Unrecognized

Amber Watson felt that she had never been taken seriously, this was the main reason she took the job at MetaTech; to prove to everyone, once and for all that she could make a difference, that she wasn't just the quirky geek that never really made a connection with anyone. She had many successes in her short time in the corporate lab at MetaTech, but nothing up to this point that made people fall silent in awe. Sure the self cleaning ashtray was an impressive feat, but as smoking had been outlawed in all but licenced smoking dens since 2013, the market for such products was limited to say the least. Most of her other ideas and prototypes were either brushed off for being 'not grounded in reality' or 'not in touch with budgetary remits', whatever that meant.

This time, however, things would be different, people would notice her; no, not only notice her, respect her. The prototype was sound, proven even, admittedly only on a small scale, but it showed that it could be done, and with reasonable power and no obvious side effects.

She sipped at her coffee and stared out of her apartment window, waiting for her third consecutive dawn to break over the city. It had been days since she had a proper night's sleep. In fact, ever since she was given the go ahead to première her prototype to the board, with the complete resources of the cluster, she had been on edge and suffered from acute insomnia. She had run every simulation, and every scenario she could dream up, just to prove to herself what she already knew. Yes, today they would notice her.

The sudden clunk of an incorrectly timed servo unit in her automation system broke her free of her thoughts, as the program shifted out of night mode and prepared the apartment for her to wake up. She had been meaning to fix it for ages, but something more important had always come up.

Three hours to the meeting, time to get ready and head off to the lab. Amber showered and put on her meeting clothes, which bore a striking resemblance to her normal work clothes only a little less creased; black pencil skirt, white blouse and comfortable yet shiny shoes. Amber had never been into the whole clothes thing, she just didn't see the point, to her clothes were functional, a means to an end. Skirt and blouse for the lab, jeans and t-shirt for home, and a suit for weddings and funerals. Not that she ever got invited to weddings, or funerals come to think of that. A fact that she was more than happy with.

She grabbed her keys, iPod and phone, which was out of power again, yet another thing that she would have to find time to fix; checked herself in the mirror, slammed the door to her apartment and headed off towards the lift, which for once was actually working.

Amber was never much for travelling, which was the main reason she took up the apartment just off Baker Street. It wasn't the best block in the area, but it was convenient for the tube and it was a single ride on the Bakerloo line to the labs. Usually she could go the whole journey without any unnecessary human interaction, save for the occasional assistance from an underground guard when her oyster card failed to touch in. It was routine and predictable, but comfortably familiar.

The usual collection of sleeping homeless people littered the entrance porch and gardens in front of the apartment block, although they seemed to be getting more numerous over the past few days.

"No", growled one of the vagrants in a dry rasping voice, reaching out to her as she walked past; but Amber managed to avoid the tramp's grasp and shut the door behind her. She made a mental note to contact the council about them when she got into work. It didn't bother her too much, them sheltering where they did, as long as they didn't hassle her or her neighbours, but if they were going to start harassing her, that was a different matter.


The tube carriage was as busy as ever, filled with the early morning pod people, heading down to Oxford Circus, where they would disperse onto the other tube lines and go about their daily stresses. Amber always thought of the pod people as an extended family, turning up for their twice daily get together, every once in a while a new family member would arrive or one leave without question or acknowledgement by the rest of the family. True they weren't the most sociable siblings, but they never questioned her on her life choices like her real family, she didn't get badgered about her lack of marital status by the female members of the group and received no sly digs about the lack of grandchildren from the elder ones. The pod family were quiet, polite and minded their own business.

The tech guys should have the prototype linked up by now, she mused. Although MetaTech hired some of the best technicians in the business, Amber always had to check their set-ups before a demo, it had become a sort of ritual with her. Ever since the time Michael, one of the junior engineers, had crossed the power and neural IO cables on her dream inducer prototype and nearly fried an investor's brain. He swore that he hadn't, but since that time she had never fully trusted him.

Oxford Circus came and went, but not before the carriage emptied and refilled with the second half of the pod family, mixed in with the occasional night shopper from one of the many twenty four hour hypermarkets that had taken root in Oxford Street and Regent Street, after the great economic collapse of 2012. Amber remembered the days before the collapse fondly, when she didn't have to reinterview for her job every six months; and give sixty percent of her salary to the government coffers to aid in the 'rebuilding of society'.

