Jan 14 2013

A New Year’s Revelation

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Jo and the Novelist

It’s the start of a new year. There are lots of people jogging (everywhere, all the time), because it’s that time of year where we punish ourselves for our vices and decide that by this time next year, we will most definitely be a much better person.

I tell myself to be a much better person at the beginning of every week, never mind the beginning of every year. And every time I decide to go forth and become an infinitely better person, the whole thing quickly falls apart and I soon end up feeling much worse than I did to begin with.

This year, I’ve decided not to set myself up for failure and I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions. There are two reasons I always totally flunk at New Year’s resolutions:

1. I expect to see changes in myself almost immediately after deciding that I’m going to change.

2. My resolutions tend to be a bit vague and immeasurable like “Be healthy” or “Be less shit at everything”.

A while ago I wrote this post about how much I wanted to be someone totally different – someone who wakes up at dawn to do yoga, someone who is creative, productive and successful, someone who has deep philosophical conversations, someone who… (the list goes on). I have to be honest with myself: I AM NEVER going to be someone who wakes up bright and early, and does Yoga while reading… I dunno, Plato or whatever. What’s more, I’m actually okay with the fact I will never be this person.

Change shouldn’t about shoe-horning myself into a personality that doesn’t fit. My ideal version of myself – the clever, healthy, active creative with a mind that’s totally Zen – is not me. It’s never going to be me. If I became this person – the “perfect Me” – and I met perfect Me at a party, I would most probably want to punch perfect Me in the face. When I really think about it, perfect Me isn’t someone I would want to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t know what to talk to perfect Me about. In fact, perfect Me is probably someone I would bitch about behind their back. I would roll my eyes whenever perfect Me was talking. Perfect me probably wears Lycra and goes jogging. Perfect Me is probably a fussy eater… And that’s pretty much a deal breaker.

The more I thought about it, the more the perfect Me became less perfect and more smug and annoying. I realised that I don’t really like perfect Me at all. And if I don’t like the perfect version of myself, then why tell myself to become that person in the first place?

I started to wonder what was really so terrible about my imperfect life to make me feel like I had to become this Lycra-wearing object of perfection.

I decided to review what I’d achieved in 2012. While I realise that I didn’t make any particularly massive leaps forward with my life, in review, I think I achieved a fair amount. I completed the taught seminars on my MA, where I also made loads of new friends, I re-connected with old friends, I started writing for a couple of websites, I started writing a new novel and I (admittedly, in a totally random and seemingly impulsive manner) bought a dog.

And while none of my 2012 accomplishments have earned me an impressive salary, or landed me a publishing deal, or got me into some Lycra trousers, I’m safe in the knowledge that, in the very least, I’m heading in the right direction.

In the end, I decided to stop tormenting myself with thoughts of having a massive life overhaul and of becoming a person I don’t really want to be. And while there’s still a lot of room for change in my life, ultimately, I’m doing okay. Most people are doing okay. And that’s okay.

So while I’m still fully committed to trying new things and continuing with my 30 Before 30 list, I’m also not pretending that by the end of 2013, I will be a fit and healthy, intellectual, best-selling novelist with zero financial worries and a buzzing social life. All I want to get out of this year is to learn to be more appreciative of the things I have got and to just keep chipping away, slowly but surely, at the things I really want.

So here’s to 2013 – what I hope will be a slightly better year than 2012.

Oct 24 2011

Because Amazon is trying to humiliate me…

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

If Amazon were a person, you would never introduce Amazon to your friends. Why? Because Amazon would embarrass you.

Amazon would not do this intentionally. Amazon would merely be trying too hard to impress you and your friends.

But the problem is, Amazon knows way too much about you.

Worse still, Amazon thinks Amazon knows you and all of your idiosyncrasies and makes suggestions about what you should purchase next (in case you’re struggling for ideas).

So how does Amazon do this?

Simple. By sending you emails like this:

Usually when you’re checking your emails as someone you greatly respect/admire/have a secret crush on pops over to talk to you.

Amazon. You’re great. But we can never be friends.

And I will never buy anything by Phil Collins.

Aug 3 2011

Just be better. Way better. At EVERYTHING.

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

‘Why am I not a much better person?’

This has to be the most frequently asked question that my psyche asks. Why am I not better? Why am I not much better? Why am I not a million times better than I currently am? And I’m not just asking why I’m not better at one thing, I want to know why I’m not better at everything.

My head is overcrowded with variations of this question – a constant swarm of voices telling me to just. Be. Better.

Way better.

