I have had a great time blogging for you all, and I appreciate the comments you have made and the interest you have shown over the past 2.5 years. I would not have kept going for so long had that not been the case.

I want to thank Monika for giving me such free rein, and for never editing me or even suggesting I might want to change tack. She has really allowed me to blog here as though it’s been my own website, and I truly appreciate the confidence she has placed in me.

I especially want to thank her for very clearly letting me blog beyond the time when she would have liked me to call it a day. I know that’s true because within a few hours of saying I was quitting, she had put the website up for sale. Bless her for that.

I hope I have raised a few smiles over the years, and, just occasionally, may have provided something more profound in my more thoughtful musings.

The most treasured gift I am taking away from this experience, though, is my friendship with fellow ex-blogger George Angus, aka Tumblemoose. I have never met the man, but we Skype when we can and we are dead-set on hooking up with each other in person one of these fine days. And that, my friends, is the essence of our writing: communication. Reaching out and finding someone who clicks with you. It is surely the best reason in the world to be tapping away at the keyboard.

So, thank you to everyone who has followed me, and please do occasionally pop by my own website at markpepper.com. It’s rather neglected, but I hope soon to be publishing my third novel, Veteran Avenue, as an ebook on Amazon and/or Smashwords (no doubt with much help from George), so as and when that happens I will put a note on the site.

Hasta luego!

I grimace when I read a piece of professional writing that stumbles or stutters or mumbles to a degree that makes me stop and have to backtrack to make sense of it. If I falter when I’m reading something I want it to be because I’ve been moved or perhaps shocked by the message. I want it to be because the freelance writer has triumphed in their communication. They have spoken and I have heard.

Missteps in communication on the writer’s part make the reader feel like they have suddenly run from solid ground into a bog. It’s even more disappointing when everything leading up to that point has been so fluent, because it suggests a lazy attitude is at fault rather than a lack of writing talent. There should be no place in professional freelance writing for “oh, that’ll do”.

The writing that is easiest to read is often hardest to perform. With good writing, the focus is not on big or clever words or a large volume of words; the focus is on communication – the most effective way to relay the intended message. Indeed, a good piece of writing may not feature any words that a ten-year-old wouldn’t understand. It is not the words themselves; it is the correct placement of them that matters. Small words are fine. Short sentences are dandy. Whatever works to enhance the communication between the writer and the reader. Consider The Dictionary of Quotations. An effective quotation is simply the fullest encapsulation of meaning in the most concise form so that the reader receives the message loud and clear. It doesn’t have to be flowery or verbose to have an impact. You can read an entire book and say, “Uh-huh”, or you can read one quotation and say, “Wow”.

Effective communication in writing can take time. It involves the willingness to re-read and re-write. Professional deadlines are bound to work against that process to a certain extent, but they should not become a ready excuse that ends up defining your writing no matter how much time is available. Before you know it, you’ll hear yourself saying “Oh, that’ll do” when you know deep down that it really won’t.

What spurred me to write on this subject was a news headline I read the other day. To be fair, writing news headlines is a skill in itself. I read a lot of news headlines in my work, and even the journos at Reuters and Bloomberg can struggle at times to make sense in their headlining of articles.

So I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that a local town newspaper came out with this frown-worthy effort: “Young father dies suddenly at home of cricket“. This wasn’t an interpretation by Google News; it was in the web link to the article as well.

Let’s set aside the clearly tragic nature of the news and try to make sense of the headline. Maybe it’s clear to you from one glance, but I was flummoxed. To my mind, a young father was at home when he died of cricket. Assuming that didn’t mean a particularly aggressive insect, I could only surmise that he had been playing the game of cricket and had then keeled over. Or perhaps he had been fatally hit by a cricket ball in his garden.

Eventually, I had to open the article and read the content to understand. Immediately I got it. I got it because the headline had been altered, presumably because someone had pointed out the potential confusion. It now read: “Tributes paid to Caterham father who died suddenly at Lord’s”.

Lord’s is a cricket ground which is thought of as the home of cricket.

