Z is for… Zen in the Art of Writing (Ray Bradbury) (Book)

The last of my two last A-Z challenge posts – my other post this morning was about zombies and I think I feel like one now (next year I WILL complete most if not all of my blog posts before hand and schedule them – I will also pick a much easier and shorter topic – sorry so many posts including this one have been up a little late – what can I say I’m busy!).

Anyway the Z post for my PhD challenge is a review of another book on writing by a writer.

This is one of my early purchases and it was inspired by seeing someone’s signature line with the quote:
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’

For Ray writing was seen as a tonic or cure to the stresses of everyday life – to not write was to die.

I’m guessing he may have been a pantser type by this quote: ‘In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.’

‘The problem for any writer in any field is being circumcised by what has gone before…’
Is this an unhealthy relationship maybe within writing?

I’m going to enjoy this series of essays – he also recommends Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer which I recently bought.

The zen part is about relaxing into your writing work – I love this quote which is very very OT – ‘So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers, body, blood and heart do.’

I’m hoping to do some more fiction writing soon – how about you?

A-Z over and out.

Z is for… Zombies -  In the Flesh

I watched the BBC3 3 episode series In the Flesh this weekend. This is an interesting take on zombies.

The main character is Kieron – a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer (the politically correct term for zombies).

A treatment has been found that helps the PDS victims feel again and they begin to be reintegrated back into society. Needing to use contacts to cover their staring eyes and mousse to pink up their pale complexions they can’t eat or drink without nasty eliminations of their waste.

Kieron is haunted by images of the last person he killed when in his untreated state and is at first reluctant to go home (other reasons for this reluctance are also explored).

Also despite a law to protect them from discrimination there are enough people who want him and everyone like him dead again.

Kieron is sensitively played by Luke Newberry who played the uncredited Teddy Lupin in the last Harry Potter film epilogue scene (I’ll have to look out for him when I next watch it).

The reason this works so well – it’s about human relationships and love and loss and second chances.

Highly recommended.

The other zombie series I have waiting to be watched are The Walking Dead and Dead Set – I also have Warm Bodies to read and look forward to the DVD release.

And that’s it – the final post of my A-Z of Supernatural, Sci-Fi and Fantasy TV series. Thanks for all of your comments – I hope you’ve discovered at least one new show to enjoy. Do come back if you have, and let me know what you think.

Y is for… Your story too

In this world we often feel alone and until we hear other people’s stories we might continue to feel that way.
I have spoken to a number of PhD students and soon began to realise that my sense of confusion in trying to determine my direction was not completely unique.

Today I attended the PGR conference (Post Graduate Researcher) at work and presented my poster – I shared the abstract for it in my B post and below is how it looks printed in the abstract booklet.

The graduate school offered to print the posters but for one reason or another I didn’t manage to get my poem ready on time. I decided to ask if I could be a little more creative with my poster – go old school and hand make it. I was a little anxious about doing so but thankfully I had positive feedback, including a mention by the keynote speaker who was talking about public engagement. So I’ve decided to share it here with you in the hopes that you might recognise aspects of the story and not feel so alone. Scroll down for a brief review of the process of making it  if you are interested (click on the image to zoom in).

The poster is made from four pieces of A3 watercolour paper hole-punched and knitted together with wool (with extra tape on the back). This symbolised the bringing together of lots of ideas into a whole. The title indicated the format, circles (in purple pastel mixed with water and lavender acrylic) with square 1 in the middle. Blackness shows the frustration. The fact that I used gold paint made me use the image of prospecting in the poem. The circles didn’t quite reach to the edge on the left hand side so I made a gold ‘book spine’ for my circular PhD story.
When I cut out the lines of the poem there were too many to fit in single lines so I grouped them. Most are in the top half of the circle symbolising the period of confusion start on the outer circle, read the top line and the line below – move round that circle and then back to the next circle).
I decided to spread the rest out at the bottom – as I started to see the light and find my direction.
Looking at the poem itself I had fun especially when talking about the different methodologies I’ve explored. I also used the bookish links because of my creative writing topic focus.
It’s not perfect but I think it reflects how I was feeling at the time – I also enjoyed playing with the glue gun and laminator.

