Don't tell me

A checklist of sorts. These are things I never want to hear ever again in my life, but especially in a submission or pitch:

• "I know [a whole lot of people], who you may know."
  Alida thinks: Who cares? Can you string a sentence together? The rest of this pitch suggests not.
  
  
• "I'd love to contribute something. Let me know if you're interested."
  Alida thinks: Something? Something? I'm not interested already!
  
  
• "I like you already!" (upon article acceptance)
  Alida thinks: Fuck off, you condescending wanker.
  
  
• "heading: My Story"
  Alida thinks: Dude, your story is boring. Get to the point for Christ's sakes! Oh, forget it: Rejected.
  
  
• "heading: Here's Where Things Get Interesting"
  Alida thinks: Thank Christ. I was beginning to wonder when the boring and irrelevant would end.
  
  
• "Why is this interesting?"
  Alida thinks: If you know I'm already wondering this, your article has already failed.
  
  
• "How is this relevant?"
  Alida thinks: See above. And stop torturing me.
  

[louise's daughter]

[In the evenings, the house is silent but for the crackling fire. Miss Lingham always had the stove in the kitchen going, and Elise does the same.

There is a photograph album in the bookshelf, filled with old pictures: picnics in black and white, starched families outside small colonial homesteads, unfamiliar women in a dusty road.

None of them is Miss Lingham.

There are countless stories in the house, but they’re hidden in the walls, the layers of paint, that broken door-lock, this repaired light shade, the chip in the milk jug and the cracked blue vase. Each flaw tells its own story. Each scar has its own secrets.

At nights, Elise may look around the room, eyes on the freshly-dusted picture rail as if that might be where the story of her great aunt is hiding.

But Miss Lingham is nowhere to be found.

And yet she’s everywhere. From the compost heap to the old plate serving spoon in the kitchen drawer, Miss Lingham is entirely present. Elise can feel it. Miss Lingham’s footfall doesn’t pause in the corridor; the bean frames stand silent without her chatter among them.

Is the chip in the milk jug a sad story or a happy one? Perhaps it’s no more than an innocent accident, unremarkable. There is no way of knowing.

Elise is a nobody, identified in Miss Lingham’s will only as "Louise’s daughter".

She doesn’t have parents now, and she didn’t know Miss Lingham.

She doesn’t know why she's here.]

The ghost writer

I saw a trailer for new cinematic experience The Ghost Writer recently, and boy did it look exciting. There were suspense, danger, nice suits, private jets, horn-rimmed spectacles, and good looking women. Dictaphones. Typewriters. Cigarettes burning low in long-forgotten ashtrays.

Occasionally someone held a sheaf of paper -- presumably it contained the thousands of words the ghost writer had already penned, and was momentarily sending to the publisher. The entire cast seemed perpetually poised on the dual brinks of literary fame and dramatic death, undoubtedly at the hands of a bespectacled man or a good looking woman. Or a private jet.

In my experience, ghost writing is less death and more deadline-related drama. Less glory and more grunt.

The ghost writer is akin to the elephant carrying the litter of the gold-silk-draped prince. The author-prince decides the direction; the elephant gets him there. The author-prince becomes distracted eating a pomegranate; the elephant fords a muddy torrent rather than being allowed to take the bridge that's just upstream. At the journey's end, the author-prince calls for lute players and virgins and virginal lute players, and prepares for the attention of the court; the elephant gets a long-awaited bath in the muddy torrent.

In short, ghost writing is like building any product for any brand. What I do is just like what you do. The only difference between a book and a shoe design, or an advertisement, or a piece of software, or a boat is that a book is usually attached to a name, and the laws of copyright have ensured that the public usually expects the name of the author to be the name of the person who put the actual words on the paper (or screen, if you're so inclined).

