20 Minutes a day

Cory Doctorow suggests that using any spare 20minutes you can find for writing is a good habit to get into if you are serious about writing (http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html), amongst other things (aside his suggesting of using "tk" to indicate a fact check has been useful too).

So in the interests of maintaining some level of skill in the use of the English language, I've decided to make an attempt to follow his suggestion. Unfortunately I guess the first issue for anyone who decides to start writing is actually finding a topic to write about. So for the next couple of posts it will be somewhat rambling as I attempt to find a niche that vaguely interests me in a personal capacity.

The problem that I've always had with writing has been the subject matter: writing essays whilst at school was never an issue as someone else had to make the decision about what the topic should be. Once that's set the rest is merely synthesis, and synthesis is something that I can do: research, fact-check, correlate and then pull together the final part.

So lets start by looking at what I'm actually interested in. Unfortunately, in recent years, this has probably become much narrower than 10 years ago when I was still in my formative years. Maybe it is a consequence of the passage of time: things that were interesting to you either become a good prospect for your daily job, or get pushed out by the daily job, until you only have the most valuable ones left.

In my case my interests and hobbies at school consisted of: computers, piano, editing the school magazine and some (hopefully forgotten) thespian-ism, playing hockey, being a member of the pipe band.

The intervening years actually saw me managing to maintain ooh...two of these: computers and working in a theatre group. Of course you could say that the 4 others got replaced by the requirements of being a student, but in reality it was probably because I discovered the pub.

Of course 10 years is quite a while and even in the last few years since graduating even the theatre work has all but disappeared, another victim to the day job and the personal feeling of not being able to put in sufficient time to either to do both justice. All that's left now is the computers...which if you hadn't gathered is the day job. I'm not saying at all that I don't enjoy it, in fact quite the opposite, the ideas and potential for the "playing with toys" is still something that I am passionate about. But maybe, just maybe I need to have a serious look at what I'm doing to leave that in the office and do something to broaden my horizons again...

So now I have a fiance (gf first!), a flat a cat and a dog (in that order). And just the last two weeks with the mutt has had me out almost every day, 3 times a day, just wandering about Glasgow and further afield at the weekend. Plans are afoot to look at going off to see a bit more of the UK: long walk along Hadrian's Wall (to find that bloody tree that's in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves), and its a start.

I remember a while ago some one said to me: "middle age is when a broad mind and narrow hips swap places"...I'm not there yet!