The Artificial Passenger

I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with me a while longer. Things are hectic round here at the moment and without my laptop, I’m pretty useless. How on earth did writers cope before computers? They must have had a whole lot more discipline and patience than I do, I think.

I’ve been reading Counting Sheep by Paul Martin recently (well worth reading if you’re interested in sleep and dreaming, and easy to read too). There’s a section that particularly caught my interest about something called the ‘Artificial Passenger’, developed by IBM to reduce accidents caused by sleepiness. Has anyone come across this? It’s designed to go in cars, programmed with personal information about the driver. The idea is that it can hold a conversation with you, even tell you jokes, to keep you stimulated while you’re driving. It judges your responses on intonation and speed and if it concludes that you’re falling asleep, it opens a window, sounds an alarm or sprays water at you to keep you awake. Which I imagine could be quite dangerous in itself, but one assumes this has all been safety tested.

Apart from the fact that this seems like an insane idea, I can’t imagine how it can possibly work. Even if it knows all your favourite conversational subjects, how can it know enough about them to provide enough engaging conversational material to keep your mind busy? I imagine the conversation would be a little one-sided.

While I’m all for looking for ways to reduce road accidents, this idea seems a bit crazy to me. The idea of any kind of artificial company worries me. What’s wrong with a good night’s sleep and/or a real passenger? One who actually knows you and has a natural ability to converse.

The idea reminds me a little bit of Paro the Seal, a robotic baby seal that responds to human voice and touch, invented in Japan for use in nursing homes and hospitals. It was designed as a therapy tool, and is apparently very effective in reducing stress and promoting social interaction between patients. But I find the idea a bit creepy. Yes it’s very cute, but there’s something disturbing about watching cared-for adults talking to an inanimate object. It just feels very patronising.

I leave you with Paro. And I have to say, I can see the attraction. Which is, perhaps, what frightens me.


Image by Aaron Biggs

The End

Having looked forward to my writing retreat for the best part of a year, it seems strange now that it’s over. It was such an amazing opportunity and I would jump at the chance to do it again.

The first couple of days were a bit overwhelming. Here I was in voluntary isolation with grand plans to write the whole first draft of a full-length novel. I was in a beautiful place with no one to share it with, and I wasn’t going to have any phone reception for two weeks. Oh dear, I thought. Why have you done this to yourself?

And then, after a couple of long days of arduous writing and feeling sorry for myself, the sun came out and I went for a spectacular walk along the cliff side. I’d made a good dent in the first section of my novel by this stage, and it didn’t seem quite so hopeless. I stopped thinking of my trip as some kind of lonely holiday and started enjoying it in the spirit I'd intended: as a taste of a different way of life. And once I got that sorted, I was fine.

I spent my days writing and walking along the coast. I absolutely fell in love with the place. It was achingly beautiful, and I loved falling asleep to the sound of the waves and waking up to the squabbling seagulls. I would eat breakfast in the garden, watching the waves lap against the wall, and in the evening I would walk to the top of the hill to watch the sun set over the sea. Everything became beautifully timeless, and the structure of my days began to be guided by daylight and tides instead of the hands on my watch. If I could live like that forever, I would be very happy.

I hit my writing target, not quite in word count, but certainly in terms of content. I have come back with a first draft, and (as you might expect from a first draft) it’s hideously rough and has an awfully long way to go before it will be readable. But it’s there. It’s written. And around my ordinary life, that would have been impossible in two weeks.

Now I’m back in the real world where I have to think about other things than my characters and go back to work in the mornings. Which is a hard adjustment after two weeks that, simultaneously somehow, seemed both to fly by and last forever, as though I’d never lived any other kind of life.

Since I’ve been back, my computer seems to have collapsed with exhaustion and is currently refusing to turn on. So my plans of catching up online have been thwarted and I may be lying low for a little while longer yet.

Adjusting

I thought you might like to see where I’m hiding.


I’m three days into my adventure, and I’ve been finding it quite hard to adjust to being so isolated. I’ve been writing to my targets, but I haven’t found it particularly fulfilling. Not, that is, until today.


Today I unearthed a little of my writing mojo and remembered what it is that writing means to me, what I believe writing should be. Hopefully that’s back to stay for the rest of my time here, and now I can really crack on with the task in hand.