The tube train pulled to a squealing halt into Embankment station and Amber got out, squeezing past the remaining family members heading to Waterloo and beyond, and joined the heaving throng of commuters on the escalator. Advertising screens flashed targeted images at her as she flowed past, offering her faster processors than ever before, and custom memory implants of a better life. 'Oh they know me so well', she thought to herself, making a mental memo to order a sleep inducer module for her home automation system, that had flashed at her as she reached the top of the moving track.

The sky that greeted Amber as she exited Embankment station was grey and swollen with rain, quite a contrast from the sunny start the day had offered earlier. Fortunately MetaTech was reasonably close to the station, so she calculated that she should make it to the lab before the heavens opened.


"Morning, Miss Watson", smiled Derek, firing Amber a jaunty salute, as she approached after her short walk from Embankment station.
"Tell me Derek, how do you remain so happy all of the time?"
"What's not to be happy about, it's a lovely day", he said pointing at the grey clouds above, "OK, so maybe not glorious, but it's not raining."

Amber smiled at him, of all the people at MetaTech, Derek was definitely her favourite. He had been a door guard for as long as she had been there, and he always greeted her with a genuine smile. He accepted her for who she was and she appreciated it.

"You have a good day Derek"
"I always do Miss Watson, I always do", he replied cheerily, opening the main door to let her inside.

MetaTech from the foyer was just like any other corporate technology building in the West End business sector; dizzyingly high ceilings held up by impressive marble pillars and impossibly clean marble and granite flooring, which swept their way up to a ridiculously over-sized reception desk. Flanked on either side of reception were swipe card security gates which would decide whether or not you were worthy to enter the upper echelons of the building.

Swiping though the right gate on only her second attempt, Amber headed for the lift and up towards the fifth floor lab complex she called home. For all their usual corporate flaws, MetaTech did get the lab funding right, not skimping on the equipment, computer power or cooling systems. MetaTech was a company that valued their engineers and scientists, knowing that they were the life blood of the business; and the way to a geek's heart is through good technology.

Despite it being still early, the labs were bustling with her co-workers, many of which she swore lived there, as she had never seen them actually enter or leave their labs. Steve was busy pouring over multiple terminals of data, a coffee in one hand and a palm keyboard in the other. She had learned a while ago that there was no point in greeting him when he was in data mode. His trance like state could only take in the streams of figures in front of his eyes, everything else was just a hazy cloud of peripheral vision and white noise.

"Good luck on the demo Amber, don't cock it up this time!"

Peter Blake, as annoying as he was talented. Amber both admired him for his technical ability and loathed him for his corporate brown nosing in equal measures. Peter was one of those geeks who knew how skilled he was and made no pretences of who he told about it. He was easily the most accomplished of the team, with countless successes to his name, which had earned him the title of 'Head of Research and Development.' In reality, this title meant very little, as all the R&D techs tended to work on their own projects and were given carte-blanche to develop their ideas the way they wanted, without interference from Peter. This was partly to allow them the creativity and head room to produce their best work, but mostly due to the fact that Peter didn't want to be implicated in any bad ideas, or worse, product law suits.

"Morning to you too Peter. Who's setting up the prototype in the demo room?"
"Well", Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat, "Wesley called in sick again and June is still on holiday, so I got Michael to set it up for you."
"You have got to be kidding me, are you trying to sabotage my projects", she cried and strode past her lab, hurrying off to the demo room.
"Dude, that's harsh", said Kate shaking her head at him. Kate was a young graduate scientist, who had been working as Peter's personal lab technician. She had only been with the company for a few months, but even she knew that assigning Michael to one of Amber's projects was like a kiss of death.
"Honestly, short of doing it myself, like that's going to happen, what choice did I have?"


The demo room was an impressive space, the crown jewel of the MetaTech building. Designed two years ago by Peter Blake himself and kitted out with the help of all the biggest names in hardware and software, in return for sponsorship and first rights on the products that MetaTech developed, the demo room was the pinnacle of technical excellence. Today the centrepiece of the room was Amber's prototype device, standing seven feet tall with its gleaming dome cascading to the floor of the raised presentation stage. For once it looked like Michael had actually done the connections right. All the I/O cables, network interfaces and power conduits were correctly connected and properly rated. Even the demo scripts were good, still room for tweaking, but they would work and wouldn't kill anyone in the process. This was just as well, as once the room was locked in demonstration mode, the security protocols protected the systems from being tampered with by anyone except the set-up technician.

