The Syphilitic Nature of Blogging (Part One)

Writing things in the hope that other people will read them on the internet is such a schizophrenic experience.

Is it acceptable to use mental illness metaphors? I think it might be, even if I’m not being postmodern, but that’s not exactly fair is it? It would hardly be acceptable for me to say blogging is like having Duchenne muscular dystrophy or Down’s syndrome or syphilis. Saying any of those things would be insensitive and incorrect and yet a bipolar person doesn’t make a choice to be out of kilter anymore than a victim of muscular dystrophy does.

Curiously, saying blogging is like having syphilis might be just about acceptable (although inaccurate). I wonder if that’s because syphilis is a STD and therefore inherently comical or because it’s treatable with antibiotics?

I digress; promoting a blog is fraught with conflicts and contradictions. At first I though I was writing for myself but that’s not really true. I write a new blog-post and I’d like people to read it. To advertise the new post I tweet a sheepish link on Twitter to people I’ve mostly never met. From what I can make out a fair number of my Twitter Followers are actually pretend people; some of them sell solutions; storage-solutions (boxes, I think) and communications-solutions (computer-shit). Judging by their friendly and outgoing photographs, some ladies who follow me are promoting relief-solutions, I tend to block them - unless I know them - obviously.

Because of the slightly impersonal nature of twittering I queer-like sort of don’t mind if Twitter Followers pity me, that’d just be Twitter Pity.

As I’ve become bolder I’ve tried to make the promotional tweet a hook, writing lines like, ‘I’ve been looking at ladies legs.’ or name-checking characters that people obsess about, Myra Hindley or Carol Ann Duffy or Hairdresser Ladies; (it might only be me who obsesses about hairdresser ladies - but somehow I Don’t Think So).

To begin with I cravenly tweeted a link to my blog-post in the middle of the night; a quiet time when people are asleep and when my tweet could get buried under the getting up tweets-rush and never be seen again.

However, my Twitter tweet now updates my Facebook status (sorry if that makes no sense at all).

I have met (just about) all of my Facebook friends – I see a fair number of my Facebook friends most days. I don’t mind too much if the storage-solution thinks I’m vain and deluded but it’s a bit different to rub your Facebook friends’ faces in the facts.

In earlier days of Twitter/Facebook synchronisation I’d nervously post a blog link via Twitter, wait a few nail-biting minutes, and then I’d hysterically logon to Facebook and delete the synchronised status update before it could be seen by too many of my (23 plus) Facebook friends.

I was cured of this lunacy (there I go again with my mental illness metaphor) when I deleted a Facebook status update blog link just as someone added the comment, ‘I loved this post! :)’ Of course, the complimentary comment disappeared with the deleted original Facebook status update:

Noooooooo! Your first blog-approval and you deleted it! You were frantic. Yet again it was time to calm down, and weigh up the options, and decide what to do.

Nothing?
Too vain and deluded for that.

Print off the email alert and carry it everywhere with you so it’s handy if it ever crops up in conversation?
Goes without saying.

ReTweet the link and ask your Facebook friend to write his comment again?
Pathetic, are you a complete moron?

ReTweet the link and copy and paste your Facebook friend’s comment from the alert email you received when he posted it?
The reply would still have your name on it, Stupid; how would that look? Think about what you’re considering (and You, stop using learning difficulty-allegory whilst you’re at it).

What I did do was to ReTweet the link in the hope that my Facebook friend was a sympathetic mind-reader who understood about deranged wannabe writers and would write the same comment again. Sadly, not. (I've have got a copy of the comment in my pocket if you want to see it though).

On the topic of deranged wannabe writers I received two disappointing MA Creative Writing marks on the same day several weeks ago. On the strength of my disappointment (in myself) I decided I was going to complete the last two taught modules of my MA and then drop out of the programme without starting the dissertation.

‘That,’ I thought grimly as I bloodily sawed at my nose,’ will show me.’

