Author Archives: The Hyperteller

Celebrating 100 Followers, and What Am I Worth?

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I’m pretty certain I’m not the only person who, upon thinking about starting up a blog, suffered a mild identity crisis. The internet is filled with blogs and bloggers, publishing millions (billions? Trillions? Yards?) of words daily. In a world where Facebook and Twitter encourage people to shout the most menial details of their everyday lives (had a sandwich, then another sandwich, YOLO), what need was there for me to add my voice to the masses?

Incidentally, I had noodles for lunch, in case you were wondering.

It caused a considerable period of introspection, which doesn’t seem to show signs of ending any time soon. I couldn’t simply start writing. Before I began posting, before I even set up the blog, I had to know one key thing.

What is my worth?

This might be why I’m not the best when it comes to Twitter. I have to think about things for way too long before I can say them. Other people casually fire off a Tweet about what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, that crazy duck they just saw. Me, well that empty box seems awfully challenging.

There’s an episode of Red Dwarf in which all the characters must justify their existence to the universal Inquisitor or forever be erased from history and replaced with one of their alternatives who never got the chance to be (lost out in the initial swim, so to speak).

That’s how I feel when I log onto Twitter. Every word I write is followed by the nagging question, ‘Will anyone want to read that?’

I still haven’t cracked it with Twitter, but as you may have noticed, I have been blogging for over a year now. How did I get over that hurdle?

It’s all about context. My problem was I was assuming my voice would be like a Kit Kat in a bucket full of Kit Kats. Why would anyone single me out, when all I could possibly hope to say would be things that have been said before? What I failed to realise off the bat was that, just because it had been said before, doesn’t mean it has been heard.

And even more importantly, just because it has been said before, doesn’t mean it’s been said in a way that is even slightly reminiscent of the way I could, would, or will say it.

My blog isn’t a Kit Kat in a bucket full of Kit Kats. It’s a Kit Kat on a football pitch. Sure, every other football pitch may have a Kit Kat or two on it, but who amongst us wouldn’t be impressed and overjoyed to find a Kit Kat on a football pitch?

But of course, you can’t tell everyone what you’re worth (unless you’re in business, in which case, you should). Whatever the universal measurement of worth is, whatever ethereal fabric in the ether that absorbs the worth we try to inject into the universe, it’s the people who follow your blog that justify your existence as a blogger.

A blog that no one reads is useless, unless you simply wanted it to be that way. If no one is listening, it doesn’t matter if you whisper or shout. Getting followers shows that whatever you are trying to say has found its mark.

I may not be the most regular of bloggers, I may have periods where other things distract me, or I don’t have the energy or conviction to write. I may find my cursor hovering over the ‘publish’ button as I contemplate whether my latest post is really worth posting at all. But I like to think that, like every writer, there is something in my language, and my perspective, that makes me unique.

Clearly there are some who value my combination of (at least attempted) deep thought and surrealist whimsy.

So whether you were follower number 1 or 100, or any of the 98 in between:

Thank you for following, it is appreciated.

The Hyperteller

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including any images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Is it a problem that we all speak in absolutes?

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There seems to be an awful lot of ‘vanilla’ conflict in the world. By that I mean people arguing (sometimes even coming to blows) over the most minor of occurrences, such as a difference of opinion, as opposed to people dying in horrible conditions and struggling to survive in war torn or disaster ravaged places.

I’ve just been reading some critics’ reviews of the sitcom Vicious, which premiered on ITV last night. It starred Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple, whose relationship has descended to the point of misery and bickering. Personally, I loved it. I thought it was very funny (although I found a few lines, such as McKellen’s opening ‘joke’ that were to comedy what a face punch is to a witty retort), and I enjoyed the fact that a show about a gay couple was given a primetime slot and so heavily promoted.

The critics from The Guardian and The Independent hated it. They were put off by what they were sure was canned laughter, thought the jokes were cheap and lacked intelligence, and that the two leads were very over the top. I can certainly agree that there was an element of theatre acting involved, with lots of wild gesticulation and projected voices, but I rather enjoyed that. The two characters were overly camp, but then again it’s a sitcom (for understated, the also excellent The Job Lot fitted the bill perfectly, and was shown directly after Vicious).

Anyway, the shows aren’t really important. It got me thinking about the way in which we voice our thoughts. The comments’ sections underneath both articles were full of people agreeing with the critic, but of course there were the inevitable arguments.

What was interesting about each of these disagreements was that they were started by someone stating their opinion as fact ‘Vicious wasn’t funny’, for example. Well, if the internet has taught us anything, it’s that everyone is entitled to their opinion, as long as their opinion is the same as yours.

We’re all very protective of our opinions, and of the things we like. What we like, love and hate are small examples of the person we are. They say something about us, and we’ve now skipped out a few logical steps on the bridge between someone having a different opinion to us and making a personal attack. If someone makes a comment that clashes with our own views, we must defend our honour, like medieval knights jousting to protect the honour of a woman who probably couldn’t care less about her honour what men thought her ‘honour’ actually was.

Could this be the case because most of us speak in absolutes? Comedies we don’t like ‘aren’t funny’, books we hated had ‘terrible plots’, your best friend’s gorilla is ‘the wrong colour’.