But this is the information age, kids. The era of personal branding and big ideas. And even if you lock yourself in your library of high-embodied-energy hardbacks and pretend it's 1860, you'll have to admit that unnamed editors have always had a strong hand in the way a book turns out, no matter who put the actual words on the paper in the first draft of the ms. These, alongside the association of private jets with ghost writers, are among the greatest misrepresentations of how content is produced.

The name "ghost writing" seems eminently suitable for such a veiled profession.

Order, today

If you're like me, the page pictured above makes you want to lie down.

When I look at this, my eyes frantically search for something to latch onto, and I find myself thinking that before I lie down, I should ORDER TODAY. After that, I'll lie down and try to divest my brain of the static that seems to have lodged there since I loaded this page.

I know: I'm overly dramatic. Sometimes, Alida, I tell myself, you just need to knuckle down and read all the words to imbibe information from the web.

But, really. Back at the Writing for the Internet Community College, the first class I took was Little Paras 101. There I learned to make each para small, and to make it start with some exciting words that tip off scanners as to what's in the para.

That, we learned, was the way to create order, today, in the chaos of online text: use word flags, signposts, whitespace -- headings, if you have them at your disposal -- and a lot of hinting. Accordingly, most of the time, writers try to write so that scanners can imply the thread of a story, roughly, by glancing at each para's first few words.

What about the readers?, you may ask. Well, they're getting the full story, the lucky, dedicated so-and-sos. But the scanners are effectively the lowest common denominator. I say this as a scanner myself. If you've catered to me and my moronic approach to web content, you've catered to the whole barrel of monkeys.

Perhaps, the cynic advances, the whole purpose of the page is to get me to order today: overwhelm users with words and a portion of them, in looking for an escape, will click on the pretty, inviting picture rather than the Back button. That ad is for the print version of this online publication -- Fast Company magazine.

But if I find the publication's content daunting before I even begin to read it, I posit that I will be unlikely to order today. I'm not about to pay money to be daunted.

The proposed defence, in this case, is that the article pictured here is an excerpt from a book. Yes, we could muse wryly all day over the clash of media, readability, content transferability, and [cue ellipsis here]. But the truth is: users don't care whether it's a book excerpt or a Martian communique beamed in from outer space. They just want smaller paragraphs.

Get a content editor to insert a couple of paragraph breaks where currently there are none. By all means, clear it with the publisher. But do it, because without that, you limit your readership automatically on the basis of layout, rather than content.

Evidence? I tried to read this article, but all I know was what's on the cover image at the top left of the page. And that I should ORDER TODAY.

Meet my mascot

This little guy is my current mascot, the leading light in the pantheon of charms I keep about me in an effort to divine some sort of light from the ether.

You might think he's limited, but to me he seems especially well-honed for the job at hand. When all you have is a rifle, everything starts looking like a battle. Lost your head? You can still shoot 'em up good. A dearth of functioning legs didn't stop one N. Kelly from trying to kill everything in sight.

As such, he's my counterweight. When I'm not tough enough to let go, this guys breaks my knuckles, one by one. When I'm too tired to bother, he points the rifle at my face. When I can't see in the dark, he screams 'Forward!'

He's the hard arse to my soft heart, the trench-bound fighter to my pussy-footing perambulations, the fresh blood dripping from the stilled heart on my sleeve. Neat, huh?

Reneging: the highlights reel

Recently, I decided to make some Life Decisions.

Immediately, everything took on a different hue. All Important Ideas started with initial caps and some even attained italicised status. My thoughts became punctuated with Loud Talking for the Crucial Bits.

I decided Never to Work Full-Time in an Office Again!

Then I took an eight-week full-time on-site writing contract.

I decided to Stop Editing and Only Write!

Then I got offered two nice, neat, entertaining-sounding projects that are largely editorial but may enable me to achieve some other Life Goals, like floating in a prawn trawler off Darwin, and growing my own bananas.

I decided to Travel to Egypt at Last!

Then HRH started talking about three weeks of free accommodation in Paris.

