Back in the time before time, when blogging was, if you were lucky, something you did with blogger.com (before google bought it) Blogs wouldn’t have titles. Just dates. Replacing the title with the date takes a little bit of pressure off (no need to think of a witty title!)
This week, Belfast is hosting the Fleadh (pronounced FLAH) a massive olympics for traditional irish music (seriously, there are competitions), 800,000 visitors expected through the week which is … twice Belfast’s population.
I’ve long held that Belfast is desperate – DESPERATE – for city wide events that can bring both sides of the community (and both sides is a little anachronistic these days, there are still two big political tribes in NI, but culturally we’ve enough communities from many different parts of the worlds that many places feel very international) anyway this event is drawing every one in and it’s brilliant. It’s on all week(!) and on again next year. Streets shut down, pubs spilling out on to the streets, music everywhere you go. It’s a big city with big music.
I’d love Belfast one day to do the same for comics – though it’s harder to picture that taking over the city in the same way, it would need the UK to take the comics industry seriously (and the industry itself would need to grow a fair bit).
In other news, this week getting to look at Terran Omega The Seed #1 – slightly afraid of starting it. So far today I’ve written something else entirely, pitched it, and then started building a cardboard model of the Bike Terran Omega is riding. I say building – I’ve cut out some cardboard and now I have a bunch of chopped up bit of cardboard. There’s no building going on. Just pure procrastination.
The weather remains gruesome. Sticky and hot. I do not like it at all.
Next week I’m off to Amsterdam so I really want to get some Terran Omega: The Seed done and out of the way.
Had a cracking weekend in Birmingham for my mate John McCrea’s 60th birthday. Hard to believe I’ve known him since he was 22 – like that’s proper bananas. I don’t know where the time has gone. There was a lot of talk at the weekend with others in the same or similar age range of how, as much as we ache and complain, at least we’re here. Many others didn’t get that far.
The last person’s 60th birthday I was at was my dad’s and that was about 20 years ago or so. The next will be my own, I guess. And that’s a scant four years off.
Eldest son remains in Japan. He was on the island that the earthquake happened last week – we have a tracking app (with his permission!) that lets us know where he is, but of course we don’t know Japan at all so we zoomed in on his location and where the earthquake was and we couldn’t really tell what scale everything was and there’s nothing scarier than thinking your son is one finger distant from an earthquake, until you realise that the finger distance is probably 150 miles.
At John’s birthday sitting in the hotel room I came up with a fun idea for a thing, which I’ve written up and pitched. I’ll let you know how it gets on. I’m happy that I pitched it, even if it bounces right off the pitchee, there’s a chance I might write it up as practice and … I dunno… just post it online. Or something. (It’s a character I don’t own) it’s possible I could file off the serial numbers but really there’s no fun in that when you’ve thought of an idea that works because it works for THAT character, you’re getting a lot of free stuff with it. Let’s say you think of an idea for Wolverine. Well, we all know the character, so you can subvert expectations, write something that has weight because of Wolvie’s history. And then, say, you file the serial numbers off. Well, now. Yes, he’s a feral character with claws, but he doesn’t carry wolverine’s history and so you have to build that for the story and now your story is different.
Anyway, what do I know? I’m no writer.
Was reminded of the phrase “Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Good” – which, if I’m honest I’ve always struggled to parse. It feels like “Don’t let delicious be the enemy of almost delicious” that makes no sense to me and my brain. I guess what it means is don’t let the chasing of perfection stop you doing something that is just good. I mean I kind of get that, but I’ve always really tried to live more by “Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Done” – which I think is a more useful aphorism. Getting things finished is the goal. Finish things.
Though I’d also add to that the idea that “the best person to do this may not be you, but you’re the only one interested in doing it” which is … look, I made that up, so it’s crap. But I’ve been trying to parse and process this idea for a little while. Yes, there’s someone out there who will write this thing I want to write 100% better than me. Of course there is. I could throw a stone and hit a hundred writers more capable than me. But the truth is… not one of them is interested in the exact things I’m interested in. Not one will be drawn to the exact same ideas and expressions of ideas as me, and so if I want to explore those ideas, it’s going to have to be me that does it.
It’s not unlike the odd little factoid that the best place to do any sort of studying of nature is your backyard. Because, yes, there are places in the world that you’d love to go, the truth is you’re always at your backyard and so you can spend time there.
Anyway, I’m rambling now. PJ OUT!