Just one more post left to go on Zen and the Art of Writing.

So does any of this resonate as your story too?

Y is for… Your Favourites

I couldn’t find any Supernatural, Sci-Fi or Fantasy shows beginning with Y (that I’ve seen) so I thought that for today I’d leave it up to you to share your favourites.

It can be shows I’ve already mentioned or ones you think I’ve omitted.

Please comment with the title and your reasons for recommending – a must see episode, a ballsy character, the writing or anything else.

Thanks for taking part – come back tomorrow for the final post – on zombies!

X is for… X doesn’t mark the spot

Completing qualitative research isn’t a search for a universal truth but a contextual one.
It also isn’t a simple case of turning the page and finding the answer staring back at you.

Image courtesy of Winnond/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s more like an x-ray – which needs reading and interpreting.

Image courtesy of arztsamui/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Or even exploring a treasure map with a number of ‘x’s to mark many spots.

Truth is:
Multiple
Subjective
Created

It is the qualitative researcher’s responsibility to document full, rich description to allow the consumer of research to analyse similarities to and differences from their own context and make appropriate judgements based on clinical reasoning.

So, to link up with my other X post for today my catchphrase won’t be the X-Files ‘The Truth is Out There’ but rather ‘The Truth is in You’.

What do you think about the exploration for truth?

X is for… X-Files

Now for my x post in the 2011 challenge I wrote about The X-Files and my full on geekdom surrounding it – you can see my full post here -  ‎but rather than write something new I’m just going to plagiarise myself and pull out the relevant part for this year’s challenge.

The X-Files stars David Duchovny as Fox Mulder, a believer in extra-terrestrial life and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully a skeptic. They work for the FBI to solve/investigate X-Files, unexplained or spooky cases and they are dab hands at holding torches and guns at the same time! Other notable characters were Alex Krycek (who I thought, along with Mulder, was somewhat dishy), Skinner, The Cigarette Smoking Man and The Lone Gunmen (men!!).

I am ashamed to admit that despite owning the DVDs I have never actually watched all of the X-Files [This still hold true two years later - hangs head in shame]. To be honest I know I watched up to S6 but after that just looking at the episode titles on imdb.com I’m not sure. I haven’t watched S9 or the second film for sure. The thing is it’s now too late down the line to just watch the last few series, I’m going to have to start from the beginning to get back into it.

The series spawned two major catchphrases, ‘The Truth is Out There’ and ‘I Want to Believe’. The first in the show refers mainly to Mulder’s search for the truth about what happened to his sister who he believes was abducted by aliens, and obviously more generally for the process of discovery or solving the spooky cases (which Dana likes to attribute to a neat scientific cause). The catchphrase has been used by conspiracy theorists to refer to government ‘cover-ups’ such as Area 51 and the Roswell alien crash landing and alien autopsy video. The second ‘I Want to Believe’ is on a poster along with a picture of a flying saucer in the agents’ office. Now I’m not entirely sure that personally I want to believe. For all of my ‘love’ of this genre when people start talking to me about real life ghosts or if I stop too long to consider the existence of any extra-terrestrials that are not ET or the kids from Escape to/Return From Witch Mountain (love these films) then I get a bit freaked out (though I still sit and watch things to fuel these fears like Independence Day, V, War of the Worlds etc etc -idiot!).

Despite the show being about aliens and the paranormal the episode that most clearly sticks out in my mind as being the most creepy and scary was Home (S4, E2). This concerns an icky case of serious in-breeding and is more akin to a horror film, deformed monsters in the woods type, not my favourite type of horror at all. I like my horror all self-referential and comic and jumpy like the Scream franchise. The episodes Squeeze (S1, E3) and Tooms (S1, E20) were also creepy, especially his ‘nest’.