This is the highlights reel -- there have been many other, lesser Life Decisions that have also fallen by the wayside almost as soon as I finished italicising their Important Bits. It would appear that whatever I decide, the opposite will take place. As you can imagine, my progress is barely perceptible at best, and wildly unpredictable.

There seems to be no solution to this -- certainly making A Decision about it won't help. Instead, I've taken to gazing mindlessly at the Rand McNally map of The Political World above my desk and trying to imagine its two dimensions brought alive with some depth. Instead of reading the words HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS, I try to picture the ridges and creases, the snow, the Sherpas. The ice picks and tiny tents in a blizzard. Sun on the snow caps. The world in three dimensions.

Yet the items on the Reneging Highlights Reel remain on film, two-dimensional depictions of a fantastical reality, imagined but not lived.

Hot under the collar

Before we begin, I must warn you that this missive contains harsh words other than the tried and tested likes of "crap" and "fucking" I happily use here with gay abandon. It contains harsh words that I wouldn't ordinarily utter, being the prunish prude that we both know I am.

But last night, The Gruen Transfer broke this camel's back.

Backstory: within the last week I was presented with a woman's ample and amply Photoshopped upper portions while entering a 7/11 in search of that humble lunch staple, noodles in a cup. Not a DD cup, a plastic cup.

And I have had to endure having another woman's ample and amply Photoshopped upper portions displayed as Something to Aspire To on Facebook, kind courtesy of the latest advances in contextual underwear advertising.

As well as all this, while MYER staff have thankfully removed from their windows the larger-than-life decals of some football star in his undies, which appeared kind courtesy of the latest advances in completely-without-context underwear advertising, I find that more and more, the common language of the people is riddled with terms of an overtly sexual nature: hot, sexy, blow, suck, balls, blah blah fucking (I know, I know) blah.

And for some reason, every mass media publication, print or digital, sees it within their purview to report constantly on the sexploits of celebrities, would-be celebrities, and people who only become celebrities because of their sexploits (Paris Hilton and the freaking -- literally -- Octo Mum, for example).

The point? While trying to go about my business as a mild-mannered typist, I am constantly presented with irrelevant, uninteresting, dumber-than-dumb messages about sex.

So what? Is that what you just said? So what?

Consider: broccoli. It's great for you, affordable, and versatile. Consider: kindness. It's also great for you, affordable, and versatile. Broccoli and kindness are two things, like sex, that most people in this country can understand, apply, and enjoy. Yet broccoli and kindness feature far less often in mass media and everyday communications than do a woman's ample and amply Photoshopped upper portions, a man's "ripped" "abs", and the lewd implications thereof.

In short, there seems a disproportionate, unjustified focus on sex in the media.

And: it's fucking tedious.

Why must we tolerate this endless parade of bronzed body parts, the interweaving of normal dialogue with a ceaseless, driving hail of implied, or overt, sexuality? All I wanted was noodles! Noodles for Christ's sakes! Not, as the vernacular would have it, norgs.* Noodles.

But last night, all was explained to me. I saw my first-ever episode of the much-lauded Gruen Transfer (series 3 episode 10) in which The Pitch -- a competition where two agencies are given an unlikely brief and must come up with an ad concept in response to it -- involved marketing the legalisation of polygamy to the Australian people. The winning ad, which seemed excruciatingly 90s and tacky beyond words (I got the feeling it had been shot in a pokies venue), won largely because it included both the words "pussy" and "dick".

Only minutes later, that same panel of ad executives and comms big wheels who had voted this ad as the winner -- the cream of the industry, you might say -- were sitting around talking about how many ads assume idiocy on the part of the public. I was, as you can imagine, suitably stupefied.

I put it to both the producers and consumers of modern communications that "sex sells" is a lowest-common-denominator philosophy that assumes idiocy on the part of the public. It's boring. It assumes the only thing that will interest me in a product -- insurance, ice cream, eyeglasses -- is sex. It assumes that the only thing that's funny is sex. It assumes that the thing we all have in common isn't broccoli or kindness, but sex.

