I started writing regular prose in 2004, though I had been creating little picture and comic books since at least 1997. Sadly, at least 90% of my pre-2004 work is lost, which is a shame, but from around 2004 onward, what I produced was mainly only prose fiction. When it comes to art, for a long time I had an attitude of just sticking to my comfort zones because I didn’t think I’d be able to make anything worthwhile by dabbling in mediums I didn’t really know anything about. But, now, I think that I was quite wrong and that experimenting with your work can indeed be very worthwhile. I’m going to use today’s blog entry to explain how I changed my perspective.
    In May 2011, my friend Dalfino offhandedly said that he’d like me to start a blog, and so I did right away. This was a step out of my comfort zone. I was used to writing non-fiction and I didn’t know what kind of thing to write on a blog, yet three years later I’ve been happily and regularly updating this to an audience of a few hundred. Also, at around that time, my Mum kindly gave me her old camera. In the past, I’d never really had an interest in photography, yet now I enjoy taking pictures so much that I rarely go out without my camera. In July 2012, a friend of mine was feeling sad, so, I decided that a little comic strip might be the best way to cheer her up. It worked well, and I enjoyed making it so much that I’ve now been doing that regularly for the last two years. Indeed, the first story I had published was actually written as a result of me experimenting with present tense first person.
    So, if you do like to create art, stepping outside of your normal boundaries could be very helpful, even if it may feel counterproductive. In virtually every instance so far, it has been greatly beneficial to me. In future I’d love to develop my script writing, musical and visual art abilities and I’d really love to get the opportunity to work on a video game in one way or another.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

Last summer I found myself visiting a nightclub in London with my friend Dalfino Madrigal Keyte, his sister and some of her friends. I’d been to one or two night clubs in the past, so I thought I knew the kind of thing that I could expect from there. Indeed, I had a fairly nice time there and I even wrote about it once before, but there was one thing I didn’t expect about London nightclubs: increased security. On my way into Mother (that was the name of the club) I was frisked for the first (and so far only) time in my life.
    I was asked to stand with my arms spread open, and the man at the door began feeling around for anything that shouldn’t be brought into a nightclub. I’m sure this takes about five seconds for most of the people who walk in wearing t-shirts with no pockets, but I came in with my jacket and had lots of items on me so it took several minutes.
    Through the material, he had a little feel of every item I had on me.
    As he got to one thing, he frowned at me, suspecting something bad.
    “That’s just my ocarina,” I said, offering a reassuring smile.
    He carried on looking. Then he found something else which didn’t feel quite right.
    “My yoyo,” I said in answer to the unspoken question.
    The search continued. He found something else.
    “It’s just a tape measure,” I said.
    “Alright, you can go in then,” he said finally.
    “Oh good,” I said happily.
    “But you can’t take in this.” He pulled my Trusty Water Bottle from my pocket and my heart dropped.
    “Don’t worry, Adam,” said Dalfino’s sister behind me. “I’ll make sure it’s looked after.”
    And I never saw that water bottle again.

A couple of years ago, I was in Bath for the day visiting my friend David Tubb. At the start of the day, I was looking for something in particular from my pockets, I can’t remember what it was, but I often keep a lot of things in my pockets so it took me a while to find whatever it was I was looking for. One of the things I took out of my pockets while rummaging was an ‘Emergency Lollipop’.
    “When would you need a lollipop in an emergency?” asked David.
    “Well, I can’t think of anything right now,” I said, “but it’s best to be prepared for all possibilities!”
    Then we went about our day as we often did at the time. A lovely lunch at Pizza Express, a luxurious browse in a book shop or two, a sniff of the air in a tea shop and visits to various other places until we finally popped into Sainsbury’s. David was going to have dinner once I’d left, so we were going in there so that he could get his shopping before I left. I believe he bought himself a lasagne and one or two other essential foods (milk and bread, for example) and while he was looking around getting all of these things, I spotted something which would be a nice snack for me too.
    I’m quite a big fan of dark chocolate, I certainly prefer it to milk chocolate (and I don’t even like white chocolate), and while we were looking around Sainsbury’s I spotted a nice, big bar of dark chocolate. It was 95% pure, so that meant that it was made almost entirely of cocoa beans and very little else. This was going to be very dark chocolate indeed! I could remember having bought the 95% one before, and I loved it, so it seemed reasonable to get it again as I was a little hungry. However, it seems I’d remembered wrong.
    Once we got back to the station and were waiting for our respective buses, I quickly ate all of the chocolate. Delicious. But hang on a moment, what was that extremely bitter taste in my mouth? While it had seemed nice during the process of eating it, once it was gone there was such a horrible bitter taste left behind. I might even be sick! I reached for my Trusty Water Bottle and took several huge gulps, hoping it would get things back to normal. Sadly, all that happened was that it made the water taste bad as well. I couldn’t handle the taste at all. It was a real emergency. That’s when the Emergency Lollipop came in handy; sucking on that very sweet snack perfectly cancelled out the bitter taste left from the chocolate.
    David was very impressed that it had proved to be useful so soon after his enquiry and then we both headed home. Me with the happiness of a non-bitter mouth and him with the happiness of the upcoming dinner and both with the happiness at having spent a nice day together.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)