"I don't believe it Amber", Michael screeched from the door of the demo room, "You've already checked my code once today, can't you just let me do my job!" And with that he stormed from the room slamming the door behind him.
'What the hell was that all about?' Amber mused, 'must be getting near re-interviewing time again, the techs always get twitchy around then.' No, the configuration would do fine, all the readings were well within tolerance levels and the prototype did look damn impressive.


The assembled audience in the demo room made Amber nervous. There was the usual board members, directors, security cleared heads of departments she expected, but also in the room were military personnel and government officials. She had been so pre-occupied with getting the technology to work, she hadn't even thought about the potential applications of her designs, and now she did, her head began to swim with the possibilities.

"Whenever you're ready Miss Watson, the floor is all yours", Peter announced to the room, and then quieter, to Amber, "good luck, I sincerely mean that."

Amber smiled and nodded in appreciation before taking to the stage and starting her presentation.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for taking time out of your schedules for today's special demonstration. What you see before you is the culmination of more than two years of research and development. We are all quite accustomed by now to the time freezing boxes that have revolutionised the delivery of fresh food and human organs. Most of you will be at least familiar with the concept of time fabric manipulation that allows these boxes to hold their contents in a state of stasis, allowing the item to be transported without degradation. Using a modification of this same process we can now take time fabric manipulation to the next level. Let me present... The Time Accelerator. A device that will change everything. Once inside the dome of the device, the very fabric of time can be controlled to take objects or even people forward to any point in the future, and then safely bring them back to the point of time origin. What Jules Verne imagined back in the 1890s is finally a reality. Before I begin this demonstration, does anyone have any questions."

Amber scanned the room and pointed towards a distinguished looking man in a dark grey suit. Judging by the way he held himself, she guessed government.

"You said forward in time, what about backwards?"
"Currently, travelling back in time beyond the point at which the Time Accelerator is linked up to the cluster isn't possible. Because the traveller has to be enclosed in a powered dome, if you attempted to travel back past the point at which it was connected you wouldn't move at all. Theoretically, you could leave a dome connected for a period of time and then travel back to the point of connection, but the jolt as it hit the connection point would not be good for the occupant. To put it mildly."

"If no one else has any questions, I shall begin", Amber announced, her heart now in her mouth over what she was about to attempt. Turning and nodding at Peter, Amber strode up to the dome and stepped inside.

Readings were all normal, power at optimal levels and all safety protocols were showing green. This was it, this was the moment she had worked so hard for all these years. Setting the controls one week forward, Amber hit the start button on the touch screen display.


The first thing Amber saw, or more importantly didn't see, as the prototype started up troubled her. She was expecting to see herself walking from the dome, newspaper in her hand and the assembled audience breaking into applause. Instead, they looked restless, bored even, and as seconds passed, the audience vanished and the room went dark. Something was very wrong, the room was still there, its security lights flashing, but as the dome accelerated, a bright glow emanated from around her, getting brighter and brighter by the second. As she watched, the security lights went out one by one and then the equipment around her also started glowing before bursting into a furnace of flames. Amber had to think quickly, any moment now the flames would engulf the dome and she would be finished. Instinctively, rather than logically, Amber shoved the machine into reverse, and the room around her froze in time for a moment, before spiralling backwards in time at increasing velocity. Stopping the time accelerator now wasn't an option, she was hurtling towards the connection point giving her less than a second to prepare for the impact.

As time came crashing in to meet her, Amber felt as if every molecule in her body had become separated from each other, and then smacked back together with the force of a nuclear blast. Her brain felt like it would explode and every single nerve experienced what felt like a high voltage electric shock. And then everything just stopped. The machine, her pain, the noise, everything was calm, save for a dull buzzing in the back of her skull.

Amber looked around the demonstration room, it was empty, but fully intact. The security modules were all functioning and the chairs were all set out ready for her demonstration. Looking up at the clock on the back wall confirmed what she had hoped, almost six o'clock. Now that the system was in lock down she wouldn't be able to stop the demo from going ahead, but she could at least warn herself before she set off for the lab. Amber's head began to swim, partly at the thought of warning herself not to do something she had already done, but mostly due to the buzzing noise at the back of her skull which was increasing in volume and intensity all the time.

Amber pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at the blank screen, still out of power, and even if it wasn't it would be engaged the moment she tried to phone herself.

