Author: Gavin Cameron

I've been writing fiction and poetry since 2010, and I run writers' groups. This is a blog to talk about writing and adjacent topics.
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Letter-Writing Season Again

Shortly before I left for Sweden last month, I received two letters from pen-pals on the same day: one from Wales and the other the Republic of Ireland. They don’t know each other, so the timing was entirely a coincidence.

I’d already planned to send postcards to both of them while I was away, along with selected other folks. Since the Swedish equivalent of the Post Office allows you to buy postage online, I was able to stamp and address them in advance; it was just a matter of writing them while I was there.

But it’s now time to reply to the actual letters, so I’ve been plugging away at this for the last week or so.

I keep lined notepads especially for this purpose, particularly the Nu Elite brand. The pages have perforations near the margin so they rip off into perfect A5 sheets and fold in half for a C6 envelope. It doesn’t have to be that brand, as long at the paper is reasonably thick and has similar properties.

It’s all practical, and certainly less stylish than the letters I received.

The one from Wales has a striped coloured border, but not feint ruling on the writing area. If you ask me, it’s quite a skill to write neatly on unruled paper, as mine would start sloping up or down, no matter how careful I was. I typically write mine by hand.

Then the letter from Ireland starts off in a notecard with an intricate Alice in Wonderland theme before continuing on A5 paper, similar to what I use.

And just as I was writing this paragraph, my Welsh friend sent me a message to say the letter had been received. That’s good news, as her very first one to me went missing without trace. Fortunately, she’d kept a copy of it, although I never remember to take a copy of mine before posting. That said, it barely matters, as long as I’m reasonably careful not to repeat the same news every time.

The one bound for Ireland is around 80% complete, and just needs a final push to complete it. As far as I’m aware, the recipient doesn’t read this blog, so there’s no hurry.

I can’t see it happening any time soon, but I’ll maybe one day be able to introduce the two pen-pals so they can write to each other and complete the circle.

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The Problem with Tiffany

About 15 years ago, I read the epic Herman Melville book Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. There’s one part I remember clearly, and it’s a quote from chapter 124:

The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven [...]

As the volume was published in 1851, it seems strange we’re seeing using the word electricity because it sounds too modern.

A few chapters earlier, however, the author explained how the ship was equipped with a lightning rod which was connected to a chain touching the sea bed. Again, that sounds too up-to-date, but it was a century after Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment, so the movement of lightning was well understood by that time.

The author Nicola Cornick is attributed with naming this phenomenon The Tiffany Problem. The use of the name Tiffany as a first name dates back to medieval times, yet it feels like a 20th-century derivation. However, the term can be applied to any similar anachronism, not just names.

Conversely, the name of this observation isn’t actually that old, only dating back to 2018.

Another book where I spotted this was Dracula, where Bram Stoker mentions that Jonathan Harker has a Kodak camera. The Eastman Kodak Company was set up five years before the novel was published in 1897, but a 21st-century author might be cautious of including such a detail.

Staying in this universe, it’s possible to extrapolate in other ways. For example, some of the action is set in Whitby and this had long been connected to Leeds by rail, where Marks & Spencer was founded in 1884. As such, it’s canonically possible that Dracula could have enjoyed a cup of M&S tea.

Of course, as the problem originally highlighted becomes more widely known, that becomes the key to solving it. Now when readers encounter a girl called Tiffany living in the 1400s, they’ll recognise it’s historically consistent, and I think we’ll see authors starting to feel more relaxed about using it.

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Wordy on the Dancefloor

Regular readers will know I’m in a poetry circle called the Wyverns. When we meet, we offer critiques about each other’s work, which has usually been written during the month leading up to the meeting. I find it keeps me penning new material on a regular basis.

This month’s submission was more unusual one. Last month, I went with a couple of pals to a club night in Glasgow and inspiration struck while I was on the dancefloor, so I moved to the side and wrote about twelve fragmented lines, matching the mood of the room.

At the weekend, it was time to edit the piece and send it around the other members.

On account of the fragmentation, my original plan was to turn it into a concrete poem, forming an explosion or a word cloud. This proved to difficult to translate onto the page. While experimenting with different arrangements, I hit upon the idea of varying the font size of each line instead. That worked a treat, meaning the four most important lines are in 22-point text, while the rest are 18 or 20 points. I sent three versions to the group: one in plain text, another in RTF format, and a third coded in HTML.

I don’t generally seek to format my poetry in anything but plain text, but it’s not completely unknown.

While looking for other examples, I found one from two years ago where the poetry was placed on a circular transit-like map. It made sense here not to have a fixed beginning nor end because the topic was about the transit of the seasons. There was also an older one where the poetry was placed inside an animated PowerPoint presentation. However, this was an experiment inspired by an artist pal rather than particularly suiting the piece.