For today’s entry, I want to talk a little about insults, lies and the effects they have on us. I’m terribly sorry if that’s a rather negative subject for a blog post, but these are just some things that have been going through my head lately and so I thought I’d write them down.
    I’m not all that bothered by insults, really. I find that insults normally come in the form of a joke which may have hit a nerve, or things said in the head of the moment which aren’t really meant anyway. So, for these reasons, I don’t often let myself get offended if somebody says something insulting towards me because there was no ill will. Of course, there are exceptions of course (just as with anything). I think for me, or anybody else, insults carry the most weight when they’re coming from the mouth of somebody who you trust and you would think understood the impact their words would have, but then again, most often it’s still a case of things said in the heat of the moment and so best left ignored (though I understand that it may sometimes be difficult).
    Lies, on the other hand, are an entirely different can of worms (no, I’m only lying, they aren’t worms at all. Sorry). I find that it is much worse to lie to somebody than it is to insult them because then it’s a pre-meditated act of cruelty. If somebody says something that upsets you during the day, they probably didn’t wake up in the morning and think “I’m going to say something mean to them today” while if somebody has realised there’s something they don’t want to be honest with you about, they probably have decided in advance that they’re going to lie to you. It then brings into question whether or not they’ve lied without you knowing before, and just generally how honest they are with you. I think, the main thing is, that if you choose to lie to somebody, it shows a lack of respect and care for them. But, of course, if somebody does lie to you, that’s no reason not to forgive them, or even trust them again.
    So, you can threaten to stab me, punch me in the face, pour vodka in my eye, but just don’t lie! Not because I’d hate you for it, but because it would make me very sad.

This week, each of the three blog posts will be on a lecturer from one of my three years at Bath Spa University. So, today I’ll write about one from first year, Wednesday one from second year and Friday one from third year. Each of them have had a significant influence on me and my work and so I just wanted to dedicate a post to each of them. As you may have guessed, today’s is about somebody named Emma Hooper.
    Emma taught the core (compulsory) module for Creative Writing in first year and it was those classes that convinced me that I had made a very good choice in doing a Creative Writing degree. This class was right in the middle of a nine hour day (11 a.m. to 6 p.m. of classes, plus at least two hours travelling all the way from Corsham to Bath) but I still always looked forward to this class because it was such a fun environment for developing writing.
    Emma herself always seemed to be especially full of energy and I imagine it was a great help for those who may not have been feeling entirely enthusiastic. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but while other classes would have writing prompts that weren’t all that exciting, I remember that I was always eagerly writing up my piece to workshop in the next of Emma’s classes whereas with the others it was occasionally a bit of a chore. Perhaps it was because she gave such excellent and positive feedback, or perhaps it was the prompts that were excellent, I don’t know, either way it got me to write more. In fact (and I know this because I list all of the writing I do) my year with that class is the most productive I’ve ever been writing-wise and I’ve been listing my writing since 2004! I’m sure that’s no coincidence.
    I remember once, I was wearing my Tetris badge (a kind gift from Chris Hunter) and she spotted it almost as soon as I walked through the door! That made me very happy. The same thing happened when I was wearing my Christmas badge too (she also held an excellent Christmas class too). I think the best thing was that she made every class member feel important and really encouraged everyone with their projects, while at the same time being a really fun person to be around. In one of the last lessons we were listening to music (working on song writing, I think) and she played the song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen and it’s quite a sad song, so I felt especially sad that the classes were coming to an end and whenever I hear it now it reminds me of those classes. As I’m sure you can tell, I’ll always have extremely fond memories of my first year of Creative Writing with Emma Hooper.

