Tag: big brother

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getting published Joshua Files writing

New Content? Did I say ‘New content’?

The comments on Joshua book 1 version 2.0 are in. After a lengthy meeting over fennel tea and swiss chocolates (aren’t we girly?), The Editor and I had a frank discussion of what still isn’t working as well as it could. And from this emerged, yesterday, my new draft of the plot for v3.0. The exciting part for me is that it calls for New Content.

Yesiree. Editing where you’re just cutting is no fun, not to me anyway. There’s a sort of masochistic pleasure to it. Ha! I’ll cut out my favourite chapter then, see if I care! That sort of thing. But adding in New Content is lovely. I wrote one new chapter for version 2.0 and writing that was the best bit.

But version 3.0 calls for the restoration – in suitable form – of two sequences which originally appeared in ‘Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist’, the oft-rejected ms which provided the central concept for ‘The Joshua Files’.

And they’re two really fun sequences, too. I’m relocating one to an even more evocative setting – originally set in a Cotswold village, it will now be set in Oxford’s-canal based neighbourhood, Jericho.

It’s my first experience of being edited, and I’m really impressed with the attention to detail in a second edit. Little things get picked up, like the consistency of a particular character’s diction.

I’m going to film myself writing one of these new chapters and put it on Youtube after the book is launched. I got the idea from my mate Noam, about whom I posted a few weeks back. I might even go to Jericho to write it, on my little red laptop.

Hmmmm.

(In an aside, Caitlin Moran writes in The Times Online:

“Big Brotherly love
Quick note to all those who are saying that they are “Not going to watch Big Brother this year, actually” – YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. Get out of denial and put the telly on.”

To which I say…Get behind me, Satan!

Oh help. It’s Friday night – eviction night. Must find salsa event to attend….)

Categories
raves

Big Brother Is Back

For the love of God, let me not be tempted by Big Brother this year. It’s wicked and venial and I know I shouldn’t participate. It’s bad for me and wastes hours of my time.

I’d love to join those smug people who don’t watch it and go around being very lofty about their non-participation.

Arggghhhh…but I’d rather not…I wanna be one of the people who are having fun, especially on eviction night!

It’s not easy being a Catholic and a hedonist. More or less constant temptation! I must ask my brother-in-law for advice – he’s really good on loopholes in canon law.

Categories
raves

That Makes Two

I once admitted to a group of fellow school governors at a conference that I watched Big Brother – compulsively. The reaction was a mixture of amusement and surprise, perhaps that I’d dared admit to something so venial. Or perhaps in sympathy.

Hey, I’m not proud of it.

Two other people have slapped my wrist for the same. The first was a Jewish girlfriend of mine, who admitted surprise that I, as a Catholic, should watch such a show. The other was my literary agent, who thought it a transgression in what he’d taken for my intelligence.

YIKES!

See now, this just makes me want to watch it all the more. For the love of God, take the show off the air, Channel 4!

Categories
raves

What Howard Said

The smartest thing I’ve seen anyone write about Celebrity Big Brother so far:

Howard Jacobson: ‘Big Brother’ encourages us to embrace a condition far more worrying than racism

If society doesn’t value knowledge and wisdom then this is what you get. People with attitudes like Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd, Jo O’Meara and Jack Tweedy have always existed, but they didn’t get airtime in the days where only the talented, educated and connected had access to the media.

Big Brother claims very strongly to be about democracy. And in a modern democracy – as opposed to an ancient Greek one – maybe there is a requirement to give the uneducated and untalented a chance to reach a platform they couldn’t have aspired to years ago.

Is meritocracy morally defensible? It might be more desirable in utilitarian terms, but is it moral to lock out the uneducated and untalented from the glittering prizes offered by modern celebrity?

(I don’t know the answer – but if any moral philosophers are reading, please feel free to clue me in.)

Very few people can survive the scrutiny of Big Brother and emerge with no stain on their characters. As Germaine Greer learnt when she went into the Big House, the very situation is designed to create moments of human tension and drama. The BB producers rapidly came to understand the buttons they need to press to provoke the required responses. It is designed to bring out the very worst in people, and therefore also (rather less frequently), the very best.

Categories
writing

Losing the thread

I thought I’d take this week off from writing Josh 2. The plan was to read some good books for inspiration and distraction. But instead I got sucked into becoming a Celebrity Big Brother fiend. The worst case of BB addiction I’ve ever had…I watched Big Brother, Big Brother’s Little Brother, Big Brother’s Big Brain, Big Brother’s Big Mouth, and the live feed for hours at a time, lurked on the Digitalspy boards. Yes, I’m a basket case.

(It’s drama, Jim, but not as we know it.)

Anyway, the distance has already helped me to start editing some earlier sections. But as for getting back into the writing…yikes! I was right in the zone, really trying to empathise with Josh as he embarks on a particularly climactic stage of the journey. Now I’ve lost the thread, all I can think about is the 4-career car crash that is Celebrity Big Brother 2007.

I should give it up. Can’t go cold turkey though. I’ll go back to the highlights show only.

Meanwhile some of us at Writewords are talking about the experience of writing a sequel to one’s first published novel. Seems that everyone’s feeling the pressure, as welcome as it is. Think I’m the only one to admit to dropping the pen to watch a reality TV show.