I’ll leave you with this, which I think is a rather lovely end to my week. I just checked my emails and I have one from my bank telling me: “You have 1 important massage”. You know, that’s just what I need at the end of a stressful week. Say what you like about the banks being arseholes these past few years, but this level of personal service goes a long way to redress the balance. I will be taking my Egyptian cotton towel and dewberry massage oil into my local branch first thing tomorrow morning and draping myself across the nearest desk. I hope I get the pretty teller. The one without the moustache.

This was a phrase coined by Stephen King. It describes the imaginary movie projector inside a reader’s head that allows the world of the novel to come to life as though the words on the page are transmuting into celluloid images. Ideally, at the end of the novel, you should feel like you have already watched the movie of the novel.

From a reader’s point of view, it’s a concept that strikes a chord with me; it’s how I experience a novel. From an erstwhile novelist’s point of view, however, it is the total underpinning of everything I have written creatively – my two published novels, my one unpublished, and everything else I have dabbled in over the years from lovelorn poetry to kill-em-all screenplay. Everything I have written is stored visually in my head in exactly the same way as any movie I have seen. When I was working through plot scenarios, I “watched” various scenes as a movie director might, then considered which would work best for the novel. In my head, I see the final cut of my novels the same now as when I turned my keystrokes into actions around 15 years ago.

One question I have is whether Skull Cinema is a universal experience. From my time as a teacher, I am well aware that there are numerous styles of pupil learning. Although visual is usually the first one listed – which is best for Skull Cinema – there are others, such as aural, verbal, and kinaesthetic. Do these people with other learning styles “see” the novel as the visual people do? If they don’t, how do they actually receive it?

The other big question I have is how the hell I can revert to my original skull viewing experience when some twat of a movie director has created a celluloid version that poops all over my initial take on events.

Specifically, I am referring to Hollywood’s recent incarnation of English novelist Lee Child’s anti-hero Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher has been around for a good number of years, and I am very surprised it’s taken so long for Hollywood to cotton on. The Jack Reacher novels have always been movies waiting to happen. Nothing fancy, just strong storylines, interesting characters, and extremely well-written. Reacher is a man alone. He is The Man With No Name who has a name. He is Dirty Harry for the modern age.

In terms of character, I have to say Reacher is something of a cliché for an anti-hero. An ex-military policeman, he is 6′ 5″ tall, has a 50-inch chest, weighs around 250 pounds, and has ice-blue eyes and dirty blond hair. He is the kind of person you would conjure up if you needed someone to kick the crap out of your bullying boss. But, on paper, he works. You forget the cliché. Child’s writing is so good that you are slapped down into your burgundy velour seat in your local Skull Cinema, and you just accept.

So … wanna guess who they cast to star as Jack Reacher in the first of what I imagine will be a series of films?

None other than the Diddy Dianetic himself, Tom Cruise. Tom help-me-onto-that-bar-stool Cruise. Measuring in at a foot shorter than the paper Reacher, Cruise also fails on every other character descriptor. No barn-door chest, no blue eyes, no blond hair. Reacher? Only if you need him to switch the light on for you.

God bless him, I love him, but Tom Cruise is small. The only way to make him look tall is to surround him with Oompa Loompas. Which is what I think they did in the internet teaser for the movie that I watched recently. A group of aggressive Oompa Loompas crowd in and Cruise warns them off, as Nathan Hunt or practically any other Cruise character would warn them off: “Remember, you wanted this …”

The Oompa Loompas then swarm under him, pick him up, and carry him off to coat him in chocolate.

Uh … sorry, that’s a dream I had.

Anyway, that’s it with Jack Reacher for me. I have a novel unread in the basement and I can’t read it now. Jacker Reacher is Tom Cruise and he is fighting off Oompa Loompas. It’s in my head, in my Skull Cinema.

I’d prefer Dolph Lundgren. I’d even prefer Steven Seagal with a blond wig if he could stay off his eat-like-Elvis-before-his-death diet for a few weeks. Anything but Tom Cruise.

RIP Jack Reacher.

