How To Be Happy

 

Gasp! The year is almost over and then we’re on to a new one. Maybe this time we can get things done, achieve our goals and succeed in the areas we failed in the past…

    Yeah, all that.

Seriously? Now, I don’t wanna burst your balloon but life is not always about achievement. It’s also about feeling content with ourselves, doing good and, gosh darn it, being happy.

Honestly, this compulsive need to complete goals and see tasks through to the end is surely what causes most of the stress in our lives.  

Sometimes I think we should simply reject our quest for instant
gratification and hyper stimulation. But what can we do to be calm and in control, positive, and, most of all, consistently creative?

Personally, first thing I do when I need to be happy is to write my 500 words for the day. More is good but 500 is fine. Just enough to make me feel useful and fulfilled.

Here are some other ways to keep up your happiness quotient:

Go for a walk in nature. This is a big one for me. Connecting with the natural world never fails to make me feel better. There’s something wonderful about the simple rhythm of walking and breathing in fresh air, thinking light thoughts, and just enjoying being outside. Especially if you’re surrounded by greenery - a state that is proven to have an efficacious effect on your body and mind.

Apparently nature is beneficial and calming because our inherited memory associates lush natural abundance with comfort, safety, and stability.

Studies show that people who live in a natural environment are generally less stressed and have more creative energy.

If you’re stuck in town, find a park or an empty seat away from traffic. Maybe in a cemetery or church grounds. Find peaceful places in your local area, they’re good for you.

Find water, running or otherwise. Watching and listening to water is restful, refreshing and acts like gentle music to our souls.

Find anywhere peaceful to calm your mind, to smooth away your frayed nerves. If you can’t find anywhere around you, try to create a special place in your home. In your  garden, or in a safe room perhaps, even just a spot on the end of the bed. Making this space - and ensuring it’s perfect for you - is often just as happiness inducing as using it.

To me, any creative endeavor is calming and likely to bring joy.

Sing, paint, write, sculpt, knit, always create.

I know many people regard sport and other vigorous activity as calming and energizing. Sometimes it can be. It’s not my cup of tea but do that if it works for you.  

Try little things too. Make an unselfish gesture, like helping someone or complimenting them and expecting nothing in return.

If you’re depressed or struggling to feel good, make a short list of positives. Start with just one item to feel good about then move up to five or ten. I guess the trick is to feel grateful. Even just one positive is enough to be going along with.

Try meditating. Close your eyes, relax and count down from ten to one, calm your mind, slow your breathing. Learn to associate stillness with happiness, carelessness with freedom.

I learned this little trick from a book once: If you want to induce instant joy, tap the center of your chest lightly. Yes, that’s right. Gently tap your breastbone about a dozen times. For some weird reason this will make you smile. If you don’t believe me, just try it.

Obviously, reading a book should make you feel better because it’s a way of switching your brain off from destructive self-talk. For a while you can allow another author’s voice to become your own.

Try going out and deliberately leaving your phone behind. The dopamine rush you get from social media is fun, sure, but it’s also addictive and ultimately unsettling, causing you to experience restlessness and irritation. For short periods try going without the internet.  See time away as fasting from the overabundance of inputs. I mean really, nobody actually needs all that petty stimulation, like you’re some kind of baby that wants constant distraction.

Find stillness. Breathe. Slow your heart.

Daydream a better future. Think aimless thoughts. Have no agenda. Relax. Take it easy. Don’t get so involved in other people’s meaningless drama.    

And don’t define yourself by your work. We are all so much more than what we do. I blame the Industrial Revolution. Around the eighteenth century we began to equate repetitive activity with worth. Usually some one else’s wealth at that. But to define ourselves by some fat cat corporation’s agenda is just wrong.

Yes, you should be busy and productive but for yourself. Making someone else rich and successful is not a great recipe for personal mental health. Because you’re wasting your time, giving away your soul for a few shillings in your pocket. Experience tells us that money doesn't really buy anything but more stress. Like the way giving children more toys makes them anxious, and eventually impossible to handle.

We need to give in to nothing. Encourage our brains, through stillness, to understand that nothing is the most important thing. Only when we need nothing and realize that nothing will help us, can we begin to appreciate the joy and majesty of life.

All very Zen, right?

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

Software for Writers: the AI Invasion

Last week we looked at software created to help authors find and enhance their talent. This week we’re examining AI software that seems designed to either hinder skill, replace talent, or turn writing into some kind of blood sport for people who would rather not get involved in the dirty business of actually putting pen to paper.

Since the beginning of time blocked writers have been looking for a way to make their craft easier and by the look of the numerous new products hitting the market, many software companies are applying themselves to the potentially lucrative business of replacing artists with machines.

To my mind Jasper was the first autonomous machine author. The software was called Jeeves originally, but they got into a fight with Marvel about using a name Disney had claimed as its own because Iron Man had used the name for his computer butler. Clearly Disney had never come across PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster - where the idea of calling a butler ‘Jeeves’ originated in the first place.

Jasper is very clever, suitably expensive, and often feels like a smart-arse friend. Probably better for articles and non fiction content, many young entrepreneurs swear by it.

AI-Writer is recommended for generating content from as little input as one word and boasts a sub-topic finder tool.

WordAI is good for repurposing and paraphrasing text, Apparently good for tensing, grammar, and ‘AI content spinning’ whatever that is.

These AI programs sell well but probably not specifically to those we might traditionally regard as ‘writers’. My guess is that there are now many ‘word nerds’ out there who know all there is about writing without actually doing any.  

I watched a video recently from a young guy explaining how he used AI software for all of his web content, how he worked with his copy writing clients, and generally how he spent all day manipulating words, sales pages, books, and articles, without actually doing any writing at all. Fascinating and bizarre. The new normal.

Honestly there are so many AI writing providers out there at the moment, it’s hard to keep up. They have silly names like Hypotenuse and Stunwriter and Copysmith. Most are concerned with writing marketing copy and SEO and keyword stuffed articles for online content. Soul destroying drivel mostly.

I guess online people need this stuff and there’s no doubt AI makes it easier if you like your writing to be ‘done for you’ and aren’t too fussy about the person-less quality you end up with. Not great for writing books either because Amazon and other online publishers now use machines that can tell whether you wrote your books with AI. They can also reject your book if they suspect you used too much AI to write it.

Some AI programs have a terrible habit of plagiarizing sections from other books. It’s happened to me. I’ve seen entire paragraphs of mine appear in other books with authors claiming it’s all their own work.

Hmm…

Scribbr is an AI detector, using AI, ironically, to detect itself. Problem is it analyzes only short bursts of text.  And in English only. Ai-detector and contentscale do the same.

There are also websites that will check your writing for ‘AI-ness’ so that they can change some of your words and sentences around to fool writing software detectors. Some sites also offer to do that for you automatically, as in: change the text, to undo the AI, making it less detectable to AI detectors!

I should mention that all of the above AI programs are expensive. Monthly and annual subscription based mostly, usually with limits on your word usage. Expect to pay $50 to $250 a month for basic writing AI.

All very complicated, programming heavy and seriously, if you spend all that time trying to make AI writing work for you, at the end of the day, you might as well have spent all day writing properly - you know, like making stuff up off the top of your head. Writing stuff that’s real and engaging. Having said that, I’m sure there are many people working in content mills - and people who want to sell content writing - who think AI is a godsend.

A product called Vellum is a book formatting option. I use Amazon, and Draft2Digital for that. For making the text of hardbacks Vellum is probably useful but it’s an expensive one-off option that may not work so well as technology changes. As it often has in the last couple of decades. For example, Amazon and D2D now offer a variety of text formats for free.

