Craig Stone's Blog, page 4

Here’s how to run the world

Interesting thoughts. #politics #theworld

Originally posted on ideas.ted.com:

Do you think your country’s political system is broken? Simon Anholt has a solution: the Good Country Party, which looks beyond borders to include everyone from everywhere.

I’ve just started a party. It’s called the Good Country Party.

It’s not exactly a drinks party, because for starters I’ve invited 700 million people to join. And it’s not exactly a political party, because I’m getting sick of politics and we won’t be standing for election. Actually, we can’t stand for election, because the Good Country Party isn’t located in any country: it’s located on the internet and it’s a party for everyone, everywhere.

So what kind of party is this?

It’s a party for people who feel frustrated at the way things seem to be going. Every day, we read in the newspapers that people are fighting and starving, we’ve broken the weather, the economic system is in turmoil, the threat of nuclear…

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Published on May 16, 2015 05:07

Fake reviews. Fake reviews everywhere

A wedge of authors have became popular against all the odds. A chunk of writers have sold material on the back of paying people to review their books. Some writers have grown their careers by selling books explaining (in detail) how they made their name, but conveniently the chapter describing how they initially paid for hundreds of fake reviews is missing. They have ballooned the perception of their talent and taken your money, then taken your money again by selling a lie, which covered up the truth about what made you buy their books in the first place.

These ‘writers’ are the enemy of words. They are the plastic Phoenixes rising from the heat of their own moist flatulence.

They have manipulated an environment where they are statistically more successful by throwing money at fake reviewers. These authors might be perceived as important, but I believe for a person to write something of worth, a person must first be worth something. And paying to rig a system, alludes to a mind less beautiful. Some justify the process by saying paying for a reviewer does not mean paying for the review. Some reviewers even say they will take the money, but only review honestly. Then you check the reviews. And they are all five star: once money exchanges hands, a grey cloud appears in the sky above the land of honesty. And that cloud later rains urine. And clowns. And spiders.

No, it later rains tiny incontinent spider clowns. And umbrellas are outlawed.

That’s not a town I want to live in.

Your book could be brilliant, but if you’re not prepared or cannot pay money to manufacture a false review system, then your book, even if it is wonderful, will be perceived to be worse than books that are successful, but actually terrible.

Here’s a fact: each time someone pays for a fake review a fairy gets its wings pulled off by a goblin, who then shits the broken wings out into the face of a yawning angel.

I don’t like the idea that “literary success” is less about talent and more about expenditure, but perhaps it is: perhaps that is the way it’s always been – not just in the indie world, but in traditional publishing too. Marketing is king, and money supports marketing. There are very few, if any, traditionally printed books that are not smothered in gushing quotes by some famous name from within the industry, regardless of how rubbish the book turns out to be.

We had a chance to create something better.

We had the chance to create a world where good books are judged by their content, and not their cover. But instead of being authors, we studied marketing. We filed into the system and waited for our heads to be patted, and because of the same selfish people that turn up at the beginning of everything that could be good, we have corrupted that system.

People with more money than wisdom, people with a bigger budget than talent: these are the Gods of this literary cardboard Babylon.

Read books and say what you want about them. Support the people out there who have sacrificed for words. Support talent. Support authors who write regardless of what people think of their writing, and recognise the people who write because they are desperate for an affirmation from strangers: for a Facebook like, or a five star review they handed to a reviewer and wrote themselves.

Stick two fingers into the dry eyeball of truth: review, and just say no to fake reviews.

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Published on May 14, 2015 17:33

The obsessions of the indie author

What have we done?! No, what have you done? Sitting at your desk, arms like eels sliming ego over your keyboard. The keyboard has become your feeder, encouraging you to keep tapping away because the next message you receive might make you feel alive again. A single piece of toast rests on your cheek, curiously blending in with the rest of your buttery skin.

The sun blazes through the window of the room; the kids are asking where has Daddy gone?

Daddy will be there in a minute, he’s just got to finish joining another Facebook group for independent writers, so he can pretend they are his friends, so they can all pretend to be his, so everyone can have wonderful five star reviews, so people who don’t know what’s going on will end up buying his books. He’s just got to tell them he loves them, again, and laugh at their terrible puns, again, and agree he loves the cover of another terrible cover, again, and pretend to care about the so called struggle of another writer asking help from others about what she should name the characters in her book, again. He knows she doesn’t really want his advice, because naming characters is a personal thing, but he joins in anyway, because he wants to play the game: because this is the game where every writer wins.