In the case of this most recent poem, I believe the presentation adds an extra layer of impact. I’ve already received a couple of responses from the Wyverns, but we’ll see how it actually goes down at the meeting.

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The Charm of Audio Drama

While almost every radio station can be accessed online these days, one of my favourite purchases from the last five years is a pocket DAB+ radio. I find it freeing to use a standalone device with few distractions that doesn’t use much battery.

That first radio was made by Pure, but it stopped charging some time ago. A local repair shop was physically unable to remove the cover, while the manufacturer declined to make an out-of-warranty repair. As such, I bought a refurbished one made by Majority. I hadn’t heard of this brand before, but it’s just as good as any other I’ve used.

I typically listen to BBC stations, particularly Radio 1, even though I’m more than a decade older than their target demographic. The attraction is that most contemporary music is upbeat, and I’ve found it increasingly difficult to listen to slow music over the last few years.

But I don’t want to focus on music output in this entry. I’m here to talk about speech. The corporation is a leading producer and broadcaster of scripted audio drama. Most of its output can be found on BBC Radio 4 Extra, sandwiched between comedy and occasionally poetry.

One drama I caught recently was Credit Risk by R D Wingfield, a name that might be familiar to fans of A Touch of Frost. I didn’t specifically tune in for this, but I was intrigued by how a gang infiltrated the offices of a credit card company to siphon off payments. I also didn’t specifically tune in for Double Income No Kids Yet, featuring David Tennant as half of the only childless couple in a friend group, but I’ve so far listened to two episodes.

Such audio drama tends to have a high repeatability potential. The Tennant drama has aged reasonably well since its original run from 2001 to 2003. Credit Risk, by contrast, is somewhat fossilised in 1977, but it’s a fascinating historical snapshot of when many card payments were done manually, and by characters called ‘Mr Shadbolt’ and ‘Sales Lady’.

I haven’t even mentioned long-running soap The Archers, although I don’t listen to that.

For those who have only watched TV dramas, there are some immediate differences in how the dialogue sounds. On the screen, writers aim for a more naturalistic style, since the setting can be made obvious through vision. In audio drama, the scene needs to be set with words, tone and/or sound effects.

On account of this restriction, the dialogue can sound somewhat clunky, even though the production team will aim to reduce the word count as much as possible.

Although there are plenty of podcasts featuring audio drama, there isn’t a commercial UK station with comparable output. Any speech stations tend to focus on news, current affairs, debate and/or sport.

I wonder whether there’s a gap in the market to add regularly scheduled audio drama. Such programmes are typically made on a shoestring budget, and I don’t foresee much trouble finding a sponsor to offset at least part of the cost.

In the meantime, however, it looks like the BBC has a practical monopoly on broadcast scripted drama.

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Navigating Sweden with Basic Language Skills

From Thursday to yesterday, I was on a trip to Sweden with a pal, staying at a hotel in Stockholm. While we largely stuck to that city, we took a trip to the city of Malmö on Saturday, primarily to see the bridge featured in the drama series The Bridge and to explore the area in general.

I was advised before visiting the country that English is widely spoken there as a second language. Conversely, it tends to be the norm in the English-speaking world that we don’t learn supplemental languages, with the possible exception of French in Canada. Still, I was determined to break away from the typical tourist stereotype, so I embarked on learning some useful phrases.

My first purchase was a Berlitz phrase book from Oxfam, which was originally published around 1990 and has an accompanying cassette. It’s great as a pocket reference guide, and it sometimes proved to be the quickest and most authoritative way to find the right phrase. Amusingly, some sections haven’t aged well, including how to ask for an ashtray and giving advice about where to have photos developed.

I’ve also employed more modern resources. For one, there’s an app called Clozemaster. This presents sentences with one word blanked out, and – as the name suggests – you need to close the gap. Additionally, Microsoft Translator offers free but powerful interpreting, including optical character recognition for printed text, and speech-to-text for parroting an overheard phrase.

To gain a feel for the language in general, I’ve been tuning into a speech radio station called SR P1, which is similar to BBC Radio 4 in its mixture of news, documentaries and occasionally comedy.

After three months of preparation, how did this work out ‘in the wild’? Well, the results are mixed.

For meeting people in enclosed spaces like shops or trains, it’s been useful to have a few stock words on hand, including: hej (hello), tack (thank you) and förlåt (sorry). Transactional conversations can usually be conducted with phrases such as Jag vill… (I want…) and Det har (This here) while pointing in the right direction.

In the last case, there are grammatical rules about genders and plurals that I’ve yet to master, but these weren’t a hindrance for such short conversations. Besides, people rarely speak in full sentences except for formal contexts.

I knew before I arrived, however, that my listening skills were limited. When I’m tuned into the radio, it takes a few minutes to figure out the topic of conversation, with most of the words bypassing me.

