C'mon, fess up, you've missed me aintcha? Me and him had a discussion today. I need to get his ass moving now, I don't intend to eat Crappofin Super-Value Tuna flavoured mush out of a can no more. It may be dolphin friendly, but it ain't no friend of mine. Winnie eats it, but she's a scag. She eats spud peelings up the garden too - eeyuoogh...
Right, so what's been the hold up then? Him, innit? Has a million ideas a second, and takes an action a year. So we had this discussion, let's just say it got a bit heated, ok very heated, look, he takes loads of vitamin C and zinc OK? The wounds are bound to stop oozing soon. Winnie tried to interfere like she does, and I had to remonstrate with her. A shorter tail suits her. So there we were, chatting loudly, when I told him that there is a difference between him and a writer. Writers write. He don't. Did I say this was going be rocket science 101??
He says he wants to be a writer. So, he asks, how does he become a writer? See? YOU sussed it! Yer 'ave to write. He went and spent a whole day learning that from Martin Avis and Brett McFall a couple of weeks ago, when his personal life-coach and business mentor - Moi - has been telling him that for years. He doesn't even have to think does he? He don't need to sweat over ideas, I'M THE BRAIN, all he needs is two fingers to bang keys with. He's slowed down a bit during our sabbatical. He used to type 70 letters a minute, it's back to 27 now, but we're working on it. (For all you Pitman types out there, yeah, that was 70 LETTERS a minutes, not words). Martin Avis writes a newsletter. How does he do that, asks the softest jerk I know. Well, he sits down, bangs keys, and hits send. Do you want a friggin manual? An e-book maybe? Sometimes I really despair. I could use my blog he says. No says I, coz you ain't got a blog. It's Dannythegurucat, not Softythejerkoboy, but I'll let you take all the credit for my ideas and writing it for you. You just bang keys and dribble. Martin's stuff is here http://www.kickstartdaily.com Now that's how to write a newsletter. How hard is that? When you're stupid, it's hard, that's why I have to do it for him, but we'll get there, one finger stab at a time.
He reminds me of Dustin Hoffman when he was in some film with Larry Olivier. Dustin was getting angst ridden about becoming the part, getting inside the character, finding the muse. He couldn't do it he said, the character was bigger than him, it wouldn't let him in, he couldn't become the character in the way he felt the character needed to express, he was at a loss to properly produce the performance whilst totally melded within the character. He had no choice but to come clean to Larry about his inability to become the character and produce the goods. What should he do? How could he overcome his complete lack of ability to transform into the character? "Act, dear boy" said Larry, and made Dustin look the pathetic, pretentious twonk he was. Me and Larry would have hit it off.
He said that he'd seen someone say that you should only write from experience, something you've actually experienced or achieved yourself. That puts paid to every history book in the universe then Softo says I, and the murder stories, vampire stories, the Grinch, Trumpton and Camberwick Green. Makes you wonder what planet J K Rowling comes from dunnit? Should Stephen King and James Herbert be arrested on suspicion? What about the whole Black Lace series? Granted the writers might have wanted to have experienced all that pervertery, but I bet they were all too pig ugly to have made it, and that's why they write about it. You can even go over old ground I said, regurgitate the same old crap and people will still buy it. Don't believe me? Oh come on, surely by now the residents of bloody Cabot Cove must have sussed that Angela Landsbury is a raving psycho? It ain't a big town, and she just happens to be there every time someone gets theirs? Per-lease. And Jersey. Only rich people can afford to live there, and you have to be vetted to get in. Bergerac MUST be doing inside jobs. Airlines anyone? What prat would even think of booking with, or working for Oceanic?? Every plane they ever had that took off blew up, crashed or was hi-jacked by iffy looking geezers in flares and tartan jackets wanting to go to South America, but even they ended up on a mountainside eating each other. Hello, you write about what you can imagine, not what you've experienced unless you are sticking to an autobiography, and they don't leave much room for sequels do they Soft one?
He could try a bible. They seem to be popular, you even get them free in hotels. The first one of those was good. Disasters every five minutes, genocide, and loads of sex (but they called it begatting back then) a whole planet got invented, great recipes for health and fitness that the 7th day adventists follow to this day - and seldom suffer cancer. The sequel was a bit too new-age for me. Started on about forgiveness, when I really preferred the jealous god bit and revenge in the first one. The hero in the second one was a bit badly written. Born of a virgin, becomes a chippy, then disappears for over a decade and comes back a guru. The continuity people should have got hold of that before it was sent to the cinemas. Can you imagine Jeremy Kyle or Gerry Springer getting hold of that story? Has the standard Hollywood bit about the gang with the traitor in the midst, and a right judas he turned out to be. They have a party, and it all goes bad, and he does the Don Corleone bit where he says he knows he'll be betrayed. He dies in the end, but when they go up the cemetery, he's gone. Good cliffhanger ending! Perhaps I'll get him to write the Threequel to that? It's begging for it.
So, here we are, back in the cyberworld, and this time it's personal!
If you want to see Softboy get some more advice from Brett, get over to the World internet summit in a couple of weeks. It'll be mind-blowing, and anyone who can blow the cobwebs out of his head works for me. http://www.worldinternetoffice.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=1080916
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