But, whisper it: literature is losing. And so are the children.

And so he throws names at the writer who needs help with something she doesn’t need help for; because if she can’t name her own characters what kind of writer is she? And the writer rubs her hands at all the Facebook comments, from the father and others; because the thing is, she thinks, she’s already named her characters, but this conversation is a completely free advertisement.

And everybody wins.

But, whisper it: literature is finding it hard to breathe. And so are the children.

The truth sometimes has an ugly face, but inside the bubble where everything’s fake, nothing changes. Everything is beautiful, and it doesn’t matter it’s not real, because when your head is in the trough with others, you can’t see the pig you’ve become. There are terrible writers and good writers, some fantastic books, and some terrible books. That’s the beauty of Kindle. So what is it with all these five star reviews? Some books are terrible, I’ve read some of them, but the reviews state repeatedly this is the best book I’ve ever read.

So what’s going on? Who is changing the rules?

Not the reader, readers have been around since the beginning. The people changing the rules are the people who should be governed by them…a percentage of the new dawn of Kindle authors. Adults wrapped in tin foil sitting on top of donkeys, preparing to fight a dragon, waiting to be called heroes. But the dragon is just a broom handle covered in socks puppets.

Some Kindle authors are rigging the game; acting as friends, but only for themselves, because the friendships aren’t real like everything else. But the line between pretend friends and real enemies is fine; the laughter fake, but the anger real. The moment a writer fails to return the favour of a review or Amazon “like” is the moment all hell breaks loose. The mask slips, and the selfish, egotistical, obsessed writer who will stop at anything to reach the top, revealed. A dog barking madness, chewing their own arm off to break the chains of the life they’ve wrapped around them.

I’ll explain…

We had a chance to create a world so amazing the publishing industry would be forced to change their approach to literature. We had a chance of building a city built from truth, a land where the best books get great reviews because the best books are simply the best books.

But, you fuckers, some of you have ruined it.

Instead we built a world where the books with the best people marketing them win, where the simple process of the amount of time someone can spend at a PC directly equates to how many books they sell. What has that got to do with writing, with the words on the page, with the substance and imagination and skill of the writer? Nothing, is the answer. Everyone is passing their books around in one big author circle, so up the Amazon rankings books soar, but nobody is reading the words on the page. And nobody cares, as long as the rankings tell others they’re more special than most.

What happened to artists? What happened to writing words that mean something? When did everything become about the Amazon ranking? What happened to not caring about reviews, about not caring what others think because the words mean something to you? What happened to waking up, and seeing the person you love, instead of reaching for your phone in hope your book has moved up in an irrelevant and easily fixed digital ranking?

Nice one, take a bow. Dip your hand deep into a bowl of grapes and pull out your soul. Put your soul through a blender, put it back into an idiot without integrity, zip the suit up at the back, and get on with being who you’ve become.

Writing the best book you could, and allowing readers the freedom to judge without the fear of reprisal or judgement, was all we had to do. People started with good intention, but now the market is flooded with terrible words, plastered over storylines we’ve all read a million times. Quantity has replaced quality. Books with over a thousand reviews, surely these have to be good?

And then after page ten, you realise: you are reading something shit.

Bad writing is now acceptable. Books literally copying and pasting other books, with terrible titles, shoved under our noses to see if we sniff. And if we do, we smell faecal matter, and pass out immediately from over expanding brain cells struggling to find a safe place to vomit. Some books have a great title and cover, and then when you look inside your eyes start bleeding and your brain turns around in your skull, and shuts down your central nervous system as a defence mechanism.

With indie publishing I thought we would get away from the bullshit of doing anything to get ahead, but this isn’t just cut-throat, people are cutting their own throats for the appearance of success.

I thought publishers would start publishing original books, and discover the dip in traditional paperback sales had nothing to do with the Kindle, and everything to do with their continuous insulting of the imagination of their audience. I was wrong. Instead, many of the books with the most reviews on Amazon today are often a reflection of the amount of time people have spent at their PC. We have become the promoters, the marketers, and the fake reviewers: we have become the article in The Guardian praising a book, which turns out to be the worst book ever read.

We are the reporters in the pockets of publishers, and the publishers in the pocket of fear.

We are the collaborators of the demise of the platform we sought for years, because a fake review is nothing more than a sabre tooth tiger with his teeth removed, his tiger passport taken away, chained to a wall by penguins. Told if he doesn’t dance like a monkey and pretend to like fish, he will be shot and his body moved to the back end of an elephant. And a rumour spread, after death, he enjoyed inserting his penis into the bum-ring of giants.