I say this because a friend of mine some years ago applied for a technical writing job in the games development arena, despite not knowing anything about games development. What he did have in his favour was the abovementioned set of writing skills and some decent intelligence. And he liked playing computer games. With those attributes, he got the job. His employer recognised that he possessed the most important part of the job spec already; a steep learning curve could quickly teach him what he needed to know on the technical side. A smart employer will always recognise the importance of good foundation writing skills in a person; those skills without which all the technical knowledge in the world is pretty redundant because they can never be conveyed with any literary prowess.

On the back of this job, my friend ended up moving to the States to pursue his technical writing career.

So, with that in mind, I will now further prove my point by tackling the subject of the Higgs boson.

You’ve no doubt seen on the news that some top physicists in Switzerland recently lost their decorum and went distinctly X-Factor on us, hugging each other and whooping and hollering.

Their cause for celebration? Well, bearing in mind I am not a physicist, let me break it down for you. Essentially, they’ve been searching for 50 years for something they haven’t seen before, and they’re now ecstatic because, having found something they haven’t seen before, they assume it must be the something they haven’t seen before that they’ve been searching for for 50 years. I think that’s right. You see how easily technical writing can be achieved by the layman?

The reason I can explain it all so fluently is because there’s nothing much to explain. Fifty years ago, a science bod named Higgs suggested that there must be an as-yet-undiscovered particle which is the basis of our entire universe. That’s not such a startling conjecture, if you ask me. It all sounds perfectly feasible, and it’s a theory that can never be refuted on the basis that if it’s not discovered it’s not because it doesn’t exist, it’s just that we haven’t found it yet. I think I would be equally valid in positing that all things began from marmalade.

Anyway, these people have recently been hunkered down beneath a mountain in Switzerland, using a thing called the Large Hadron Collider to clash atoms and other very small things (pet rodents when they’re very bored) into each other at the speed of light in the hope of seeing something they haven’t previously seen, and, one would hope, in the hope of not blowing us all to shit. (As a writer, I’m not too happy with the connotations of the word “Collider”. Collisions are never good. If one of your family members comes home and tells you they’ve had a collision, you don’t say, “Oh, then we must celebrate. Where did I put that special-occasion Champagne?”)

What makes matters worse is that there is even a big question mark over whether it is actually the Higgs boson. But there would be, wouldn’t there? How can you positively liken something you’ve never seen before to something someone thought might possibly exist but couldn’t describe?

If these people really want to be taken seriously, they need to deal in real-world conjecture. Particles schmarticles. I’d be happier if they suggested that somewhere out there is a juggling aardvark called Nigel. We’d at least get a Pixar movie out of it.

And if it is the Higgs boson, what can it be used for? Nothing – yet. They don’t know and I hope they never find out. I don’t like scientists discovering new stuff. The Universe has done a pretty good job of holding itself together for a number of years without some bearded people (men and women) understanding why. If they ever do find out how it was formed, I have no doubt they will go right ahead and unform it for us. The fact that they built the Large Hadron Collider inside a mountain makes me think they’re not too confident in their ability to keep a lid on things, although, as they’re playing with forces responsible for The Big Bang, I don’t think having a roof made out of a mountain is going to help them if their little experiments go awry. That’s like cupping your hands around 10 lbs of Semtex and thinking you’ll contain the blast.

Remember: these are the people who brought you the atomic bomb, which will at some point inevitably fall into the hands of sun-baked Iranian fruitcake, President Armoured Dinner Jacket. No Large Hadron Collider required then, eh? Just a red button.

No, they’re far too clever for their own good, scientists – and for our own good. They seem to think that just because something can be done, it should be done, but that theory rather collapses when you look at endeavours such as Russian Roulette, Bungee Jumping and Competitive Eating. Now I’ve said that, you watch some idiot go off and combine the three of them.

Well, I think I’ve made my point. Technical writing. Easy Peasy.

This development, according to the Journal, “reflects the growing need for physical book retailers to get a piece of the digital business”. But in the very next paragraph, it said: “The gains in digital reading have also called into question the future of booksellers like Waterstones”.

Am I alone in thinking this is all a bit counterintuitive?

A physical bookseller is being threatened by the growth in digital readers so starts selling digital readers in its stores.

Let me mock up a conversation between the store manager at the cash register and the buyer of said digital reader.