ProWritingAid. I bought this for a year but only used it once. I’m sure the programmers mean well and many people do like it but the ‘help’ was so thorough, it made me hate my own writing. Always trying to perfect everything until the text was so bland as to be unreadable. After a while I thought, Why should I write the way a machine tells me is correct when my bestselling books are the ones where I make all my own decisions about grammar, readability, and sense?

You probably already know I recommend Sudowrite for fiction writing. Lots of bells and whistles and always trying hard to be useful. And honestly it is very good at what it’s trying to do.

Replacing authors might be its ultimate goal but my feeling is that AI will always need a guiding human hand. Certain publishers may regard AI as ingenious and entirely better than a real author, but when I said guiding human hand I wasn’t including publishers - or movie producers for that matter.

While professional editors are often referred to with great affection by the authors who rely on them to make them look good, publishers (and movie producers) are often seen as the scourge of their industries. Funny because it’s these same parasites that give themselves the most awards at ceremonies where the writers are not invited!

Looks like in the future we may have award ceremonies for computer nerds who invent the best AI writing robots. I wonder who will be writing the thank you speeches for them.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

Writing With Software. An Overview

Now we’re getting close to Christmas, if you want treat yourself and make next year go with a definite bang, you should consider buying Scrivener from Literature and Latte. If you haven’t done so already. 

Honestly, I get no money for giving Scrivener a plug. I just happen to believe it will make your life and your writing better. I’ve been using this awesome writing software for over a decade and have no complaints about its looks, its functionality, reliability, and its importance to the writing community.

And no, it doesn’t do anything spectacular. It’s little more than an organization tool. Use it for writing novels, ebooks, movies, articles, poems, shopping lists, pretty much anything.

Now, if you want something that edits, corrects, make suggestions, and annoys the crap out of you by trying to be everything to everyone, then you should probably try other programs.

What you don’t want to imagine is that any one software will make writing easier. Writing will always be hard for true writers because the mental head-space required to write isn’t available as a download.

Even AI requires your focus and an ability to analyze text and make decisions based on what the AI creates. That process is not always rewarding because the AI generated text may be so awful you will quickly become dispirited and go back to not using software at all!.

Scrivener doesn’t try to distract you with natty tricks, though it does format for all and sundry, has links to useful tools, and even has a handy name generator.

Writing is a craft you need to master. Only you can do that through trial and error. And, as with anything worthwhile, the more you practice, the better you get.

Using AI is a bit like painting by numbers. If you’ve ever done that, you will know that the resulting canvas is often fake looking and not quite satisfying to the eye. Certainly nothing like a proper oil painting that has been lovingly crafted with skill, technique, and talent. AI might be clever but it’s never going to write like YOU, as much as you might tell it to and force it to speak in a way that you’re happy with.

My personal issue with AI is that it tends to write everything it can think of, relaying what it apparently 'sees' other writers do. But to me it’s what real writers often LEAVE OUT that defines their uniqueness and their vision.

Amateurs tend to put in as much as possible but professionals do not. They either have a better sense of balance, pace, or stylistic skill, or they have efficient editors who have the courage to delete swathes of material readers will probably find dull.

This is what you have to do for yourself. Decide what’s not worth focusing on, either because it’s obvious or because it interferes with the pacing.

I find that you need distance from your own work to really see what you’ve written but - failing that - you need to read your work as though it’s been written by someone else.

There are other writing software programs.

Dabble is similar to Scrivener. The difference being you can also set goals and track your progress, something I use Excel for if I need to. But with Dabble, I don’t like the fact that all the writing is being saved on a cloud. This is common nowadays but I prefer knowing that I have my own versions of my stories on my own hard drives - which I then (ironically) save to my Dropbox (cloud) anyway because then I can access my work from any computer.

In Dabble there’s a special function where you can speak your story and have the program write it down. It will also read it back to you. Both functions I don’t need and strike me as gimmicky, therefore distracting.

When I write I like to immerse myself in the process. That’s how I stay focused. If I have to do other things like choose AI text or fiddle with self-correcting grammar, even just looking for alternate words in an online thesaurus, all these things break the writing spell.

Some say you can benefit from using Google Docs, though probably only Google. Unless you want to write collaboratively, I don’t see the point of spreading your writing across clouds. It seems like no one wants to trust their own systems anymore. We want everything we do: our music, our writing, our pictures, our videos, to be owned and kept by other agencies and only available when the electricity is on.

Trouble is, we become more reliant on technology every day.

It’s the very simplicity of Scrivener that I like. I use it in dark mode to help my eyes. On good days, I forget where I am and lose myself in the moment. F11 will take you into “composition mode” (where only your current text is visible) but to be honest I like knowing where I am in the book, so I always have the chapter headings down the left hand side. Plus I have the Notes, Word Count, and the Synopsis boxes open too so that I can remember little things I need to include: plot points, descriptions, and also I have little pictures of things like cars, locations, and guns etc., all in front of me on the home screen.

Scrivener is great for plotting too. Moving chapters around using the cork board function, all good. Plus, I often use separate pages (files) to record character descriptions, names, places, and plot details in locations outside of the main manuscript.

There you have it, a big Xmas thumbs up for Scrivener. Next week we look at some of the more “intelligent” AI software programs available for writers.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell's Writing Academy

Writing in Tomorrow's World

 

While I was growing up in the UK, we had this TV show called Tomorrow’s World. I loved it. The theme music was a hip, airy tune designed to signify progress. The presenters had wry, earnest smiles that implied they knew something we didn’t. The half-hour program was full of inspiring articles about how great the world was going to be. The show celebrated just how advanced, how smart, sophisticated, and especially how accountable the people of the future would become.

    Pure joy to watch when you’re a wide-eyed child.

    Like many kids, I also loved reruns of Star Trek, mainly because of the vision of the future it presented. What inspired me in particular was a universe in which cash-money was no longer necessary; where friendship and shared responsibility were more important than power, war, violence, and conflict.

    Apparently Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, had many arguments with writers over the issue of conflict. In his future, most human conflict had been resolved and for the sake of plotting new stories set in the twenty-third century, his writers should assume that much conflict was unnecessary, redundant if you will. Which of course annoyed the crap out of the writers because, as we know, all good fiction is basically conflict driven.

    That’s the reason why the crew of the Enterprise is multi-racial. Back in the early 1960s this was a radical, even potentially self-defeating aspect of the show that curiously, never bothered anyone.  

    Talking of the future, we were told there was to be a Reset, either happening now or soon. Is it still happening? Has it happened without us noticing? Or does “reset” simply refer to an ongoing new process or philosophy?

    It’s funny. Way back in time, the most prevalent symbols of the future were robots and flying cars. As if these wonders were the pinnacle of our imagination, representing the promise of the golden days to come.
Well, if you’ve ever watched The Fifth Element you’ll remember what a bad idea flying cars are and robots, well, they’re here but we’re yet to be convinced…

    Elon Musk recently said the hardest part of making robots is getting them to stand up.  Imagine that. Not the thinking, understanding, or decision making but simply standing. That’s what we have to look forward to. Killer robots that keep falling over.

    I notice we keep talking about all the intellectual stuff that robots can do because of AI but nobody seems to be focusing on the potential real winners: in health management, construction, space and sea exploration, police and security, from warfare to janitorial duties, gardening, transport, logistics, generally saving our lives and freeing humans from toil, indignity, and pain.

