I do not have a standard way of writing. Usually I write from an inspiration. Sometimes I plan meticulously. Often I write a stream of consciousness.
Torture – was thoroughly researched. I spent ages checking out the Quran, quotes, factions, terrorism and torture. A lot of that was not pleasant reading. I mapped out each chapter and wrote it slowly.
Anthropocene Apocalypse – was written in sections. It was a series of my personal observations and thoughts that stemmed from my life and travels around the world and personal witnessing of the destruction of the natural habitat around the world.
Sorting the Future – came from a dream. I was on board the Marco Polo and had a weird dream about aliens who came to Earth on a mission to save nature and intelligence, equipped with rejuvenating machine and advanced technology. It was a bit of wishful thinking. I wrote the first draft in five days in one long stream of consciousness. It just flowed. The rewrites took a lot longer but I tried to keep the light touch and flow and think I have been successful
Ebola in the Garden of Eden – was mapped out very carefully with the plot sorted. I had the outline written out but did not write it for about twenty years. When I did it came out as one of my best Sci-Fi novels
In Search of Captain Beefheart – was a memoir of my life with Rock Music. It charts my love of Rock from my first singles, albums and gigs through to now. It straddles the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. I did not want it to be a boring chronological run through but I had this idea of a quest that brought it to life. It is my most popular book.
A Passion For Education – this was another memoir. I wanted to put my philosophy of education down in black and white but I did not want it to be a boring academic book. I had the idea of explaining why I believed in the various aspects of my reasoning through anecdotes and experiences that brought it to life. It tells the inside story of Headship. I have had many people not in education tell me how interesting they found it. That was good. I wrote it in sections. It was easy to do. The content provided the structure. I had to marry the anecdotes and stories to the theory.
Danny’s Story – is a story about a house I lived in in the early seventies. It was full of characters and incidents. I sat on it for forty years. I could not think how to write it in an interesting way. Then I read John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and it inspired me. I saw a way of doing it. I fictionalised myself and the characters so that they were removed from it. It flowed out ion one great stream of consciousness that worked for me. I am now going through and knocking the raw, rough descriptions and sentences into better shape.
As you can see – I tend to suddenly get an inspiration and that is it – I’m off. I write hard and fast until it is complete. I then hone. Sometimes I plan and map. Sometimes I research. But often it comes pouring out of my head in one long splurge. All I have to do is get an insight into how to structure it. It’s like pouring cement. When I get going my mind churns. I find myself waking in the night to head off to the computer to write another section that has materialised in my sleep. I have been known to write through the night for twenty four hours without a break.
I have written 57 books.
Here’s a few of them:
These are my six books of poetry. They are available as paperback or on Kindle from Amazon – all for under £5 for a paperback. You could buy the whole lot for just £27.62!!
They are not conventional poetry books. They are like you find on my blog with a page of explanatory prose followed by the poem. The prose is as important as the poem to me.
Why do I write? That is a question a lot of people ask me and it is one I often ask myself. Writing is a lonely, sedentary task. It is time consuming, frustrating and unrewarding in many ways.It was Paul Simon who wrote ‘All my words come back to me – in shades of mediocrity – like emptiness in harmony’. That about sums it up. I am not the next John Fowles. I did not study English Literature. Why do I think I can write? I write because I know I can articulate the contents of my mind into words that will resonate with my readers. I know I can and sometimes I do. I write because I have a head that is full of passions, ideas, thoughts, opinions and stories and I have a burning need to write them down. I enjoy writing as much as I do reading – and I love reading. I am not religious. I do not believe in any god or afterlife; I do not believe there is an ultimate purpose. I believe we have to give life a purpose. We have to strive to make the world a better place. Writing does that for me. I love nature and am destroyed by what we are doing to the planet. It eats me up.I write about the things that mean something to me. I am a communicator who is an idealist; I believe we can make things better. I write because I believe in creativity. Creating something beautiful or passionate gives purpose and fulfilment. My books contain the wonder in my head. I write because it is difficult. Writing a novel is like climbing Everest. It is so hard that it leaves you with a sense of fulfilment when you’ve achieved it. I’ve climbed a lot of mountains. I write because I am a rebel who wants to change the system. I want to change it because it stinks. I think we can do better. I write about my passions. There are no rules. I like to push the limits in every way going. My books are different. They are sometimes extreme. I write for fun. I have written 49 books and published twenty four. Twenty two are available on Amazon. They are my babies. They will live longer than me. I dread to think how many hours I have sat in the dark typing on an old type-writer or pounding the keyboard on my various computers. How much of my life? How many tens of thousands of hours?A book would take me a couple of thousand hours. I done rewrite after rewrite. So far I have earned around £700 for all those efforts. I make about a dollar a book. It’s not a great return. If it was about the money I could have worked in a filling-station and bought a house! It’s not about the recognition. You write into a relentless vacuum. It is sometimes the most discouraging, pointless, lonely task in the world. Sometimes I read what I have written and despair. But I’m still writing!
