Tag: fiction

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Too Late and Too Early

Long-time readers will know I’m in a poetry circle called the Wyverns, where members critique each other’s work on a monthly basis.

The pieces are typically written especially for each meeting, often around a theme agreed at the previous one. Because I write mine quite quickly, it’s not unusual that I’ll submit mine the week before we meet.

By Friday of last week, I had no ideas for the October prompt of wonder, at least until I happened to walk past the house of a former friend. A ten-line verse quickly began to emerge and I submitted it the same evening.

I try to avoid rewrites because we keep in touch via an email distribution list, which makes it difficult to track multiple versions, but I made a rare exception. It’s already received some good feedback, but the best critiques come at the meetings themselves, where members read in front of the others, offering an extra angle that a poem on the page often doesn’t convey.

That’s not the only piece I created over the weekend.

On Sunday, I made a last-minute decision to see two exhibitions at the V&A Dundee, followed by one at Dundee Contemporary Arts. During the last of these, I was struck with another idea for the Fun a Day challenge held every January. It’s early days, but this is already beginning to exist inside its own self-contained universe.

The challenge for this coming January is already in the can and will be revealed towards the end of December this year, so this current idea will need to wait until 2028. Maybe the real challenge will be to keep it under wraps until then.

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Rediscovering a Dream Journal

Around two months ago, I rediscovered a dream journal I’d kept on another blogging website for around 2½ months in 2011. At present, all the entries are locked away, but the pinned entry suggests that mutual friends were welcome to follow it, and there’s an overview of my motivation.

I was inspired by a blogger friend who often experienced called WILD, or Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, and how she found it a great source of inspiration for writing. This would have been less than a year after I started with the former National Novel Writing Month the previous year, so I was keen to try anything.

I did talk in the pinned entry about general techniques for falling asleep and how to check whether you’re in a lucid dream. At the time, I didn’t seem to realise there is a specific technique for learning how to induce WILD that would only have been a Yahoo! search away. What a missed opportunity.

I didn’t intend for the project to last any specific period; I didn’t set a time frame at all. It was just to there to store the material for use at a future date.

From the first entry on 27 July 2011, I made 11 regular updates – excluding the pinned post – with fragments of dreams I’d had over the last few days. One phrase that appears a lot is Forgotten on Waking, and that became the subtitle for the blog.

So what of the actual contents?

I need to be selective about what I post because some people referenced are still around. Other fragments have been tagged NSFW, or Not Safe for Work, whereas this WordPress blog is firmly PG. But there are some repeatable gems, reproduced here with the original grammar intact:

  1. 24 July: 1 saw round poles about 100mm wide and 1m long, with a large, “knob,” at the end of each, with an eight- or nine-letter word beginning with H word stamped on the handle. They were placed in a bucket in a white room like an art gallery. Still in the art gallery, I was impressed by a stand that held six posters – two wide and three tall – being folded up into a box shape about 50cm cubed.
  2. 31 July: I was arranging with a friend to pick up a crisis loan of £100 on my behalf and him asking via text message if he could use some of the money to travel back to give it to me. He replied, “If I don’t enjoy it, I’ll go away and never speak to you again.”
  3. 12 August: Dream 1, fragment: I learnt that the two men who operated the puppets on The Sooty Show were Army reservists, so they could only film when they weren’t required to be on duty.

Reading these again after 15 years, I can see why I thought they might eventually prove useful. The Sooty Show fragment in particular feels like the sort of premise that might make for a good short story, although I’d fictionalise the TV show. Even the objects in the art gallery objects might worm their way into the description of a scene.

While writing this entry, I intermittently thought about restarting the journal, maybe for a limited period, but it’s not a reliable method of generating writing prompts, Eleven entries across 2½ months isn’t exactly a production line, particularly when so many of them amount to Forgotten on Waking. The process also requires the will and the means to make notes immediately after waking up.

Rather, the value of this collection is closer to keeping a box of miscellaneous electrical wires. Most won’t have any practical use, but you might occasionally need one for a particular project.

Perhaps that’s enough reason to keep the journal as a fossil: you never know when you’ll need a mysterious art installation, a crisis loan, or an Army reservist puppeteer.

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Listening Over Lecturing

Many years ago, I volunteered at a community radio station in Glasgow. As well as turning up for my shift, however, I made a point of showing up at their other events.

At one of these, I was introduced to someone who was supposed to be some big deal in radio, even if the details of his background are now hazy. I can’t even remember whether he was actually a professional or just an enthusiastic amateur. In any case, I was starting out with presenting and he knew more than I did, so I asked him whether he had any advice.

This turned out to be a mistake. Rather than first asking a few establishing questions, he talked at me non-stop for about ten minutes. I’m trying to remember even one of the points he made, but all I can recall is the wide-eyed enthusiasm in his face.