When you remove phrases such as ‘I think’, or ‘In my opinion’, you change the face value of the sentence. Your opinion is being stated as fact. And where people confuse opinion with fact, there are always going to be arguments and disagreements, because everyone has a different world view. It’s true of the world in general that some of the worst people in it are those who hate the fact that we are all individual.

So someone who comments on the review of Vicious and says ‘It was really funny’ is stating a fact, as are the people who said ‘It wasn’t funny in the slightest’. No wonder we argue about these things, because their syntax and lexicon suggests a fact. Clearly, you cannot categorise a sitcom as either ‘funny’ or ‘unfunny’ because there are bound to be some people who find it amusing. Humour is not a universal constant.

But do we need to preface everything with ‘I think’, or ‘In my opinion’? Would that not become overly tiring? Although, how much effort does it take to say ‘Thank you’, as an example. Still too much for some people, but for the polite amongst us, it’s automatic. Do we need to train ourselves up again to categorise our thoughts as mere opinions?

Or is the problem actually that we are losing the ability to read subtext? Once upon a time if someone made a comment such as ‘Vicious isn’t funny’, we all had the ability to deduce from the context that this was someone’s personal opinion. Now, however, we have a tendency not to bother. We take everything at face value, which is why people have to be warned that coffee is hot so they don’t burn themselves and then sue. People can’t be bothered to do that extra brain work.

Perhaps it’s not opinions we are fighting against, but simply the misinterpretation of statements as facts and not thoughts. If someone tells you a fact that you know is wrong, you will likely correct them. So when opinions become facts, they are going to be wrong for someone, who will then try and correct them. Then arguments ensue, and everyone marches off to get their death rays.

As a writer, it concerns me that the idea of subtext could be disappearing, that subtlety is being dropped in favour of blunt observation. A huge part of any art form is the things you don’t say, or don’t show.

If we keep on going at this rate, in another hundred years we’ll back be to just pointing at things we want, then hitting someone with a rock.

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including any images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Women, relax! Your status as ‘not a man’ is secure!

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Since the beginning of time, women have not been men. It’s a fundamental point of our species, really, in the same way that men aren’t women. However, unlike the fact that men aren’t women, the idea that women aren’t men is something that a lot of people are still very keen on focussing on.

Take Wikipedia, for example. They’ve recently started mass‐migrating the names of American women novelists out of the category ‘American Novelists’. It’s all right though ‐ apparently ‐ because they’ve now got their own category ‐ ‘American Women Novelists’.

This annoyed quite a few women, who, for some unimaginable reason, didn’t want to be defined by the fact that they were not a man. I consider myself to be a pretty well adjusted ‘Not a Tomato’, and so I cannot imagine why these not‐men might consider it offensive to have to constantly be described and categorised in relation to what they are not. Hell, we’re all ‘Not Koalas’ here. Can’t we just get along?

Of course, what the above paragraph meant to say was, yes, this is absolutely ridiculous. Wikipedia has responded to the furore that has been created amongst these ‘novelists who aren’t toasters’. It seems as though it has recently created the page ‘American Men Novelists’ and begun migrating some of pages across (note: I’m assuming that this is a newly created category, as all the articles on the gender segregation topic reference the fact that there is no ‘American Men Novelists’ category). The other thing Wikipedia has done is to reconsider the idea, and is currently discussing the idea of putting all the pages in the ‘American Women Novelists’ category back into the main category.

Whether or not Wikipedia’s decision sticks is really beside the point. What it highlights is a general attitude that certain occupations are roles for men, and that a women doing any of these is therefore somehow an anomaly. So if a man writes a book, fair enough, that’s what men do. If a woman writes a book, it’s worthy of note that she’s a woman (sorry; not a man) because…erm…well…because women aren’t natural, or something.

We might as well just go the whole hog and introduce a rule that says every time a woman tells a man that they have written a novel, or are going to write a novel, he must pat them on the head and say ‘Aww, good for you’.

I had intended to write a more in-depth post on why ‘Category: humans/Sub‐Category: Men/ Sub‐Category: Humans Who Aren’t Men ’ shouldn’t be treated like anomalies, but quite frankly it’s baffling that it should even need to be spelled out.

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including any images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Guest Post by Sonney Stelling: Why I Write

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Having read Rewan’s previous blog about why he plays video games, I had decided I would write my own post detailing my reasons for playing. However as the slightly observant of you may have noticed from the title it kind of evolved into something else.

Thinking about why I play games, the main reason I came up with is escapism. Life as a whole is pretty boring. Most days I get up, go to work, work all day, come home, sit around for a few hours before going to bed in preparation for the next day of going to work. This cycle is basically the same for everyone in modern society. But if I spend those few spare hours playing video games, then suddenly instead of simply sitting around waiting for work to start again I am; (just using my last few games I played as examples) either a Spartan warrior trying to get revenge against Olympus or a master thief travelling through time to save his ancestors or a master assassin trying to liberate a country or a soldier saving the universe from an ancient alien race. Obviously these are all things I could never do in real life but in videogame form I can. It is this reason why I never really got the appeal of the Sims series.

I then realized that this escapism also exists when watching movies or reading books, or indeed writing stories. However the interactivity is what makes games and books far more immersive than films. I say books are interactive because when you read I believe you do interact with them, clearly not in the same way that you do with videogames, but when you read, you are using your imagination to bring the words on the page to life. You are using the writer’s words to conjure up a world with your mind, and that is quite an immersive and definitely an interactive experience.