When did everything become guaranteed awesome? Every book is awesome, every author is awesome, every review is awesome, every cover is awesome, every book title is awesome, gumball machines are awesome, being fake is awesome, lies are awesome, war is awesome.

Actually, gumball machines might be awesome.

The books selling the most are not the best books, the writers climbing the charts are not even the best writers; some of them are not even good writers. If you know the name of every reviewer they aren’t reviewing your book, they are reviewing your friendship with them. And they are only reviewing you, so you review them too.

This doesn’t have a happy ending. This ends with people turning away from Kindle because the reviews can’t be trusted. This ends with people not reading books because they think they are rubbish before they begin. This ends with your five star reviews drying up and you wondering why. Unable to contemplate it’s because you used up all your credit with people who have given you fake reviews, and to get more fake reviews you need to sell yourself to more people by handing out more fake reviews.

The process sounds exhausting. And it doesn’t mean anything. If you continue to give fake reviews in return for fake reviews, eventually the only way to spot a good book will be because it has no reviews. I wrote a terrible book when I was starting out, and gave it to someone, and they said it was terrible and laughed in my face. That’s how it should be. Now a writer starting out can write something terrible and manipulate the people around them to tell the world their terrible book is in fact amazing. That is not success. That is failure: redefined.

And it gets worse…

Some authors are now afraid to speak out, because to openly criticise a book and give it a low review on Amazon means confronting a potential bullying herd of spiteful smaller authors who stick to the authors who sell in vast numbers like barnacles on a rusting ship. Leave an honest one star review as an author under your real name on Amazon, and live in fear one star reviews will start appearing on your books. The drive to succeed has driven us mad, the illusion of becoming a household name has taken the smile off the journey and turned it upside down.

So, authors just starting out, or authors long established – here’s my advice:

Promote your book, put your words under as many noses as you can, as writers we have the right to do that. As writers we do not have the right to manipulate how and when people read our work. We do not, or we should not, have the power to influence people into “liking” our book on Facebook or reviewing it favourably on Amazon before that person has read the first page. Turn your back on Amazon reviews exchanged for Amazon reviews.

Observe but do not judge – remember that despite all I am saying, there is no way anyone can truly know if a review is fake or real. The self appointed Kindle author police, the sad old folk who spend all day on the Kindle publishing forum because they have nothing better to do, are just as deluded in their pursuit of justice as some Kindle authors are in their pursuit of success.

Fake Amazon reviews are born from fear: the self appointed Kindle police are born from jealousy.

Remember that reviews are meant to enhance overall book quality for the reader. The whole point of a review is to make authors think they can’t release any old nonsense because strangers are going to read their books and review them honestly. That is quality control. If the review system is rigged, if most writers pretend to be best friends with most other writers, then we are creating a literary world where one day a writer can release a photograph of their left testicle, or vaginal flap, and receive great reviews. Eventually all books will be filled with a single photograph of a testicle or vaginal flap. And the people will gather around in awe at the new Shakespeare.

Remember some books are shit. Get over it.

If you get a bad review, guess what? Congratulations. You are on the path to becoming a better writer, instead of remaining a deluded idiot. One of the great things about Kindle as an author, is you can edit, and update your books. I’ve updated mine plenty. They are now the most complete they have ever been. But, it took years to get them to where they are. If you’ve penned something in a month, prepare to go back to it. You should want to go back to it. Great writers aren’t born: they are carved from thousands of hours of hard graft, and loneliness.

An author has to expect criticism, not run away from it. A writer won’t grow as a writer, won’t become the potential great writer they dreamt of being if they receive only five star reviews for a two star book.

Remember that there is a connection between how readers are expected to review and how hard it is to get reviews. Readers have become afraid to say what they really think. What happened to lots of reviews, with some people saying they like a book and others hating it; a debate with people divided: life, born from a book? Answer: we did – the kindle authors.

Stop asking for likes in exchange for likes, stop saying I’ll buy your book if you buy mine; because you are personally responsible for the death of indie publishing before it begins.

Remember when you had a life? When you wanted to write a book and release it for you? To see what fate had in store? When did you start taking yourself so seriously? When was the last time you went outside in the day, instead of sitting at your PC trying to generate fake reviews for your books? Well done, you wrote a book. You released it. Now keep your head high. Don’t get down in the gutter to look up at the stars, you don’t need to: stars shine brighter with your family and friends around you. Don’t become one of the authors changing what Kindle could still be. Resist the temptation to generate fake reviews because our brave new world of indie publishing is slowly becoming a world full of quite nice, educated, manipulating cowards, more than prepared to lie to themselves and others. And only you can save it.

