Author: Scott Andrews

Waxing Lyrical

One of the nightmares caused by the invention of social media is the given ability to demonstrate your bad taste to a wider circle of people.  Whether it be the ability to show add videos to your profile or just the texts you write, the point is now its even easier to show what an absolute Muppet you are.  When I was young, trendy and hip, and needed to make an arse of myself I would go to a party, with a much smaller circle of friends and do or say something embarrassing.  Now all you need to do is copy paste something into the appropriate area.

This 21st century of magic has grown at phenomenal speed.  The major issue with any interactions involving these modern forms of communication is that there are not any rules.  All social rules have been tossed out the window.  It’s perfectly acceptable to write on your friends wall, just underneath his Mum’s comment, it weren’t as funny as the time he took it in the bottom from a lady boy on a lads holiday of Thailand.  There are no rules.  It’s like a jungle out there in cyberspace.  Except there aren’t any animals.  Or trees.  Or remote tribes fighting for their way of life.

One common phenomena which appears to be growing as a standard social media norm is the quoting of song lyrics.  Rather than thinking up something original about how you are feeling you can quote the latest pop singing r and b sensation Arsehole MacDouglas new song ‘Yeah bitches,yeah,yeah,yeah.’ or something equally meaningful.  It would be interesting if the same people used lyrics from different styles of music to demonstrate their emotions but they don’t.  It means it works as a great system of categorizing people.  I understand the urge to share videos but I find the lyric culture a little weirder.  Saying that not so long ago I was disgusted to find that I did the exact same thing.  It was during the riots in Britain that I thought I would try to dazzle my friends by giving them a particularly smart quote to see if I could join the cult of song lyrics.  The song which came to mind was ‘Thatcher Fucked The Kids’ by Frank Turner.  The quote in question was;

‘Whatever happened to childhood?
We’re all scared of the kids in our neighborhood;
They’re not small, charming and harmless,
They’re a violent bunch of bastard little shits.
And anyone who looks younger than me
Makes me check for my wallet, my phone and my keys,
And I’m tired of being tired out
Always being on the lookout for thieving gits.’

So there I was, proud that I had posted a witty social comment using lyrics from a song I love.  I awaited the clamor of comments.  The pat on the back for identifying a song which spoke to the zeitgeist of that moment.  Instead I got an old school friend who commented;

“You was a violent little shit at school lol”

And the moment was gone.  Ruined.  Broken by reminiscence.  Perhaps I am too old to quote songs.  Or maybe it’s a more feminine thing to do.  What I can be sure of is that it’s a phenomenon I don’t understand and I certainly don’t know the rules to and that above all, fascinates me.

Pigeon-Hole Yourself

Language has its limitations.  We expose them on a daily basis and we don’t actually realise it.  Yesterday I finished drafting a synopsis for my novel.  I actually wrote a few different versions varying in length and style.  I actually found it very difficult.  First actually selecting 450 words to describe 80,000 was tough enough.  Second and even harder was choosing exactly how to pigeon-hole my novel.  It is a work of literary fiction.  Well it’s certainly not commercial.  But then how would I know.  If by some miracle my novel was a hit then surely it becomes commercial.  Is it a thriller?  Well it contains some typically thriller like elements?  Is it a comic novel?  Well I never set out to deliberately write jokes but it does have some funny moments.  Is it a satire?  Well it says a lot about the world we live in without being obnoxiously satirical.  So what is it then?

This question, which we value so greatly is meaningless.  Our armoury of weapons we have to describe something consists of adjectives and adverbs which are incapable of telling the entire truth.  Pick three words to describe yourself.  I choose intelligent, funny and moody.  Now ask yourself am I always those three things.  Are those three things a constant about me?  In my case no.  I am sometimes all three.  Never always.  So then ask yourself for one word which describes your character.  One word which is always fitting.  I bet you can’t do it.  And we do this all the time.  In job interviews you often get questions like describe your greatest weakness or strength?  Or a number of seemingly innocuous questions which convince your brain that you need to answer using adjectives which describe your character.  ‘So tell me Mr Scott what can you bring to the position of chief burger flipper at MacDonald’s?’  ‘Well I am dedicated, driven, punctual and have a great team ethic.’   When your brain switches on you realise that what you said doesn’t actually have any sense to it whatsoever and for some reason the person interviewing you is grinning like a rather contented cat.

We don’t only do it professionally.  On a personal level we are always swapping descriptions about people.  It’s as if a human being cannot make their own assumptions about stories which describe someones character.  It’s as if we have to fill in the gaps for each other.  ‘Scott did the craziest thing the other day, but then you know what he is like,  a bit nutty you know.’  In that imaginary sentence there is barely a single piece of information offered to the listener to help them make their own mind up.  It’s our way of ensuring or making sure that the listener is of the same opinion as us.  When you are the listener in that situation automatically you find yourself nodding encouragement or mumbling an ‘ah-ha’ or ‘go on’ to the speaker in order to hurry them along.  However the speaker assumes that your encouragement is actually a validation of the point they were making.  It’s a bizarre habit, a ritual almost which we all participate it at some point.  The weirdest of these situations is when you observe women talking about a new man.  Whether it is after the first date and a friend asks ‘so what is he like?’ which is clearly a stupid question when she is only starting to get know him, or when the speaker looks for validation by adding the words ‘you know what men or like.’  when what she actually wants to say is ‘Help me please my friends.  Is it normal for a man to wipe it on the curtains afterwards?’ .