Now writing stories does one other thing for me that reading or playing games cannot do; it is therapeutic. This is a conclusion I came to when I thought about why it is I listen to music (as you can see, this post became quite a long winded thought process). The reason I listen to music itself is mainly because walking in silence is boring, so perhaps a better question is why I listen to the type of music I listen to? I mainly listen to rock music in particular punk.

The reason I started listening to that genre is that in the lyrics I tend to find solace, I relate to the artist as if they are writing songs about my life. This ability to relate to a song is obviously not exclusive to that genre of music, in fact a lot of popular music is highly relatable due to its tendency to lean towards vague lyrics that allow almost anyone to relate to it if they want to. The genre of rock music is something I can relate to a lot, whenever I feel angry or confused about the way the world is being run, I find comfort in the fury of bands such as Rise Against or Funeral for a Friend. Whenever I feel at a low ebb in my life I tend to find hope in the words of Death Cab for Cutie or Brand New or Biffy Clyro. Music is what helps me get through those times; it is a kind of therapy.

Going back to writing, I feel the same way about writing that I do about music (possible explanation for why I cannot write without also listening to music). There is a popular theory that all characters are merely a part of the writer, I guess that stems from the ‘write what you know’ ideology. Well I disagree with that slightly, most main characters I create have personality traits that I do not as a starting point. Like they are me but as a negative, I write about what I am not. I am creating the person I want to be in my head or less simplistically, I am creating somebody that either has or has not got the particular trait I dislike in me or wish I had at the time. From there I tend to create the world they live and the story they most go through, all other characters are thought up after the main story and exist as part of that story.

The process of creating a character and taking them on an adventure (usually in my case in a world totally different to ours) is complete escapism and has the same enjoyment as playing a videogame or reading a book. The process of almost remaking myself (or at least a part of myself) is what makes the writing process something else. Something cathartic and soothing, that’s why I see writing as a form of therapy and I would completely encourage people to try it next time they are feeling not at their best.

Getting slightly personal for a bit, those that know me well enough, will know that I can get pretty down sometimes, and that sometimes I suffer from a form of depression and tend to be both angry and sad at the world around me. I have recently been experiencing this feeling again, although I am not saying the two are totally linked, but it coincides with the longest period of me not writing in a while. Even just writing this piece helps me feel better, so that’s why I write, that’s why I feel writing is therapeutic.

Busy, and learning to prioritise

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Things have been rather busy here at Hyperteller HQ (how I wish I had a HQ; I could say things like ‘Quick, back to HQ!’ or ‘Meet me at HQ at 9.00 hours’). I’ve been juggling three big writing projects, and it’s got me thinking about managing time and prioritising.

Everyone knows that Step One of any massive project is to stare at the massive project and think things such as ‘How the hell am I ever going to get that done?’ It’s the same as when a large monster/deadly thing arrives in a Hollywood film. All the characters must stand on the spot, gobsmacked by the hugeness of the large monster/deadly thing for several moments, even though running, getting ‘The Big Gun’, or climbing in a very fast vehicle headed the opposite direction would be a much better use of their time.

At first, it seemed as though these three massive projects all needed doing at exactly the same time. Taking a little while out to think things through, however, showed me that there was a clear solution as to how they should be prioritised.

It’s one of those weird paradoxes of nature that the best way to get a lot of things done is to stop doing everything and just think about it for a while. Thinking doesn’t get the work done (unless you are a professional philosopher. Can you even get those? Dammit, I think I’ve just unwittingly become an amateur one…) but it does allow you to see what needs doing first. Spending half an hour measuring for wallpaper isn’t the best use of your time if you haven’t built the wall yet.

Stepping back and looking at my time as a whole and the projects I was working on allowed me to see that there was a clear winner in the ‘What should I work on first?’ category of the awards I don’t have. Because, looking at all the projects together allowed me to compare them and see that:

  1. Project one is for an opportunity that is, as of this particular moment, indefinitely open
  2. Project two is short term, but I haven’t yet taken the first steps to secure it, so there is no point doing the rest of the work
  3. Project three is a short term opportunity, and one that I want to capitalise on ‘whilst the iron’s still hot’

It became obvious after a few moments’ of thinking about all three projects together that the order I should do them in is 3,2,1. Number one is that I am going through a last round of edits on Politics in Blood, as the fantasy publisher Tor has decided to allow authors who don’t have an agent to submit their work. (Hint; if you’re a fantasy author without an agent, but with a finished book, do this). Seeing as Politics in Blood has been the focus of my writing world for a long time, opportunity one seemed like it should be my priority, but actually, project 3 is far more exciting as of this moment in time.

Juggling several projects isn’t, as it turns out, such a bad idea. As long as you take the time to see what your final goal is, and then look at what you have to do and see which of the things you are working on best moves you closer to that goal, you can make progress without being buried under work.

Whether you make a list, with highest priority projects at the top and the lowest at the bottom, assign projects a points‐based ratings system, or shave tasks into the side of a cat, knowing what your priorities are can really make a difference to the progress you make towards your writing goals.

What are your writing goals, and how do you ensure you stay on track?

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Don’t call the police, you’ll get sued

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Policewoman sues garage owner after tripping on a kerb during a 999 callout

Kerbs are evil. We all know this; it’s why being a kerb carries a 10 year jail sentence. Kerbs across the country are regularly found hiding in shipping containers or in meth labs, and are subsequently rounded up and imprisoned. Being a kerb is almost as bad as being a murderer.