    Bill Gates, before he grew into the archetypal James Bond villain, said that computers would come into their own when they became invisible. Not much chance of that happening soon. In fact we seem to revel in the appearance and universality of technology.

    So what does The Reset mean?

    Will anything actually change at all?

    If you are a writer, you will want to use your talent to examine issues, your own and others, and try to make conclusions based on analysis and wisdom. I know many of us write for simple entertainment but do you ever feel a sense of revelation? Sometimes just looking at things critically can reveal the true nature of the world. We need writers to revisit established truths. We have a responsibility to seek knowledge and wisdom. To see the world the way it is.  

    Writers are the changers, the leaders who show the way. That is our duty.    

    Some say not. Are we merely observers who can do nothing to help? 

    I would argue that simply by observing we are doing our duty. Observing means collating, weighing, measuring, not merely existing and accepting. We need to question, to remain unconvinced by arguments that do not sit well with us. We should be encouraged to disagree without consequence.

    I know it’s sometimes hard but we should try to see the positive in this new era of technology and globalization. We should be able to report on the changes we see and to rebel against them if necessary. The Reset needs to be about telling the truth, seeing reality and fighting for rationality and progress based on what is right and necessary for human welfare. Accountability for all, not only for the rich and powerful but for everyone. We need to hold each other to a higher standard because for the first time in history, we can and should.

    I remember once watching an episode of Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock with my kids where one of the characters couldn’t do as he was told. Assigning him work just made him angry, resentful, and eventually made him run away. In a cave where he was hiding, hating himself for not fitting in, some wise old dude told him to think of his predicament as a test. Some of us are just not meant to be drones, he said, some of us were meant to think and dream and create, to be someone who tries to change the world.

    Artists, writers, thinkers, inventors, often become the pioneers, the thought leaders, the ones we admire most and look to for purpose and meaning.

    That’s what The Reset should be for: to elevate wisdom, clarity, and creativity!

    Now that’s a Tomorrow’s World I can look forward to and be a part of.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

How Do You Start Writing A Book?

  

Most of us dive right in with an idea we feel is the most compelling to begin a story. We will often think of a scenario, a concept, or perhaps just a sentence that could draw the attention of a potential reader. We might then make it to a chapter or two before we inevitably run out of steam and wonder where this piece of writing is headed.

You may feel tempted to keep writing without any kind of a plan.

Sometimes that seems like the right thing to do because we feel so good about the new reality we are creating. We get so pumped we cannot imagine that this good feeling will ever stop. Or, on some level, we know it will end but we don’t care, because this moment of surety and clarity is so powerful, all engrossing, sweet, and satisfying.

But how do you sustain your enthusiasm for writing when this feeling goes away?

First of all, you need to decide what you’re writing.

A short story? Something longer? Perhaps an entire novel?

Sure, write when you are inspired. Fill the pages with words, ideas, descriptions, emotions, agendas, and do all the fun stuff that makes you feel alive. Write all day if and when the inspiration strikes.

But, just before you go to sleep, ask yourself, where is this piece of writing headed? What is it going to be? Your answer will define how you continue, and help ensure you will finish.

The easiest part of writing is starting.

The hardest part of writing is finishing what you start.

So the best way forward is to know your ending before you get too far into the writing.

Better still, know the ending before you even start.

Honestly, you will save yourself a lot of heartache and rewriting if you stop and think through the ending before you begin.

It doesn’t need to be complicated or even complete. But at the same time as you might say to yourself, THIS would make a great start, you need to add THAT would make the ending work. Having a strong idea for the end of a project will keep you going through the darkest times. Remember, THIS and THAT is where it’s at. This phrase will help you focus.

A novel is a huge undertaking.

Hell, so is a short story.

My students are always asking, How do I maintain the motivation to keep writing?

The best way is to know your ending. That’s the anchor that will hold you steady.

I know many authors say they write better when they don’t know where they’re going. That may be true if you like fixing things later on, which will happen anyway - even when you make full outlines of your stories. It’s just the way the creative process works. Like all the great masters, we like to shape and hone works of art as we go along.

But we’re not robots. We don’t just look at what everyone else has done and copy that. Well, yes, that is, in a sense, exactly what we do in a round about way but human creativity is better, more than just that.

Inspiration hides from us in the undergrowth, around corners, in the basement, or in the attic. Then it jumps out on us. Making us start, literally and metaphorically.

Inspiration, the feeling that somehow something is JUST RIGHT is an entirely human response. A machine can point you towards an answer or three, but only a person can decide on the best course of action, the best solution, based on a gut feeling. And the wonderful thing about humans is that we won’t all make the same decision. Not every solution will be right for everyone. We can each make our own solution work for us.

That’s the problem with Hollywood, Disney, Marvel, and with creating via committee. There is no such thing as a perfect formula. There is only the answer that works FOR YOU.

And your solution will be different from mine, better than mine, better than anyone’s. In fact the only solution that is right is the one that is right for you.

Because once you have decided the answer, the ending, or the plot twist, or whatever, that is what motivates you to continue. When other people come along and tell you the answer, they can kill your idea, your inspiration, and your motivation immediately.

You have to believe in yourself and believe that your decisions are correct and valid.

If you’re struggling over an idea, a choice, a decision, that’s all good. It’s part of the creative process. The trick is to make faster, better decisions so you don’t get blocked by your own lack of courage or commitment. You have to get used to making decisions and sticking with them - at least until you finish the first draft.

Only then will you know what you have and whether the inspiration you felt at the beginning of the project was justified.

Truth is, not every great idea works perfectly.

But the important thing to do is to keep coming up with ideas and working on them until you finish them. In other words…

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

Writers and Online Communities

A few weeks back I ran a poll to see if anyone was interested in being part of a Writing Academy community. The results were interesting.

    Of all the people who received the email, only around a dozen expressed a positive interest in the idea but a few were very negative. In the past I’ve run surveys that have inspired hundreds of responses. So the low response rate for this one was stunning - but not as shocking to me as the emails I received talking about how online communities were nowadays nasty places to be - full of trolls and haters that writers especially would rather not meet.

    Writers told me of their bad experiences. Of being victimized and abused. Of being made to feel small and worthless. They told me they would rather not get involved than have to experience this stuff. And I don’t blame them!

    Now this is surprising. Some websites like Tribe profess that everybody loves online communities. They recently produced a lavish ninety-minute movie that outlined the massive benefits of running a community to their customers. Indeed my own people at Thinkific also run regular promotions to tempt me into hosting expensive communities within my Academy.

    I resist the hype but in fact I already do run forums for my students.

    Each of my courses hosts a discussion forum for its lessons. I’ve noticed that this aspect of my courses is already scarcely used and that participation in the forums has dropped steadily in the last decade. The inevitable question then would be, why?

    Why don’t people like online communities anymore?

    I blame Facebook and Twitter.

    Twitter is in fact an online community already, and it inspires much hate and conflict as a result, something that Elon lovingly calls free speech.

    Facebook changed its algorithms a long time ago to address the online hate culture by moving away from random interactions to local and “friend” based posting where you were are now mainly accosted by people you know and have a personal interest in. I think Facebook must have noticed that most arguments and disputes on its platform arose from ignorance and malice and were often between people who don’t know each other.

    It appears there’s a type out there who just like abusing strangers - something that writers online experience often, through no fault of their own, and then only by perhaps expressing something that certain other groups find offensive.

    Twenty years ago I noticed that the internet was a minefield that needed to be negotiated with care, which is why I tend to steer clear of conflict if I can help it.

    But actually, this reflects what I’m like as a person, so it wasn’t much of a shift for me. For others, it might be more difficult.

