Blogging as a concept is something alien to me I have to admit. Diary writing as a whole in fact is a style I have difficulty with. When I write anything down I am very used to having an audience in mind; I write for people. Writing for myself, to myself, seems somehow superfluous; it's in my head anyway, why put it through another medium?
Folks will I'm sure point out that the very act of writing down, like speaking aloud, illuminates ideas and emotions in a way that internal stewing does not, and this is quite true, but honestly I'm not here right now to analyse the pros and cons of blog writing. I do find it interesting that neither 'blog' nor 'blogging' is a recognised word on the spell-checker. Not that that is any indication of the vernacular vocabulary of course. So I blog because for why? Because I'm a writer, a long time amateur hoping to turn professional.
Essentially, I write, therefore I am, at least on-line. More specifically my name is Andrew Benn, commonly referred to as Highlander, and I live in Glasgow (Scotland) and I've recently completed and undergraduate in Philosophy. More relevantly I write stories. More interestingly I write stories in many genres,occasionally even different parts of the same story. I've meandered through styles and idioms since I began putting paper to pen almost twenty years ago. I graduated from Fantasy fiction after high-school, though I remember the good times. I experiment with Science fiction and Crime. Most recently I've moved into Suspense and Horror fiction and I'm currently working on a series of short stories inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.
Why I write is less straightforward to answer, but I ought at least to outline it before I start trying to think what to say next, then I can go on long rambles about it later. I started writing, when I was small, mainly out of boredom. I was a very solitary child and making up places and people was a good way of occupying the time. I'm the first one to say those old, angsty and teenage pieces were awful. Early work is always derivative, flat, predicable and generally all the things you never want said about your more recent offerings.
As time passed though, I realised how stories have shaped the way we look at the world, how stories that can be told on one day in one place to bring people together, entertain and move, in another place and time can be used to inspire hate, fear and melancholy. How everyone tells themselves stories and lives their own story day to day in life and that the goal of the author should be to capture the lives of their characters and present them to readers to be lived through vicariously. When I think about it, it really intrigues me the implicit voyeurism of fiction; the reader may in a surprisingly real sense occupy the mental space of another person and live through their eyes for a while. I can't think of a more powerful tool for making a person see other perspectives or to show them other worlds of thought while waiting for a bus or of an evening on the sofa.
So that's very much what I want to do with words; provide interesting and unusual perspectives or places for folks to inhabit and think about. This blog, as I mentioned is the small shootlet of what will become my on-line presence. Here I'm going to put down some titbits about my life and things that I'm thinking, and also to showcase and promote my work. I imagine there will be other things too, links, memes and so forth, but those are a given in Internetland. There will be rants here, probably swearing and the odd scene of a sexual nature. I will be witty and insightful as well as ranty, sweary and randy, but everyone has off-days, I'm only human.
...
Yup, I think that's about it. As far as you're concerned you are most welcome to comment. I won't delete anything; even flame wars can be fun and nothing irritates me more than reading Youtube comments only to find out the one that started everyone off has been deleted. Obviously I'd rather you said something more positive, but if calling me dumb or racist or a fag, shout it out, whatever works for you. If you happen to like my work I'm happy to be praised, and if you also have ideas and want to talk about them or work together on something then by all means make it known. Don't feel you need to follow me though, I'm quite a paranoid person and having people follow me would be almost traumatising.
Well, that's my two cents. Should I end on a joke you think? Ok so.
"So my brother just moved to Warsaw. He's opened a Divorce Lawyer's Firm there. You know what he calls it?"
"No, what does he call his Warsaw-based Divorce Firm?"
"Poles Apart"
I'm Andrew 'Highlander' Benn, I've been rambling and you've been reading. Thank you kindly,
H.
No comments:
Post a Comment