Associating with a kerb is also a very serious crime. Kerbs are evil because they are so dangerous. Therefore associating with a kerb is kind of like buying sweets for a mugger, or hugging a Tory.

So it’s no wonder that petrol station owner Steve Jones has found himself in trouble with the police for having a kerb on the premises. To be more specific, he called 999 because he thought he’d been robbed, and when the police turned up, one of them tripped on the kerb and injured herself. She’s now suing Mr Jones, under the pretence of…what’s the legal term?… greed.

‘Fire brigade? My house is on fire. Oh, and be careful. It’s on fire.’

Apparently, according to PC Kelly Jones’ lawyers, the petrol station owner failed to warn her of the dangers of the badly lit garage forecourt. How could he have been so stupid? He’s going to be so embarrassed to realise that, when he phoned the emergency services, he only said*;

‘Hello, police? I think I’ve been burgled.’

When what he meant to say, was;

‘Hello, police? I think I’ve been burgled. Also, mind out ‐ I own a kerb.’

*I don’t know what he actually said on his 999 call, I’ve just made something up.

That changes the face of 999 calls forever. ‘Police, help! There’s a killer in my house. Come quick! Also, just so you know, I was warming a bagel, so the toaster is still a little bit warm.’

Being innocent costs a whole lot of money

But get your pipes out, people, it’s time to get serious about this. Apparently £20million per year is received by members of the police force in compensation claims for accidents they have at work. While I’m sure some of that is justifiable, PC Jones’ claim could have big implications if it actually goes through (although it seems as though she might now try to withdraw the claim).

The whole point of compensation is that you get recompense for something that happens to you that isn’t your fault. The idea being that if a tree surgeon came along and hacked your leg off because he hadn’t been trained by his employer to tell the difference between humans and trees, you’d probably need some financial help to adapt to your new circumstances.

Of course, unsurprisingly, the idea of compensation has just become some big money pot that people see as an easy way to sort out a few financial problems.

Does anyone remember common sense?

No one’s allowed common sense anymore, and we’re all treated as though we’re in preschool. It’s too much to expect an adult (who deals with work, taxes, driving a car, marriage, raising kids, etc) to have the mental faculties to know that the coffee they just bought is hot. Where we used to have accidents, we now have ‘oversights’ and ‘policy failures’. No one is allowed to be in the wrong anymore, because that’s mean, so people tripping over is no longer the result of fluke, clumsiness or stupidity. There has to be someone to blame, and we’re all too narcissistic to ever blame ourselves for stabbing that fork into our ear. No, it must have been someone else’s fault; there wasn’t a sign telling us not to do it.

When your job is dangerous, what do you do about health & safety?

When you introduce this kind of culture to law enforcement, it creates a big problem. If PC Jones’ claim was to be successful, it would create a very worrying precedent. We’ll be in a country where people have to weigh up the risk factors involved in calling the police. They are meant to protect the innocent, not steal their money. People will soon be debating calling 999, on the principal that ‘Well, thieves have just stolen my £20,000 car, but if the police turn up and one of them falls into my hedge, they could sue me for a lot more’. It’ll come to something when it’s cheaper and easier to let criminals get away with breaking the law than it is to call out the people whose sole purpose is to keep you safe.

Luckily, PC Jones’ Chief Constable has criticised the move, saying that he is disappointed this course of action has been taken. However, in one of those typical speeches designed to mitigate public anger, he said that officers who join the police force ‘understand and accept the risks’.

And there I was thinking that the risks involved in policing were things such as high speed car chases, crazed drug dealers, murderers and gangs.

Next you’ll be telling us that before soldiers are sent to Afghanistan, they’re sat down by a superior and told ‘Right then; safety briefing. You’ll be going to Afghanistan, so make sure you’re ready. It does get a bit hot.’

Do you know what your prawns are eating?

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You know how when you leave your prawns home alone, and tell them not to raid the fridge? How can you be sure that your prawns aren’t eating things they shouldn’t? You tell them they can have a bit of the cheese, and the next thing you know, they’ve eaten all the Ben & Jerry’s.

No, I haven’t gone mad. This is a phrase that is being used currently by the TV programme Hugh’s Fish Fight. Apparently, King Prawns are mostly farmed in inland ponds, but they need a lot of protein, so in Thailand they’re being given ‘trash fish’. No, that’s not a fish that has 20 offspring and a couch on the front lawn.

Trash fish is fish that is unsuitable for humans. They don’t like the same music as us, they don’t read books (paper/Kindles and water don’t really mix; as anyone who has ever taken a lectern into the bath in order to read Game of Thrones will know), and they’re too rotten, small, or bony to be fed to us.

On top of that, a lot of this trash fish consists of juvenile fish that are being caught illegally by fisherman using nets that are too small. Not too small in that there’s a fisherman on a trawler in Thailand trying to land cod (or whatever) with one of those tea strainers you use for relocating your goldfish, but small in that the mesh is too fine. They are deliberately trying to catch these fish, fish that could grow up to be big ass fish which could make Captain Birdseye cry with happiness. Big ass fish we could actually eat, and which could help to repopulate Thailand’s overfished seas by becoming adults and spawning (before we eat them, obviously).