    I too was part of an online writing community for a short while and was surprised by the amount of hostility the group engendered. Again, these people were largely strangers but bore a surprising enmity towards other members. They seemed to view the group as a self-appreciation society and when faced with constructive criticism would lambast and insult their peers, rather than learn from another’s viewpoint. I left the group within a month, so no, I’m not surprised that the idea of writer’s groups has become challenging to the average wannabe author.

    It would be nice to think we could create a safe place for writers to share their feelings and experiences but this new “reset” reality seems to have changed any hope of a secure environment for artists. People are just way too competitive these days. 

    A desire for recognition among a faceless mass of competing people has resulted in hostility, back-stabbing, and demeaning behavior that goes beyond entertainment into something quite dark and scary. Even the most innocent of causes online, whether religious, ecological, political, or personal proves that most communities quickly descend into aggressive and confrontational pits of despair. The idea you can have a community of constantly supportive people is probably now false.
    
     To get back to writing, the main reason why I thought a community for the Academy might be a good idea was really just to reassure you that if you need me I’m here, and that’s all you need to know.

    People do email me all the time for advice and guidance and I’m happy to give it.

    One of my esteemed students mentioned that there was perhaps a general distrust of the online education system at play.

    This is possible given the sheer number of online players currently in this field. But their predominant focus on price-gouging and aggressive marketing might be off-putting for most.

    All in all there appears to be a large amount of distrust for online entities these days.

    Is this valid? Is paranoia the new norm?

    I hope not.

    But let’s rejoice in our own virtual community. You don’t have to join a physical group to feel validated. Just know that by being part of Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy you are already cherished and loved and that your creativity is encouraged without question or criticism.

    You made the right choice.

    You got here.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

No Free Ride For Gen Z

 

I feel a bit sorry for Gen Z. Growing up at the beginning of the 21st century, they’ve never had it so good: a nice easy life where they’ve always had the net, 24/7 entertainment, podcasts, movies and TV shows, games and music galore, and the ability to talk to anyone in the world, for any reason, via social media.

Now, when their school days are over, Gen Z are having to leave the nest and go out into the world, only to discover they have to get some soul crushing job. To work forty long hours a week just to pay bills that never stop: rent, utilities, food and drink, cable, internet, tech, and a million other micro-charges we’re hit with every day…

Welcome to the Machine.

Recent reports shows that the most desired job amongst Gen Zs is Internet Influencer. Wannabe writers are probably in the best position to tackle the job because, as we know, everything starts with writing - every podcast, social media post, and even those ten second blasts on TikTok all have to be written down before anything else can happen.

What could be better and easier than being paid be to be yourself and, when you get enough followers (30,000 plus) you can endorse products for payment.

Sounds like easy money, right?

Not really. You should know that being an online personality means working harder than you ever thought possible. Constantly thinking about the posts you will put up every hour of the day. Advertising to gain fans and momentum. Most likely “paying” for enough followers to appeal to the people who will want you to promote things you wouldn’t normally have anything to do with.

The Influencers I speak to work very hard. They are driven by the possibility of wealth and fame but also trapped by having to remain in the limelight. They lead lives of poverty, compromise, and pain, in public, slaving to maintain an image that is usually at odds with their reality. Creating hi-tech content, writing, researching, networking, taking pictures, traveling, rustling up joint ventures with strange new people, working all hours…

    I see these debates people are having on TikTok about how the 9 to 5 work week is depressing and somehow inappropriate to modern life, I agree, Always have. The work system sucks and has done since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Of course working 40 hours a week is hard, pointless, and often soul-destroying. Yes, most of the days we spend at work are a waste of time, effort, and the earth’s resources.

    But CEOs and managers are on the other side of the debate. They want people to work longer hours - miles away from home - because they have to pay tax, contributions, and benefits for each employee. Why would they employ two people for twenty hours each when one person working double or triple the hours is cheaper?

    Yes, monotony and lack of motivation are massive problems in the workplace. Sure, the whole system needs rethinking and updating but to assume it will change because we don’t like it is absurdly naive.

    The world doesn’t work like that.

    Of course we all want to be writers, artists, actors, influencers, and other big stars but creating a monetized career from creativity is a challenge. And art is still a business.

    And business is about profit, the maximization of efficiency. Business does not owe its workers anything. If you don’t like the 9 to 5, you can always leave, which incidentally is apparently exactly what’s happening. The Western worker is retiring earlier, or never even entering the work marketplace at all because it’s just too hard. 

But the next time you want to better design your work/life balance, think on this.

Writers always have to work hard.

Writing success requires time, dedication, and commitment. No amount of short cuts, AI, or clever software will help you get around the fact that writing requires your time, dedication, and commitment as well as all the new funky tech. And insisting you only want to work for four hours a day will often lose you the gig.

Other, already successful writers, make it look easy but only if you ignore the work they put in. Every day, consistently. Overcoming obstacles like rejection, bad reviews, peer pressure, and yes, bills and responsibilities. Making choices about how they spend their time and how they earn their money, over and over.

It’s about focus.

Sometimes I think we’re too self-absorbed in our own time. Our sense of history is vague and our thoughts about the future are similarly unformed. We’re caught in the present day, looking for answers, guidance and more apps - trapped in a bubble of triviality and meaninglessness. 

Gen Z is right. 

Modern life has been pared-down to pure daily existence that leaves no room for personal fulfillment, purpose, and achievement. Nobody knows what life is about anymore because we’ve realized it’s not important to our existence. We just consume because we’re told that’s what we want.

But writers, surely, should want more. A lot more.

The pursuit of wisdom, for one thing, would be a good starting point.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell's Writing Academy

News Versus Content Versus Ads

  

I’m reading Val McDermid’s books at the moment. I love her relaxed writing style that I know from experience is hard to create, let alone sustain. The one I’m reading at the moment - 1979 - is about journalism. It’s interesting because she seems to suggest that not all journalists in those days were very good writers and some cheated by getting editors, sub-editors, and even their assistants to write for them. No AI to help back then.
 
   Ten years later - in the sequel, 1989 - the newspaper industry has already been swamped by willing freelancers, replacing journalists wholesale because they’re not unionized, don’t need cigarettes or toilet breaks, and they work harder for less money.

    Perhaps Val intends to write 1999, 2009 and then 2019 and, if she does, I’m sure she’ll mention how journalism has lately been transformed into little more than rapacious clickbait, that reportage has sloughed away and all but died along with offline newspapers and magazines, and that artificially created ‘news’ content abounds.

    We live in a world where journalistic prowess has been reduced to the production of state-approved press releases and trivia sound bytes that are endlessly broken down and rewritten by robots into a thousand different versions, each more bland and meaningless than the previous.

Our world is eating itself, regurgitating information, even fiction, into endless gobbets of mechanical content that delivers what people allegedly want but is not meant to be anything more than throwaway. Garbage. That’s the news. It’s no wonder TikTok is so big. It’s better at delivering the news quickly and with less fuss.

Written news articles are not important anymore. The only thing that matters is that when you’re reading, you’re on the same page as an ad, a money sponge. As far as the Net is concerned, your only function is to spend cash. You are nothing more than a buyer, a pool of resources that needs fleecing.

You are pocket change to the news corporation’s swag bag.

The fact you want to read something is actually an encumbrance for news media. That’s the difference between 1979 - then - and now. In the old days we knew on some level that the ads paid for the newspaper and/or the magazine. Now we have no doubt. It’s in our faces. The ads and the content are all the same, part of the same package. The punter can’t see the journalism because he has to beat down the ads to find any kind of value. Like forest predators we can barely see the wood for the trees.