"I can't believe your checking my work this early, haven't you got better things to do, like, oh I don't know, maybe prepare for your demo." Michael looked genuinely hurt by Amber's presence in the demo room.
"Michael, you have to stop the program, it's going to go terribly wrong, you must power it down"
"Jesus woman, I even came in extra early today to make sure everything was done perfectly, double checked everything and this is how you repay me! Thanks." And with that he stormed from the room. Except from Amber's eyes he might as well have just vanished into thin air, along with the rest of the demo room, as she experienced her first time gap and found herself standing on the platform of Embankment station completely unaware of how she got there. The buzzing in her head was now like a swarm of angry hornets fighting to find an escape route from her skull. Amber concluded from where she was standing that she must have already decided to go home to intercept herself before the other her left home. This train of thought did nothing to help the buzzing, which swelled in intensity as her mind wrapped itself around the paradox that she was causing herself.

Amber decided it was best to just act and not to think, as thinking was quickly killing her, and so as the train pulled into the station she boarded the carriage and tried to empty her mind of all thoughts. A talent which she soon realised she didn't possess, her whole life was based around thinking, her brain was her prized possession and to ignore it was virtually impossible for her. She would have to think of other things, anything but the fact that she was sharing the same time frame as herself from earlier on in the same day... or was it later now. This thought sent a bolt of pain through the base of her skull and she collapsed onto the floor of the train.


When she came to, she found herself on the pavement outside Baker Street station, the early morning rush stepping around or even over her as they went about their morning routines, her pod family either not seeing her or, more likely, refusing to recognise her. As she pulled herself up from the floor, the pain in her skull was now close to unbearable, the buzzing shooting from the back to the front of her head almost metronomically. She only had to make it another few hundred metres and then she could rest, she reassured herself.

Staggering onwards, her head swimming with the decreased frame rate that her eyes were presenting the word to her with, she rounded the corner. Her apartment building coming into sight spurred her on, even though her brain wanted her body to just drop and give in to the hornets that so wanted to devour her. Thinking was now no longer an option even if she wanted it to be, her head was so filled with noise that concious thought could not be heard above the din.

Crashing through the double doors of her apartment building's entrance porch, Amber crumpled to the floor amongst the vagrants sheltering from the harsh world around them. Almost by some cruel synergy, as soon as her body hit the cold hard floor she heard the lift doors at the end of the hallway open and her other self walk towards the porch doors. With all the remaining strength in her body, Amber reached out to her other self and cried out.

"No!"

Amber managed to avoid the tramp's grasp and shut the door behind her. She made a mental note to contact the council about them when she got into work. It didn't bother her too much, them sheltering where they did, as long as they didn't hassle her or her neighbours, but if they were going to start harassing her, that was a different matter.

Building Dreams

Tuesday the thirteenth of May, the day they got the call that any boat builder would give their right arm for. Wesley and Duke had been in the boat building business for a little over twenty years now, custom building vessels for clients large and small. What had started out as a flight of fancy, a means of escape from the humdrum existence of their nine to five jobs had turned into a lucrative and award winning business that had allowed the partners to tell their employers at the time to stick their jobs and enjoy the freedom of being their own bosses.

Wesley, a scruffy but not unattractive looking man had been a data processing clerk for the DVLA, a job he not only hated, but as a non-driver had absolutely no interest in either. Quite how he got stuck in such a dead end job, he couldn't quite remember. It had been one of those jobs which the Swansea job centre had forced him to interview for back during the last big economic downturn; and despite his best efforts, he managed to get the job. His day would consist of transferring hand written forms onto a data terminal and escalate any 'dubious' forms to the investigation team. That, in a nutshell was the sum total of his daily existence. He would clock in at nine and clock out again as close to five as he could get away with.

It was during one of these 'escalation' episodes that Wesley had met Duke, or Mr Duke as everyone called him at the data processing centre. Mr Duke was different from all the other investigators at the DVLA, he didn't seem to take his elevated position within the organisation with the air of seriousness that all the other suits did. He did his job well, better than his peers in fact, just without the stuffiness and stiffness that seemed to typify his department. I guess it went with the job, but most of the investigators would view everyone around them with distrust and suspicion, which always gave you a feeling as if you had done something wrong. Not with Mr Duke; his very presence would put you at ease, he had one of those undefinable charismatic qualities that you would normal find in a top rate salesman or movie star. Wesley jelled with him from the first day Duke started at the office. Partly due to his charisma, but mostly because they shared a passion for boats.

The first day Wesley had visited Mr Duke's office, he had caught Duke surfing for pictures on the internet, pictures of pure beauty, pictures of seventeenth century clippers; boat porn as Duke referred to it.