Now, Hugh’s Fish Fight is trying to get consumers to put pressure on Tesco, Morrisons, and The Cooperative, to in turn put pressure on Thailand’s prawn industry. People are Tweeting the companies with ‘What are your prawns eating? #fishfight’.Which is all well and good. Overfishing is one of those problems that people don’t really care about, but will when it’s gone too far and there’s no fish left. I don’t like fish, so I won’t really notice a different, although considering one of Britain’s classic dishes is ‘Fish & Chips’, and ‘& Chips’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, maybe overfishing could cause a serious shift in our cultural paradigm.

But, whether you care about overfishing (which you should, because fish are people too…or something) or not, there’s a serious human issue at the bottom of this. It’s perhaps a sad fact, although understandable from an evolutionary point of view, that we’re going to care about something more when humans are involved. The human issue is this:

Those fishermen in Thailand are breaking the law and illegally catching juvenile fish to supply the prawn industry. There must be a motivator. A rather unlikely option is that these Thai fishermen are all very anti-fish, and are trying to clean up the sea as quickly as possible in a genocide attempt to rid the sea of the slipperly little buggers. Another option is that, rather like with Wally, it’s very hard to find Nemo with so many bloody fish out there. Overfishing clearly solves both of these problems.

Or, they are overfishing because the legal quotas aren’t enough, just like in this country, for a Thai fisherperson to make a living on. Without catching these illegal fish, they simply wouldn’t make enough money to survive. I live in a county with a large fishing industry, and we hear the same thing here all the time. I’m sure the Thai prawn companies know nothing about this (why isn’t there an Ironitalics?).

And why aren’t these fisherman paid more? Because the prawn barons (I’m very slowly slipping into pun territory now, although can you really blame me?) can’t afford to. And why can’t the producers of hardcore prawn pay them more? Because our supermarkets aren’t paying them more. And why aren’t the supermarkets able to pay them more? Because we, as consumers, have an expectancy about the price of prawns, and don’t want to pay ‘too much’.

Now, before anyone gets offended, I’m not blaming us. There’s a growing trend to blame the consumer for everything at the moment. The recession, and subsequent slow economic recovery, is always mentioned on the news and ‘low consumer spending’ is one of the main reasons. Everyone reports it very neutrally, but there always seems to be a subtext of ‘look at those consumers, not spending money. It’s like they want the country to be poor’. High streets are shutting down because we’re all buying online.

Why are we all buying online? Because it’s cheaper. I’d love to be able to support high street stores, but when I could get two albums off Amazon for the same price as one on the high street, well… When I’m a millionaire author (side note: one day I will be a millionaire author) I’ll happily buy things from independent bookstores and suchlike. I’ll buy physical CDs for twice the price the album is online in order to help out a high street store. But at the moment, how many of us actually have the surplus income to be able to literally waste money?

Whether it’s prawns, CDs, or big inflatable elephants, we have expectations regarding price. We each know what is ‘too much’, and what is cheap. These are mostly affected by how much money we have. An iPhone might seem an expensive luxury for many of us, but there are those out there who treat theirs like it’s worthless.

The bottom line is we can’t pay more for prawns (or whatever) because we don’t have enough money to. This means that the price of things such as cod and prawns has to stay low. Which means that the people who farm/catch them can’t make a decent living. They have to resort to the illegal things, such as overfishing, or catching things they shouldn’t, because that’s what the companies need. Although maybe the companies don’t specifically need tiny baby fish to feed their prawns. But something is motivating Thai fishermen to actively try to catch them, and I’m betting that motivation is money, somewhere down the line.

There’s a link between these kind of malpractices and the amount of money we are all earning. It’s the same reason companies can get away with employing children in foreign countries to make clothes. We can’t afford to pay more, and because there’s a cheap option, we like to look the other way and pretend that things are OK. But fish are dying out, children having their childhoods taken away, and on a shrinking iceberg somewhere, there are some polar bears looking sad.

If we were all paid more, if the big corporations could stand to make a couple of billion less each year in order to increase worker’s wages, we’d have bigger consumer spending, and therefore a higher household prawn budget. The price of prawns could go up, meaning the cost of prawn production could go up, meaning Thai fisherman wages could go up, meaning they wouldn’t have to overfish and fish illegally, meaning the fish would be happy, and Nemo can get on with his life.

So yes, by all means ask the supermarkets to put pressure on the prawn barons. But, while we’re at it, why not all point out the fact that, if we want to spend our way out of recession, be able to afford clean energy to save the planet, and be able to buy expensive fish, clothes and inflatable elephants, we need more household income.

The corporate fat cats driving home in one of their seven Ferraris might disagree. But, the one message that remains constantly ignored by those in power is that the poor people have for too long been squeezed too hard, where those at the top have plenty to give without even noticing. Whether it’s us consumers at one end, trying to keep household bills down by paying as little as possible for our prawns, or the Thai fishermen who are breaking the law because it’s the only way to survive, passing a little more money down to the bottom of the ladder could go a long way to solving a lot of the world’s problems; the fact that we’re systematically killing entire species being one of them.

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Why a fantasy writer and a drummer are the same thing

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Words and numbers. They’re both very different (try paying for your next coffee with alphabet fridge magnets). They have rules and constraints that only apply to them (for instance, can you think of a naughty number? Oh, actually, one, but no one would bother to censor it by putting a * in place of one of the digits…). Image that; ‘swear’numbers. ‘That 47ing bus driver saw me at the stop and just drove right past me. What a 4.’