There are so many things that I need to not suck at doing, that I’m completely overwhelmed as to what I should stop sucking at first. As ever, please consult the scientific diagram below which fully illustrates my neuroses:

I know that it’s bad to compare yourself with other people and not to quote Desiderata too much, (there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself) but I do. I still compare myself with other people because people are getting married, and promoted and having babies all over the place. And while I’m not jealous because I don’t really aspire to any of those things, I still feel as though I’m seriously lagging behind.

In my head, my life should be an all-round wholesome sphere of joy and harmony, and I should feel engaged with life rather than detached from it.

In the infinitely-better-version-of-me:

I get up at 6am everyday, do yoga while eating organic yogurt and homemade granola and reading The Guardian from cover to cover and tweeting my every thought on Twitter to improve traffic to my blog.
I write 2000 words of a potentially best-selling literary masterpiece, before briskly walking to work feeling somewhat alert and spiritually Zen and wearing clothes that are sharp and stylish and make me look super-hot.
I have some cool job or other, which involves having a desk by the window, a cappuccino machine, pleasant telephone conversations and people asking me for my opinion.
At lunch I meet my agent or editor or whoever to discuss my latest creative project, and afterwards I go to David Mitchell‘s house for a cup of tea and chat about all the stuff I’d read in The Guardian that day, as well as his recent article in The Observer and I’m all ‘David, today’s article was brilliant,’ and he’s all ‘Thanks Jo, would you like sugar in your tea?’ and I’m all ‘David, you’re so funny – you KNOW I don’t take sugar because I’m so damn wholesome and well-rounded,’ Then we laugh and eat organic wholemeal scones.
I go to the gym and work out like a ninja before sprinting home to cook some kind of delicious culinary taste-fest for my friends (of which there are many), who later descend on my trendy city centre loft apartment for an evening of philosophical discussions, cocktails and Nintendo (not necessarily in that order) until the early hours of the morning when I snuggle up in my King size bed and have a restful sleep that doesn’t involve having troublesome nightmares about zombie-cat-vampires.

And that’s pretty much it. That’s all I want out of life. Oh, and maybe bigger boobs. And a smaller nose. But in my head this is the person I should try to be… A British, politically minded, Carrie Bradshaw who is big chums with David Mitchell. And is really good at Nintendo.

Actually, thinking about it, SJP has a big nose and small boobs and everyone freaking loved her as Carrie Bradshaw (except some people kind of hated her with a passion). So I guess, that technically, I don’t need to worry about the boobs and the nose for now.

Anyway, given the unlikeliness of any of this ever filtering into my petty existence, not to mention how worryingly idealistic I am, it’s little wonder that I give myself such a hard time for being the exact opposite:

In and amongst the endless list of things to do to change and become an infinitely better person, there’s this list of startling reality points which I endlessly torture myself with.

Earlier this week, I read this blog post by the fantastic Hipstercrite, and I actually began to feel a little, sort of, maybe okay again. Because even though I shouldn’t constantly compare myself with other people, at least I can be safe in the knowledge that I’m not alone. There are other people stuck in the colossal nightmare that is their twenties, still bumbling around in a post-graduation haze wondering what it is they’re supposed to do with their life. And they’re all poor and in miserable admin jobs too. The twenties is a suckfest decade. And all I can say is that I hope I get this self-doubt confusion stuff out of my system now. If only to prevent myself from having a complete meltdown in the future – when I’m a forty-year old British, politically-minded ninja Carrie Bradshaw and regular tea and scone guest at David Mitchell’s house.

Jul 14 2011

And then from nowhere, you feel like smashing things…

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

This isn’t quite the sneaky hate spiral, the one which Allie Brosh describes so brilliantly on Hyperbole and a Half. This is something else. Entirely.

In recent years I’d say that I’ve managed to knock a lot of my self-loathy behaviour on the head. But every now and again, I wake up feeling like I am the worst person to ever have existed. I’m terrible and everyone knows it etc.

Sometimes I can even wake up feeling fine, happy almost, and then at some point in the day lurch frantically into this evil state of unadulterated rage.

What’s a classic trait of this state of mind is that I can’t say what it is that’s making me feel so terrible. I feel bad, and I have no explanation as to why that is. Which, in itself, makes me feel more upset.

Generally, I try to hide feelings crappiness, but even a minor set back (in any capacity) seems to open a floodgate of anger fuelled by a back-catalogue of negative thoughts from my life so far. It looks a little something like this:

Stage 1 – A Minor Setback:

Stage 2 – Irrational Feelings of Anger and Rage:

Stage 3 – Self-Loathing:

Stage 4 – Crying:

Er… No illustration needed.