“They don't make them like that any more”, Wesley commented, completely catching Duke off-guard.
“Sorry, I didn't see you come in. But you are correct, more's the pity.”
“These days it's all about function and performance, they've completely lost the art of boat building. I mean look at the detail on that hull. Beautiful.”

That was the beginning of their friendship. Wesley started working later, making excuses to go and see Mr Duke so they could discuss boats and everything nautical. It was also the point that the seed of an idea had formed in Wesley's head.

“We should do it, we should build them, bring back the beauty into boat building. There must be a market out there for it.”
Duke laughed heartily. “What do we know about building boats? Other than what they should look like.”
“We'll learn, we'll take classes, start small. I know it's not something you can do overnight, but everyone has to start somewhere.”
Duke stared intently into Wesley's eyes, he was serious, totally serious. “Shit, you're crazy. I love the idea!”

Over the next twenty years, they worked their way up, starting small as Wesley had promised, with canoes and rowing boats and slowly growing in size. Even a devastating fire that levelled their entire stock of materials hadn't dented their enthusiasm for their true calling. Twelve years on from that first seed of an idea, they won their first award and soon after that the commissions started rolling in. They had become famous in their narrow field, builders of beauty and perfection, builders of dreams.

The day the phone rang, the thirteenth of May, Duke was just finishing off the stern of a yacht which was going to be presented to the president of the naval society for his seventieth birthday.

“Hi, Wesley and Duke, Mr Duke speaking.”
“Hello, this is Simon Faraday calling from the British Maritime Museum, I am looking for someone to build the Mary Rose, money no object.”
Duke nearly dropped the phone. “Did you say the Mary Rose, that's quite a request. Are you sure you mean the Mary Rose?”
“I'm quite sure Mr Duke, we will need it one year from today, in time for the five hundredth anniversary of the ships original completion. Can you do it?”
“Not only can we do it, we'd be honoured to.”

Duke scribbled the words 'Mary Rose' on a scrap of paper and thrust it at Wesley, who all but fainted on reading it. The Mary Rose was any boat builder's dream, and to build it with other people's money was just a gift.

“Of course, we'll get on to it straight away, and thank you for choosing Wesley and Duke, you'll be glad you did.”

Duke hung up the phone and he started whooping like a little girl who had just won a holiday camp beauty contest. This is what they had worked so hard for, this was a shot at the big time. “Clear the decks, and clear your head Wesley, we have a dream to build!”

The next twelve months would prove to be one of the most trying times of their partnership; building large commissions was always difficult, but when they had to build a boat that had only really been seen in paintings save for the odd fragments of its hull, things were that much trickier. They would pour over five hundred year old paintings and sketches into the early hours of the morning, immersing themselves in the history and legend of King Henry VIII's most prized ship. They would argue and bicker over this detail and that supposition, on one occasion arguing so fervently that they refused to speak to one another for two days. During all the quarrelling however, they would still continue to build. Wesley headed up the design process, whilst Duke concentrated on the craftsmanship of the vessel.

Summer and Autumn passed and Winter arrived, the heated blankets coming into play, to protect the delicate wood from the warping effects of the cold nights. They were on schedule but only just, there were days through the dying months of Winter when they wouldn't see daylight, locked away tweaking and building.

Finally on a misty morning in April, the pair stood back and admired what they had created. It was magnificent, the most beautiful boat they had ever created, every detail was perfect.

“We did it, we actually did it.” Wesley grinned from ear to ear and shook Duke's shoulder, “just one more to go, and it's complete. Mr Duke, it's all yours.”

Duke smiled broadly, took the small piece of wood from Wesley and carefully glued the final matchstick in place.

The Room

Mike climbed the stairs of the semi-detached country house, his hand firmly gripping his overly used firearm, sweat breaking out on his brow. The house was plunged into a murky darkness, save only for the occasional blue flashing from a broken sun jar on the staircase.

He had seen her run into the house with his own eyes, but it couldn't possibly have been who he thought it was. Shit, he had been at her funeral six months ago, he carried her coffin; but deep down in the pit of his stomach, he knew it was her, and his stomach was seldom wrong.

He turned the corner of the top few stairs and glanced across the landing to the room on the far left. A flickering of white light danced out of the slightly open doorway casting strobe like shadows across the wall. Mike gripped his gun tighter, his palms sticky with sweat. Slowly he edged his way towards the room, fear filling his throat.

"I know you're there", he called, "there's no need to hide from me, I'm not going to hurt you."