Anyway, the point is, words and numbers are different (thank you, captain obvious). What’s that got to do with fantasy writing or drumming? Well, music is very mathematical. Some study by wizards or something has shown that people who are good at music often have very strong maths skills. Hence, numbers. Music is all about fractions, after all.

One of the remarkable capabilities of the human brain is to draw meaning from the most insignificant of details. Such as ‘OMG, you’re wearing the same jumper as me! How random is that! You’d think they manufactured them en masse in a factory somewhere and sold them at hundreds of retail outlets across the country or something!’ And it was while jamming to something or another on my trusty Alesis DM5 Pro (I’m not quite sure what makes it a ‘pro’ electronic drum kit) that I made an interesting connection between two of my hobbies.

You see, as the title so rather suggests, whether I’m drumming or writing fantasy, in many ways, nothing changes. Here’s why.

Virtually ignored

Now, obviously with such successful writers as Terry Pratchett, George R. R. Martin, Trudi Canavan (‘What about Stephanie Meyer?’ 9 off…), fantasy clearly isn’t ignored as a genre. Not by the people who buy and read it, anyway. It’s very hard to read a book if you are ignoring it. And there are plenty of drummers out there, makers of drum kits, and bands with drummers, so as musicians they’re not ignored either.

Except that they are. As are fantasy writers. For different reasons, of course, but they are.

Fantasy writers are overlooked in that the idea of fantasy novels for adults is viewed by many as an oxymoron. Fantasy and adults are viewed as two incompatible things, like beef and milkshake, or a triple AAA international credit rating and a Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer. I’ve found several literary agent submission guidelines that include phrases such as ‘We do not represent children’s books, so please do not send us fantasy’. But suggesting fantasy is only for children is like suggesting that arms are only for women.

Drumming is ignored in that nobody really notices a drummer. They make a lot of noise, so you’d think they’d be hard to ignore, but actually, they are easy to overlook. They sit at the back, hidden behind lots of cymbals, whilst guitarists, singers and even bassists jump around a lot in front of them. Paying attention to a drummer is kind of like watching the extras in the background of a scene from television or film.

Looked down upon

Fantasy and drumming both have a lack of standing amongst their peers. Drumming is considered just above the triangle when it comes to musical instruments. I often find it odd that people disregard drums because they involve hitting things (how primitive), yet the piano is arguably the King/Queen of instruments. Look inside a piano next time you see one. It’s full of hammers.

Fantasy is regarded as one of the ‘silly’ genres. Perhaps slightly better than Chick Lit, but only if it’s aimed at kids. Fantasy writers themselves are often the people who are responsible for the genre having such a bad name, because a majority of the books out there are still clichéd Tolkien wannabes. Fantasy, like any story, has the potential to say things that are meaningful. A story can be powerful, deep, philosophical, and ground-breaking no matter whether it’s set in a Victorian brothel, a modern day art gallery, or an elven castle.

Similarly, there are some fantastic drummers out there, who get buried underneath all the typical, so-easy-you-can-play-it-whilst-asleep, beats of music in the charts (see my top 5 drummers). It takes skill, precision and practice to become a great drummer, just like it does any other instrument. Drums play a valuable role in modern music, but guitars are probably more interesting. They’re certainly easier to turn down if you’re worried about waking the neighbours.

What can you do?

Well, I guess that’s just the drummer or fantasy writer’s lot in life. There are only two things you can do:

  1. Accept it
  2. Take what you know and do something special with it

Whether drumming or writing, the people who do it the best are those who take the customs and constraints of the skill and stick to them whilst still creating something unique. Not everything has to be about thinking outside of the box; there’s a lot you can do inside the box, it just requires creative thinking.

Just because other people don’t value what you do doesn’t mean you can’t show them its worth. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write a jam, or drum a story. Or something.

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Writing as a man feminist; when no means no

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I have spent a lot of time on the protagonist of Politics in Blood (which someday will get published and y’all be able to read it). I wanted Fray to be a ‘strong’ female character (check out this post by Danielle Shipley about ‘strong’ female characters, and then follow my quote back to my post which explains why I keep using inverted commas when I write ‘strong’ female characters). I wanted her to be a woman that women could ‘get’, understand and identify with (in as much as you can identify with a master criminal). I wanted her to be a character that women could read and not be embarrassed by.

In order to do that, I spent a lot of time reading feminist blogs and columns. I wanted to know what kind of things made female characters ‘weak’ or stereotypical. Luckily, pretty much everything I found, Fray wasn’t guilty of. Every now and then I’d find something I hadn’t thought of.

Turning points

But actually, there was one moment when I realised something very important. Which is that, just because I’m a man, doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with something feminism asserts.

The example in question was a really simple choice. I was going back over my first chapter and decided that I ought to describe Fray a bit more. In thinking about the clothes she was wearing, I hit upon an interesting conundrum. Trousers or skirt? After I’d decided what I’d be wearing (joke), I returned to Fray’s wardrobe.

I spent a little time on Google looking over results and reading some feminist thoughts on the subject. I found out two things:

  1. Trousers are evil (and so are men).
  2. Skirts are evil (and so are men).

As Danielle Shipley so rightly points out in her latest post, you can’t please everyone. Some people thought women wearing trousers was a sign of male oppression, as wearing trousers is a ‘man thing’ so women wearing trousers are ‘trying to be men’. But the other side of the coin was people arguing that skirts are a sign of male oppression because they’re a garment just for women, etc etc.

