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I’ve Started a Facebook Page

| cjlevinson

Just a quick note. I’ve just started a Facebook page for my photography and writing in case anyone would like to follow it.

I’ve mainly started it as I tend to get quite a few friend requests from people who have just found my blog and want to see more of my photos. While I’m usually happy to accept, I also get a lot of spam and I thought it would be easier to have an actual page to direct people to instead.

I also only share a fairly small selection of photos on the blog due to time and other content and I thought having an area to share some of my other photos and to tell some of the stories that go with them would be fun.

I’ll be using it to share some of my writing and poetry from time to time too, as well as thoughts on life and politics and things like that.

So it’s really a bit of an extension of this blog, just with more random content.

If you’d be interested in following, you can follow it here or by clicking on the badge below. Will have a new blog post finished later tonight as well. 🙂

Which Door Would you Choose?

| cjlevinson

 

So I came across an interesting post on Facebook earlier today. It asked a question that in turn got me thinking about something else. So I thought I’d borrow the idea and explore it in a bit more detail on the blog.

First, here’s the post itself:

which door would you choose

I guess I found it interesting as when I was young I used to daydream a little about this kind of thing. Quite often I used to imagine I was in Sherwood Forrest or Camelot and I loved using my imagination to make me feel like I was really there and not in my bedroom or back yard. This doesn’t seem all that different from those childhood fantasies.

What would I do now, given the choice as an adult? Where would I love to visit and what would I love to see? Maybe the beauty of Rivendell or the grandeur of Camelot? The fun of magical London or the breadth of the Wall?

I find that idea really fun to think about but, funnily enough, treating it seriously for a moment, I don’t think I’d actually want to go to any of those worlds.

When you stop and think about it and place them into context, all these worlds are wonderfully imagined, magical places but they’re also all torn apart by war and strife. That’s the nature of fiction, that it needs conflict to drive the narrative, and that’s often what interests us about these worlds as backdrops – but that becomes very different when you think about these places as potentially being ‘real’. While a child might dream of playing and adventuring in those worlds, for an adult they probably wouldn’t be as attractive and likely would be very dangerous.

I guess if you were to imagine a real world equivalent, it would be a bit like visiting Syria at the moment; it would be a wonderful place to see and learn about but probably not that safe and not somewhere most people would choose to go.

Given that, I find it quite hard to answer the question. All of the places would have incredible beauty and interesting landmarks, so it would be hard for me to decide simply based on that also.

So I guess this is how I would answer and why:

For me Narnia would be first out as, no matter how interesting that world is, it’s basically set against a never-ending religious civil war and there is enough of that in our world. And Neverland is a pretty weird and dangerous place when you think about it, so that’s out for me as well. Wonderland is too trippy for me and Westeros is a pretty hard land where everyone wants to kill you, including George RR Martin, so that’s out too.

That leaves Hogwarts, Camelot and Middle-Earth. Hogwarts is nice but there’s a really dark undercurrent to those stories too and as much as I love Camelot, there’s an awful lot of betrayal and loss.

Which leaves Middle-Earth. While there’s fighting, there are also long periods of peace and a quiet life in the Shire sounds like a pretty good option overall. Plus there’s a lot of beauty in that world.

So I guess I’d choose the Middle-Earth door and try to have a quiet life.

That’s more or less how I answered on Facebook as well, except with a little more humour.

I spent a while reading through the comments afterwards as well and something occurred to me while reading them. The choices were split pretty evenly on the whole, except for Hogwarts and Middle-Earth which both had a slight advantage, but the most interesting thing was how the answers often seemed to reflect bits and pieces of people’s lives and personalities.

For instance, people who chose Narnia often said they did so because they related to the themes in the world, while others who liked Neverland said they liked the innocence of the story, and Hogwarts because they would have loved to have escaped like Harry did when they were young. And so on.

I find that fascinating, how a simple question can reveal so much about us. It reminds me of some of the tests psychologists use and I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere something like this is actually being used that way.

I thought about it for a while and came up with this to describe the traits based on the choices people made and the reasons they gave. I’m obviously not a psychologist so this is obviously highly unscientific(!) but these traits definitely seemed to come up again and again in the answers which I thought was interesting.