Years ago, when I went to Corsham Regis Primary School, I remember being told very often by teachers and MDSAs that I was living the best years of my life. At the time, I was rather surprised, not because I was being overly pessimistic, but because I just assumed life would get better. Sure, life was nice, but I imagined it getting much better as I got older. Before long, the time came for me to leave Regis and so, of course, a big celebration assembly was arranged for me and all the other students in my year. We were all told to pick two cherished memories of Regis to say on stage. That was hard. I didn’t really have any cherished memories. In the end I just picked an arbitrary conversation I remembered having with my friend Davey four years earlier and something about getting hurt while doing rock climbing.
    From there, I went on to The Corsham School. I was still occasionally told, though not as often, that these were the best years of my life and unlike when I was at Regis, I actually started to believe it. As I aged through my teenage years, I developed into the person I am today and formed strong bonds with lots of people who I’m still in contact with today. I had so much fun, and had I been asked to give two cherished memories of my time at The Corsham School, I’d have struggled, but this time the struggle would have been narrowing it down to just two. At the end of compulsory education, there was another big leavers’ event, but I didn’t really see it as an ending, because I had two more years there in the sixth form coming up. When I got to the end of the sixth form, however, I felt rather sad. The best time of my life really was coming to an end. Each of the year’s tutor groups I had to make a presentation, and since my group wasn’t very keen, I pretty much made the entire presentation myself. People found it hilarious, “wonderfully dry” the head teacher said to me afterwards, but there was actually a lot of emotion in it. I felt rather gloomy that day, really, as I watched all of the presentations. It really felt like life would never be that good again, I’d be going somewhere away from all my beloved friends and the routine I’d be used to for seven years would be gone forever.
    Then I went to Bath Spa University (today is officially my last day as a student). I loved it there. I met several new people and I grew to love them just as I did my friends from The Corsham School. I was expecting the worst, but then that turned out to be the time of my life. I’ve never been happier than during my time at Bath Spa Univerisity. I’ve been able to work a lot on my writing and to take it in a more professional direction which has been infinitely helpful. I’ve had such close, intense friendships with several people and I feel that I’ve been enriched as a person because of it. I recently found myself walking alone around the university’s campus fairly late at night and I knew it would be one of the last times I got to be there. I felt so sad because all of the wonderful times of the past three years were running through my head and now it was over. I was feeling very emotional indeed and I wrote a few text messages to different people, trying to express the feeling, but I didn’t send any of them because I didn’t feel I could capture it in words. I slowly walked up to the bus stop and got onto the 15 bus. I love riding on the bus, but as I sat and looked out of the window, I couldn’t enjoy this bus ride because I knew it was taking me away from my fantastic time at Bath Spa University.
    But while this is an ending, it’s also a new beginning. I’m sure that in three years’ time (or however long it takes for the next change to come along) I’ll be sad that the next ‘time of my life’ is over, because life just seems to get better and better as the years go by. As life goes on, endings get harder and harder, but we mustn’t forget that each new beginning can be better than the last.

(Don’t miss today’s, related, Finger Puppet Show!)

I tend to find it extremely interesting to read about the writing habits of other writers and so I thought that the writers in the audience may enjoy reading about my writing routine. Not that I actually have any real writing routine, so to speak, but I’ll talk about my habits nonetheless.
    Firstly, there are the regular posts here on the Trusty Water Blog. I never write an entry in advance, I always write them on the day (except book reviews, which are nearly always written on the day I finish a book and then saved). I suppose it seems a little reckless, but I’ve been doing this for over three years now and I still manage to find time on every update day. I took a break from updating for a couple of weeks in the early days because my laptop broke (if that happened now, I wouldn’t stop) and other than that, I’ve only missed an update once so, I’m quite proud of that. Usually I have three vague ideas for the entries at the start of the week and then they may or may not end up being what I write. Sometimes I’ll just be talking to a friend and then I’ll be reminded of something that happened to me and then that’ll be the entry for that day.
    Then there’s the second of my ‘public’ works, the Finger Puppet Show. Unlike my blog, I fairly often do this in advance. Usually, at the start of a week I’ll have the two strips already uploaded and ready to be automatically posted at 12 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday. Last summer, I actually had ten weeks’ worth of strips ready and waiting. That’s not to say I’ve never been up late the night before getting one finished! Oddly, despite it being a rather childish thing about talking animals, the inspiration for these often comes from real life. Sometimes I’ll be in a conversation with a group of people and somebody will say something and then I’ll think “Wouldn’t it be funny if somebody replied with …” and then I make that into a comic strip. At the moment, this might be the most fulfilling writing I do.
    Finally, there’re my short stories. I’ve written 240 short stories of varying quality since 2004 and the 241st is in progress. As I like to list things, I noticed that when I started writing this blog, I also started writing fewer short stories, presumably because my creative energy had to be spread over a broader area and I’ve noticed that I’ve been producing fewer still since I started the Finger Puppet Show. Sometimes I’ll think to myself that I need to focus less on the Trusty Water Blog and Finger Puppet Show and focus more on my ‘real’ writing, but I quickly reassure myself that that’s silly. First and foremost writing should be a pleasure and if you’re forcing yourself in any direction, your writing might be of lower quality. At the moment, I’ll usually go weeks without doing any of this ‘real’ writing but then I’ll get an idea, and these ideas usually come at about 3 a.m. and keep me up for hours, then the next day I’ll write it all in one go, no matter how long it turns out. On the other hand I am currently working on a story that I’ve been slowly adding to for the last month or so. It’s an idea I really like, but I always find myself doing other things, so I should probably focus on it more.
    I so often think to myself that I don’t write enough, but I don’t worry about it for long. Every writer I’ve known has expressed similar concerns to me about themselves at different times, and I think I know why. I tend to find that I just have an infinite number of ideas and no matter how much I write I still have loads of new ideas. Perhaps I, and others, feel that I don’t produce work because any amount is small next to infinity. I’m sure this is true of most other artists (not just writers) too.

(Don’t miss today’s Finger Puppet Show!)