Deciding to say no

I realised after a while that I was spending far too much time thinking about it. It’s a stupid issue. Women can wear what they want, as can fictional women. It doesn’t matter; skirts and trousers aren’t evil, or good. They’re just things that people put on, like hats, or a pantomime horse costume. There doesn’t have to be inherent sexist overtones in a piece of material.

It was an important decision to make, because up until that point, I think I’d operated in the same way a lot of men clued up about feminism do, in that they tread very carefully because we’re obviously guilty of everything. Look at us, with our man faces. Oh, the hate that pours off you. What, you have facial hair? You oppressive bastard; I feel so oppressed right now.

But after reading certain pieces of feminism by people who believe that the world would be a better place if all the men were dead, or kept in zoos, and that mothers should kill their children in order to escape gender roles, and that sex with a man is always rape, I realised that feminism, like religion, capitalism and democracy, is great as a concept, but as soon as you give that concept to humans, they don’t half screw it up.

You can’t please everyone

There is no way I’m ever going to write a woman who everyone thinks is a ‘strong’ character. There’ll always be someone who will accuse me of sexism, and of taking breaks in between writing in order to stab women and then laugh about it. One woman’s idea of equality is to be able to choose to look after her children, not be forced to; whereas another’s is that she has a career while her husband is forced to stay at home. There are people who want true equality, and people who just want to flip things around so that women can have thousands of years oppressing men in order to even things up.

I realised some very important things on that day, just from pondering a simple costume choice for my main character.

I realised that feminism, like everything, isn’t one idea (even jam). There are different factions within the belief (as there are in…jam). Some of them want a better world for everyone, and the start of that is equality in the sexes (these, I like to think, are the true feminists ((or jamists – ‘what do we want? Equality for all jams! When do we want it? Whenever there’s toast, please’)), so just hate men and feminism gives them a handy cover to say whatever they want and get away with misandry, and others think men are the cause of all evil in the world and that no woman has ever done a thing wrong.

What happens when you disagree with your beliefs?

It opened up a very large moral conundrum, however. I’d openly acknowledged to myself that it was possible to disagree with feminism, whilst still believing, and wanting to uphold, its main principles. But half the problem in this world is that there are those who disagree with feminism full stop (or period, for you Americans). How do you be a man who supports gender equality, yet still disagrees with certain parts of feminism?

In the same way, I imagine, as gay Catholics do. You look at what you believe, and then you realise which bits have been twisted and distorted by people. I don’t believe in God, but I think religion is a wonderful thing. It gives hope, joy and morality to people all across the world. At its core, every religion teaches tolerance, understanding, charity and acceptance. How people have managed to take those core messages and extract homophobia, racism, sexism and general badassery out of them is another issue entirely. It’s like turning gold into lead. (Or something worse, but I haven’t quite decided which swear words I want to appear on this blog.)

What it’s all about

Feminism, at its core, wants equality for everyone. True feminists (I believe) are as worried about the gender stereotypes and expectations that are placed upon men, as they are all the societal constraints that women have to suffer with. Being a man and believing in feminism is not a case of hating oneself or one’s gender; it’s about wanting to make a better world.

So, while I’ll uphold feminism, and will continue to write about it, and try and do my little part to make this world a better place, I also know that it’s OK to stand up and say, ‘You know, I don’t agree with that’.

That women are abused and treated as second class citizens are massive issues that need to be dealt with. But as to whether they want to wear a skirt or some trousers, well; let’s just say I won’t be picketing any branches of Topshop any time soon.

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

Tweet me – @RewanTremethick

The content of this post (including images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013

Guest post exchange: Write What You Want, by Tirzah Duncan

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It’s guest post time again. This post comes from the rather talented Tirzah Duncan. Incidentally, my guest post ‘Learning to write: The Goldilocks Effect’ will soon be gracing her blogspace with some very strange analogies. Check out Tirzah’s blog here, then read this sample of her novel, Ever the Actor, and wait with excitement until this brilliant book gets published (hurry up with that, Tirzah!)

Write What You Know. This is an interesting statement that has annoyed me for a long time. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood it. Perhaps I’ve understood it perfectly and yet disagreed with it. Or perhaps, like any adage, it was meant for certain times and situations (he who hesitates is lost) and has simply been too often misapplied when an opposite adage would have been more appropriate (look before you leap).

Let’s leap into a little dissection of this standard five-word piece of writing instruction.

Here is how some take this little piece of writing wisdom: Write Yourself/Your Situation/Your Emotional Journey.

This is the meaning that seems, to me, to be the obvious one. Now, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with writing characters who are facets of yourself and people you know. Nothing wrong with writing a situation very similar to yours, and nothing wrong with using your writing to chronicle your emotional journey. Quasi-biography is a legitimate device, and there have been perfectly powerful stories written using any and each of these concepts. And I’m sure that for some, using “Write what you know” in this way has been wonderful career-starting advice.

But for the wrong person at the wrong time, this idea is entirely terrible, like crying “He who hesitates is lost!” to someone going cliff-diving from an untested height—or a little more appropriately in this case, like crying “look before you leap!” to someone bracing up for their first ever jump from the high-dive.

