…personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive ( Read more... )

A while ago, I was talking about gender and characters' voices.

The characters are boys. Regardless of whether they're straight, gay, or the filling in a Woody Allen sandwich, they have to come across as sound like boys.

I think this is another symptom of the author substituting her voice for the character's. Yes, her voice: that seems to be how ( Read more... )

I've been thinking about the feedback I've had about DNR. The story seems to have struck a chord, and yet nobody seems entirely sure why. As a would-be writer, I'm not complaining - we live for that kind of reaction - but not knowing what I did bothers me, because maybe I won't be able to do it again. But I had a thought.

( Read more... )

Or why Tom is a jockstrap and Harry is a champion.

There's a whole industry out there geared towards generating labels to stick on people. Well, they wouldn't put it like that, more that they're offering tools for understanding the differences between people, for understanding one's self, and for getting along better.

I thought it would be ( Read more... )

Maybe it's just the last couple of days. Those bruises. Danny in tears, Tom lost for words - now there's two things I never thought I'd see. You. Rehearsal, the TV studio, all that stuff yesterday, last night, afraid to go to sleep.

That's Harry, of course, trying to figure out some strange new feelings.

He's thinking, and for that kind of thing, ( Read more... )

Here are three lines of dialogue between three of the AtST characters. Who's saying each line?
Summat's not right, we shouldn't be in here.

The man at the desk said it was OK. Seriously.

Guys, there's something, it's on my, it's touching my… oh crap.

Danny, Tom, and Doug, right? How do you know?

( Fun with voices )

goldatamera commented :
I love hearing how a story came about, so. Why this particular one? What started it? Why this particular time in the band's story? And why McFly?
( Why indeed? )

I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the thoughts, influences, and other such stuff that went into the writing of All the Small Things (AtST for short), if only because they're otherwise a bunch of jottings in various notebooks that will probably go astray.

Got a question/comment about AtST? Curious about why I did something a ( Read more... )