The other thing that The X-Files did was to make me notice that some series creators give actual titles to episodes, this is something I enjoy (with Buffy, Angel, Charmed, Gilmore Girls etc) in seeing what meaning they may place on an episode and what pop-culture references they make with them.

But the element of The X-Files that I enjoyed the most was the will they, won’t they relationship tension between Mulder and Scully. Their relationship made this otherwise otherworldly show seem real and their characters got me invested in their search.

What TV shows have you loved but never finished?

Do you believe/want to believe? Remember I might get scared if you share too many freaky stories

W is for… Why I Write (Orwell) (Book)

This is a short little book containing four essays written by George Orwell. The one I was most interested in, is the 10 page title essay – Why I Write.

As a side note I didn’t realise he was so young when he died, only 47. A quick Google told me that he had tuberculosis. Even more surprising was that he wrote 1984 when he was ill publishing it just a year before his death.

Some choice snippets from this essay:

He talks about making up his own story – writing his life descriptively in his head (p.3)

Subject matter is determined by age the writer lives in (p.4)

Before starting writing one acquires an emotional attitude from which you can’t escape (p.4)

To escape early influences might kill the ‘impulse to write’ (p.4)

Other than for money, four main reasons to write – shifts in balance or focus on these over time:
1. Sheer egoism e.g. to be remembered
2. Aesthetic enthusiasms e.g. Perception of beauty ‘in words and their right arrangement’
3. Historical impulse e.g. Record for posterity
4. Political purpose e.g. ‘Desire to push the world in a certain direction’ (p.4-5)

‘every book is a failure’ (p.10)

‘Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand’ (p.10)

He concludes by saying that his political purpose is his driving force.

Do you recognise elements of the four main reasons to write in you? Which do you think is most important at this time?

What do you think he meant by ‘every book is a failure’ – this isn’t expanded on – is it self confidence or something else?

Do you voice-over your life, e.g. ‘Kirsty walks into the pub, spies the pool tables and fishes the 50p out of purse at the request of a friend.’? (I don’t think I do normally)

Thanks to Colin Smith for awarding me the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award.

This award comes with some rules and I will obey some and break others. Below is the award logo and also my completion of the sentence ‘A great reader is…’
The bit I’m going to break is listing 14 other people to give this award to – Sorry Colin hope you don’t mind. I’m not one for chain mails etc either. If I like what the mail says I forward it but where possible take out the send this to x no of people bit. I will however say a huge thank you to Colin in particular who has commented lots on my blog during this challenge and thank you too to each and everyone of you who have commented this month and before, especially if you’ve come back more than once – that has been very appreciated. In short I would give this to everyone who has taken time to read what I’ve written whether you’ve commented or not.

A great reader is one who reads their own story as well as the one that is written.

W is for… Wonderfalls

I’m not sure how many of you will have heard of Wonderfalls. Just one season of 13 episodes, this was a wacky little show that reminds me of the BBC kids series Shoebox Zoo in some ways though this is much odder.

Jaye works in the Falls souvenir shop at Niagra Falls when inanimate objects start talking to her and guiding her to act based on their often cryptic warnings.

This was a fun and quirky series that was probably always destined to be cancelled too soon.

And a quick nod to Wizards of Waverley Place

A Disney channel show about three wizard siblings; Max, Alex and Justin. When older they must compete to become the only wizard in the family. For now they go to school, work in the family restaurant and learn what they can about magic.

I think my favourite character is Hugh Normous who they meet at Wizard School – he thinks he’s a giant and just has really small things around him to try and feel bigger.

So, do you remember Wonderfalls?
If an inanimate object started talking to you how do you think you’d react?

V is for… Victory

Today’s post was going to be called ‘Value the Personal’ but I think I’ve already made the point that I think it is important to value personal experience, opinion, biases etc etc in research so instead I’m going to share a short personal PhD victory.

Today I had supervision, my overarching research question finally looks good – my sub-questions need tweaking because I’ve made them too closed and they need to be open! There are too many of them so I get to cut some out for the time being. I consider this a victory. I feel comfortable with what I have down.

Wish me this as an ongoing feeling.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net