I subsequently learnt there can be something of a ‘wannabe culture’ in community radio, and it’s likely he was part of that. Many volunteers are genuinely there to make a difference to the listeners, but a few believe they could have been on Absolute 90s if only their luck had turned out differently.

I was reminded of this incident recently when I was asked by two different people for general writing advice. I could easily have launched into my own ten-minute speech. I could have reeled off all the times I’ve been published, that I took over National Novel Writing Month for Dundee & Angus, how I used to run an open-mic, what is the best time of week to post a blog, and a hundred other topics.

But what use would it have been? Writing advice is only effective in response to a specific problem.

So instead of channelling that wannabe, I find it more useful to ask some establishing questions, starting broad and narrowing it down. These questions could include, but are not limited to:

  • What’s your current project?
  • Which part are you stuck on?
  • What solutions have you tried so far?

That way, everyone saves time and the person asking gains a much more useful insight than hearing the other person trying to prove their vast knowledge.

Whether the other person takes that advice, however, is another matter.

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The Formatting That Went Out of Date

A rare Wednesday entry, but I couldn’t let this lie. You might have read yesterday’s entry The Story That Went Out of Date, which includes a short story at the end.

It has become apparent that the formatting only appears correctly on https://gavincameron.co.uk. The first line of each paragraph was supposed to be indented like a novel; instead, anyone viewing on the Reading page or the Jetpack app would have seen a wall of text, and nobody likes a wall of text.

It seems I haven’t quite yet cracked the coding on this site. As such, I’ve gone back and edited it, so the formatting should show correctly everywhere.

Thank you for your co-operation.

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The Story That Went Out of Date

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the challenges facing writing with the advent of generative text software. Much of the discourse has become dull and repetitive, and what I haven’t seen discussed much is how new technology can quickly make an existing story obsolete or dated.

Pick up any novel from the 19th century or before, and the characters will travel by horse or on a ship with sails and rigging. Enter the 20th century and characters will use home phones or call boxes to speak to each other. Readers are quick to make allowances for the age of the text. But what happens when the piece is more recent?

I was reminded this week of a story I wrote in 2015 called Film Star Reanimation Ltd., where the plot revolves around resurrecting two dead actors for a feature-length film.

It’s something that was possible at the time, but involved a lot of manual input and guesswork. It was inspired by, and makes reference to, an advert for Galaxy from 2013 which starred an electronic replica of Audrey Hepburn. Here’s an article from 2014 about how this was achieved.

Now, 13 years on, this sci-fi idea is edging closer to reality, rendering the plot less outlandish than it appeared on its first outing. As such, I can’t foresee this being published professionally now, unless I wait a few decades and present it as a historical piece.

I can find three versions in my files: two from February 2015 and one from December 2015. The last one is the version I’ve included under the cut.

It’s only 1,352 words and I’d like to edit it properly because there are enough plot points in there to unpack it to twice that length. Nonetheless, I’ve left the words unchanged, only the formatting to make it appear correctly on WordPress.

For anyone keeping tabs on my WordPress awards, by the way, the site today awarded me two badges while fixing that formatting:

  • CSS Sorcerer. You’re a developer now. Basically.
  • Perfectionist. Edit a single post over and over again. It’s still not right, is it?

Film Star Reanimation Ltd.

Continue reading “The Story That Went Out of Date” →
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This Isn’t a Music Blog, But…

Something incredibly exciting is happening with the top 40 right now. Last week, the track Rein Me In by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean reached 19 non-consecutive weeks at number one. In doing so, it surpasses the 18-week record set by the Frankie Laine single I Believe in 1953.

The last time anything threatened to come close was during the first half of the 1990s with Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet with soundtracks from popular films. These have been pushed into third and fourth place respectively. Conversely, Rein Me In is a slow-burning hit with no obvious cultural trigger, with the trade-off that it hasn’t yet bored everyone senseless.

For better analysis, I invite you visit the Chart Watch blog.

I mention this phenomenon because it leads nicely into the topic of this week’s entry: what do I listen to while writing?

The short answer is: nothing specific. My radio is generally tuned to BBC Radio 1 for the breakfast show every weekday morning and the chart show on a Friday afternoon. If I want a change, I might switch to an adult contemporary station like Absolute Radio or one of its offshoots.

I’m also a regular listener to the speech output of BBC Radio 4 Extra, but not while writing. Pop and rock music lyrics tends to fade into the background, whereas comedy or conversation can be distracting.

I used to have a specific playlist. The majority of it comprised music from the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James, composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, with additional Cave tracks to bring it up to one hour.