There were a couple of conversations where I opened with Talar du engelska? (Do you speak English?) because I knew my question would be too complex to explain in Swedish. The one time I should have deployed this was when the security scanners at Stockholm Arlanda airport started beeping at me. In my defence, it’s hard to think what to say in any language when uniformed personnel are telling you something at 100mph – or 160kph for my European readers.

By contrast, my pal hadn’t been learning the language and always initiated conversations in English. I was consistently impressed by the ability of the other party to switch immediately.

The learning was most useful for reading signs and directions. The larger transport hubs contained bilingual signage, and some staff even greeted us in English. However, self-service tills and kiosks are quite common in Sweden, and not all of them have a language selection button. In these cases, it’s been useful to know words like inte to indicate a negative and avbryt to cancel an action.

It’s been doubly helpful that Swedish has a similar word order to English. Some phrases even map word-for-word, and I’ve found it harder to grasp when they break away from that format.

The big question is whether to keep up the learning after the need for it has passed. At the moment, I’m considering keeping it up.

Figures aren’t readily available for how many native Anglophones have Swedish in their back pockets, suggesting the figure is low or negligible. Maybe it’s because around three-quarters of Swedes have some level of English proficiency, so there’s little practical need, but I would find it appealing to be one of this assumed minority.

One reason I chose Clozemaster over the more popular Duolingo is that it doesn’t pressure you to maintain a streak, even though I have actually maintained one by consistently completing sets each morning. The free version offers up to 30 sentences per day, up to ten of which can be listening practice.

And I reckon listening will be key to progress, as well as nailing the prepositions, conjunctions and genders. Speaking with a native regularly would help me move forward, but the closest I can find right now is the aforementioned SR P1.

One unexpected discovery is a programme on the station called Tolvslaget. This is broadcast at 12pm Swedish time, which is 11am in the UK, and features a recording of a church clock striking 12, followed by a different poem every day. On the days when I’m working from home, this sets me up perfectly for morning break.

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Ideas Happen Outdoors, Writing Happens Indoors

I’ve realised there’s a contradiction in my writing process, and I’ve been struggling to reconcile the two sides of the coin.

On the one hand, I occasionally pepper into my entries that many of my writing ideas happen while walking. There’s something about the constant motion that brings these to the surface.

On the other hand, I realised a few years ago that I consider writing to be a strictly indoor activity, not an outdoor one. I examined this in a short entry titled Inside the Box from 2022, and I still agree with the points made.

The recent streak of sunny weather has brought this duality to mind. It’s provided a good incentive to go for these walks and think about recent projects.

I will, of course, always write down an idea when it occurs. Yet even on the warmest day, I hadn’t once considered intentionally taking my computer or notepad outdoors.

I entertained the thought that it might be down to practical issues like screen glare, spitting rain or unexpected gusts. Annoying as these are, it doesn’t fully describe my aversion to outdoor writing. I can be anywhere with walls and a ceiling; I’ll happily write on public transport, and I even jotted down the beginnings of a poem in a club this weekend.

In short, it simply feels wrong to write anywhere but indoors, and there’s no concrete reason for it, especially when I like to be outdoors to form ideas.

If you’ve any clues or insights about why this might be, I’d like to hear from you.

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A Morning in the Library Archives

Thanks to an invitation from the Amps network at Creative Dundee, I was invited to explore the archives at the city’s Central Library on Saturday morning. This should have happened back in March, but plumbing problems forced the place to close for the day.

While there is a wealth of historical documents on public display, there is far more behind closed doors, viewable only by appointment.

It proved challenging to squeeze ten people around the tightly-packed shelves, and it’s just as challenging to describe the breadth of stored material. It spans three centuries of historical newspapers, self-published poetry, local maps, building plans, posters for pantomimes, &c. Each piece tells its own story and can’t always be slotted neatly into one category or another.

A narrow aisle lined with red shelves filled with historical documents and bound books at the Central Library, with a cart containing various bound materials in the foreground.
Some of the shelves at Dundee Central Library.

My pal Dr Erin Farley led the tour, giving answers to every question posed throughout the two-hour visit. When booking the tickets, Amps members were invited to request any special documents they wanted to see. I seized the opportunity to mention my interest in railway infrastructure.

In response, I was rewarded with the original proposal for the first Tay Bridge, bound in a booklet of broadsheet-sized paper and listing Thomas Bouch as the author. As we know from history, the structure collapsed in 1879. Meanwhile, another member enquired about whether there was an LGBT+ collection. Erin explained that efforts were actively underway to develop one.

After the visit, we were treated to coffee and an overdue catch-up with others. Since most Amps events take place during office hours, I’m rarely able to attend, though this scheduling suits many of the self-employed creatives with more flexible routines. I especially miss the wonderful virtual breakfast events at 9am on Tuesdays, so I was keen not to miss a rare Saturday outing.