In one exercise I used to write my synopsis it asked me to try to write a moral which is applicable to the story.  I found this task remarkably difficult as I hope my novel is multi-faceted and I believe it contains more than one.  In the end I tried to choose one which seemed applicable to the ending.  Which seems doubly fitting.  The moral is about how your own judgment is what makes a good deed a good deed and not the action in itself.  However as I have discussed here judgment is blinkered by language, it is often as precise as a nuclear bomb.  And this is why a pigeon-hole is rarely a comfortable home for mice, men and novels.  A much more honest question is to who do you aspire to be or to what do you aspire?  As a person I strive to be good, honest and warm.  As a writer I aspire to be interesting, inspiring and intelligent.

What Doesn’t Kill You Only Makes You Stronger

If the above statement was true I would be Mr Universe.  However it is not and I am not.  It’s shitty world we live in when the only comforting words we can ever find for troubled people are meaningless idioms and metaphors.  As a race, when did we suddenly lose the ability to be sympathetic or understanding.  I have heard my fair share, and of course at appropriate times I have found myself  participating in this bullshit pass the parcel system of comfort.  And you know what?  I have learnt two things.  The first is that it doesn’t actually help.  And the second is that it doesn’t actually help.

The human mind was never built to compartmentalise.  It is not a natural function.  Yet in the vast majority of societies it’s what we are expected to do.  It defies belief.  If you divide the circle of emotions into two groups, honest and dishonest you can instantly discover what a lying bunch of hypocrites we are.  In the honest group we could put anger.  Anger very often makes us speak our mind.  Sadness or melancholy too.  Frustration.  Disappointment.  And many others.  The truth of the matter is that we are discouraged in our efforts to be honest.  It is no longer necessary in society.  It is better you stay silent and not cause a scene, or get yourself fired or some other equally deserving punishment for someone who tries to say it how they see it.

By choosing the kind of life where you have to withdraw and bottle reality up you are rejecting humanity.  The joy of this life comes from the fact that we are alive.  What separates us from animals is the fact that we have this wonderful range of emotions and when we do not accept them we are rejecting the fact that we are really alive.  So say it loud, and say it proud just say whats on your fucking mind.

A Question Of Ethics

Imagine you are eight years old.  Your parents tell you that you have to clean up your bedroom.  It’s not that you don’t want to exactly, it’s just that you don’t have the manpower, the tools or the skills to do the job.  So you ask your friend who lives down the street to come and help you.  After all, he is a little richer, goes to a better school, has a bigger room and greater experience of domestic chores.  Before he arrives, another of his friends arrives.  A boy you don’t really know, nor like much by reputation.  Before you can say a word he is cleaning, and scrubbing and polishing.  Finally your friend from down the street arrives to help.  You take him to one side and tell them that his friend is making you feel quite uncomfortable.  You are worried that his friend isn’t very popular in your neighbourhood.  You tell him that the longer his friend stays with you, even though he might be well intended in trying to clean up, the more chance of your neighbours becoming angry, and your parents becoming angry and that the problem may escalate.  Your friend from down the street manages to persuade the boy to leave.  He goes quietly.  You see him to the door and as you go back to your room you see him in the street.  He is just standing there watching from afar.  When you return to your friend you find your friend from down the street cleaning like crazy.  He is throwing some things away which you want to keep but you know that in return for his help you have to accept that there is going to be collateral damage.  It may have felt like months, but actually hours go by and slowly you realise that the end is in sight.  You are now certain that you can finish this on your own.  You turn to your friend, you tell him ‘thank you very much for your help.  I will always appreciate what you have done.’.  He doesn’t move.  You gesture with a nod to try to show him what you mean.  He doesn’t move.  Your friend from down the street Anders Fogh Rasmussen just ignores you as if you don’t exist, and continues with the cleaning.

How Good Is One Fifth Of You?

Now I am finally in a position to reduce the hours I spend playing around with websites(It’s amazing to think that two weeks ago I didn’t know a thing.) I can slowly start turning my attention back towards my novel.  I have been fighting with myself for sometime.  Namely the knowledge that I must attempt to polish either the first three chapters(I don’t have a single chapter) or fifty pages into a shiny enough state that someone may mistake it for a diamond.  And that my friends is a troublesome thought.

Picture the scene.  A whirlwind romance.  Man and woman meet, fall in love and get married.  Man only tells woman about 20% of his true personality.  Is the marriage going to work?  Hell, no.  Picture the scene.  Thirty something business executive goes for a job interview.  Rather than explain what he has been doing for the last ten years, he only mentions the last two.  Is he going to get the job?  It’s rather unlikely.  And this is the very real issue I am faced with.  How do I make the two years which Mr X does talk about so compelling that he gets the job?

This type of thinking can torpedo the most brilliant project in a manner of seconds.  You can’t help but wonder whether you should make small changes to suit the people you are going to send it too.  If the agent or publisher you are targeting has interests in a broad spectrum of work, but and it’s a very big supersized quarter pounder meal butt recently made a wheelbarrow full of money by promoting a book about lesbian hairdresser vampires flying a spaceship to the planet Ketchup; should you add some hairdressers?  It’s hard to resist the temptation.  I know in my own case, my novel includes sequences regarding civic unrest.  Six months ago I was considering moving the story to the middle east.  A fortnight ago I was thinking about moving the story to London.  In some respects you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  When you find yourself face to face with the inevitable rejection letter then you will be sternly asking yourself if lesbian hairdressing vampires could add something to your story.  And that’s when the problems will really start.

Confidence doesn’t come to many.  Those who are gifted with it are often deemed arrogant by their peers.  However if you truly love what you have created there is nothing wrong with having faith and sticking to your guns.  My novel Lesbian Hairdressing Vampires From Outta Space will be available on………..