The wood is the view and we have to forage for the news, for any information, within a sea of robotized padding and endless ads that ensnare us like computerized ivy. The cash grab is the parasite that weaves and pollutes the content. They’re symbiotic creatures. One cannot live without the other, in plain view, no longer disguised or subtle.

As writers, how do we compete?

Well, perhaps we don’t need to.

Just know that in the future there will be far more information managers than there will be writers. This will be true right across the board, from journalism to scriptwriting, from book preparation to genre fiction. The robots will become so good at organizing information that humans (those who still have a job) will be reduced to the mindless proofing of manuscripts, copy, and content, just to make sure the words are not offensive, too dull, or nonsensical. Come to think of it, I think the machines can probably take care of that too.

My wife often points out how bizarre it is that the corporate world is trying so hard to replace human workers with machines that there can be no other consequence than a vast sea of idle people wondering where all the work went. Who is then going to pay for all the unemployed to live and breathe?

Some of us, I’m sure, will always love words. And we will continue to fill the world with stories, entertainment, and with written opinion.

One thing I’ve noticed is that robots are not very good at personality. But I guess that goes without saying as the robots are, by definition, lacking in humanity. It’s curious because it’s personality that makes writing so good and ultimately so salable. It’s personality that makes a piece of writing sing in a way that machines seem to completely misunderstand.

Maybe it won’t take long before machines become self-aware and write with a wry sense of humor, or a chip on the shoulder, or with some other character trait that lifts the text above just being words. It’s a subtle thing, actually hard to quantify. But when you’re human, you know it when you see it.

AI generated text is for most of us easy to spot but soon it may not be. And who’s to say that the machines won’t actually need to get better? As so often happens, the punters will probably just become less fussy. That’s what happened to modern music, right?

When I read, I want the tone of voice of the writer to come through because that’s the thing that hypnotizes me and keeps me transfixed. But if machines learn how to get us into that trance state using a different method, then the result will be the same.

Not sure what I’m trying to say here. Perhaps that there’s some element of humanity that cannot be taught to a machine but, you know what? I’m saddened by the idea this might not be true. At all. Perhaps not only will the machines learn quickly how to emulate us but soon they’ll be better than we are.

That’ll be an interesting time to write about.

But who will be doing the writing?

The machines or us?

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

Lost Revisited

  

I know I’m probably two decades late but my partner and I have been binge watching LOST for the last few weeks and I feel inspired to comment.

Plus, I know there’s a whole lot of websites out there dedicated to the many complexities of the LOST plot but I can’t resist weighing in for myself on some of the issues that this classic TV show made me consider.

Especially the first three seasons.

Now, you have to understand that the show was largely written on the fly.

The first six episodes were executed roughly to plan but after that, the show was written with lots of writers putting their own ideas into the ring. That’s why the backstories of the various characters are so vast and complex, contradictory sometimes, even illogical.

My main interest is in the sweep of the original premise. Because to me, LOST is about humanity and how we survive on this Earth. Its many stories represent a microcosm of all of us. After all, Charlie, the ex-popstar’s hit song featured in the show was appropriately called, We Are Everybody.

Okay, with that in mind, what do we do to survive on this planet?

First, we make sure we can eat and that our health is okay. We take comfort in each other, we share our stories as we try to find the best and safest way to live. Then we may give ourselves over to a vague sense of hope that we may be somehow “saved” but when that fails to create a solution, we take ever more comfort in each other. Because we are basically gregarious and need each other. But there are always outsiders too, who prefer to live and make it on their own. Hence some characters choose solitude.

As we progress, we become more interested in the spiritual, mysterious side of life, because we’re looking for more meaning than mere survival. Just like Maslow’s Pyramid. That’s what drives us as humans. We want to make sense of who we are, why we are here and how we fit in to the great scheme of things. That’s why everyone - mostly Locke - is fascinated by the ‘bunker’ at the end of Season One. If there’s an answer, it’s down there.

Season Two provides more confusion than answers but the truth is unfolding slowly. The Dharma Initiative represents humanity finding religion as they progress towards enlightenment, which, coincidentally, is exactly what humans did over 3000 years ago. During the late Bronze Age, we began to attach supernatural agency to the unexplained and in doing so, brought religion into our society to act as a focus, a motivator, and a reason to be.

But the more we find out about The Dharma Initiative the more we discover it’s just a set of rituals based on ideas passed down by long dead people that have no real bearing on the lives of any of the island’s current inhabitants. But against logic, they hold on to these old beliefs because their rituals bind them and give them a sense of identity and purpose, just as religion does in real life, for better or worse.

This apparently helpful aspect of communication and control quickly descends into a war of distrust between the two sets of people on the island, each of whom claim that their god is the true one. The Others are led by Ben who takes orders from an invisible man (God?) in the forest. Jack, aptly named Shephard, is compelled to look after his flock - but by the end of Season Three we see that he is literally LOST when he has no purpose, nobody to help or save.

John Locke was always the strongest of the characters because his quest is based on experience and faith. Just like his philosopher namesake, he believes what he sees and learns. He was miraculously cured by the island and knows that there is no reason to leave because he realizes that everybody is ALREADY HOME. Coincidentally, this is actually the same message Jesus tried to teach us a couple of thousand years ago but one which the Christian Church has conveniently sidelined or forgotten.

The leader of the Others, Ben Linus feels the same way though for different reasons. He is mildly psychotic and his faith is far more trenchant and dangerous. However, in his favor, he’s charismatic and pulls his followers along with secrets and lies.

Sounds like the Church and State to me.

Sawyer and Kate represent normality. They’re out for themselves, sometimes in a bad way, but mostly just to protect their sanity and their need for security.

Each of the other characters represent the many types of people on the planet and the myriad of ways we make sense of our time here on this island Earth.

To me, the ultimate power and message of LOST is that, whatever happens, we’re better off sharing our experience of the world, because the search for meaning, though it may seem compelling and frustrating, is really just leading us into more mystery and confusion.

Ironically the quest for meaning will always elude us because we can’t accept the obvious answer. Fact is, the true meaning of life is simple and straightforward: we’re here to love and to help each other. That’s it.

There’s no mystery. No greater purpose. We’re here - so we’d better make the most of it.

Basically, we’re all LOST but at least we FOUND each other.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

P.S. I should add that I believe the true purpose of life is to experience and co-create the universe. Hence my dedication to writing, art, making music, and helping others to achieve their dreams. 

Practical Writing Advice

Recently I set up a Scrivener file for blog article writing. I have a page for ideas and a separate folder for every article I start. I’m way ahead of myself. I have weekly articles for months to come. I’ve also written two novels this year, a Sherlock Holmes episode, a few more short stories, and I’m feeling like I could keep going like this forever. 

It’s funny because when I first started out - a few decades ago - I couldn’t sit still for long. Literally, youthful adrenalin prevented me from being immobile. I used to perch and write for short periods, literally five or ten minutes, then get up and pace around the room, burning off excess energy, waiting for the next wave of inspiration to hit. A totally exhausting process to be sure - and really not a very productive way to work. But I had to do it that way or I’d do nothing.

Growing up I also wrote in short spurts, literally five minutes here and there because I felt embarrassed and didn’t want my family to know I kept diaries, wrote short stories based on real life events, and recorded all my most personal thoughts. I used codes so they wouldn’t know what I’d written. I wrote using tiny words and sentences that curled around corners so people would find it difficult to know what I’d written. I guess I thought of my writing as secret and somehow perhaps shameful.