For all the millions of us indie authors, very few are going to make it to the other side; to that place our words appear on paper, paid for by somebody else. Let that sink in. I’ve made it my life ambition to try, but not at the expense of my integrity. Not at the expense of my art, or my words. There is no point crossing a burning bridge.

Children who once told parents to go away because parents are boring and ruining their game are now hearing just another minute, almost finished. Remember to balance your drive, passion and all the obsessional hours spent at your PC with what you had before: your life.

Because your life might not wait forever for you to go back to it, and if it goes, all you’ll be left with is the pretend friends inside your machine. And a book, in the Amazon charts, with a handful of biased reviews, and old memories of who you used to be.

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Published on May 14, 2015 12:09

The Oxymoron of (American) Gun Control

There is no gun control. There are guns. There is the illusion of control.

We are emotionally led beings; the beauty of being alive is we have free will, and brains, that sometimes rage.

And we are adults, we have it easy; the waves of self control and emotionally led actions are far greater in those being led by hormones and the fear of being invisible.

The kids, who have to go to school.

Not many people in human history have mastered the art of control. None I’ve met, and we are the most evolved people in our history to have lived so far.

So this is it people, this is as evolved as we can be right now, and we do not have control of ourselves.

None of us do. We all lose control.

Buddha might have mastered control, but I never met him. And I’m pretty sure even Buddha had times when he thought understanding the point was pointless.

Times when he thought, fuck this, someone else can be wise; for a moment, I want to go crazy. Get drunk. Paint a picture of me having sex with a glove puppet.

Self-control is an illusion; control itself is an illusion, designed to make us feel as safe as possible, whilst sustaining a profitable gun business.

What does gun control even mean?

More paperwork. Longer documents to sign. Photographs.

A check on your criminal history.

Big wow.

Paperwork can be faked, and a criminal history can’t be revealed if this is a person’s first and last crime.

How does a government control an event that cannot be predicted?

By taking away the possibility of it happening. Period.

By taking away the chance anyone has of ever being a victim to it.

And that means making all guns illegal.

If we can’t control ourselves, how can we say, with straight faces, gun control is a reasonable response to the latest horrors in American schools?

The bullet in any gun has a future all of it’s own.

The future of every bullet in this world, from the deserts of Iraq, the locked gun cabinet in the house, the sidearm on the belt of the cop…The future of every bullet fired from a gun, is to cause death to one; but tears and loss to many more.

The consequences of a bullet entering another human are wildly out of control. The ripple effect of tears and loss, the tiny boxes for tiny bodies, the long empty paths of lives not walked.

Small footprints in the snow, no child coming home to finish building their first snowman.

We like to think of ourselves as an evolved society, but how can we be, when all of the worst medieval weapons rolled into one, sit in the home of so many Americans?

Feeling we need violence to protect us from violence is a philosophy so full of fear and hate, I don’t know where to begin.

The victims of this philosophy are those thinking it, but the reason they’re thinking it, is because it’s been implanted into their thought process by a system set up to control them; and when adult citizens feel they are so controlled they cannot breathe, they fight with their wife, then drive too fast to a pub and drink a shit load of beer.

Nobody gets hurt, except for the occasional liver.

But when children have those same emotions, without the rationality that comes with age and experience, without truly understanding the world around them or their role within it…

…When children feel so controlled, invisible and angry. (Anger being one of the first emotions, the sense of being controlled the first sign of a child wishing for independence. The sense of being invisible, designed to implement the notion of accomplishment.)

They pick up a gun. Because they are available.

The fast food way to obtain power. The idiots guide to being someone.

They believe a gun equates to power and status, but the opposite is true.

The person who thinks they need a gun, has lost control of their own self. They are disagreeing with the logical reasoning we are born with, using other ideas put into their head to hide behind.

They have moved from love to fellow man, toward desperation to be noticed by anyone.

In England, when kids are young, but old enough to be the dumbest they are ever going to be, kids go crazy too. They do it all over the world. In England kids drop bricks off bridges to see if they can cause car crashes, and fight each other with fists.

Sometimes fights go too far and people are stabbed.

This is youth, this is growing up.

Like wild animals, some don’t make it through.

Lots of kids around sixteen get smashed on alcohol from a young age in the UK, that’s because booze is on every shelf and our kids are told not to go near it.