Narnia: someone who is quite religious or enjoys religious themes. Neverland: someone who is a child at heart and has a sense of wonder about the world. Wonderland: someone who is attracted to more offbeat, eccentric subjects and thinks outside the box. Hogwarts: someone attracted to escapism and wishes they could be/could have been someone else during their life. Camelot: someone who is a bit of a romantic and a traditionalist and often wishes for simpler times. Middle-Earth: someone who seeks beauty and/or adventure and is a bit of a dreamer at heart. Westeros: someone who enjoys testing themselves and/or has experienced pain and loss.

I doubt those would be accurate for everyone but they corresponded with a lot of the answers and I’d say they’re accurate for me as well. I would definitely describe myself as a bit of a dreamer, and I’d say I’d also relate to some of those reasons for enjoying Harry Potter and the Arthurian stories too at different times in my life.

Overall I found the question and the answers really interesting and it’s funny how something like a simple Facebook post or a blog quiz can reveal so much about us.

Sometimes I wonder what historians in five hundred or a thousand years will make of a lot of the data we’ve put online and what it will tell them about our lives. Because that’s what we’re actually doing by keeping a blog or updating social media, we’re creating a collective tapestry of life that will far outlive us. Which is a bit scary when you think about it. But pretty amazing too.

I imagine a lot of it will seem very pedantic and self-absorbed (because honestly, a lot of it is) but at the same time things like blogs and social media will be a real boon to them, showing what our interests were like, our speech and writing patterns, clothing, politics, etc. Even a simple question like this might provide a huge amount of insight.

Something to think about the next time we write a post or share something on Facebook or Twitter.

So which door would you choose and what do you think it says about you? I’d love to find out. 🙂

Sleepless: A Micronovel

| cjlevinson

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“If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
– Toni Morrison.

I’ve always loved that quote. It’s so typical of Toni Morrison; so simple, and yet it captures the process perfectly. Every time I read it, it reminds me of why I wanted to write in the first place.

I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about the first story I wrote. It was a thriller called School Terror and I was fourteen when I wrote it. Actually, it wasn’t quite my first story; I’d written a few other things when I was younger, including my very first story when I was seven. But School Terror was the first time I really tried to write something original, and I was quite proud of it.

Basically the story was about a prestigious school which was overrun by terrorists trying to take the students hostage; a girl, Mara, and her teacher escape and take on the terrorists one by one. If you think of 24 mixed with teenage angst, you’ll probably get an idea of what it was supposed to be like. The story was probably fuelled by my frustrations about school at the time but I thought it was kind of a cool idea just the same. I mean, who wouldn’t want to read about a sassy sixteen year old and her curmudgeonly history teacher, taking on a band of vicious terrorists?

To be honest, looking back, it was pretty bad. My spelling and grammar were atrocious and it was 1998; I was fourteen – I knew nothing about writing, let alone terrorism! But I’m still quite fond of that story. I think writing it was the moment I knew I really wanted to be a writer. It was the first time I’d tried to tell my own story, something original and uniquely my own, and it was the kind of story I’d want to read myself. Even now, twelve years later, that’s still why I write: to tell stories I’d want to read. I think if you ever start writing for any other reason, it’s time to put down your pen.

I haven’t posted an update on my writing in a while but it’s been going well over the last couple of months. I’ve got a lot further with my novel; most of the storyline is plotted now and I’m starting to flesh out the back-story before I start on a first draft. In the meantime I’m writing a couple of short stories which should be finished in the next month or so (but don’t hold me to it!). One of them is a modern fable about beauty and ageing, a slightly different take on an old theme.

I’m also starting a new project tomorrow which I’m very excited about. I’m announcing it now but it’s actually been something of an open secret for the last few weeks, so you might already know about it if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

So what is the project? Basically I want to try something a little different. From tomorrow I’m going to be publishing a micronovel via Twitter and Facebook. It’s called Sleepless, a story I’ve been developing for a couple of years now and it’s really an experiment as much as a novel.