The marks weren’t awful but they were comparatively low and, worse, I deserved them. I knew I was floundering when I put my Stylistics portfolio together. In the end I felt as if I resorted to writing bottomfishbanana a thousand million times because I just didn’t really get it or know what else to do.

I went to see the programme leader to discuss my decision. She, predictably, told me my marks were creditable. That’s another one of Those Terms isn’t it? Like ‘salt of the earth’ (common) and ‘friendly and outgoing’ (fast) ‘lively writing’ (self conscious, verbose, first draft-type writing). Creditable is kindly meant but it hurts.

But she said something else that did make me reconsider my decision. She said that she could see me submitting work for publication in two or three years time. My reflex reaction was that if I’m not good enough now I don’t want to know. Before I came away I’d realised that I couldn’t expect any greater compliment than what she said; of course it won’t happen overnight. And I’m grateful for her honestly, and her sagacity.

So, if you see me with nasty awkwardly sewn-back nose - horrible black thread and oversized needle-holes (I can never find the right needle) don’t worry; its just my schizophrenia, I mean syphilis, playing up again.

The photograph is of The Minotaur and the Hare by Sophie Ryder in the centre of Cheltenham. Frankie said the Minotaur looks like a nice boyfriend, and despite the fact he’s as friendly and outgoing in his dress sense as some of my relief-solutions Twitter Followers, she right, he does look like nice boyfriend doesn’t he?

Process and Development - and twitting protocol. Wednesday 11 March 2009.

This day we was starting to learn about crafting scenes, dialogue, plotting and back story. All that.

For practice the Writer with the Writerly Name set us an in-class exercise to write about two interesting characters in an interesting place doing something interesting. In addition we had to disclose a third character; divulge a bit of back story; reveal something of the characters of the people in the scene; feature moments with no dialogue; introduce a crisis. I had a vicar and a tart dry stone walling up Beacon Fell, the third character (of course) was a Bishop. However, in an attempt at wit and originality I made the vicar female and the tart male.

I have been researching to amass some back story for the fiction I’m properly trying to write. The story is set in the 1970s but the back story is set in the 1940s and 1950s and involves seedy things. I quickly discovered t’internet isn’t the place to research prostitution in the 1950s. Luckily I’ve found a library with lots of out of date social science books and I’ve hoarded a few bits of ‘credible detail’ which was what I was after. Still sounds pretty shite though; like a pretentious 15 year-old’s essay.

The stuff set more recently is even worse. Great platform-boots of clunky 1970s iconery fish-sliced in: Crimplene, Players Number 6, Brian Cant, Cortina mk 3, BBC 2, Bryan Ferry, Play School, uncut moquette and Hamble. It makes me cringe to read it; it’d be a whole lot more subtle to do an information drop: “It was 1976”.

Watched Red Riding to see how to invoke period in a more restrained manner but got caught up in the story, again, and forgot to notice. Think they did it with flares and spectacles.

Ali asked me what I’d like for mother’s day so I sent her the link to three bits of loot I’m after: Darwin: A Life in Poems by Ruth Padel, Why Evolution is True Jerry A. Coyne and Darwin's Lost World: The Hidden History of Life on Earth by Martin Brasier. Obviously, there’s a bit of a theme going but she said she couldn’t possibly order any of those; Amazon’d keep contacting her with all sorts of ludicrous titles that people like her buy; it would, she continued, “be the sci-fi thing all over again”. Miniature hydrangea in a decorative pot it is then.

What's the protocol when a (very agreeable seeming) stranger twits you? Anthony twitted to me: "yay Preston :D" (we were both twitting from Preston). Do I: ignore it (rude); twit back "Preston yay :)" (bit trying too hard to be hepcat); follow him (creepy, he's literally less than a quarter of my age); twit back "hello Anthony, do you enjoy living in Cottam? (stupid). So, I followed him; then instantly unfollowed him in case he told his mum. Although maybe grannys are fine to makeup numbers - I don't know. Then I replied but tried to to achieve that that exact right mix of self aware and witty. I spare the details.

Happy Birthday Frankie