I’ve been learning some things about myself while I’ve been alone out here, and realising the things that I take for granted at home. I don’t think I really realised how hard this would be; it’s taken rather more adjusting than I’d considered. But I’m hoping the adjustments have been made, and that I’m strong enough to just get on with it all now.


I have a lot of work still to do, and while I’ve been meeting my targets, I don’t really feel like I’ve started working to my full potential yet. But there’s still time.


This, after all, is only the beginning of my journey.

Countdown

There are four more days left before I set off on my adventure. I’m filling my pencil case and searching for holes in my planning. I’m writing lists of things I need to take and things I need to do before I go. I’m having long staring contests with my suitcase, trying to figure out exactly how much stuff I can take with me. And I’m panicking just a little about whether my goals are achievable and whether I’m putting too much pressure on myself.

I’ve had this trip booked for about eight months so it seems odd to think that now it’s actually about to happen. Suddenly I’m realising just how brave I’m forcing myself to be, determined as I am to really live in this project for a couple of weeks. Suddenly I’m realising that the time has come to really test all this work I’ve been doing... and I have to admit, a tiny part of me is sad that soon it will all be over.

I won’t be posting here much while I’m away (although I might post a few photographs if I’m feeling gloaty!) and I will be having a couple of weeks off The Character Project. I think it’s going to take rather more self-control than I have to stay offline completely, so I’ll be about here and there... but expect me to be quiet for a few weeks.

This week, I will mostly be panicking and trying to finish off my preparations. Then on Saturday, I will set off for my quiet cave by the sea.

Fingers crossed for me not having lost my marbles by the next time I post!

Image by Joe Mabel

A Concert before Lunch

You’ll have noticed the lack of posts round here lately (especially of the non-writing-related variety). This largely correlates with the lack of life I’ve been having as I suddenly find out where my self-discipline’s been hiding and start making up for lost time. My house is a mess too, but we won’t go into that.

I haven’t really being doing anything apart from going to work and spending long evenings at my desk. This is a good thing. But it’s making me antisocial, uncultured, and slightly peculiar... and as such, things to write blogs about are proving few and far between.

So it’s a good job I work in a primary school and occasionally get to go on educational trips.

Today’s was with a year five class to see the London Symphony Orchestra play. This isn’t the first time I’ve realised how lucky we are to live in London or how lucky our children are to get these opportunities.

The concert was aimed at Key Stage Two children and was really well structured to keep them engaged and teach them (and me, who’s generally ignorant of all things music) about the workings of an orchestra.

My overwhelming feeling about it was, as it is at pretty much every music event I attend, one of total admiration.

I can never quite get over how all those individual instruments, by playing all at once, can create such an immense sound. The LSO played excerpts of various well-known pieces for the children, and this really highlighted for me just how amazing it is that this music can be produced.

Watching the musicians work together to produce these magnificent pieces made me admire their discipline, skill and – perhaps more than anything – lack of ego. In order to play in an orchestra, in order to play these amazing pieces of music, the musicians have to give themselves over to the group. No one’s going to say, “Oh, I really thought the fifth violin sounded beautiful tonight.” In an orchestra, a musician is like an ant: only useful as part of the colony. I couldn’t do that (even if I could play an instrument). My ego’s quiet... but it’s there.

My other thought, mixed up with the admiration and the gratitude, was how lovely it must be if your job is to play in a major orchestra. Like anyone who gets to pursue their chosen art form for a living, these people are doing what many people will only ever dream of.

And for me, it was a great way to spend the working day!

Image by Ian Britton

Edit and Destroy!

I recently discovered an editing flaw that I didn’t realise I have.

When I’m editing something, I tend to read it out loud repeatedly, trying to catch the lumps and bumps that I don’t see when I’m reading through in my head. Sometimes I’ll have to stop for a while because the lump is actually more of mountain and needs some serious flattening out.

And then I’ll have to go back to the beginning again because I’ve lost my flow.

The result? A seriously over-edited first couple of paragraphs.

Somewhere in the middle of the process, the extra time I spend on the beginning of a piece of writing pays off: the chinks are ironed out and all the words are working nicely together... and then I take it too far.