I’ll admit I did write a lot about what I considered odd behavior - but this was basically what everyone else considered normal. Later I realized I was, indeed, the odd one.

At school, I could never finish a writing exercise. My teachers would ask us to compose a story and I’d feverishly write 20 or 30 pages and hand that in. I would then have to apologize that my homework was not finished, that I had run out of time. My English teachers took note and often advised me to write as a career. Some gave me advice and guidance for which I’m grateful to this day.

I always loved writing. It made me feel good.

But I also loved music. Writing songs was the same for me. I used to write a dozen songs in one evening and then none for a year. I found writing songs exhausting too. The bands I was in would play these songs until we were sick of them but I would only write in short bursts - usually when I was alone for an evening or a day, because I didn’t want people to see me making up songs.

Again, that sense of shame associated with creation…

But my creativity was shot in those early days. I had no clue how to organize myself and make the best of my talents. Back before the Net, I had no one to compare myself to, no mentors, only my family, who thought I was weird and antisocial. Which I admit I probably was.

These days, it’s hard for me to stop being creative in some way or another. Over the years I’ve trained myself that way. Sitting for long periods is not difficult anymore and I can organize my thoughts as I write. But the best part is that I don’t get mentally buzzed or overexcited by my creativity anymore. Which means it’s not so tiring nor physically demanding.

That was the killer really. I’d get so excited my brain felt like it was about to explode. The opposite of calm progress. Just totally erratic explosions of creative vomit. And a lot of it was awful - but I still believed my every word was divine, awesome, and perfect. I realize now that was because I had so much physically invested in the process. I needed to get older and less precious before I was mature enough to write well.

Some professional authors believe you don’t have anything meaningful to say before you’re forty anyway. They say you need the objectivity that comes with maturity. I don’t agree. I think you can write at any age. And write well if you practice enough.

At various times in my life I’ve got out of the habit of writing consistently and had to retrain my brain. So, here’s the teaching part…

I remember reading Becoming A Writer by a wonderful lady called Dorothea Brande. In her book she suggested, when you’re starting out, writing for short periods every day.

When I was working in London for a - actually I can’t remember now - I used to find a spot outside in Hyde Park during lunch breaks and write silly paragraphs about nothing. When you’re struggling to start it’s not always the writing that is hard, it’s finding things to write about. You need to train your mind to find subjects that are worthy of a few words. Plus, you must learn to write fast, and try not to think of where you’re going. It’s better to be terrible than to write nothing. That’s the philosophy to encourage.

Nothing is sacred. It’s all meaningless, not worth anything, but at least it’s down, on the page.

Other times I used to get up an hour earlier and write tosh: anything, nothing, about my dreams, about my life, anything to trick my brain into thinking that my every thought was brilliant and fascinating. You have to do that. It’s a necessary part of the process.

But what all of this creativity depends on is this: you have to learn to switch off your internal editor when you write. Always know that editing and polishing is for later.

Getting stuff down, no matter how bad, is the only thing that’s important.

At least at first.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

More About Writing

 

To let you know, I managed to get over the problems I was having with my Heresy novel. I just kept writing out the issues, deleting words and paragraphs that led to the tricky parts in the first place and generally giving over more time to writing new material to get myself back on an even keel.

Short version: I finished the first draft of the novel at just under 90,000 words.

Now I’m taking a short sabbatical from the book so that I can get some distance. I never know what the right amount of time to take but I’m less than a week in and already feel like I’m wasting time, and yes, becoming a waste of space. So I’ve been writing more articles just to keep myself busy and now I’m looking at the next Sherlock story in my Zombie Slayer series, seeing if I can get any further with that.

Based on some pertinent student feedback, I’ve been wondering recently, what does one do when there’s no evidence that your artistic endeavors are worthwhile, successful, or even being noticed?

Now that we have the technology to track the impression our work has on people, it can be a sobering realization that in fact hardly anybody gives two figs about us or what we do.

Sure, the fantasy is that everyone loves us and can’t wait to see our next piece of art. But that’s not really how it works, especially now that the internet is so huge and growing daily. The average artist, writer, musician, content creator, whatever, simply can’t compete, gain a decent foothold - or barely generate casual interest in their creations.

Unless we pay for advertising of course, which is the problem with promotion, and always has been. You can’t break through into people’s consciousness unless you pay.

But what if you can’t afford to buy ads?

Simple.

Stop doing what you do for money and recognition.

Do it only for yourself.

A lot depends on what we regard as “recognition” in the first place. I’ve been an online businessperson for over twenty years and I long ago gave up on the idea of using social media as a way of generating business. All of the pat advice given to anyone starting out simply doesn’t work, except on a limited scale directly proportionate to how much you are willing to spend on the massive media platforms: Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc., etc.

And believe me when I tell you that advertising online is hugely expensive these days.

Your average return on investment is going to be limited, if not negative. Trending on social media is something that only happens to cats and famous people and making easy money from being an Influencer is a fantasy invented by Hollywood.

The only way to make it online is to simply keeping doing what you do for love and hope that eventually people will recognize that what you’re doing is valid and good. That’s how it’s always been, even before the Net. Why do people believe that the Internet somehow gives you an advantage? Wishful thinking, mostly. In reality, the Net is merely a mirror, a reflection, full of all the depth, complexity, and unfairness that plagues the real world.

Fate, luck, and chance play a much bigger role in our success than we like to admit.

Yes, we have to do what we do well, and perhaps work with our target market in mind but it’s literally impossible to know what will hit, stick, and/or become viral.

We have to do “our thing” for love.

For ourselves, first and foremost.

Now I realize I’m not supposed to say these things. As a so-called “guru” I’m supposed to be full of hype, hope, and good news to inspire you and make you feel that everything is going to be okay and you’ll make it if you just keep at it. And I still believe those things. But the pragmatist in me asks: but what about the people this doesn’t work for? What do they do? What is my responsibility toward them?

I want to help. I see it as my destiny to inspire writers and artists to do their best work. And to do it with hope and a sense of their own destiny. But what if that doesn’t work?

The figures are against us. Eight billion people on the planet. We can’t all be on the A-list, nor even the B-list or the C-list. Most of us will have to get by on getting by.

But here’s a curious thought…

Perhaps “getting by” is enough.  

When I started my writing academy online, over twenty years ago, I was lucky. I earned enough to pay off my debts and eventually buy a big old house in the country, where we still live. We’re financially all right though sometimes I want to be as rich and famous as some of my idols, though I really don’t know why. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of fame and great wealth except as a conduit for doing good things for others.

So what do we all want?

A good life shared with those we love, doing the things that bring joy to ourselves and others. Yes, money comes from those things for some but not always. Sometimes people have to work too. At terrible dehumanizing jobs, I know. The world sucks. For many of us.

To be honest I don’t really know the answer but I know it’s probably something to do with looking for The Answer with hope in our hearts while nurturing a positive attitude.

Not as inspiring as you’d like, perhaps, but at least it’s real.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

The Culprit That Dare Not Speak Its Name

On average the number of people dying each year in Australia has increased by 10 percent since the vaccine roll out. In fact nobody in the land of Oz died of Covid-19 until the vaccine was rolled out. Let’s go further. There is a direct correlation between the mRNA vaccine and excess deaths all over the World.

 

There, I said it.

 

(And why shouldn’t I say it if it’s my truth.)

 

It’s ridiculous that the medical establishment here now wants to investigate why suddenly more people are dying. Absurd because the cause is so blatantly obvious.

 

The vaccine is the “cure” that dare not speak its name.