If that's the state of the nation's creative thought -- if that's all we've amounted to -- it's pathetic.

I wanted to take every ad exec on that panel, tape their eyes open, Clockwork Orange-style, and make them watch that shitty ad a thousand times over, until they never wanted to hear the words "pussy" or "dick", or listen to that blonde chick say "it's raining men" like some crap-80's-dance-anthem-turned-late-night-phone-sex-tv-commercial ever again.

Polygamy! Think of all the witty, entertaining, subtle, intelligent ways you could promote polygamy in a TVC. One might even suggest that if you're "creative" enough to use sex to sell everything from jeans to Jeeps, you could try using something other than sex to sell polygamy. But no. They wasted that glittering, glowing opportunity on pussy.

Fuckers!

*How is that even a word?!

Backlist? You betcha

Oh, happy days. Far Flung and Andorra arrived, via the postmistress, on Saturday, bringing to a neat conclusion my longing to possess -- and read,* though that will come in the ensuing weeks -- every single book ever written by Peter Cameron.

Okay, so there remains outside this arrangement one short story compilation that includes stories from One Way or Another and Far Flung, plus two others previously published in the press. Is it worth purchasing this one remaining book just to get those two other short stories? I keep telling myself it's not, but with the amazing affordability of second-hand books (in the US) these days, and the fact that soon I'll have read everything of Cameron's that there is to read, I think the answer may well turn out to be: you betcha.

*According to current plans, Andorra will be first.

Cloudy

New Scientist regularly brings us all manner of wacky science antics, not the least of them its tag cloud.
What is a science fiction sculpture? One pictures Han Solo frozen in that block of whatever-that-was. "Change cosmology!" seems quite the call to arms, and I'm mildly dismayed that I never went on a history of science holiday. This summer, perhaps?

On the other hand, mathematics medicine sounds a little theoretical for my liking, and a psychology religion would surely see the swift demise of our species (just look at Scientology).

My favourite, though, is the biology brain climate. What a torrid, changeable place that must be. Today's forecast for the biology brain climate? Cloudy.

Wish you were here #7

[your name here],

I escaped. Writing this to you from a chocolate box-car. The country outside is all caramel fields and broad, white horizon. Sorry for the small print, but I have a lot to tell you.

I locked the old man and woman in the garden shed. They called feebly for help, but the beautiful-eyed zebra was waiting. We rode for three days and nights, scotching our followers, until we arrived at the train line. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

But soon the searchers found us and there was a terrible battle. I climbed a tree and they set about cutting it down; I leapt through the boughs to another, but they lit a fire at its base. The zebra was wounded as it reared and kicked at them, and it fled. I was alone in the trees and the darkness. And still thinking of you.

The fire crept higher; so did I. I was at the very top of the tree when the flames began to warm my toes.

And then? And then I gave up hope -- of home, of you, even of myself. All was lost. I dropped from the treetop and landed on a bed of pine needles. Then, above the voices of my captors: the bleak scream of the train's horn in the darkness. I thought I was dead -- dreaming -- but I was running, and the zebra was beside me. I caught his mane, clamboured to his back. He broached the train and I leapt into the chocolate-box car. I left the zebra on the edge of the forest some distance from the crowd. I still don't know what they wanted from me. What could I give them?

The zebra reared and kicked and vanished in the dark. Both of us are homeward-bound now.

Very soon.
Alida xo

Wish you were here #6

Dear [your name here],

I'm sorry I haven't written, but I've had nothing to report. Little changes in the village. I haven't seen the zebra again, and even though the forest plants are starting to come into flower now, nothing feels like home.

I try to imagine how things are, and what might be happening with you. I think of [your partner's name]'s giggling laughter and hope your birthday was fun. I'm so sorry I couldn't be with you, but I didn't forget you. How I wished I was there. Soon, I hope to be. Though I don't see how.

Yours,
Alida xo