I stretch the metaphors and polish the imagery so much that it becomes blinding and you can’t see what I was referring to in the first place. It’s a bit like when you’re cooking and you enjoy adding the spices so much that you keep on adding them – just a bit more of this and a tiny extra sprinkle of that - and then what you end up with is inedible.

I can’t see the extent of the damage while I’m doing all this because every time I read it I’m still thinking of the meaning I know was there when I started. It takes a bit of distance – at least a few days, if not longer – before I realise what I’ve done.

An example: the first line of Biscuit, which was the piece I wrote for The Character Project a couple of weeks ago: “A fruit fly scuttled round the ochre-green flowers, rubbing its feet through ceramic pollen.”

Any idea what that’s about?

No, neither did I when I read it back the other day.

I’ve removed all reference to the bathroom tiles I was talking about. I’ve totally undermined the impact of the ochre with the mind-boggling image of ceramic pollen. And I’ve succeeded in making the fruit fly sound seriously disoriented, which is perhaps something of a feat in itself.

This is clearly something I’m going to have to watch out for.

Image by Corey Anderson

A Story

Today's post is a cheat, I'm afraid. I wasn't going to cross-post any of my stories for The Character Project, but I've had computer problems this weekend and my to-do list is endless. So I've pulled out a story from a few weeks back. With a bit of luck, you didn't read it at the time!

Catching Breath

“That guy. The one over there in the red shirt. He’s been in here every day this week.”

Graham sighs. He should have known they’d get suspicious after a while. Not that it matters.

He watches his shadow creep across the swings as they fly backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. The two women are leaning against the flaked blue posts, occasionally pushing their daughters or waving to them as they whiz past in fits of giggles. They aren’t bothering to lower their voices. Perhaps they think he can’t hear them. Perhaps they want him to hear.

“Maybe he’s got kids,” the one with the yellow scarf says doubtfully, scanning the park for parentless children.

“He hasn’t.” The other one says.

They are hemmed in the neat hexagon of the park by a blue metal fence. He watches a heap of small bodies cling to the roundabout as an older brother races round in circles. A little boy chuckles gleefully as the seesaw thumps his feet to the ground and his sister bounces into the air. On a nearby bench, a young woman passes crusts of bread to her son, who throws them nervously at a scrum of pigeons and then retreats to the safe space between her legs.

Graham smiles. He could sit here for hours.

“Maybe we should call the police,” the woman in the pink coat is saying. “You just don’t know what he’s going to do, do you?”

He watches a group of older boys chase between the springy animals, immersed in some kind of game where the blue bits are safe. Their agile limbs tear through the air with boundless energy, their voices colouring the air in bursts.

“How long’s he been here anyway?” She’s lifting her daughter from the swing, zipping her safely into a fleece jacket.

The woman with the yellow scarf shrugs and steals a furtive glance is his direction. One of the boys runs up to her, wipes a glistening slug of snot along his sleeve, and bundles a duffle coat into her arms. He leans forwards on his knees while he catches his breath and then chases after the others, shrieking.

“Never have boys,” the woman tells her friend, shaking her head through the traces of a smile.

The woman in the pink coat laughs. “Well, be careful, alright? Don’t let Niall stay on and play here if you’re leaving, will you?”

The woman who knows football boots and grass-stained knees throws her scarf over her shoulder and looks behind her at Graham huddled in the same red shirt he’s been wearing these past three days.

“I’m not leaving him,” she says firmly.

The pink-coated woman nods and fires a long, bruising stare at Graham. “Well, we’re off then. Take care, alright?”

Graham doesn’t look at them. He watches an older girl swing between the monkey bars, her delicate body fluttering from post to post like a feather.

He focuses, as he always does, on their small limbs and laughing faces.

He tries not to think about the shrieking whiteness of the room in the hospital over the road or the small fragile girl laid out inside it. He tries not to remember the way a lorry looks when its nose is crunched into your passenger doors or the silence of a child caught beneath its bumper. He doesn’t think about his latest conversation with the doctor, the dark stains beneath his wife’s watery blue eyes. He doesn’t think about the tubes and the machines and his daughter’s breathless lungs.

He twirls an empty water bottle between his fingers, remembering how much Katie likes this park, wishing he could catch his breath for her and pour it from the plastic bottle straight into her lungs.