One young writer had this to say about writing what you know:

“I think it’s a bad saying. Even if it has a deeper meaning beyond the obvious, the obvious one is what’s going to enter most people’s minds. I don’t like it because it almost stopped me from following my dreams… I came across that saying while looking up writing advice and it pretty much stabbed me in the heart. I was a 16 year old girl who had no world experience, didn’t even go to high school, and I wanted to write these fantastical stories like the ones I loved reading.”

She didn’t manage to recover from that blow until she found this little piece of counter-advice from Kit Whitfield. “It’s not about what you’ve literally experienced yourself: fiction isn’t journalism. It’s about how closely you pay attention to what you do experience.”

I think a good rule of thumb is to Write What Your Characters Know.

One probably needs to be human (or something similar) and have experienced relatable human emotions (or something similar) to write stories that other beings of the same species will read and relate to. But that’s all you need. You don’t need to have traveled the exact emotional journey your character is experiencing. You just need to pay attention to what you do experience, look at what they’re going through, and find the lowest common emotional denominator.

Perhaps your character is going through a vicious divorce. Perhaps you’ve never been in a serious romantic relationship. But have you ever felt the pain of betrayal, even in a tiny way? Have you ever felt angry? Have you ever felt aggravated by someone’s very presence? Take these seeds of greater emotion, pay them close attention, and imagine the rest.

Set yourself fully in your character’s shoes, immerse yourself in their consciousness, and seek to understand them more fully than you understand yourself. (That shouldn’t be too hard; selves are tricky things, and far stranger than fiction.) Once you’ve seen through your character’s eyes, felt their pains and joys and trials and limitations and strengths, then you will be able to write their journey as if it were your own. (No, better; one’s own journey is a tricky thing, and far stranger than fiction.)

Of course, you’ll be setting yourself up for a mild brand of schizophrenia, but that’s just one of the risks of a writer’s life.

But perhaps this isn’t the saying’s intended meaning. Perhaps it meant Write What You’ve Researched.

Are you writing a historical fiction? Even if it’s alternate, fantastic, or a sci-fi time-travel tale, don’t mention that the bride wearing a white wedding dress and walking down an aisle, unless you know for a fact that brides did that in Frederick the Great’s time in Prussia, or 15th century Ireland, or whatever and whenever you’re writing. The point is, get it right.

You may have it a little easier in a modern or urban setting, but you had still better know the difference between a gun’s hammer and slide, whether or not you’re likely to find a warehouse in downtown Denver, and the logistics of circumventing a museum’s security systems, even with the use of limited telekinesis. Or, you know, whatever is actually relevant to your story. The point is, get it right.

If you’re writing a fantasy, you may be supposing that you’re off the hook for research—you’re not. You have a different sort of research to do, a research that involves reaching into your own head and writing the encyclopedia yourself, but it is research all the same. And unless you’re writing a translation of a higher thing comparable to a story that you discovered in a dimension utterly unlike ours, there are going to be comparable elements. You need to know how long it would take the average horse to make it from Keirn Vale to the outpost at Jerrig-Nuin, if you want to figure out how fast your elven forces would have to move to beat the human message-runner there.

And even besides the comparable elements, you must decide what the rules of your world are, and why. We sci-fi and fantasy folk call it worldbuilding, but it’s really an internal and ethereal version of research, and it’s just as exhausting—and just as vital to the suspension of disbelief. The point is, even if the only thing you have to do is not contradict yourself, get it right.

If “Write what you know” means “Write it only if you’ve come to know the facts”, then I agree with it entirely. If you don’t know the  facts of the matter, find out those facts before you throw it out there for the readers. You’re bound to get some things wrong anyway, but you owe it to those readers to at least try not to break their suspension of disbelief. Whether it’s Spain’s relationship with England at the time of Robert the Bruce, or the landscape around a small fictional town set in actual southwestern Missouri, or the essentials of the world constructed in your own head—get it right.

But I think the most important rule to keep in mind is Write What You Want.

Writing rules exist for a reason, and it’s a very good reason. As Kyle Aistech once said, “The rules are there for you to understand how readers read. Once you know that, they’re silly putty.”

If “Write what you know” means “Write yourself/your experiences/your emotional journey”, then it is not a rule at all, but an optional prompt that some writers can choose to follow, like “write a story including the words ‘mountain goat’ and ‘no white paint’”, or “write a story inspired by this picture of a stick”. I have done both, and both gave me lovely little short stories, but neither of them is anything like a rule.

If “Write what you know” means “Write what your characters know” or “Write what you’ve researched”, then it is a rule– a rule designed to teach you that readers read to be convinced. They want to be able to believe in your character’s feelings, in their setting and actions. And they don’t appreciate it when your writing doesn’t let them.

But once you understand that rule–”Readers want to be convinced”– then you can write what you want. The rule is silly putty. Bend it to your will, stretch your reader’s mind. Lemony Snicket created a world in which children can make working bungee cords out of rubber bands, and sharp-toothed infants can bite their way up elevator shafts. I doubt that would pan out in any Mythbusters episode. But Snicket wrote what he wanted to write, and his readers, expertly played by a master of the craft, stretched their belief like silly-putty.

So in the end, whatever the rules and adages and prompts say, write what you want

Ping me – thehyperteller@gmail.com

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The content of this post (including images) and the word Hyperteller are copyright © Rewan Tremethick 2013