These days, I normally use the a resource like the music of Jason Lewis for longer projects. He makes mixes of up to there hours with isochronic tones that pulse on and off at regular intervals. These are supposed to affect brainwaves in a productive fashion. I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but I find they tend to support writing rather than distracting from it.

Sometimes, of course, you need to take the soundtrack you’re given, particularly at writing group. The pub where we meet commonly plays ambient music and/or sports commentary, both of which can be loud and not conducive to writing.

As I edit this, however, I can hear a mixture of classic hits at low volume, so I hope that continues until 8pm.

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A French Revelation

Back in February, I explored the possibility of learning a second language, posing the question of whether to choose French, German or Spanish. On account of its widespread use across Europe, I was already leaning towards French, and then I saw a part-time university course to learn it: five classes of two hours per week, beginning on the last Thursday of May.

Once I signed up, I discovered I knew one of the other attendees. If I believed in omens, this was a good one.

Although the course was aimed at beginners, I wanted to make a head start with some groundwork. I initially turned to Clozemaster, which I’d used to grasp Swedish and later Dutch. This displays a sentence in the target language with one word missing; below that is a complete English translation. As the name suggests, the challenge is to cloze the gap by selecting or typing the correct word.

The main problem is that the eye latches onto the English phrase, rather than allowing you the opportunity to infer the meaning from the context. After a while, you’ll learn by rote that a sentence is correct without being able to identify the underlying pattern. Additionally, there are no oral practice activities, so learning is limited to written exercises only.

As such, I closed my Clozemaster account and instead began listening to Le Français Facile, which is updated every day with world news in simple French. It’s presented by real reporters, and there’s a transcript in the target language to follow along like a karaoke track, which can be translated by the Firefox browser. This is great for teaching pleasantries, set phrases, and up-to-date terminology.

Along with other support and resources, I thought this would give me a good enough basis, and that the first week would be spent going over similar ground. However, the advertised class for beginners had attracted more of a mixed-ability crowd, with 16 registered students.

I received a feedback form yesterday, and I won’t hesitate to give this a mixed review, as below.

One couple, for instance, had previously lived in the country for years, while another had moved back from Canada, although I never established whether this was Quebec. The tutor also seemed surprised when I mentioned this was my first foray into the language.

It felt for much of the time that she was trying to teach two classes simultaneously. For instance, the formal tone of Do you read books? (Est-ce que vous lisez des livres ?) was most useful for beginners, while the informal (Lisez-vous des livres ?) was aimed at the experienced learners.

This disparity was only properly addressed in the fifth and final week when she split the class into two and guided the folks like me. We asked and answered questions as a round robin, which helped enormously.

That’s not to say I picked up nothing useful from the other four weeks. The tutor clearly knew her subject, talking us through matters of etiquette in shops and cafés, and slang we might use with friends. It was useful to know the English and French words that look similar but don’t map onto each other, such as l’addition referring to a restaurant bill rather than a mathematical operation.

At the suggestion of one classmate, I’ve now purchased a BBC Active Languages set with three books and four audio CDs, though I’ve yet to start these. I’ve also followed relevant creators on YouTube, as suggested by another classmate, one of whom uses a lot of gestures. Gestures are such an underrated way of learning.

Furthermore, I follow a few poets on Instagram who regularly post short updates in French. They’re from Quebec, so their sentences may occasionally feature distinctive grammar. I’m led to believe while that the differences may be a little jarring, they’re not difficult to decipher.

Now the classes are over, I will continue with my learning. I still make a point of choosing and saying out loud at least one sentence per day from La Françis Facile, or another relevant source, then writing it down in a dedicated notebook with a translation.

All of which is to ask two basic, but opposite, questions. It’s aimed at any of my followers who have learnt a foreign language, whether that’s French, English or otherwise:

What's the one activity, exercise, drill, &c, that you believe (a) helped your learning the most and/or (b) simply wasted your time?

Merci d’avance !

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A Fully-Booked Weekend

This weekend just gone, I made a point of going to the Dundee Book Festival.

It would have been easy to take in a lot of events. The festival ran from Friday to Sunday, inclusive, and its three venues were all close together. The Steps Theatre acted as the base location, with a few events at the adjoining Central Library, and a few more at the nearby McManus Galleries.

I was selective about my attendance, however, as I’ve previously found it’s easy to be carried away and tie up the whole day. I settled on four events, even if I ended up only seeing three. There was a misprint on the new writing showcase that the end time was 10:30am. This led me to miss the 10:30am start to the next event, about how to submit to My Weekly magazine. However, I’m pleased to report I saw the other two unhindered.

This particular festival is relatively new. It was first organised by Leisure & Culture Dundee in 2025. It also serves as the spiritual successor to the Dundee Literary Festival, which ran from 2006 to 2017 and was an initiative of the University of Dundee.

