In all that time there were rumours about the council wanting to build houses on there, however there has always been strong local opposition to this.

The council went as far as to stop maintaining it (or so it seemed, I’m sure they would say otherwise).

So when I saw that sign, what first came to mind was bulldozers raking over my childhood memories, memories of football, rugby, laser tag, even school (I went to Crossgates Primary School – for my sins), and other childhood hi jinx. It’s a terrifying thought.

You may be asking what’s this got to do with poetry, or literature, technically it doesn’t much. It’s one of the places I used to write though,  and a place I’ve written about plenty of times. It’s somewhere special to me. I’m going to re-post one of those special stories at the end of this post.

Anyway, back to the point (yes I digressed, and that’s the subject of my latest poem), it turns out, I don’t need to be worried.  I put on my detective’s hat, and tracked down what was going on – despite English Partnerships being co-opted by Homes & Communities Agency, they appear to planning some kind of restoration and care work on the fields. Okay, yes I spent about three hours working all this out, but most of the documentation is from 2006, it’s just taken that long for bureaucracy to kick in and do something.

There’s very little on the Leeds City Council website about it – but I guess it’s been so long since it was announced it’s just slipped well down the relevant  results.

It makes me happy that it’s safe, makes me happy that one of my childhood memories remains intact, even as others vanish and warp out of recognition.

I mentioned before that I have an idea for a new poem – I’m going to be writing it there, in good old fashioned ink and paper. Though, as a matter of respect  for the maintenance and improvement of my beloved valley, I’m going to obey that sign (if I’d found out  that they building on there, I would have happily risked being arrested in protest).

If you’d like to see some more photo’s of my walk out across Primrose Valley, follow this link to more, including Bailey, our three year Yorkshire Terrier, oh and me (I’m the one with the ginger goatee, and bandana on – he’s the silver haired little dog, trust me)  - Primrose valley with Bailey – May 09

Anyway, as promised here’s one of my old stories, written back in December 2003 (I’d like to think I’ve improved as a writer since then – however it’s a story that means something, so I don’t mind exposing it):

Oh and I won’t bore you with the real history of Primrose Valley just yet – I’ll save that for another time.

A Journey into an Old Land

The man arrived at the land of his pilgrimage, a somewhat special pilgrimage. For too long he had been away, but now it felt as though he was returning home as passed the first gate into another world. As he followed the winding path, what fell before his eyes was not the greenery he had remembered, not even the calming natural browns of the falling autumn. There was rubbish, probably the waste from the border houses, it saddened him to see in such a few short years how people had neglected this place of magic.

He pushed forwards past the border paths, he came to the avenue, drop off to the left, a near solid wall of trees to his right. Now the beauty of the land showed, from the drop off he could see out over the mundane world, the world he belonged to, yet didn’t. The trees marked his land of magic, his journey into a land of his gods. There were three passages through the trees, the one closest was a hard track through the trees, there was a game path, but his was not an arduous trek, so he looked up to the path that was a few minutes’ walk away.

Stood by the entrance was a dog, a large dog, it hadn’t seen him, it was sat there as if guarding the way. The traveller thought he heard someone calling, must be the dog’s owner, but in a land of wild magic, stray animals were always a possibility. He turned and took the closer path, half way up the path he heard something behind, him then a bark. He turned slowly, aware that sudden movements could be the end of him.

In front of him there were two dogs, the large dog from before, and a little one. The big one looked scruffy and dirty, as if it had not been groomed for a long time, though it wore a collar, which told him once it had been a domesticated pet. That didn’t help him no, the big one was growling, breaking every so often to bark, the little one was just barking. Both seemed menacing. The man held his bag out in front of him, aware of the only weapon he had being a small knife in the bag, which he couldn’t use to harm these animals because of his own beliefs, and it being no good anyway. He hoped if the animals attacked he could maybe buy him some time, to do what he didn’t know.