In America, that fascination is exactly the same as in any kid in the UK, only kids aren’t looking up at strong alcohol desperate to get pissed, they are looking at guns and fantasizing about shooting bullets.

Now take the troubled kids in Britain, a smaller percentage, but a percentage; the young adults going out carrying knives with the intention of using them.

The one’s who don’t really know what they’re doing.

And imagine for a moment those kids are in America.

In America, the same small percentage of young adults are dreaming about shooting their class, and they know in their Dad’s bedroom sit the guns they can fire.

These young adults should be locked away in their bedrooms, masturbating six times a day…dreaming of sex like their parents did at the same age.

But not in America, where the bible bashing masses make sex and masturbation a sin.

The only release a young guy has at that age is to ejaculate into a sock, but no, he can’t have that either.

God has taken it away.

Now, that’s madness.

That is abuse.

But America can change the dream their sixteen year old kids are having, by simply taking the guns away.

And letting them wank a bit.

If guns and alcohol were available in the same shops in the UK, we would have the same problem the USA are having now.

America has a choice; take away the guns, or take away the children.

Instead, the powers that be say the answer is more control.

But ask any parent to what extent they can control their children.

Now ask yourself how important that gun really is to you.

But, the constitution; that’s what some Americans use to justify guns. A word starting with con, has tit in the middle, and holds a lesson to be learnt but nobody is getting it.

The word almost ends in tuition, but it’s missing I.

The constitution reflected it’s day, but to truly be free, America needs to have the balls to face up to a piece of paper, rip it up and start again.

Why do the peaceful masses bow down to those who wrote history? Why do we follow old rules which were relevant to violent times, but only serve to sustain violence today?

The rules of the cave should not be governing our moral structure of today.

The people who wrote the American Constitution didn’t even have electricity! They washed once a week and thought taking a bath caused sickness! These people are still telling Americans how to live?!

Oh, your child is dead – sorry, but it’s in the constitution; the people who thought big white wigs looked cool put it in.

Gather around your constitution America and tell me what it really means; because I can’t see the signature on your precious piece of paper because it’s covered in the blood of your children.

Rip up the American constitution; it’s time to accept the old way of thinking is causing a problem and not solving anything.

Burn it and start again.

It’s just a piece of paper with some ideas on, no matter what you’ve been encouraged to believe.

Your real weapon isn’t a gun, it’s your brain. And a constitution stating you have a right to carry a gun doesn’t generate an environment of intellect, it serves to turn young men who could have been someone, into young men carrying weapons.

Ironic, Charlton Heston supported the NRA, a man who travelled to the future to live in a world his old philosophy on weapons would have created.

If those people who wrote the American constitution could see the dead bodies of our children being buried today, they would rip up the constitution themselves and start again.

But not us, because the people in charge use old paperwork to define who we are, and this old paperwork happens to support exactly what they want.

But, at the same time, how can we blame the people of a country when the people are learning from their own government?

We live in a world where the US Government has a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and so do many other countries, including the UK; and every government says they need to have these weapons to protect themselves from potential attack.

They say if everyone has a nuclear weapon, then the consequence, is ever lasting peace.

Does that justification sound familiar?

Except, of course, for the one time it goes wrong, and everybody dies.

A government’s nuclear weapon is the individual’s handgun.

Obama can stand up and say weapons should be removed, but we all know the American president is controlled by the senate, and has no actual powers to do anything.

So it comes down to this; are the people of America able to set an example for the American government rather than the other way around?

Can those led, set an example for their leaders; can mice become men?

I say yes.

I say when a government is acting continuously against the wishes of common sense, and the President, then it’s time for the individual parent to start setting their own example of what love and life really means.

Time to set the right example for their children.

Time for the individual American to stand up and say they don’t need a gun to feel safe, because there’s no monster in their cupboard.

Despite Fox News telling them there is.

The government doesn’t have to make guns unavailable, the government doesn’t have to outlaw guns…and with corporations ruling America, the government most likely won’t.

But when our leaders don’t stand up for the right decision, people can stand up for themselves.

We live in a world and a time we don’t have to wait for the people in power to do the right thing, social media means we all have a voice.

And if we all decided, if we all agreed to act, the corrupt leaders of today picking retirement funds over the right decisions to make, become obsolete.

Whatever you’re told about guns being for peace, and being safe in a controlled environment; the information is wrong.

If your brain tells you guns are for peace, if your brains tell you safety is in the eye of your shotgun, your thoughts are wrong. Inserted into your head by your environment.