When I’m not falling out with printers or other bits of technology, I’m punishing myself for other minor mishaps. The other night for example, I found a tasty looking recipe (complete with mouth-watering picture next to it) in a book and decided to give it a go. Despite my best efforts, however, the end result did not, by any means, mirror the appetising delights in the picture. Immediately after sitting down to consume it I found myself yelling "THIS FOOD IS DOGSHIT" because honestly, that’s what it looked like.

Worse still, whenever I’m in a total funk this way, people seem to collect around me, more so than usual. They’re everywhere – popping up left and right with their smiles and polite conversations and telephone calls. And I know it isn’t them, it’s me being angry. I know that they’re merely existing, and I’m merely existing and we’re all just existing together. But their existence somehow fuels my feelings of irritability. Therefore, anyone who even so much takes an inhalation of breath within a five mile radius of where I am, is subject to endless sighs, tuts and aggressive rolls of the eyes by yours truly.

Ironically, less than a week prior to my stonking rage festival, I had attended a training course on building confidence and learning the power of positive thinking. I really felt as though I was feeling the benefits too, until the end of the week rapidly transformed into the beginning of the week and for whatever reason, I woke up feeling like a failure and hated everything.

Sometimes, to clear up these weird feelings that seem to appear from nowhere, I just need a good cry, or a long sleep or a massive piece of cake. Eventually my brain shifts back into gear and all the hating flows back into whatever dark abyss it came out of in the first place.

Afterwards, when I’m wringing out my pillows, and wiping the smears of chocolate cake off my bed sheets, I feel a quite stupid about it all. I have this feeling of ‘Seriously, what was I so upset about?’ and I still can’t really figure it out. And while I’m being honest, I also still feel a bit of resentment towards printers.

Mar 10 2011

Because creative guardians don’t exist, and because your friends will destroy you

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

So, I’m sorry I’ve been so absent for a while. I decided to concentrate all my efforts on finally finishing my novel. Convinced I didn’t have too much left to do, I set myself a deadline of February to get the novel to a point of (near) completion. It’s now March, and I’m still a very long way away.

As is the case with all things creative, that ‘finishing point’ never seems to actually occur. In my mind, I’m not too far from completion, but this thought merely stems from the fact that I’m a lot further on from where I started.

Sometimes I find working on my novel extremely frustrating, especially when the light at the end of the tunnel just seems to get further and further away. When I get stuck it’s hard to ignore the endless stream of doubts flooding my mind, telling me to give up and sack the whole thing off as a bad job. When your faced with doubts elsewhere in life (having a rough time at work/in a relationship etc.) it’s customary to call on the advice of your friends and talk the whole thing through until you can be a bit more objective about it.

For years, I’ve been convinced that writing a novel works in much the same way; when you get bogged down with your words, when you’re at the point of hovering over a trash can in an abandoned car park with your manuscript in one hand, a lighter in the other, you should be able to call on someone for help instead – some kind of creative guardian, for example, who will read your work in progress and tell you exactly what needs changing.

But this person doesn’t exist, or at least not for unpublished, losers aspiring writers such as myself. It’s only now, when I’m inching ever closer to the end of my first novel, that I’ve finally realised that the only person you can rely on to advise you, is you. You have to be your own mentor. The words of wisdom about which characters should be killed off in a freak nuclear disaster, and which chapters should go straight to the recycle bin, come from you. And what’s even more frustrating about conceding to trust your own opinion is that your opinion on your own work doesn’t form while you’re writing. It casually rocks in a few weeks/months/years later.

That’s right, you can be objective about your work after you’ve locked it in a drawer and got addicted to Street Fighter IV. Then, three months later, when you finally decide it’s time for the big read through, old, objective, logical you will be ripping out one chunk of your novel after another until there’s almost nothing left. And then you start the whole process of drafting new chapters all over again. It’s a little bit of a slow job, I realise, but other than a professional editor, who else are you going to trust to give you good honest (and useful) feedback?

Some of my friends and family have offered to step up but this has proved problematical, and usually prompts one of the following reactions:

1. They say, “Yup. I liked it…” and then never mention it again… This is possibly because a) they didn’t like it and don’t want to hurt your feelings b) they did like it but don’t really want to discuss it in any depth c) they didn’t read it.

2. They give you a lot of feed back. A lot. More than you were anticipating. Not all of it good, which is fine so long as this criticism isn’t coming from someone you a) live with b) sleep with c) are friends with d) know is illiterate.