 

We’re not allowed to speak ill of the vaccine because our rulers invested billions into its development and roll-out. The media are gagged by the government position, which is basically: THOU SHALT NOT QUESTION THE EFFICACY OF THE VACCINE.

 

We’re all part of this Second Deception.

 

The First Deception was that the vaccine was any kind of cure. It wasn’t. In fact they had to change the definition of vaccine to enable them to force mRNA technology into the marketplace - heavily subsidized by the governments who indemnified Big Pharma from liability along with presumably any responsibility for the collateral damage arising from never EVER being able to lay blame at their door.

 

The Third Deception will be the constant rewriting of history whereby the vaccine causes no harm, cures diseases, and we’re all much better off because mRNA technology will create a brighter new future. All of which are lies that we will carry to our deaths, aided and abetted by the media, social and actual, the authorities, and the rest of the self-delusional who inhabit our planet.

 

Honestly, as a species, there’s no hope for us.

 

We’d rather die than admit the truth.

 

There was no pandemic until the vaccine caused one.

 

There I said it again.

 

Apologies to anyone who doesn’t want to hear my truth.

Of course all of the above I could claim is merely my opinion. Remember opinions? Before Covid-19 we were allowed to exercise our right to express ourselves, say whatever we wanted, even stupid things that were false or delusional.

All that has stopped. Now we need disclaimers or we’ll be censored. Scrub that, they don’t even bother with “fact-checking” anymore. You just get scrubbed. Continue to spread your truth and expect your career to be destroyed, your ability to disseminate information curtailed, your voice silenced.

Doesn’t that sound like a fascist-state answer to free speech?

Doesn’t sound very free to me.

Or fair, nor even appropriate.

There’s been a whole lot of changes happening in the world since the vaccine. I would say since Covid-19, but the virus was never the problem. The problem came with the First Deception. Not because that Deception was a particular bad thing but it did prove that one thing was possible…

It was possible to deceive the entire population of the world using media censorship and, for good measure, obfuscation of the enemy. It’s a totalitarian dream that could only work with the participation of the Internet giants. Get them onside, with monetary or literal coercion, and you can set the stage, continue the lies, and undermine the truth so much that the public doesn’t know what or who to believe anymore.

We live in a Matrix-like cocoon of managed misinformation.

And yes, I know, now I sound crazy. And that proves what I’m saying. When you speak anything like “the truth”, thanks to the inspiring work of all those wonderful three letter acronyms, you always sound crazy these days.

Thanks, guys. Job done.

I’m officially a funny farmer because I have the audacity to stand by my opinion.

Of course I do. I have truth - and facts, dammit - on my side.

Weird that, isn’t it?

The misinformation machine is so effective that if you don’t tow the official line, your life may be forever plagued by forces that would silence you and try to make you feel small, irrelevant, and wrong. And by “forces” I mean your job, your school, your bank, your doctor, any kind of authority, even your neighbors and friends.

But since when do we need to be silenced for allegedly having the wrong opinion?

Apparently all the time now. Social media used to be a fun place to express outrageous indignation and show a healthy disrespect for authority. That was until the government realized it was a powerful tool that could get them voted in and out of power.

So they threatened to legislate social media and search engines out of existence unless they too, towed the official line - that is, to help spread the lies required by governments to rule effectively.

The whole world is now a 1984 blueprint where truth and facts are distorted to follow the official narrative, even when that story is patently - and provably - absurd.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter this new reality.

We’re doomed until we wake up and make a definitive change for the better.

And please, we must stop lying to ourselves about the vaccine!

On Friday the Thirteenth and Doing Research

They say it’s a bad time to do anything today because it’s Friday the thirteenth.

On this very date in 1307, King Philip of France rounded up the Knight’s Templar in an attempt to steal their money and break up their power base by making them look like Satan worshiping sodomites.

Funny, this reminds me of my article from last week. Accuse people of bad things and the sting never quite goes away. Even after 700 years.

Curiously, one of the great mysteries of history is what happened to all the Templar money. King Philip never did get hold of very much and he died about a year later, apparently cursed by the Templar’s head honcho, Jacques de Molay, during his grizzly execution.

Enough general knowledge, this week I promised you (and myself) I would make this article about writing, so I won’t bore you with all the silly (Jason) stuff associated with this date. Instead, let’s talk about research, truth, and its relationship to fiction writing.

People often ask me how much research they should do for their stories.

My first reflex is usually to say: None.

The whole research thing is a trap for writers. When it appears necessary, it’s a delay tactic for people who think that with enough research the writing will get easier. This is never true. If anything, research makes things harder because you have to accommodate veracity when a hearty dose of fiction will usually do just as well.

I remember putting off a writing project for over five years because I was convinced I needed to do more research. More being the operative word because it was Thomas More I thought I needed to know more about! True, I did use some of the information I gleaned from reading his biographies but really not enough to justify five years of my time, endless trips to the library (to research the bubonic plague - this was before the internet) and asking relatives to buy me specific books about Tudor England for birthday and Christmas presents. Waste of time really.

Stephen King was congratulated by many inmates and wardens for his accurate portrayal of prison life in The Green Mile. How much research did he do? You guessed it. None.

The human mind has a way of imagining exactly what the reality must be.
I often look things up as I’m going along these days, just to confirm facts, geographical locations, plane times, that kind of thing. But it’s easy to get obsessed. Really, at the end of the day, how accurate does fiction have to be?

Some authors travel to the destinations in their books, just to get the feel of a place and to know that their descriptions are authentic. But as Hemingway used to say, the better you know a place, the less you need to describe it. Somehow the reader senses you know more but doesn’t expect you to write it all down.

Plus, too much truth and fiction starts to become unbelievable. It’s a strange phenomenon that permeates the literary genre. Truth will get in the way of a good story. Don’t get sucked in to the idea that because it really happened, that will make it believable. Often the opposite is true.  

These days I tend to do research after the first draft of a book, whether fiction or non fiction. When I have a compelling premise in my mind I find that research can ruin a good idea, or at least remove some of the impetus to continue.

Best to get all of your ideas, the flow and the right-brain artistic sweep of the premise down before you mess up your head with all that left-brain fact, filler, and logic.

As I say, research is a delay tactic. It’s dry and feels productive when it’s not. Basically it’s a waste of creative energy. And that’s a sin. Better to write well and make mistakes than to be factual and dull.

Also people ask me, how true does my fiction have to be?

Depends on the genre.

Thrillers tend to need more accurate portrayals of places, weapons, and technology because the readers of these books like it that way. Romances, mysteries, even horror, can gloss over the real world and, to a certain extent, glamorize things beyond recognition. Of course in fantasy, nothing needs to be real, except your belief in it.

Our memory is unreliable. I’ve gone back to places I’ve written about and, because I wasn’t in the same head-space, I see the location differently, and not in a good way.

I enjoy being in that weird fictional reality where everything is bright and significant because that’s the easiest place to write in. Sometimes reality is not very conducive to being artistic. I read this recently: Artists are meant to improve on reality to make our lives - and the lives of our readers - more bearable. Fun even.

Reality is dull, often unpleasant, and not very inspiring.

That’s why we feel sorry for people who don’t read. Because readers are privy to a whole set of worlds inside their heads that are special beyond words.  

Thanks for reading. Let’s hope this article is not cursed with paraskavedekatriaphobia. (That’s fear of Friday the thirteenth.)

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

Suspicion is Nine-Tenths of the Law

 

The presumption of innocence prior to conviction is enshrined in the law of most Western countries. 