But if you could swap for a moment, live in the heart of a parent mourning their murdered child for a second, then you would fall to your knees and apologise for wandering so far from the path of good intention.

You can make a difference. If you are an American reading this and you have a gun in your house, go and get it, take it out and bury it in your garden.

You can do your little bit for peace.

Bury it deep, because the deeper you bury your gun in your own garden, the closer you carry peace to the surface for all of us to walk on.

If no bullet leaves your gun in your life, you will leave only footprints when you die.

And maybe when the people of America show their will by putting down the guns so easy to get hold of, maybe one day the government and the senate will look around and notice the money they’re making has disappeared.

Because when people stop buying guns, when the industry isn’t a billion dollar business, gun shops will close; and gun violence will end.

How can we be creating a world where books shops are closing, but gun shops are booming?

You might believe the gun in your house is safe because it’s locked inside a gun cabinet, but how many adults who have a gun cabinet know for sure their children don’t know where the key is?

Children keep secrets, and parents don’t know when they do.

No gun is safe, every accident is a lost life waiting to happen.

Make a change, go and bury your gun in your garden and tell everyone on Facebook, Twitter and your blog what you have done, and explain why.

Do your own little bit to bring peace to this world.

You can go to bed at night and not have to worry where the key is to your guns, or if your child is going to be the next kid to appear on the news.

And maybe one day, our television screens will stop flooding our front rooms with images of American children shot and dying from violence, and the American government will stop perpetuating this myth guns are for peace.

Guns aren’t cool, peace is.

Maybe the leaders of America will never stop being producers of weapons, but it won’t matter, if the people take matters into their own hands; instead of a gun.

As the old saying goes, what would happen if they had a war and nobody came?

Well, what will happen when the US Government continue to make guns, but the people of America refuse to pick them up, and bury the ones they have in a peaceful act against violence?

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Published on May 13, 2015 13:04

My Top Six Writing Tips

Marketing is now more important than content, sales are more important than authors, immediate profit is more important than sustaining the publishing industry long term. The material has become immaterial. Most people are writing the same sort of stuff, falling into the same old trap, eating each other alive in the bucket of life to get out; like rats.

Here are some tips on how to emerge from the bucket and scurry into the jungle as the last rat breathing; a rat with a dream, a passion, and a story everybody will want to read about your escape…

1. IGNORE ALL ADVICE, ESPECIALLY ALL THIS ADVICE

Everybody is an expert, but the truth is, nobody is. Not even the experts are experts. The expert people behind the scenes in publishing companies are just people who have read books, like you and I. Experience has made them an expert, but too much experience eventually turns people blind. All YOU can do is focus on the content of YOUR book, and be brave about it. Don’t look to other writers to see what they’re doing to learn how to do what you want to do, because the truth is the writers you look to for advice previously looked to other writers to see what they were doing, and those writers who came before the writers you are looking to for advice, looked to learn from other writers who wrote before them to learn about what they should be doing and, finally, the last writer referenced, who was also the first writer to write anything down didn’t have a single fucking clue what he/she was doing. Everybody is copying everybody else believing somebody must know what they are doing. Remember: nobody does.

There are no experts; start with that in mind, and one day you might just become an expert.

2. JOIN TWITTER

Twitter is the place writers go to fuck the shit out of other like-minded brains, so if you are thinking of writing a book, it’s a great place to begin. Others say Twitter is the place writers go to die. Actually, nobody has said that, I’ve just made it up, but there is some truth to it. However if you are already dead, or not alive yet, then you have nothing to lose; and if you can write a book, then you can sure as hell write something interesting in 140 characters.

3. STOP CALLING YOURSELF AN ASPIRING AUTHOR!

You either are or you’re not, you either can or you can’t, you either will do or you won’t. Either we are all aspiring authors, and I include every single person who has ever picked up a pen in the history of man, or none of us are. There are writers on Twitter claiming to be best-selling authors because one of their books about a cowboy falling in love with his own waxed chest has somehow made it to #357,095 in the Amazon charts. These books are a silver bullet shot into the heel of a werewolf formerly known as Achilles. IF the people writing these books are not calling themselves aspiring, then guess what? Nobody is aspiring. MAKE NOTE: Aspiring is dead. The meaning of the word has been changed by Kindle; don’t sell yourself short before you begin. And besides, just because you are starting out, does not make you an aspiring anything; some authors who have forty books behind them might disagree, but I like to think that in ten years time some kid will come along and write something better than I ever did, because he is naturally more gifted than I ever was. In fact, if that doesn’t happen, I’ll be extremely sad. Our duty, your duty as an author, is to push the boundaries of where we can take literature, to try and push where we can take the human imagination; and if you don’t believe that is possible, then why get into writing in the first place? The less time you spend aspiring, the sooner your steps to changing the world begin. Begin a dreamer, and never stop dreaming, and do not confuse dreaming with aspiring.