Store manager: That’s just £99.
Buyer: Here’s £100. Keep the change – you need it more than me.
Store manager: Thank you. And you come back and see us again soon.
Buyer: What?
Store manager: Come back and visit us again soon.
Buyer: Why would I do that?
Store manager: Eh?
Buyer: Look at what you’ve just sold me. Why would I need to set foot in a bookshop ever again?
Store manager: Oh. Yeah. Shit.

Talk about desperation stakes. This is like a family of deers who run a coffee shop in a Texas state park during hunting season deciding to open a hunting rifle section because they’re not making enough on their Cinnamon Spice Mochas.

Waterstones, in its defence, says it wants a chance to craft a “digital environment” based on the Kindle in its physical stores.

I don’t think that means anything. If I had to guess, I think they think that Kindle owners, rather than sitting in the comfort of their own home choosing ebooks to buy off their computer, or off the Kindle itself, will traipse down to their local Waterstones to visit its “digital environment”.

No, that definitely doesn’t mean anything. I suspect Amazon may have had a hand in creating the notion of a “digital environment”, and some fool at Waterstones just bought into it.

No doubt it will help Waterstones make a bit more revenue in the short term, but it won’t ultimately save them or any other bookstore from the fate suffered by Borders last year. It’s not that people will stop wanting to buy physical books; it’s that, at some point, there won’t be enough of them to create the kind of footfall needed to keep the physical bookstores out of Chapter 11.

That’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not the eleventh section of a book.

A year later, still unemployed, he’s back in his village hall doing amdram Agatha Christie in front of six people.

When a blog or an article goes viral, it’s a freelance writer’s dream come true. It’s not Harry Potter, but it doesn’t need to be. A window opens up in which you can make hay while the sun is briefly shining through it. I wrote a few weeks back about an 85-year-old woman who works for the Grand Forks Herald who became “an internet sensation”, thanks to a restaurant review she wrote on her local, newly-opened Olive Garden restaurant:

http://www.thewritersmanifesto.com/blog/2012/03/14/sensational-seriously/

She was feted in New York, interviewed by everyone who was anyone, and, the last I heard, was signing a book deal. Her review was pedestrian and entirely unshocking, and yet it caused no end of fuss.

Now, we have the story of 9 year-old Scottish girl, Martha Payne, whose blog NeverSeconds has seen her catapulted into the pages of the world’s most prestigious newspapers. We’re talking the print versions of The New York Times and Financial Times, to name but two.

What the fugoodness sake, what the hell is going on?

NeverSeconds is a blog about Miss Payne’s school meals. She has been taking pictures of them and then grading and critiquing them.

When her local council found out, they banned her from taking a camera into school as they said the blog had led to the school canteen staff “being accused of child abuse”. I would have thought the school might have had a camera ban in force already, but that’s beside the point.

After millions more hits to the blog, and an outcry about freedom of speech, the council was forced to reverse the ban, and so she can keep on dishing the dirt – pun intended.

The blog is so-named because none of the pupils are offered seconds. Considering how fat and unhealthy many kids are these days, I would have thought that particular policy was the antithesis of child abuse.

Anyway, it all seems like yet another fuss about bugger all.

But there’s another point that strikes me about this story, and it’s this: no way on God’s Green Earth did a 9 year-old girl write this blog. I know what the UK education system is like from my teaching days. Sorry to be cynical, but this is just too well done. I don’t mean the technical side of the blog – I would expect an adult’s input on that – I mean the spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc. Most adult blogs I read are littered with such mistakes. Even the professional websites of world-class companies fall prey to the odd cock-up.

From what I’ve read of it, this blog looks error-free, and it’s more than a matter of employing spell-check. The sentences flow, there is proper hyphenation, apostrophes are in the right place, and full-stops are where they should be even when the last part of the sentence is in parentheses. All things many adults get wrong.

But not, I suspect, Miss Payne’s parents.

Unless this girl is a freelance-writing prodigy, then her input is limited. She obviously takes the photos and forms her 9 year-old opinion on the lunches, but the final crafting of the blog is down to a far more developed brain. You’ll see what I mean if you visit the blog. It’s an odd melding of childish assessment (“I chose an omelette over the sausages … It was really nice and tasted of cheese”) and adult execution. It’s all a bit disingenuous, if you ask me.