There’s so much more I could add about the organisation, but I’ve written so much over the past there years that it’s easier to read the relevant back-entries. Indeed, if you’re local and you think this might be for you, here’s how to sign up.

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Cramming in the RAM

I don’t upgrade my computer regularly, preferring to wait until the current one is on its last legs before considering a replacement. This is partly because the setup is highly customised for my particular requirements, such as the many hotkeys that trigger useful writing shortcuts like the en-dash,

Three years ago, the fan on my old laptop gave out. I can’t recall whether I looked into a repair, but I ultimately opted for a new device – one that serves me to this day.

Before buying it, I knew it wouldn’t pack quite the same punch, with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of hard disc space, only half that of my previous laptop. However, I reasoned I could cope with the loss of computing power because I’d only use it for writing and for watching the occasional 1080p video.

The trouble is that the actual writing is only one part of the equation. If I want to type into a Google Document, the browser takes up a chunk of RAM. If I want to listen to music for concentration and/or talk to other writers via Discord, that’s extra memory in use. Meanwhile, Windows would increasingly use the hard disc as temporary storage to compensate for this.

A couple of weeks ago, I attempted to take off the back cover of the laptop to check whether extra RAM could be fitted. It was too thoroughly screwed on, so I took it to a repair shop last week. They tripled the memory for a reasonable price, bringing it up to 12 GB.

Part of me feels this is a ridiculously high specification for a computer primarily used for text, especially since I can recall using a family computer from 1998 that contained a whopping 4 GB of total hard disc space.

Yet it really does feel like a new machine. Even typing out this entry into WordPress, I haven’t felt the usual lag. I can even switch tasks without my video buffering or the screen blanking out.

So until this device is beyond repair, I’ll happily keep it in service as long as possible.

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Answering the Prompt ‘Morning Rituals’

Many weeks ago, my laptop charger stopped working. While I acquired a replacement, I instead used the Jetpack app on my phone, which suggests a different prompt every day. I decided to keep that one handy for a slow week. That slow week has now arrived, so here’s the prompt:

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

I won’t go through everything I do in the morning, as much of it is keeping up-to-date with pals, but let’s look at some highlights.

For the past seven years, I’ve updated Instagram nearly every day with a themed picture. I decide on a different theme each month. We’re just coming out of April Angles, featuring pictures that contain adjoining or intersecting straight lines, including wall buttresses, a railway signal and a set of swings.

I also tackle two puzzles. The first is the classic Wordle, and I’m pleased to report I’ve now retrospectively caught up with all the puzzles. You need a paid subscription for this, and it’s now cancelled. The second is the seven-letter Full Rainbow anagram. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to catch up with missed puzzles, but it’s a lot of fun.

Thirdly, I’m off to Sweden with a pal at the end of next month. It’s only for a long weekend, and I hear English is widely spoken as a second language, but I’d like to learn a few handy phrases for emergencies. Another pal recommended Clozemaster, which shows sentences with one word blanked out, and you close the gap by clicking on the correct option or – for advanced users – typing it in. The free option offers up to 30 sentences per day. Later on, I intermittently listen to a Swedish talk radio station for extra listening practice.

However, I rarely write prose or poetry in the morning. One piece of writing wisdom you’ll likely hear is to keep a pencil and paper by your bedside for ideas that strike during the night. This simply doesn’t produce work for me. I need to be up and about before ideas start to emerge.

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Problems with Printers

I have two wireless printers used for different purposes. The larger one takes A4 paper and is for ordinary documents like manuscripts, while the smaller one prints onto a roll of thermal paper and can be used to create typed stickers. As they’re both made by Brother, they’re distinguished by the network names Big Brother and Little Brother.

A few weeks ago, I started to experience problems with the first of these, particularly when trying to print off documents from Outlook. Last week, the connection completely broke down, and it was the very worst time for this because I needed to print off a proposal I’d written for a writing class.

As such, I spent a chunk of Good Friday fixing the problem. The problem somehow fixed itself after I removed the printer from Windows and added it again. It happened just in the nick of time to commit that proposal to paper, and I hope to bring further news

At around the same time, Little Brother was up to the capers. This always had a quirk where the software sometimes says it’s offline, yet it spits out the print a few seconds later. More recently, the printing has become more hit and miss before failing completely.

It’s only by good fortune that I didn’t urgently need prints from that machine, since it took a lot of time on Saturday to fix it. It proved necessary to remove the existing installation, then use a temporary wired connection and disable the VPN while setting it up again.

I don’t fully understand the problem, but it’s probably not unrelated to a recent Windows update that won’t install for me, and it seems many other users are in the same situation.

What I now have, however, is a USB cable on standby in case this happens again.