The bottom line is; it isn’t easy to take criticism from a friend. And that isn’t just with writing. Ever had someone “make a suggestion” while you’re cooking them dinner? Ever had someone say “well, if I was doing that I would [insert lengthy description of doing something here]…”? On the inside, you know they’re only trying to help, however, the mere fact they’re even suggesting that they know more than you do causes an instant bruise to the ego and makes you want to punch them in the face.

Trust me, I know. I’ve not only (frequently) been on the receiving end of such ‘friendly’ advice, but I’ve also been the smug twat dolling it out too. A while ago, a friend gave me a first draft to read through so I could let him “know what I thought”. Within minutes of reading, I was zealously marking it like some kind of power-corrupt school teacher. Merely being asked for your opinion makes your ego flick into hyperdrive, and you end up acting like a complete dick, or in this case handing someone their work with snarky annotations all over the typeface.

There’s nothing worse that getting something like this back from your ‘friend’ after they’ve looked at your work:

Ouch.

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Before I go, I should mention that I was bitten by the zombie rabbit (it hurt) thanks to my recent online bud, and man of writery wisdom Steven Chapman.

In order to keep the zombie blogging virus award (type-thing) going, award winners suggest other blogs on their site. As you might have already noticed, links to my favourite blogs and sites are on the right-hand side of the screen under the title “Jo and the Love for Other Bloggers”. To save me the ball-ache of typing it all out again, may I suggest you peruse the side bar, and give my zombie-bitees a visit.

Feb 17 2011

My phone thinks that I keep trying to look at porn…

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

I’ve accidentally, nearly looked at porn, on my phone, in public, twice in the last week.

Firstly, let me point out that neither time was intentional – I don’t really have any kind of desire to watch porn on my phone.

The first incident was when I was waiting around to meet a friend who was running late, one day last week. As is the way with owning a smart phone, I did a bit of internet browsing at nothing in particular just to kill the time. For whatever reason, I navigated away from the page I was on, and when I went back to it, something that looked a bit like the following (but not really), popped up on screen.

That’s right, without realising it, I was trying to look at porn. And not just any porn, really horrible porn. Don’t ask me how the website transformed, within a single click from an entirely acceptable non-porn related site, to one too filthy to have access to, but it did.

What’s worse is, because it’s suggesting other porn sites instead, I feel like my mobile company are kind of saying ‘It’s okay if you want to look at porn on your phone… but not the really dirty stuff. Have some dignity.’ As ever, I’m totally taking this personally, because I feel like they’re being kind of judgmental towards me, and I wasn’t even trying to look at porn.

Within the same week, another friend and I were having one of those ‘Which member of the A-Team would you be?’ discussions which pop up every now and again during those first few hazy hours of a day in the office. For the record, I would be Murdoch seeing as my friends have to pick me up from my therapist’s house anytime we go somewhere – which is almost the same as being busted out of a loony bin. Sadly, my friend couldn’t decide whether he would be Face and Hannibal. So, naturally, I whipped out my phone and Googled ‘Which member of the A-Team are you?’ hoping for some sort of definitive quiz to appear in the results.

Clicking the top result, which in fairness, looked an awful lot like it might actually be said definitive quiz, sent me back to the sorry-you’re-trying-to-look-at-porn message again. And while it’s just a standard message, to me, the second time around it looked like this:

Unless ‘A-Team’ is actually some kind well known euphemism that I’m completely unaware of, then I’m really not sure how porn appeared in my search results. Either way, I am now convinced my mobile company are going to ditch me as a customer, for two accidental attempts to look at porn on my phone.

Also, I’m now worried that both of these incidents have been logged in my customer details, thus sabotaging my chance of getting a free upgrade when my contract is up. Once my contract expires they’ll probably offer me some really rubbish deal, and when I ring up to say “WTF? This is a really crappy upgrade – it’s actually worse than the phone I have now,” they’ll be all “I’m sorry, this is the best we can offer you because, y’know, you tried to look at porn that time…’”

I don’t know about you, but if you’ve ever surfed the net at work or on your phone and somehow accidentally ended up with porn, even if it popped up just for a second and no-one saw it because you shut your browser down a nano-second afterwards, even if all that popped up was a message to say that the site is blocked, I feel like the entire world has been notified of my faux pas, and feel all guilty and ashamed even though I wasn’t actually trying to look at porn.

On the plus side, all this has given me something to write about this week. And considering the amount of times I’ve used the word ‘porn’ in this post, I’m likely to get a few more hits – probably from folk who are actually surfing the net to look at porn. To those people; if you’re reading this instead of watching porn, then I’m really sorry. But now you know how I feel when I use Google to search for A-Team quizzes.