Next thing you know, she’ll have a book deal and be (not) authoring a recipe book.

I give up.

Here’s the New York Times link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/world/europe/girl-9-gives-school-lunch-failing-grade.html?ref=todayspaper

Baldrick, have you no idea what “irony” is?
Yes, it’s like “goldy” and “bronzy” only it’s made out of iron.

Classic Blackadder. Anyway, irony must make me laugh just as much as funny because I laughed out loud when reading the story. I don’t think the headline helped very much. Written by the illustrious Associated Press, the journalist responsible (as opposed to the responsible journalist – always good to make that distinction with journalists) plumped for a longer headline that explained the entire article rather than something snappy that kept the surprise for the body of the article itself:

“Man writing book called ‘The Kindness of America’ shot while hitchhiking in Montana.”

I’m sorry, forgive me, I just sniggered again.

Hey, and you thought freelance writing was a safe and sedentary endeavour. Apparently not for Ray Dolin, 39, of West Virginia. To quote the AP, he was a week into “hitchhiking across the country and writing a memoir about kindness” when he was shot for no sane reason.

Dolin was eating his lunch beside the road when a car pulled up. Obviously thinking this would be another one for the book – a motorist stopping to pick him up without even being waved down – Dolin approached the car and was promptly shot in the arm. He’s now recovering in hospital, and the perp was swiftly caught. Good news if you’re planning something similar because you also think hitchhiking alone in the American wilderness isn’t a recipe for disaster. You and Dolin clearly don’t watch the same movies I do.

Apparently, the whole state of Montana is now in therapy, as the local sheriff is quoted as saying: “We’re still the wonderful people in Montana we’ve always been, and we’ll get through this.”

Yes, a mostly wonderful state peppered with the odd nutcase. I think Dolin should continue his trip but with the intention of writing about all the assholes he meets along the way. That way, if good ol’ irony hops in his rucksack again, he should have a perfectly pleasant journey.

Here’s the link if you want to read the whole thing: http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/238502/

UPDATE 19 June

This story gets better and better. I just stumbled across an update this morning, and it’s a hoot. You can read the article at the link below, but here’s the gist. Unable to find any evidence against the man they’d arrested, police became suspicious and returned to the scene of the shooting and found a Derringer pistol in a nearby field. The gun traced back to Dolin, who had bought it before leaving home.

Yes, that’s right. Dolin bought himself a gun and shot himself in the arm to create publicity for his book.

Now that’s what you call desperate.

But, you know what? I bet he’ll make a fortune.

http://thetandd.com/news/national/hitchhiker-shooting-seen-as-hoax-when-no-gun-found/article_c25efed2-8e97-5c43-99d4-b820d8f34e93.html

Yah, right.

No one likes rejection of any kind. I don’t care how old you are, it sucks. Adults may be more adept at masking their true feelings, but they are still there. The best you can hope for is that you become so used to rejection that you become somewhat emotionally inured to the whole thing.

I appreciate how that sounds: I am suggesting rejection is good for you. But if you ever want to make a career out of freelance writing or any other art, then, initially at least, you’d better learn to love it.

Rejection is the submerged stepping stone in that river you need to cross. Most of those stones are submerged and you’re going to get uncomfortably cold and wet as you progress, but you need to find them if you are to reach the ones that are high and dry, and thus further your trip to the other side.

Remember also that no one is rejected all the time. Don’t take my word for it; look at the amount of duff writing out there that someone paid for. It should have been rejected but it wasn’t. Take heart that your skills are better than that and so your chances of success are inevitably higher.

I have lost count of how many times I have been professionally rejected. Most of those rejections happened as an actor rather than a freelance writer, and in many cases the stakes in terms of money and notoriety were far greater than with the writing. Every rejection upset me, but I kept on going. And I found that each rejection upset me a little less because I was not so surprised.