This was a lie and he knew it, the first line of site he got and it would finally be over. He'd already grieved for her once, this time there would be no crying, no pain, just release.

He inched the door of the room open and slid inside, his gun line tracing the outline of the shadow strewn walls. The flickering light he had witnessed from outside in the hallway was spewing from a field of static pulsating from the LCD screen in the corner, iridescent in the otherwise dark room. The bulbs from both lamps on the shelf were black and covered with a layer of dust, not having shone for an age, and the radiator at the far end of the room had been all but eaten away by a veracious army of rust patches; so far removed from the warm and welcoming den that he used to write her bedtime stories in, all those years ago.

'Where the hell is she?' His mind raced with the sudden realization that he had seen her climb the stairs, but hadn't actually seen her since she rounded the corner. She could be anywhere up here. But she wasn't anywhere, a fact that painfully dawned on him as her teeth dug deep into the back of his skull.

I know I should be writing

My short(ish) story is coming along reasonably steadily, but I'm finding it hard to brain dump on the page at the moment. Not entirely sure why, but I'm certain it will pass. So to keep my fingers moving and my right hemisphere active, I've decided to write essays whenever I have a blockage, to prevent the site from the onset of content atrophy.

One of the initial pushes that started me on this literary voyage into the unknown, was a podcast entitled 'I Should be Writing', which is intended for wannabe fiction writers, created and hosted by Mur Lafferty. It was this podcast that introduced me to Nanowrimo, and the trials and tribulations of writing. Actually, tracing it back a bit further, I should really lay the blame on Edgar Alan Poe. Yes Mr Poe, I'm blaming you personally for my lack of focus and time management skills!

About a year or so ago, I was looking for an audio version of 'The Raven', by Poe, and whilst searching iTunes for a copy, I somehow came across 'Crescent', by Phil Rossi; an excellent sci-fi/horror episodic audio-book, which became my first toe dip into podcast novels and audio fiction in general. I listened to the first episode and was instantly hooked by the quality and flow of the story and the impressive production quality.

Trailed after one of the episodes of Crescent, was a plug for the podcast novel 'Space Casey', by Christiana Ellis, which I decided to check out, and would also highly recommend as a great read... um, listen. One of the guest voices in Space Casey was that of Mur Lafferty, which in turn made me discover 'Playing for Keeps', 'Secrets of a Geek Fu master', 'Heaven' and ultimately, 'I Should be Writing'. You'll find links to all of the aforementioned feeds at the bottom of this post, to save you the searching for them yourself. I'm still looking for a good reading of 'The Raven' though, so if anyone can suggest one, comment in the usual manner.

'I Should be Writing' convinced me that it was OK for my writing to initially suck, and that the only way I could write a novel is to actually start writing it. The premise being that instead of putting it off, blaming not enough time or too much to do, you should pick up a pen, or keyboard in this case, and start writing.

This is where the idea for 'Growing a Bear' came from, the site, not the name, which I still can't remember the reason for. By writing on the train, and in-between thing, I would have no excuse of lack of time, as it was effectively dead time. I could do all the things that normally fill my busy day, without it impacting on my writing and visa versa. Of course what I hadn't figured into this plan, was that before I started writing, my dead time was filled by listening to the podcasts and episodic novels like the ones listed above. This is proving a hard habit to break and I'm finding the temptation to just sit back and be spoken to much too inviting most mornings, especially when I'm bleary eyed. I even tried compromising, by writing while I listened to my postcasts, but that just got confusing with too many voices rattling around in my skull, making it impossible to concentrate.

As a side note, I don't seem to have any problem writing with people singing in my head, it's only when they begin speaking that I struggle to concentrate properly. Why putting a tune to speaking makes it less distracting than without, I'm not entirely sure, maybe something to ponder on for a future post. And while I'm digressing, this site was originally going to be called 'The In-between' because it was being written in-between things; and was also going to be hosted with WordPress, but I'll cover that series of rants in a future essay too.

Meanwhile, in another part of the page, we rejoin the point, who has been waiting patiently for me to come back to him. only occasionally glancing at his pocket watch and tutting loudly.

The only solution that I have found to the postcast dilemma is, to put it simply, will power and discipline, which is another skill that I'm going to have to master, so it would seem. I can only allow myself to listen to podcasts and similar audio presentations when my legs are physically moving, or I'm on the tube (see the FAQ for my reasons for not writing on the tube). When I'm sitting down in dead time, I should be writing.