He stood there facing the animals, he slowly started stepping backwards, he stood on a stick, fortunately it appeared the animals were more wary of him, and stepped back at the noise. They held their ground again, edging forward. Fear permeated every part of the man’s being, but he knew that he should remain calm.

For whatever reason the animals went through the tall grass and circled round, calmly, but quickly the man went back the way he had come, keep a wary eye behind him in case they came down the path behind him. He went back to the green avenue, he walked it up to the second furthest entrance, always wary of the dogs. He went through the passage way of trees on both sides to the open land beyond. As he stepped out into the open land. It was glorious rolling hills, banks of the valley, flat plains trees, oh so many old and glorious trees. The signs of autumn were there, the yellow and brown patches to the mostly green trees.

As he looked over to a hill, just further past he could see the two dogs running round. Were they guardians of this land, was he not meant to be here? He could see no one else around, had this place changed so much that his Gods no longer welcomed people to this holy place. He decided to wait the guardians out. They ran round for a bit, then went over the hill, ahead of him and over into the trees to his left. He turned right and headed for the hill, it would be a good vantage point to eye the land, and keep his eyes out for the dogs.

Strangely the idea of being hunted, the idea that the longer he spent in this world, the more danger he was in, it reached to him, he was now part of the land. He was hunter of his own spirit, but while he was here he was also the hunted. Should the way he treated this land, his respect for it falter then he would find himself no part of this world, or the mundane world.

From the hill he could see all around, most of this area of the valley was his to see, he couldn’t see where he wanted to go, the land concealed it, held it protected against its bosom. He looked for the two dogs but could not see them, somewhere distant he heard a bark, so he took it as a good sign and headed further into the valley. He came to another passage of trees, this one lead down to the pond, an old area where water come up from the ground, ran for a bit then went back into the land. It was a beautiful place, a place of power, yet tranquil. Passing the tree’s he could hear the birds moving, every so often he thought he heard breathing, more than birds something larger. He hoped it wasn’t the dogs, but just in case he was extra vigilant. He pushed the fear aside, he wasn’t willing to enter a place of the Gods with fear in his heart or in his mind.

As he walked down the passage way, the water before him seemed to speak invitingly. He recognised the siren’s call of water nature, but he knew beneath the calm surface was a danger unseen, the depths, though not deep would trap a man still, then pull him under. He had heard the stories when he had been a child. He walked down by the water, he walked past the island, the stones that led to it were no longer there, and round it was over grown with reeds. He sighed, once it had not been like this, but he took solace in some things didn’t change. The feeling of the area was still the same, and it felt good. He spent a few minutes there, before heading back part of the way he had come. He took a right and head over some scrub land. He went to the end of the pond, a place unseen by most. It was a small pool, set a foot or so below the ground level, with rocks. Trees crowded round to one side, he sat down, and meditated. This was where the Gods spoke to him when he was a child. This was where the fairies came to play.

His visions came and went, he saw the past, and he saw the bits of the future he was allowed to see. When all was done, his sense of peace returned, he got up, leaving a small gift to the land. A piece of bread and a piece of topaz. He head off back to the plains, taking the long way enjoying the land around him.

He heard a bark in the distance as he got to the plains, he looked round, and following the line of the hill he could see the two dogs in the distance. He was very aware they could come down a straight route from where they were to the passageway to the green avenue. He decided that he’d risk it, be it the gods will, that their two guardians stop him. He got near the passageway, and looked round, he could the see the dogs coming towards where he was, they weren’t running, they were ambling down. He quickened his pace, but remaining casual, he got through the passageway, constantly looking back to know if he had to run or not. The dogs stopped at the end of the passageway, not following him. They loitered in the area sniffing round, and watching him. The guardians were allowing him to leave, they had allowed him to enter, but had given him a warning, though he was in a land of immortals, he was still mortal, and his will did not countermand the lands. If only the rest of the world understood that.

He left the way he had come, saying thank you to the lands, leaving just a common stone he had found on his travels through, he left it by the entrance, significantly telling the land he that he returned what he took. His final mark of respect before stepping back into his world.