Jan 13 2011

Technically, I could have written six novels by now, and be working for Microsoft…

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Jo and the Novelist

In my head, I write all the time. In my mind there is an endless sprawl of potentially award-winning stuff. In my head I am constantly narrating my own life. All day, every day. And I don’t do it consciously, my brain does it automatically, and it works a thousand times quicker than I do, and it’s a thousand times more intelligent, and a thousand times more witty. Sadly, this is a side of me you’ll never see.

Every so often, when I’m wandering around, letting my subconscious narrate my life, it will reel off the odd paragraph or two of really great stuff and I’ll think; “Wow, that’s a really accurate/witty portrayal of my own life. I can’t believe I just thought of that – well done me!” and then I tell myself that I should probably write it down before I forget it and then my subconscious hides away taking said paragraph of literary genius with it.

Last week I wrote about something that wasn’t the idea I had for my blog post, but about the fact I *had* an idea for a blog post and had since forgotten it. This is a problem that I meet time and time again. And i doesn’t stop at blog posts; I’ve had so many ideas for my novel, for short stories, Oscar-winning screenplays, that have just slipped into the ether because my subconscious is a cheat and my brain is too feckless to retain them long enough for me to write them down.

Whenever I attempt to write a random idea down, as soon as pen hits the paper the it rapidly begins to dissolve. With each stroke of the pen, more of it falls away, and no matter what, I don’t ever get the essence of what my subconscious had churned out. And the harder I try to remember it, the worse it gets until all I’m left with is some ramshackle half-wit of an idea that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

It’s a bit like trying to carry a sandcastle from one end of a beach to another and expecting it to still be in perfect condition when you get there. I speak from experience – it totally doesn’t work. For one thing, the second you attempt to pick up a sandcastle it crumbles into its former constructed state of, well, sand. So instead, you carry the piles of sand to the other side of the beach with the aim to reconstruct it exactly as it was. But let’s face it, you’re never going to pick up all the sand you used to build the first sandcastle, and you’ll lose some of it in transit, and it begins to dry out so when you reach the other side of the beach and build your new sandcastle, it’s all wonky and crooked; not a patch on the awesome sandy piece of architecture you constructed mere moments ago.

And I know what you’re thinking; why would anyone dismantle a sandcastle and attempt to carry it from one end of a beach to another?

While I understand that’s a very valid question, it totally destroys my metaphor about ideas, so how about you just keep it to yourself, okay?

Anyway, if you’re having trouble following this sandcastle metaphor, then I’ve gone to the trouble of creating this diagram for you instead. You’re welcome.

So, the bottom line is; ideas are a lot like sandcastles.

Anyway, knowing that the likely outcome of me attempting to write an idea down will result in me ~~building a rubbish-looking sandcastle~~ writing something down that isn’t vaguely akin to the witty, edgy stuff that my subconscious created, I don’t bother to write it down.

Knowing I’ve got a brilliant idea in me, somewhere, and knowing I am completely incapable of writing it down I frequently find myself wishing I could plug my brain into a USB port on my PC and upload thoughts onto my hard-drive. Then I’d run some kind of amazing software which would transcribe my thoughts directly into an MS Word document.

This would really save me a lot of time and trouble in the creative process – I would have an entire library of ideas to work from. I could have written six novels by now. Maybe more. Maybe seven novels.

Plus, if I could invent such amazing software, I’d be working for Micro$oft and earning millions. And I wouldn’t even have to worry about writing novels and blog posts and things. You’re welcome, Bill Gates. You can totally have my idea for freesies, because you’re geeky and know all the stuff I don’t, preventing me from ever developing this idea further because I don’t even know where to start when it comes to connecting the brain by USB to your PC. And there’s always the worry I’m not compatible with Windows 7 [You’d probably have to run your brain on a DOS emulator – Geeky Reader].

To conclude: if clever technological folk stopped arsing around developing cloud computing to enable morons to edit pictures of their stupid ugly families into pictures of of their stupid, slightly less ugly families, and used my idea to create amazing subconscious transcribing software and brain to PC USB cables, then I would have written six or seven novels by now. And/or be earning loads by working for Micro$oft.

Further proof that my writing career has been sabotaged by the lack of technological progression.

PS. Subconscious transcribing software and brain to PC USB cables do not exist. I already checked on Amazon.

Jo and the Novelist

Neurotic/writer/mentalist…

Category Archives: Trying to be Funny (and failing)