Many things are beyond our understanding – such as how a bunch of chemicals have come to think and speak, to wonder and emote.
Many things are beyond our comprehension such as the infinite nature of the universe, the vastness of space, the enormity of matter and the unending nature of time.
In Scenario 1 the population continued to grow eating up space, wilderness and destroying all naturally living creatures. Technology dealt with the problems of food, water, energy, weather and even oxygen in the atmosphere. We lived in huge urban developments and the world is devoid of wild-life and natural areas.
Scenario 2.
The premise:
a. We realise the impact of our actions on the environment and limit our numbers, conserve the wilderness and wild-life, stop our habitat destruction and pollution.
b. We lay aside 50% of the planet for wilderness and wild-life. We do not allow roads, hunters or development in these areas.
We are extremely good at solving problems. We can easily create a sustainable future where wilderness and wild-life has a place.
The result:
a. We introduce contraception, education and family planning on a global scale and successfully reduce our population.
b. We use technology to produce better transport, housing, energy production, and food.
c. We do not have urban sprawl, deforestation, overfishing, or other unsustainable exploitation of the environment.
d. We raise the standards of life for all people globally so that there is no longer war, conflict or poverty. There are social services, pensions and sick pay enabling people to live without requiring large numbers of children to support them through hard times.
e. We produce technology that is not polluting and is sustainable. We have ample energy (probably through nuclear fusion and solar) and our farming methods are not cruel or ineffective. We can produce ample good food to support the population without encroaching on the wilderness areas.
f. The forests are conserved. Fishing is sustainable. The weather and global warming is controlled.
g. 50% of the world is teeming with wild-life that we can marvel at. The air, water and soil are not contaminated with carcinogens. We globally control the weather and global warming. Everything regarding conservation and pollution is controlled and enforced globally.
I know which of the two possible future scenarios I would prefer to live in.
Let us look into the future and extrapolate from where we are to where we are heading.
Scenario 1
The premise:
a. The population continues to grow
b. There are no catastrophes that wipe us out
Man is extremely good at solving problems. So let us assume that we negotiate our way through problem after problem. We do not annihilate ourselves through nuclear war or manufactured biological warfare. We do not succumb to a virus. We merely continue to grow in numbers.
These are the consequences:
a. Space and shelter. We need land and housing and our cities, towns and villages grow. The countryside becomes consumed in plastic and concrete. Roads connect and transport systems enable easy access.
b. The Wilderness. The wilderness and natural world become open to us and exploited for farming, mining, logging and habitation until there is no more inaccessible wilderness areas. Roads run through every place.
c. The Wild-life. The wild-life now has no habitat left, no food, shelter or way of living. It is butchered for meat, hunted for ivory or medicine (The rarer it gets, the more it is worth, the higher the price, the more worth the risk). The remnants of the wild things are corralled into parks or zoos and confined, protected and used as objects of tourism. Those considered pests, unpleasant or dangerous are eradicated.
d. Food. Even with all the wilderness opened up for farming, the seas fully harvested and hydroponics, genetic modifications and intensive farming methods there is not sufficient food for the burgeoning population. Food is produced from bacteria and fungus in vast industrial vats (Pruteen, mycoprotein etc. – already produced in large quantities – in our pies, sausages etc.), textured, flavoured and used as a meat substitute. Proper meat is a luxury food item.
e. Water. Water is a dwindling resource and desalination plants provide supplies.
f. Energy. Fossil fuels are replaced by large-scale sustainable technology – probably nuclear fusion supplemented with solar.
g. Weather. The effects of global warming are alleviated. The hurricanes and extreme weather conditions are now able to be controlled.
h. Oxygen. Oxygen is a natural product of photosynthesis. With the destruction of the forests and pollution of the oceans it is no longer being produced in sufficient quantities. Oceans are seeded to produce algal blooms and hydrolysis plants produce oxygen from water.
