It’s humanity’s natural addiction to spectacle and disaster.

It’s called schadenfreude. Look it up. It’s German. Schadenfreude is the pleasure that you feel from watching other people suffer. The more moral among us feel that urge and think that it’s sadistic, or cruel, or unnatural. The less moral, the more mean-spirited – they just don’t even know it’s there. But regardless of whether we know it or not, it’s a part of all of us. It’s why we all crowd round the TV when there’s a hurricane, secretly praying for a disaster. It’s why we read awful romance novels, just for the death at the end. It’s why we live our lives, after all. What else is there to live for, if not to outlive others?

This urge is why on a Tuesday afternoon, at about ten to four, with the wind blowing from the east and a chill breeze in the air, a large crowd had gathered around a woman of about your age, standing on the ledge of the roof of a twenty-story office building with a gun in her hand. She was poised to either pull the trigger and let the gun do its work, or topple backwards and let gravity have its way with her. What a choice.

Let’s think about another sad and sorry individual on that rooftop today. His name was Cameron Ramone. If sadism could be measured, he’d surely rank highly. As the scene unfolded and the woman shouted unintelligible gibberish at the gathered crowd, Cameron was playing out all of the possibilities in his head.

Let’s say she fell. Assuming the woman weighed seventy kilos, if she was to fall directly downwards, at a rate of several metres per second, allowing for the wind that was blowing from the east…fuck it, thought Cameron. He was never any good at maths. But she’d be dead. Finished. Finito. Extinct, like the dodo, like numerous other species that were either savagely hunted by more powerful species, or maybe just saw the futility in things. Cameron always thought that this was a good way of keeping intelligence in check. If a species ever evolved to become too intelligent, they would see the horrors of the world for real, and would not be able to stand to live. Maybe this was the same with people.

What if she didn’t fall? Ah, well. Not to worry. There was the gun. If the woman pulled that shiny silver trigger, a small, copper bullet would be fired into her head at an alarming speed. Immediately, the intricate little threads that held her brain together would be ripped apart, and this is the most important part: the blood to her brain would be cut off. Every death is caused, believe it or not, by a lack of blood to the brain. Every jealous shot fired, every poignant death from cancer, every soldier’s death in the heat of battle, every emotional wrist-slitting episode that leaves more than a couple of scars. It’s all because of the blood. Because of the lack of blood to her brain, the woman would lose control of her legs. And thanks to gravity – that damned force that limits us all so much – she would fall backwards. Back to outcome A.

For Cameron, it was a win-win situation.

Everyone feels that sick pleasure coursing through their veins. Maybe only the Germans were clever enough to invent a word for it.

You’re led to believe that a gunshot makes a “bang” sound. You’re wrong. It’s more like a “crack”. How delightfully onomatopoeiac. A harsh, ear-splitting crack that pierces through the cold air and leaves a ringing in your ears long after the crowd has screamed, the nearby birds have scattered, and the woman’s body has fallen to the street below.

It was ten minutes before the police showed up.

Come on, I said to Cameron. Let’s get back to work.

Yeah, he replied pensively.

Poor thing, he added. I feel sorry for her.

He shuffled off, disappearing down the stairs. Back to normality.

God, Cameron, I thought. You bloody liar.

The BBC believes that on average, the population has read just 6 of these 100 books. Quite disappointing, don’t you think? Why not go through the list and see how many you’ve read.

(I can’t seem to find the original source for this. If anyone could find it, that’d be great. Also, there seems to be more than one list – others, for example, have the Harry Potter books as separate entries.)

Bold are the books that I’ve read.

01 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen –
02 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien –
03 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte –
04 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling –
05 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee -
06 The Bible -
07 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte -
08 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell –
09 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman -
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens -

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott -
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy –
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien –
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger -
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot -

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell -
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald -
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams –
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck –
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll –
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame –

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens -
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis –
34 Emma – Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis –
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne -

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell –
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown –
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving -
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood –
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding -
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan -

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel -
52 Dune – Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen -
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens –
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley -
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez -

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck –
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold -
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas-
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie –
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville -

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens –
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses – James Joyce -
76 The Inferno – Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal – Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession – AS Byatt –

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White -
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton -

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare –
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl –
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So I’ve read a quarter of the books on the list. How many have you read, and how do you compare to an “average” person?

Tim

“They didn’t look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big – muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students.

The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.”

- Twilight, Stephenie Meyer, Chapter 1

I have probably mislabelled some things as adjectives, or missed some, but that’s beside the point.

Tim

(I’m aware that the capitalisation is wrong. That’s fixed on the version that resides at school, and I can’t be bothered changing it here.)