You also might not be missing out as much as you think you are. Don’t let the negatives cloud the truth. Towards the end of my acting career I asked my agent what a good success rate might be in interview. He said 1 out of 10 would be about average. I had been hitting 1 out of 3 or 4 for nearly 20 years. My problem was a lack of interviews. In freelance writing, there are not the same obstacles between you and your potential clients. You can make your own introductions.

The trick, though, is more difficult than just getting used to rejection. What’s essential is that you don’t allow each rejection to increase your feelings of DEjection. Dejection carries across in your work. It steals the spark from it. It robs you of your belief that this time the outcome will be different. Dejection is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Try not to take it personally when you fail to secure a freelance writing project. You have no idea what machinations contrived to draw it away from you. In our current economy, it may simply be that you asked for a living wage and the other guy didn’t.

Above all, remember that freelance writing is your choice. You weren’t conscripted against your will. You were assuredly lured in by all that you believed this career had to offer, but no promises were ever made to you and you can leave whenever you want.

Okay, to be fair, she is probably defining her new offering as an adult book to make sure it isn’t bought for children. I imagine there will be some swearing, death, and fornication in it. Which means the Potter series could be classed as being of universal appeal, rather than just for children. However, as an adult myself, I am not particularly attracted to anything on paper or celluloid that doesn’t contain plenty of the abovementioned swearing, death and fornication. A cloak of invisibility doesn’t do it for me.

Or I like the material to be laugh-out-loud funny. Speaking of which, Rowling’s new book is entitled “The Casual Vacancy”, and is, according to her publisher, “blackly comic”. I’m not sure we can or should read anything into that. I can’t recall too many belly laughs in the Potter films. We’ll see.

Well, I won’t, as I will not be buying it. Not only do I not want to be proven wrong on my assumption it may not be very funny, I also don’t fancy shelling out the euro equivalent of $35 for it in hard cover. Or $20 as an e-book.

On that score, I have changed my mind. I would now, on principal, rather pay more to hold a solid book in my hands, even if that fells a few more Amazonian trees. I resent the idea of paying $20 for a poxy download. There has been a heap of news over the past few months about this – all the price-fixing and dodgy agreements and outrageous behaviour of the big publishers (in cahoots with the rotten Apple). Unless these a-holes want to sell me their electronic words for, say, $5, then they can bloody well build me a real book. I want to see some effort for my hard-earned shekels.

Come on, Potter fans, defend your Queen. There’s a space at the foot of the page for comments. Or would you rather put a spell on me? Oooooo.

Monika put her faith in me and threw a bunch of freelance writing work my way. I learned a lot. Long tailed keyword articles were flying through the email. She helped me understand the Google keyword site and to this day I use that information. In a lot of ways, Monika has served as my mentor in the freelance writing arena. She has been generous and patient, even taking the hit with one of her clients when the work I submitted wasn’t really their cup of tea.

Then, nearly three years ago, she asked if I would contribute here and the saga has been allowed to continue. Four or so articles every month and with each one, I’ve learned a little more about myself and about freelance writing. I’ve been given free reign to post as I please. Really, could a freelance writer ask for a better gig? I think not.

In addition to the learning and the income, I received a huge added bonus. I’ve met Mark Pepper. I knew from the first writing of his that this guy was something special. His writing is funny, punchy and straight from the gut. I love seeing his posts come along because you just never know where he’s going to go next. All you really know is that you need to be strapped in for the ride. In addition to meeting a great writer whom I absolutely respect, I have made a friend. Mark and I have Skyped and developed a relationship I cherish. Number one on my bucket list is to hoist a cold beer with Mark whilst taking in a Spanish sunset. Mark, you rock.

So, if you’ve been paying attention at all, you see where this is going. Recently I have struggled with providing posts of the quality I expect of myself and deserving of the site that Monika has worked so hard to build. I’m in fear of being redundant and of not writing posts that are useful for folks. To that end, it’s time for a change. Time to freshen up the joint a bit. Time to step aside for a fresh voice.

Some of you folks have been faithful in your reading and your commenting. I’ve learned a lot from you and I’m frankly flattered by the loyalty. Thanks a lot.

I suspect I’ll still be around, maybe doing a guest post now and then. I think that this stuff never really leaves your blood. When my passion returns, you folks will be the first to know.

Cheers

George