Robert C. Day's Blog, page 17

Resident Zombies

Yeah, I went to see another zombie movie. And when I emerged into the open air, what did I do? I ran!

Oh, you could say that I was running to get my train, but in my mind a horde of zombies were chasing me down the high street. The screams of the people around were not drunken revellers on a Saturday night piss-up, they were the victims of the swelling crowd of flesh eating, sub-human zOmBies!

Yeah, yeah, I know – waaaay too much imagination. I’m in the train now. All is good. Except for … wh...

Exposed

I spend a few weeks doing Creative Nonfiction (CNF) as part of the Masters in Creative Writing I’m doing at the moment with the Open University.

This is what I have gained from practising CNF:

Fiction is a beautifully wide-open place to explore. CNF, by comparison, seems to be such a constrained form. There is such a massive emphasis on telling the truth. Sure, you still get to tell a story, but it has to be based on fact, even if it’s just the fact of remembering it a certain way. The self...

For One Person Only

Angelfish with devil’s boots on – swimming across the table top in the company of Pewter, who is a whale, but only a small one. They watch the cliffs of the CD player closely. You just never can tell with CD players – sometimes they roar and other times they sit, quiet as chips.

There is a bowel too. In the bowel live bananas that are neither figs nor plantain. Sometimes an apple comes to stay for several weeks. Its fate is to be turned to compost, but don’t tell it, lest you hurt its feeling...

Blood Collector

The moleman came and took away my children. I didn’t want him to. They were entertaining were my children. I liked the way they ran around screaming at the smallest thing. It only took a pinch or a bite from one of the smaller ones and the room was quickly full of tears and snot. Actually, the snot was not so fast – that usually came later. Sometimes there was blood.

Truth be told I don’t actually miss the blood. Oh sure, it was fun to collect. I once read that some famous man saved every pie...

Cut and Paste

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in ete...

Last Gasp Physicality

I suppose I’m doing my best to express my physicality before bodies themselves go out of fashion, whether through a surfeit of spiritual sentiment or by reaching the point at which computer hardware and software get to be sophisticated enough to allow us to be uploaded into the matrix.

Shall I, Like, Compare You …

Jeesh no – you can’t compare me to a frickin’ summer’s day – are you bonkers? Summer’s just too bloomin’ sweaty … damn – one sec – just got one of those little flies stuck in me ketchup! Hold on.

Yeah, got the little bugger. Can’t a girl just eat her chips in peace without-

Now what you blathering on about? I’m lovely and more what?!

Eh? Temperate? What’s that mean then?

You’re kidding me. Do I strike you as being reasonable? Does this voice sound like reasonable to you? Nutter.

Hey, wait a m...

Made My Bed

Concerns that are foremost in my mind:

That I can’t express what’s really on my mind for fear of hurting someone or other. There is no number two.

Let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, that a close friend of mine joined a spiritual group because he wanted to meet a girl. Suppose that the girls he used to meet in bars and nightclubs just weren’t doing it for him anymore and so he … well, suppose he thought that he would meet a better quality person in a group of people who were into metap...

Mistake!

Just about to make a sandwich and almost put the margarine on the wrong thing!

How Ideas Are Born

Here are several writer’s thoughts on where ideas come from (paraphrasing is my own):

Stephen King – Don’t bother to look for ideas, just learn to recognise them when they show up. Ann Patchett – The ideas are already in you – just write them down. Umberto Eco – When a good idea comes to you just put some flesh on it, i.e. just write about it. Robert C Day – Sit down and write about the first idea that pops in your head whilst trusting that the idea was just waiting for you to pay it some at...