Greivances – a Shakesperean sonnet.

I shan’t compare thee to a summer’s day
Nor shall I remark on your sun-like eyes,
No! I will refrain, and shall simply say
Your mind and soul is something I despise.
All of the verse and all of the world’s books
Cannot describe the hatred that I feel
For your mocking sneer, your derisive looks,
Your hateful self that your visage reveals.
My dear, you are just like a winter’s day,
Grating and bringing a chill to my veins,
Bitter, unwelcome, depressing and grey,
But I am bound by your miserable chains.
Darling, your horrors become ten times worse,
To expound I would need ten times the verse.

Final Straw – a sestina.

“Wake up,” she cried out, in angry protest
“Hurry yourself – we have not got all day!”
She kicked the bed, waking me from my sleep,
Left me bleary-eyed, staring at the ceiling,
I heard the creek of floorboards as she left,
Slamming the door with both triumph and rage.

I was left lying in a fit of rage,
I rose from the bed to shout in protest,
But no, too late, she had already left,
To perform tasks and errands of the day.
I lay back down, eyes fixed on the ceiling,
Before letting them shut, to steal some sleep.

I had such dreams while I peacefully slept,
Of jungles that sway and rivers that rage,
Temples covered by shining gold ceilings,
Furious winds with their fearful protest,
The still and calm nights and the tranquil days,
Sights to behold from the right and the left!

But my stirring dreams eventually left,
The real world woke me from my tranquil sleep,
I looked around – it was no longer day,
I had slept all day! I was filled with rage,
But there was none to whom I could protest,
Just an empty room, white walls and ceiling.

But as I tore my gaze from the ceiling,
I saw, beside me, a note had been left,
I did not know whether I should protest,
It had been penned while there I calmly slept,
I noticed it had been written with rage,
By the one who had angered me today.

“My darling,” it read, “While you slept today,
As you looked up and gazed at the ceiling,
No doubt stewing with anger and with rage,
I gathered my things, and quietly I left,
You shan’t see me again after your sleep,
Do not cry; do not bother to protest.”

And I shan’t forget that day that she left,
And while I look at the ceiling or sleep,
I obey her – I don’t rage or protest.

-

In a completely unrelated note, this article entitled “101 Writing Prompts” is possibly one of the best tools for inspiration that I’ve ever seen.

Tim

Speaking of bad writing, I’ll have some more prose and poetry examples up soonish.

Tim

Robert stepped through the heavy, metal door, jumping slightly as it shut behind him with a loud, clanging thud. He looked at what was once Washington, D.C., and saw a green sky and the rotting bones of animals strewn across the brown grass. He could see only the burnt-out frame of the Capitol, and could only taste and smell a tangy, iron-like sensation. There was once incessant noise and congestion in this city, but now there was an eerie silence. A vulture crowed – a raspy, hungry sound. Robert sighed, and turned back to the doors. It wasn’t safe yet.

Described as a “performance poet”, Geoff Goodfellow (born 1949 in Adelaide) is an Australian poet and public speaker who currently tours schools, giving talks about writing and poetry to college students across the country. Goodfellow grew up in Adelaide in a war service group house with his parents and three siblings, and left school at fifteen. He worked a number of jobs, including that of a builder, until he started writing poetry in 1982 after a back injury. For the last two decades he has written poetry, toured the country and the world, and held the position of “writer-in-residence” at several foreign institutions, including those in the USA, Europe, and China.

What follows is an example of Goodfellow’s work (‘Miles Away’, from ‘Poems for a Dead Father’ [Vulgar Press, 2004]):

I remember my feet
on the cold kitchen lino
that morning
a teenager with
bumfluff & pimples
i was leaning over
the kitchen table
most of its red & white
marbled laminex top
covered in the morning
newspaper
as i stood above it all
i read there was a war
in the jungles of Vietnam
& they were sending Aussies
Vietnam I thought
Vietnam . . .
where the hell is Vietnam
& i found The Jacaranda Atlas
from school
Vietnam i kept thinking -
it must be next to Queensland
but it wasn’t
it took a while but i did
find it
it was on page 75 -
& it was miles away
as i stared at the map
i thought about the madness
the old man lived with
& how he served
in the Middle East
& i thought about the madness
uncle Bronte lived with
& how he served
in New Guinea
& i thought about the madness
cousin Neville lived with
& how he served
in Korea
Vietnam i thought
Vietnam . . .
& i knew then
knew then i was going -
nowhere.

As is obvious from the text, Goodfellow tends to pay little attention to poetic norms. He uses a lot of slang terms (especially those that would have been popular in the 1950s and 1960s, when he was growing up), and tends to use colourful language, abbrevations, and terms that are not often found in poetry. The syntax of his poetry is often important, with many spaces and line breaks added in unusual places.