So, as you can see, my biggest distraction from actually writing, is listening to a woman telling me that 'I Should be Writing', and the only way I can become disciplined enough to achieve the word count I want is to start scheduling and planning dead time;. which by its very definition is supposed to be unscheduled! Pffff! (Yes I know it's not a word, but it is in OpenOffice's dictionary... well, my copy at any rate! :P )

Addendum

It would seem that iTunes has a unique, but undocumented feature within it, that has effectively solved my entire conundrum. By wiping my iPod, without my consent, of all content when I synced it tonight, I cannot be distracted by podcasts, as there are now none on it. Genius! Although wiping all my music off at the same time was a little harsh I thought.

Addendum to the Addendum

Since starting this essay, Bekie has fired two idea seeds at me, making me write two quick fire flash stories, each one between 300 and 600 words in length. Amazingly, I had no problem in writing them, and they've come out a lot better than I thought they would. I will put them up on the site in the coming week, after I've tweaked them a little for grammar, punctuation and pace.

Feeds and Sites

Mur Lafferty's Hub
Crescent
Space Casey

Object Oriented Writing

Before anyone starts to complain that I haven't actually put any creative writing up on this site yet, let me reassure you that I am in the process of writing a short story, which I should get finished in the coming week. It's taking longer than I anticipated, but my initial writer's block lifted once I performed a gender re-alignment on the story's main character, which was as much of a shock to me as it was to him.

The other shock that I had over the past week was the discovery that I write better if I plan out the story before writing it. This surprised me, as I always thought I'd be more of an organic writer, making it up as I go along with only a vague outline in my mind. However (ooo starting a sentence with a conjunction), when I discussed this discovery with Bekie, my illustrator and muse, and explained the process of how I was drafting the story, she spotted that what I was doing was drafting the story programmatically. A style I now refer to as Object Oriented Writing, or OOW for short.

For all the non-programmers reading this, I will attempt to explain how Object Oriented Writing works. For any code monkeys reading, you can skip down to the zipped up ActionScript 3 classes and work it out for yourself.

Objects in the programming world are difficult to put into laymen's terms; a fact I've only just discovered having written this section three times already and not making it any clearer with each re-write! So I'll explain it briefly and give a real world example.

All objects have properties and methods. Properties are pieces of information that describe the object, and methods are ways of interacting with that object and modifying the properties. Take, for example, a car. A car has properties, amongst many others, of colour, bodywork type, current speed, amount of petrol, and value. Possible methods of this car would be things like acceleration and breaking, which modifies the current speed; filling the tank, which modifies the amount of petrol; driving, which modifies both the speed and the amount of petrol; and crashing into a tree, which modifies the colour, bodywork type, and value. Under normal circumstances you wouldn't modify the properties without going through a method, just as pulling on the accelerator cable in a car whilst you are moving is not the normal way to go faster. Putting these concepts into the process of writing a novel you get the following.

A novel has properties of title, author and chapters. Title is just a string of characters which have no additional properties, known as a simple data type in programming terms. Author is another object, with its own properties of first name, last name, date of birth, and so on. Chapters are a collection of chapter objects, which in turn have their own properties of title and scenes. Scenes are a collection of scene objects with properties of location, characters, and story fragment. The more detail you put into the objects, the more the story takes shape.

The methods in the case of the Novel objects would be things like: place a character in a scene, assign a collection of scenes to a chapter, kill off a character (i.e. remove the character from the scene), and so on. Using these objects, I can create an outline of the story with as much or as little detail as I need; and if necessary generate a draft of the story with a little bit of code.

I'm well aware that this way of thinking is probably not how 'creatives' tend to think, but if it gets words on the page, and gets me writing engaging stories, then why not I say.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I'm linking to the ActionScript 3 classes I have created, which I'm covering with a Creative Commons GNU GPL V2 license . You are welcome to modify, extend, tidy up, or otherwise screw with the classes, just make sure you release them back into the wild with the same GNU license.


> Growing a Bear classes

Hopefully, the next post I put up will be my debut short story, that is if I can stop myself from editing it to death.

Pushing a boulder up a hill

You know that Greek bloke? No not that one, the other one. He was in that thing that time. Sisyphus, that's the one! That's me that is. Obviously it's not actually me, otherwise I would be the oldest interface developer on the planet. But I do know how he felt. Indulge me on this one.

I work for a web mapping company in a highly technical field, in fact you could call me a geek to my face and I wouldn't disagree. I have an extremely logic driven brain and, even if I do say so myself, I'm very good at what I do. This technical bias is part of the reason why I decided to start writing, to experience and try to understand life as a creative, away from my comfort zone; and I think I'm starting to see a problem.