The idea is that I want to try to write a story specifically for social media like Twitter and Facebook. A lot of writers have published works on Twitter and Facebook before so the idea is nothing new, but personally I think they’ve been going about it the wrong way. Twitter and Facebook are excellent tools for writers but they weren’t meant to be used like that; publishing a short story – let alone a full novel – takes thousands of updates. It’s just not practical and it becomes confusing and hard to follow.

The idea of building a community is also something that is essential to social media but many writers seem to misuse it. They don’t engage their community; they have a one-way dialogue with their readers, rather than an ongoing conversation. But the feedback and interaction that a social community provides is one of its biggest strengths and I think that should be embraced.

What I’m getting at is that I think social media should be treated as a new format entirely, with different rules. Writers shouldn’t be treating Twitter and Facebook as another publishing platform; rather they should be writing stories for Twitter and Facebook and posting them live, so readers can follow and share in the experience of creating a work.

Likewise the way writers approach stories should be different. Many people access Twitter and Facebook on their phones and they’re only online for a few minutes at a time. Expecting them to sit and read through large chunks of text is unrealistic. Instead I think writers need to find a new way of telling stories for that format by condensing their work.

That’s what I want to do with the micronovel. The idea of a micronovel is to tell the same story as an ordinary novel but in a condensed fashion. It doesn’t mean turning a novel into a short story or losing the structure of a novel. Rather it’s an exercise in brevity, where you find new ways to tell the story and explore the characters in fewer words. The finished product is about the length of a novella but in the end should still feel like you’ve read a whole novel.

Micronovels are something that more and more writers are experimenting with, particularly as Twitter and internet-capable phones have grown in popularity. They’re designed to be easy to read on mobiles and in many ways they’re inspired by Japanese mobile novels (keitai shousetsu), which are incredibly popular in Japan. Some people think it’s the future of storytelling, particularly for a generation used to so many distractions.

Personally I see micronovels and microfiction as more of an interesting experiment, something which could help to push the boundaries of fiction, particularly online. Certain kinds of stories could suit the format well, particularly minimalist fiction and stream of consciousness, and that’s kind of what I want to do with Sleepless.

I’ve talked about the story itself a little before. It’s about Jake Morgan, a man who wakes from a coma after almost twelve years. But the world he finds himself in is very different, a post-9/11 world, and his wife Rachel has remarried – and he has a son. As he begins to adapt to his new environment, Jake begins to form a relationship with his son. But he keeps wondering if he’s still the same man he was before.

At its heart the story is about the relationship between Jake and his son but it’s also a sad love story as Jake remembers his relationship with Rachel in flashbacks. It’s also a way of looking at how much the world has changed in the last ten years by seeing it through Jake’s eyes.

I’d always planned to write Sleepless as a short novel and I still do, but I think this is a good way of telling a version of the story now while it’s still fresh in my mind. The story should lend itself quite well to the format, particularly as a lot of it is told in flashbacks.

I’ll be starting it tomorrow and I’ll try to update it when I have a free moment; when I’m out on my phone or at home, etc. I imagine some errors will get through and it’ll probably go in new directions I hadn’t planned (as all stories do), but it should feel very organic and I think it’s a great opportunity for readers to see how a story evolves as its written.

If you’d like to read the story you can follow it on Facebook and on Twitter. I’ll also post it on my blog once it’s finished. What I’d like is to build up a small community as that interaction is part of the experiment as well, to see how it helps to shape the novel. So I hope you can follow along. And if you know anyone else who might be interested, it’d be great if you could let them know as well.

But to be honest, it’s an experiment and I have no idea how it’s going to go. If it works then it could be great… or it could just all fall apart! Either way it should be interesting. And I think that’s kind of the attraction for me as well, the idea of trying something new and different… it’s exciting.

It reminds me again of Toni Morrison’s quote and when I was writing my first story. I had no idea what I was doing but I knew I had a story I wanted to tell, and so I found my way. It was exciting; it made me want to write every spare moment I had, and that’s how I feel about this story too.

As a writer that’s what it’s all about for me… that feeling is the reason I write. So I think that’s a good sign. Anything else that comes from it is just a bonus.

I’ll be starting Sleepless tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it. Wish me luck. 😉