Our lives in these huge metropolises are highly controlled. Our environment is plastic. Our food, water and even the air we breathe is manufactured. We take our children to see the last remaining trees in the tree museum. We then go to the zoo to get a glimpse of and wonder at the little animals that used to run free in the wild.
As we pulled out of Kota Kinabalu the sun was low in the sky creating a psychedelic glow.We slid along the coast as I looked over at the shrouded mountains and jungle and thought about orangutans.The sun set on Borneo!
Sorry – I can’t seem to get all the other photos to come out.
Our second stop in Borneo was Kota Kinabula. We sailed in from the South China Sea to check out what is a small new city. The original was almost completely flattened during the Second World war.
We were welcomed ashore by two girls in costume and two groups of musicians and dancers. They certainly wanted our custom. The first was a set of dancers in costume supported by a tradition band with gongs. The second were dancers representing the native Indian population. The guys were dressed in skimpy bare-chested costume with wooden swords, shields and tall feathered headdresses. The girls wore brightly embroidered tunics and dresses with a little fetching headband with a single feather. They did a fearsome dance that was meant to be menacing but I couldn’t help noticing one of the guys vacillating between embarrassment and finding it very amusing.
The irony was that most of the native Indians had been displaced by the incomers.
No buses this time. We walked straight in. We set up the path into the hills to get a view over the city. The path led up through thick jungle with insects, birds and animals trilling and rustling. The views were good.
We headed back along the promenade to the fishing quay. Across the water we could see an extensive stilted village with a backdrop of jungle. It looked more ramshackle and rough and ready compared with the similar village we had seen in Banda Sera Begawan although it was a lot more extensive.
We jumped a taxi to take us to the Mosques and other major new buildings. The architecture was unique.
Back on the boat we looked at the stilted village a bit more closely and sailed past the other beautiful looking mosque.
The frustration with visiting Borneo was that we were skimming the edges, visiting the cities and not getting into the interior. I wanted to be where the wildlife was – in the real Borneo.
After leaving Kota Kinabula we headed up the coast of Borneo with a strong warm breeze in our face and a glass in our hands. On one side of the boat the shore of Borneo slowed edged past with massive volcanoes peeking through the reefs of circling clouds while to the other side the sun was putting on a show as it sank between various islands.
The frustration with visiting Borneo was that we were skimming the edges, visiting the cities and not getting into the interior. I wanted to be where the wildlife was – in the real Borneo.
After leaving Kota Kinabula we headed up the coast of Borneo with a strong warm breeze in our face and a glass in our hands. On one side of the boat the shore of Borneo slowed edged past with massive volcanoes peeking through the reefs of circling clouds while to the other side the sun was putting on a show as it sank between various islands.
The frustration with visiting Borneo was that we were skimming the edges, visiting the cities and not getting into the interior. I wanted to be where the wildlife was – in the real Borneo.
After leaving Kota Kinabula we headed up the coast of Borneo with a strong warm breeze in our face and a glass in our hands. On one side of the boat the shore of Borneo slowed edged past with massive volcanoes peeking through the reefs of circling clouds while to the other side the sun was putting on a show as it sank between various islands.
The frustration with visiting Borneo was that we were skimming the edges, visiting the cities and not getting into the interior. I wanted to be where the wildlife was – in the real Borneo.
After leaving Kota Kinabula we headed up the coast of Borneo with a strong warm breeze in our face and a glass in our hands. On one side of the boat the shore of Borneo slowed edged past with massive volcanoes peeking through the reefs of circling clouds while to the other side the sun was putting on a show as it sank between various islands.