However, for people generally, and the media especially, this is not how justice works in practice. Simply the accusation of a crime is often enough to condemn a person for life and ruin their career. And sometimes that’s the point. In a world where image is everything, it’s far too easy to destroy someone’s credibility and undermine their entire life’s work simply by suggesting they might not be wholly without fault.

This cancel culture we live in is a scourge. We may look back in a few decades and wonder why we ever had the audacity to reject an artist’s work because their private lives did not live up to the impossible standards imposed by bigots and fanatical lobby groups whose stances did not always reflect the views of the compassionate majority.

But rather than bemoan a society that is supremely intolerant of bad decisions and regrettable lapses in judgment, I think we should point out the obvious. That if you’re going to join an arena like entertainment, or become part of any kind of platform that requires respect, perhaps you should be better behaved!

As an artist, don’t try to get away with criminal or suspect activity. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal would be a good start, and certainly don’t engage in questionable sexual activities and expect never to get found out.

Yep, it’s going to be hard to get the balance right. When you look at politicians and titans of industry you see that they are often made up of questionable sociopaths who thrive on the control and abuse of others. Not all of them, sure, but a sizable number.

Now, Picasso may not have been a model human being - but who can deny his talent?

At the extreme, a creepy TV presenter like Jimmy Saville might have been one of the worst child molesters of all time but why on Earth did he think he could get away with it - and for so long? Same with Harvey Weinstein. Or Jeffrey Epstein. When you read about what these people got up to you think they must be either crazy, self-delusional, or so wanton as not to care.

And at this stage, I’m not saying Russell Brand is innocent or guilty. Just that we should perhaps reserve judgment until it’s proven either way.

So many good actors like Kevin Spacey, Johnny Depp, and Geoffrey Rush have been destroyed by spurious allegations. And you still think there’s no smoke without fire, don’t you? You still think they could be guilty. But that’s the point I’m making. It’s impossible for celebrities to recover from an accusation that reaches the mainstream media.

So what’s the answer?

Simple, don’t do bad things.

Perhaps easier said than done, of course, but my advice would be, always try to be a good person on the way up, then you won’t have to worry that the media will come for your blood.

Of course sometimes they’ll come to get you anyway. Because it’s your turn. Like Cliff Richard in the UK, an innocent singer persecuted his entire life because he never married. The British have a perverse appetite for public humiliation. I don’t know why. I used to live there and I know they love to build stars up so the media can knock them down.

In Australia it’s different. Ozzies don’t even bother building you up. You’re a scab and a tool just for wanting attention. The Tall Poppy Syndrome is alive and well here, I can tell you.

The Americans are more reverent about their stars, if you’re rich and famous, treating you with due care and respect, unless it later transpires you’re a total sleaze.

Unless you’re elected President - and then you’re fair game.

From the rest of the world’s point of view, the relentless attempts to undermine and destroy Clinton, Bush, Biden, and Trump seem obtuse, even strange. Especially when (allegedly, according to Tucker Carlson) a certain other President of color is clearly the man with the most to lose. Not because he and his “wife” might be gay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But why hide and deny the fact for such a long time? Surely that’s simply fraud on a massive scale.

And we wonder why so many people think the Earth is flat and we never went to the Moon. People don’t know what to think anymore because deception is so rampant in our society, from the top down.

I think there’s a reason for all this.

We want to accuse and incriminate people as a way of deflecting attention from ourselves. I guess we need to analyze other people’s shortcomings before we can clearly see ourselves. Plus, there’s an element of adolescent righteousness about mocking others with our own faults.

So, really, the best way to go through life is NOT to be an example of the worst kind of behaviors. Sure, we can’t always live up to the ever tightening moral yoke we insist on creating for ourselves, but we can try.

See you next week when, hopefully, I will talk more about writing.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy

You Gotta Face The Fact: Only You Can Save You!

 

Here is something I hear from my students all the time:

If I only had such and such, or so and so, then everything would be fine.

Listen. No one is coming to rescue you. No one out there will save you. 

There is no magical event that can change your circumstance or make you more successful. YOU are the only person who is responsible for your current state of being and YOU are the only person who can change that state and improve on it.

In fact you can worsen your current state simply by believing that someone or something out there can, might, or will rescue you. That's faulty logic that you may have arrived at by using what psychologists call magical thinking.  

You have to accept responsibility for your circumstance and acknowledge that if you don't like where you are and you hate what's happening to you, you MUST do something about it - take action, and do it NOW!

The fact is that having faith in a magical solution will only take you further into madness.

The first rule of self-help is: you got yourself into this mess.

The first time I heard this piece of news I was horrified. And not a little offended. At the time I was so poor and depressed that I could never accept any kind of responsibility for my predicament. How could I possibly believe I had made myself poor? That I had an awful job because I had chosen it? That I had a horrible existence because I had picked that life?

But it seems obvious now. Of course I had chosen all of those things. There was no one else to blame but myself.

It’s a hugely tough lesson to learn but one that is necessary to accept before you can move on. And you do have to accept it. You can't keep believing that only other people and fantasy events and mystical personalities can help you because then you will never learn for yourself.  

Be smart. Get in charge of your life.

We are here to gain knowledge. Superstition is a transitional state that feeds us before enlightenment kicks in. Wisdom is based on logical empiricism. But clearly not for everyone. No matter how convincing the evidence, many people prefer the dark uncertainty of believing in the supernatural rather than the reassuring chaos of real life.

Religion makes perfect sense as a facet of evolution.

Back in time, as soon as we became self-aware, our brains began to sift through the incoming data and sort information into categories. The logical and obvious was accepted as such. Anything we didn’t understand went into the “supernatural” basket. Fine, it’s what we do.

The change comes when we attach “agency” or purpose to the supernatural. When we start to believe something or someone is causing mystery and coincidence, then that may become a problem.

Some of us still do it. I’ve known many people who ascribe supernatural agency to life in the pursuit of trying to make sense of everything. They see ghosts, daemons, spiritual beings, and gods with complex personalities and characteristics that are endlessly embellished into convoluted fantasy worlds reliant on increasingly bizarre thinking.

When we were living in caves without food or warmth, relying on the vagaries of nature to sustain us and reassure each other, it made perfect sense to assign chance and certain inanimate objects with supernatural agency, power, and force. As a result we ended up living in a world where impulse and irrationality replaced science, all in the pursuit of safety, a haven from the mystery and darkness and a fear of the unknown.

Having a deity and an agreed structure to superstition - that is, the definition of religion - gives hope to the righteous, and those who cannot grasp that ignorance and lack of control does not mean weakness.

It’s okay to believe in God if you have to but thinking He’s going to actually do anything for you goes against logic, dogma, and common sense.

We naturally seek meaning and purpose in chaos. It’s how our minds work. We look for order in chance events because this gives us a sense of control. But control is another aspect of ego. And ego is another side of vanity. Accepting we might have no control is not a bad thing. Indeed, it can be liberating, and is certainly not to be feared.

We tend to anthropomorphize everything. We see humanity and our motivations in everything around us, rightly or wrongly, we seek to understand and control reality, to quash uncertainty. Especially when our self-esteem and/or our confidence is low.

But we are fine when we don’t know what will happen.

We must assume that we are always in control of ourselves, our actions, and reactions.

If we want something to happen, it’s perfectly okay to believe that we can make that thing happen ourselves, without any need for a god, or a savior, an angel investor, or a rich benefactor, a literary manager or even a publisher - or any other perceived superior being that we think we need to make sense of our destiny.

Get a grip. Accept reality.

You only need you to save yourself.

Keep Writing!

Rob Parnell’s Writing Academy