T H I N K B I G Unless you are sitting at the keyboard almost typing, fingers hovering perpetually above the keys, unless you are sitting with a pen and almost putting it to paper, then you are writing.

So, please, no more aspiring.

4. BACK TALENT WITH ARROGANCE

People might not get how you write, people might tell you that you should write more like them, people might turn their nose up at your words, people might tell you they think your book is confusing, people might say they wish it was more romantic, or had more action in, or was funnier, or was a little bit darker, or had a mermaid robot in called Daisy who got erections at funerals – BUT remember: If you change what you write to meet the expectation of your readers then you immediately negate yourself to the status of being completely irrelevant. You become, essentially, a newspaper. Not full of stories, just full of bollocks and spin put in to appease what your readers expect to read.

I’m not saying arrogance as in the type of arrogance where you immediately go out and buy a gold car with tinted windows and insist your mum drives you around, and you sit in the back seat with a prostitute taking cocaine and talking about yourself whilst your wife is at home telling the children Daddy will be back from the shops any minute. I am not talking about that kind of arrogance. I am talking about having a confidence, about having a swagger in your words. Write the stories YOU want to write. Write the stories that make YOU laugh. Write the stories that YOU want to hear. Write for yourself, fuck everybody else. Don’t live for the crowd, don’t live for the reviews, don’t write your words down for a pat on the back, write them down because if you don’t you get depressed and angry and sad, and know that means you are a writer.

Don’t back down, don’t change your vantage point, stand your ground and argue your point. Draw your line in the sand, because your book is about you, your book is not about anyone else. And to do that, takes arrogance. When the dust has settled, when your line is drawn in the sand, how many books you have sold won’t matter, because you will know you wrote your own way and for yourself. In a world full of zombies and vampires and cowboys rolling around in the hay, by not following conventional methods you give yourself the best chance of standing out from the crowd. The only chance, in fact.

5. WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW IS WRITING WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

Nobody can write what they don’t know. Everything you will ever write is something you know; so start thanking the stars we all know different things. Writer A does not have a vivid imagination, and so might truly know contemporary fiction; the here and now, real life punching you in the gut and pulling your eyeballs over your head, to show them to your friends. You, on the other hand, might just know about dragons, or you might know about talking water that has the power to convince all penguins they are better off living in apartment blocks and working for the council as dustmen. Knowledge is not just what other people tell you it is, knowledge is not just what we think in the moment we think it, knowledge is the image we see in our heads, knowledge is our imagination, knowledge is the pictures we see and the dreams we have. Knowledge is all we know, and all we know that we don’t know yet. So write what you know, but remember you don’t know at this point all you will know…because when you write, you will teach yourself a million things about you that you never knew you knew, that are waiting to be known that you know.

Writing what you know is also writing what you don’t know, because writing what you don’t know doesn’t exist.

So, that’s that sorted.

6. EDIT

If God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, I know why the world is so fucked. He left no time for an edit. A great writer, who is an average editor, will write an average book. An average writer, who is a brilliant editor, will write a brilliant book. People prefer brilliant books to average books. It’s that simple. Write your book. Then read it again and edit it. Then edit it again. And again. And again. And again. I know if you’re a bit younger, editing sounds like the boring bit. And also, if you have that arrogance which ultimately all writers have (whether they admit it or not) then you’re going to think you are so great you don’t need to check your work. You are wrong. The edit is the fun part. The edit is the cherry on the cake, the wanky bit of duck sauce next to the prawn Vol-au-vents, the money shot; the bit in dirty dancing when Swayze lifts the girl above his head. Come at writing from the back, implant in your head now that the end of your book is actually the beginning of it, and when you finally come out the end you won’t be too far off.

Now IGNORE ALL OF THIS and go and write YOUR book, YOUR way.

And remember to repeat this mantra when nobody understands what you do…

Want to know if I’m all jabber and no pantaloons? Like the cut of my pilchards and want to read more of how I fuse single words into language? Read the first part of my book The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness – entirely for free. Click on the below Amazon link – which will take you to the book – and start reading. Come back here and burn me with fire if you don’t like my stuff, or go sit on a comfortable chair, and visit the park in my brain.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Squirrel-that-Dreamt-Madness-ebook/dp/B005JU92GO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1409937182&sr=8-2&keywords=craig+stone

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Published on May 10, 2015 05:58

Only the masses can get rid of the asses

This post is to all not voting on Thursday. To all those who think the future of everyone in the UK is less important than farting their way through another episode of Eastenders while slurping iron jugs of milk and chomping through three packets of Foxes biscuits. If the world ends it’s all your fault: you lazy ignorant shark breast.