Even before I have fully begun on this 'project', I find I have what can only be described as writer's block. This I was semi-prepared for, just not this early on.

So what's the issue? Is it a language problem? No, English is my only fluent language, if you discount geek, and I've been speaking that all my life. (English, not geek.)

Is it a grammar problem? Again, no; my grasp on the rules of grammar are pretty sound. (Note: must check document for grammar before posting.)

Lack of motivation? Definitely not, once I've decided on a project I'm as stubborn and unflappable as the speaking clock.

So what is the problem then? I've boiled it down to one of three things, ability, imagination or fear. It's much too early to concede to a lack of ability (see speaking clock above). A lack of imagination is not something I would have assigned to myself, my mind can dream up all sorts of weird and wonderful things, but none of which would make for interesting reading. Trust me on that one.

Which leaves us with fear. Fear of realizing that I can't write, that 50,000 words is just not possible for me. Fear that there are things I can't do if I apply myself. But more importantly, fear that I will just plain suck at writing.

The amount of times I've read a book, seen a film or listened to a podcast novel and thought 'it was OK, but not great', I now understand why. Being artistically creative is hard work! Configuring routers, easy. Developing web applications, a breeze. Writing a 5000 word short story that doesn't make me cringe when I read it back? Whoa, that's tough.

This morning, on the train, I listened to a short story by Jared Axelrod and was blown away by the effortless flow of the prose. It was a joy to listen to and beautifully crafted. To put it bluntly, it was good. I then started reading the opening of the short story I had started writing the day before and deleted it on the spot. To put it bluntly, it was not good, in fact it was terrible. Shallow, lacking in colour, and hollow. I think that was the point at which I realized that it wasn't going to be like object coding, where just syntax and structure was enough, I needed to let myself go and be less controlled in my writing. Just write from the heart and see what happened.

After a while of pouring out onto the page, I read it back. And do you know what... it was still, to put it bluntly, not good. It was better than the first attempt, but, I'm hoping, not as good as my third attempt. (and forth, fifth, sixth...)

But just like Sisyphus, I'm going to keep pushing that boulder up the hill, because eventually I hope to read a story back and think, 'actually, that doesn't suck!'

Growing a Bear

Welcome to 'Growing a Bear', a weekly blog about organically growing teddy bears. Actually that's a complete lie. I think the best way of explaining this is in the literary form of FAQ:

Q. What is 'Growing a Bear'?
A. 'Growing a bear' is a weekly blog about organically growing teddy bears. Actually that's a complete... Whoah, deja vu!

Q. No seriously!
A. 'Growing a bear' is going to be a home for my creative writing, solely written in between things; On the train, on the tube, waiting at data centres, on the toilet etc.

Q. Ok, so what's with the bear thing?
A. Ah, that was a typo of beard.

Q. Ok, so what's with the beard?
A. What's wrong with my beard? Oh, I see... That, I can't remember. I'm sure there was a really clever and literary reason though.

Q. Why are you inflicting this on us?
A. Nanowrimo is in less than 9 months and I haven't written anything creative since my one and only stay in hospital, and I was delirious when I wrote that.

Q. Nanowrimo?
A. National novel writing month. 30 days to write a 50,000 word novel, which I'm doing for the first time this year.

Q. Why are you doing Nanowrimo and why the sudden desire to write?
A. Two reasons: firstly, I want to explore my creative side. Secondly, Mur Lafferty brainwashed me (you kept telling me I should be writing, whilst I was on the train) :P

Q. Are you going to post the poem you wrote in hospital?
A. If I can find it, yes.

Q. What sort of creative writing is likely to appear on here?
A. Essays, short stories, reviews, poetry, critiques, scripts... Umm any other forms that I can't think of at the moment.

Q. Who does all those kewl illustrations on your pages?
A. That would be the super talented Bekie Marett. Find her at The Errant Artist

Q. Can I submit work to be put on here?
A. No, get your own site! :P Actually I haven't decided on that one yet, so it's more of a maybe.

I think that covers the basics and besides, the train is pulling into the platform, or should that be onto? Actually both sound kind of dangerous!

Email or comment if you have any questions, constructive feedback or critique. But please do make contact, I'd hate to think I'm going to be writing to an empty room!

Addendum:

Scratch off the tube from the above list. Try writing on the Bakerloo line at rush hour to find out why!