Goodfellow writes about issues that were relevant in his adolescence and young adulthood, including the Vietnam War, working-class Australia, family, and mateship. His poems are often written more in a narrative style than in a descriptive one, and he tends to use more literal language. His poetry is very meaningful and deep, although whether or not is succeeds as poetry itself is a different question.

• Geoff Goodfellow, http://www.geoffgoodfellow.com/
• Geoff Goodfellow at CGPublisher, http://geoffgoodfellow.cgpublisher.com/

One of the things I both love and hate about Twitter is that it forces you to be concise. In an email, blog post, or similar message, you can rattle on about anything in as many damn characters as you like. But Twitter’s 140-character limit forces you to get your point across succinctly and explicitly. How is that good for a writer? Well, the shortest stories are often the best. I’ve been quite addicted to @twitterfiction recently, and I love the stories on there. Whether you’re like me when it comes to a short attention span or not, it can be a lot more interesting to read short, well-written stories or poetry than to read a novel.

Twitter is sporadic, instantaneous, and provides a real insight into people’s minds. Many people tweet in a “stream of consciousness” style, just typing whatever comes to their heads. And as annoying as that can be for some, it’s an amazing tool for inspiration. Apart from just reading your Twitter feed or the public feed, there are many tools that bring that data to life. Twittervision is one of them – you can have it as a flat map or as a 3D globe, showing you tweets from all around the world. But by far my favourite is called twistori. It grabs tweets from the Twitter public feed that have either the words “I love”, “I hate”, “I think”, “I believe”, “I feel”, or “I wish”, and shows you results for whichever phrase you pick. It’s a very simple yet captivating way to see how the public feels.

So next time that you have writers’ block (and it happens a lot, at least for me, anyway), take a look at Twitter. Take a random post from somewhere, completely out of context. You don’t know the story behind it, nor do you know how the tweet’s author is feeling. But that doesn’t matter. As a writer, it’s your job to make that up.

Happy writing/Twittering!

Tim

Cross-posted from here.

A small chalk square, hastily scribbled on to the cold asphalt. Schoolchildren run through it, a thrown ball bounces off at a sharp angle, and the laughs and cries of children can be heard from all directions.

Provide:

I was handed a loaf of bread – stale, and falling to pieces in my hands, but food nonetheless. I was shoved out of the way by a rather rude man behind me, who almost ran to the front of the line to receive his food. The line stretched all the way down the street and around the corner, full of hungry individuals and families, all waiting to receive their share. I bit into the bread. It tasted awful.

Misunderstood:

All those who passed the kennel looked pitifully at the little dog. Its misshapen face and mangy fur. They passed it without a second glance, moving on to the much cuter animals in the next cage over. The little, ignored puppy sadly dipped its head and retreated back into the corner of its cage.

God, that last one was depressing.

Why not? It’s because we don’t care enough. I’m including myself in that category - I’m all for alternative energy and for preventing global warming, but I, like many people around the world, don’t do a thing about it. Most of us felt like we were really making a difference during Earth Hour by turning off our lights. We felt like we were saving the planet. But if we were serious we’d get out there and protest, pour money into alternative energy, try and get into politics to make a difference. But I, like most others, simply only do what’s convenient. It’s easy enough to turn your lights off for an hour. I could have saved even more energy by unplugging my laptop, but I didn’t. Cause I was using it – simple as that. I didn’t want to slightly inconvenience myself. And I feel awful for having that attitude, but the truth is that it’s the way that most people think. And simply put, the planet will not be saved until we get over ourselves. The same goes for any issue - to help poverty, for example, I could be donating to these guys, but the closest I’ve come to “making poverty history” is by playing this (which is fun, don’t get me wrong.)

But that’s not to say that Earth Hour didn’t bring about an amazing community spirit. The blogosphere was a-Twitter about the issue, and people were posting pictures of their dark streets on Flickr left right and centre (here’s mine). It was quite eerie to walk out on to the street at nine o’clock pm and have it feel like midnight, or like the same city years ago, before electricity and before all the conveniences of modern life. The only lights I could see around me belonged to the people across the road, who I doubt care at all about the environment due to the “No Greens” sticker on their four-wheel-drive. But apart from the odd household, nearly everyone got behind Earth Hour, and made the event in some ways a success.

But like with any issue, this problem of depleting resources and global warming won’t go away until we do something about it – a little more than a token effort of just turning off our lights. Our intentions were good with Earth Hour, but we need to go just a few steps further if we really want to make a difference.

Cross-posted here.