Banks and corporations have created a culture of profit before anything else. Billionaire tax dodgers are operating within the law, the bankers who plunged us into economic disaster are collecting bonuses when they should be in prison, “politicians” are rigging expenses and our “leaders” would masturbate over each other on live television if their advisors told them it would win votes.

We are governed by slugs created in the slime of our apathy.

Look around. Open your fat eyes big bones. Day by day, those who have nothing are attacked by those who have nothing, and this symphony of hate is orchestrated by those who have it all: and the weapons of choice are free newspapers and Channel 5 documentaries. Wake up. Smell the manipulation. The papers are full of plastic rage for the jobless and immigrants (people), while protecting the rich with silence oiled by the stolen pensions of the average worker.

If you really can’t be bothered to vote, you ignorant cock squirrel, then in a few years time when you can’t get cancer treatment because The Conservatives privatised the NHS, then you’ll have no right to complain because you did nothing to stop it this Thursday. When you are attacked and the police can’t get to you for over an hour because of downsizing, you won’t be able to complain because you did nothing to stop it this Thursday. When your house is on fire and nobody answers your 999 distress call because of cutbacks, don’t look around and blame everyone else, because you did nothing to stop it this Thursday. When your kids come home from school stupid and angry because of large classrooms as a consequence of no teachers due to poor pay, don’t blame society. Don’t blame the other kids and the other parents. You aren’t twelve. Blame yourself, because this is the future society your ignorance created because you couldn’t be bothered to vote this Thursday.

The Conservative campaign line is “we support hard working people.”

Think about what elitist crap that is for a second. It’s so blind to the real world. It’s so biased to who they are and how they see themselves. Question the inference. If you read between the lines the message is clear: “We don’t support people who struggle. We don’t support people who can’t get a job. We don’t support people who are lost or who need help.”

What total fuckers. I’m not a fan of you, you big lazy non-voting pile of potato slop, but to have a campaign line that promotes division of society? That’s evil.

I remember when I couldn’t get a job, when I didn’t know what to do with my life. When I was one of the people the Conservative Party absolutely do not support. My situation had nothing to do with my work ethic. I couldn’t see a way out. I didn’t know how to access the information to alter my life path. It was my life at the time. And I don’t feel guilty about it and I wouldn’t change it. But the Conservative Party is implying that people in the situation I was in should feel guilty for their situation? Worse, it’s manipulating other people who are more fortunate to judge those in less fortunate situations. That thinking is unbelievably misguided and dark. When I was in my situation, every option was a brick wall or a dead end. It didn’t matter how hard I worked. Effort wasn’t the problem, having nowhere to put that effort, and not having the foundation blocks of knowledge to know how to begin to resolve the problem was the problem.

The Conservative Party are cruel fools. They should be supporting all people, not dividing us into people they can profit from and people they can’t. The basic requirement of any government has to be to help ALL. What happened to taking care of those in need? What happened to us as a society? When did we all become so out for ourselves, and when did the people switch off to their power and capacity to change the world? Wake up pork ankles, I’m talking to you.

A government should have empathy, it should have love and it should care. And if it doesn’t then it’s the duty of the people, the duty of the sum of the parts, to grow wiser and more powerful than the machine governing.

Do your part. Record Eastenders. Leave the butter for an hour. Start thinking now about how you’ll get to your local polling station this Thursday. Make a decision now to vote this Thursday. Let’s take our country back from the banks and the snakes and the foreheads and the suits and the shiny chins. Let’s move the UK in a direction that makes sense for all people, not just the few.

Enter your postcode here: http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/upcoming-elections-and-referendums/uk-parliamentary-general-election

Find out where you can vote. Go on Thursday.

Here’s the good news: we get to save the world.

Imagine that for a moment. Pause to take in the significance of breaking your routine for the greater good. The future of humanity is in your tiny chubby hands.

PUT THE MAYO DOWN.

GO AND VOTE ON THURSDAY.

DON’T VOTE UKIP OR THE CONSERVATIVES.

STOP EVIL.

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Published on May 05, 2015 16:38

Only the masses can get rid of the asses.