The literary festival enjoyed a close affiliation with the now-defunct Dundee International Book Prize, which was awarded from 2000 to 2016. As it stands, the university is in no financial position to bring back either the festival nor the prize.

It remains to be seen whether this book festival will match the longevity of its predecessor. However, I can see a lot of potential, so I look forward to its return next year.

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A Good Day for Goals

In honour of our team reaching the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, Monday 15 June was designated as a public holiday across Scotland. In practice, it wasn’t mandatory, although my employer observed it.

The holiday was motivated in part by the timing of their first match against Haiti. Kick-off was at 9pm in Boston on Saturday 13 June, which equated to 2am on Sunday morning in the UK. I don’t care much for football, and I’ve long been opposed to public holidays, but even I must grudgingly admit it was a nice gesture.

I decided early on to use the day for catching up with my writing, dividing my time three ways: editing existing text, writing further narrative, and worldbuilding. By the evening, the project was on firmer ground than in the morning.

As I explored on the blog three years ago, I’ve tried many times to write outdoors and it rarely works out well. So despite the brilliant weather on Monday, most of the day was spent inside at the computer, except for a couple of walks with the official Taskmaster podcast.

Although I’m a fan of the TV show, this companion piece had somehow bypassed me. So every time I go for a long enough walk, I catch up with one more past episode, which has helped me to make a decent dent in the archive.

In my experience, consistent and steady sessions are the key to making progress on a large project.

For around a decade, I’ve owned a copy of War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I’ve been going back to it intermittently during this time, and I’d reached page 767 of 1296 pages by October 2024 – although much of the latter section is given over to endnotes and other explanatory details. Despite its length, most of the chapters can be read in ten minutes; there are simply a lot of them.

On 22 May 2026, I set some time aside to read one chapter before bed and another after waking up. While I don’t always manage, I’m now rapidly approaching 900 pages, so I’m on track to finish by the end of summer.

The public holiday was a massive boon for that writing project, but without also tackling it on a regular basis, it could take a long time to finish what is expected to be a series of nine stories. At least the groundwork is firmly in place, and when I find that regular time to work on it, I’ll have a stronger idea of its future direction.

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Back In the Room

A number of factors came together yesterweek, including scheduling problems and technical problems, which meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry. In the short explanatory note, I mentioned there were three possible topics I could cover. During the intervening period, however, I’ve added another one to this list, and it’s that I’m covering today.

The horror film Backrooms was released into cinemas at the tail end of May, and I had a chance to see it on Wednesday of last week. The director Kane Parsons didn’t come up with the central idea, but used the existing concept from popular culture. He’s previously expanded upon it with a series of short films available on YouTube.

In short, the eponymous backrooms are an endless maze of empty rooms and partitions that resemble an office or storage space, often illuminated by harsh lighting and decorated in shades of yellow. The architecture is largely stable, so any character who goes through an entrance can typically return to the previous room, and objects can be carried in and out.

The limitability of the place also frequently reminds people of a real-life place they’ve been before. In my case, my dad used to have a hair salon in the basement of a bank, which was accessed by a long staircase. Fluorescent lighting was a necessity, since there wasn’t so much as a window at street level. I also remember an unfinished section that looked onto bare rock; I called it the dungeon.

But I’m going off the point somewhat, as this blog is about writing, not art. In the film, the setting is front and centre of the whole narrative, so I was interested to see how it was described in the script. I expected there would be a leaked copy of the screenplay going about. Instead, I can only find a minimalist rendering that strips out everything but the dialogue, making it no help at all.

Nonetheless, I liked that the sets are varied, but there are no contrived traps for the characters. They’re often free to leave at any time, provided they know which corner to turn and if they can outrun anything that’s chasing them. It also steers clear of parodying films with similar characteristics, such as The Shining, The Blair Witch Project or Being John Malkovich.

Considering the practical sets built for the occasion, it’s remarkable this was delivered with a budget of $10 million, which is low-budget in Hollywood terms. Yet there is one other film around at the moment with even tighter purse-strings.

If $10 million is low-budget, then the $750,000 to shoot Obsession is practically pocket change. There are some parallels: this is also a horror, and its writer-and-director Curry Barker also started on YouTube. From here, however, it travels in its own direction, following a more conventional path with storytelling and gore at its centre.

It may be a coincidence that these two directors have come from a similar background to release low-budget horror films in the same month.

Equally, it might also be the beginnings of a trend where we see ideas transfer more readily from the computer screen to the cinema screen. If so, we must also brace ourselves for a hundred photocopies of Backrooms, or narratives just different enough not to tread on the toes of Obsession.