Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • The first rule of Write Club is: you don’t talk about Write Club

    Well hello there. Sorry for the lack of non-work postings recently – I mentioned a while back that there was a reason for it, but I didn’t explain what it was. So here we go.

    For the last five or six months I’ve been killing people.

    I’ve killed so many people I’ve lost track of the total. I’ve pushed people off balconies, sabotaged cars and shot at people with a variety of weapons, and I’ve also attacked a bear with a helicopter.

    Or to put it another way, I’ve been writing a novel.

    Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those blog posts that finishes off by saying that the book is available from all good shops and you should rush out and buy it. It’s a long way from that, if it gets published at all. I’m just explaining why I’ve barely blogged or posted long drunken comments about sod-all. Because I’ve been doing the book in my spare time it’s taken over my life: when I haven’t been working I’ve either been writing, researching, editing, proofreading or thinking about what I’m going to write next. I’ve barely read, played video games or acted like a human being since Christmas.

    Are you wondering what it’s about? It’s about 240 pages. Ho ho. It’s – I hope – a fast, funny thriller, and I think it would get on really well with books by Christopher Brookmyre, Tim Dorsey, Carl Hiassen and Robert Crais, or films such as Shaun of the Dead.

    I didn’t mention it earlier for a number of reasons. First, I’ve tried to write a novel before. I’ve tried lots of times, and my hard disk is littered with drafts that, if I was lucky, ran out of steam at Chapter Four. I didn’t see the point in mentioning this one until I’d finished it (which I have. Six times. Some writers can sit down and bash out the finished article in a single draft. I’m not one of them, and I’ve benefitted greatly from other people’s input. More of that later, maybe).

    Secondly, I know from bitter experience that if editors think you’re busy, they stop offering you work. If anything I’m working longer hours than ever to do the day job, but I didn’t want to take the risk that my wonderful employers might think I’m spending my time dicking about when I should be working.

    Thirdly – and while this is weird, it’s true – I didn’t want to tempt fate. The working title is Live Forever, and when I was starting to believe I might just finish this one I became convinced that the universe would find it pretty funny if I died just before I finished it. “Yeah, he died before he could finish his book.” “What was it called?” “Live Forever! HA HA!” “HA HA!” That sort of thing.

    So anyway, I’ve written this thing, I think it’s pretty good, and I’m going to postpone having a life outside work for a bit longer as I start the expensive, time-consuming and soul-destroying process of trying to get an agent and trying to find a publisher. I’ve thought about self-publishing, electronic publishing and things like that but the truth is I’m a writer, not a marketer, and that means I need the expertise of a proper publisher. Whether it comes to anything I don’t know, but fingers crossed, eh?

    If you’re interested, I’ll blog from time to time about what I’ve learnt so far, what resources I’ve found particularly handy and what progress, if any, I make. And if you’re not, I won’t. And once the letters are written and the manuscripts sent out, I’ll start blogging about bugger-all again.

    One thing I’d like to do just now is to say thanks, though: conversations on this blog (and with some of you by email or on Twitter) gave me the kick up the arse I needed to go from thinking about writing to actually writing. Since then I’ve also had invaluable help from Mupwangle, Squander Two and Paul, all three of whom have spent an awful lot of time wading through multiple drafts and spotting the huge cock-ups I’d made when I wrote scenes after a double brandy too many. Even if the book doesn’t come to anything I’ve really enjoyed doing it, and I’m really grateful for everyone’s help.

  • More things I’ve written: Cyborgs and Chrome

    Will humans of the future have extra ears? Probably not, but cyborg technology is still fascinating.

    Sadly the “bionic arms race” owes much to a very real arms race. In 2005, the US military announced a multi-million dollar investment in prosthetic technology after a surge in the number of US soldiers losing limbs in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Improvements in body armour technology mean that attacks that just a few years ago would be fatal are now survivable – but the armour doesn’t protect limbs.

    Inevitably the military isn’t just interested in rehabilitating injured soldiers. It’s rather keen on enhancing soldiers’ effectiveness in battle, too, which is why it’s testing exoskeletons.

    And Google Chrome 2 is out of beta. Time for another car comparison.

    Firefox is a gadget-stuffed MPV, Chrome is a stripped-down sports car and IE8 is a Honda Legend: it’s built well enough, but it’s hopelessly outgunned by smarter and more stylish rivals.

  • Google fail: it’s the new blue screen of death

    It’s that man again. And by that man, I mean me.

    We’re rushing into a world where everything depends on an internet connection, whether it’s your email, your online apps, your Xbox Live or your TV on demand.

    Most of the time, that’s absolutely fine. Great, even. But it means that we’re more vulnerable to catastrophe and cock-ups than ever before.

  • Are search engines bad for the Web? And: what’s the future of the internet anyway?

    Two of my things have hit the internet. First up, an op/ed on Google’s ever-increasing usefulness:

    There’s no doubt that search engines are getting smarter, which is generally a good thing. However, they’re guilty of something called Mission Creep: that is, they’re doing more and more work. In the good old days search engines were facilitators, dumb actors that didn’t actually know anything but knew where you could find what you needed.

    Now, they’re attempting to be oracles. Instead of showing you where to find the answer, they want to tell you the answer; instead of taking you to the right destination, they want to *be* the destination. That’s an important difference, and it’s bad news for webmasters.

    Then, a feature I did for PC Plus about where the UK internet is heading:

    …it looks rather like our creaking transport system: overloaded, prone to jams at the most inconvenient of times and under constant surveillance. Only Britain could take the idea of an information superhighway and try to turn it into the M6.

  • Journalism: can pay, won’t pay?

    Here’s a thing. If the sites you regularly visited started charging, would you stick with them?

    I’ve been mulling over some stuff Rupert Murdoch has been saying. Essentially he’s arguing that the free, ad-supported content model for online news and magazines isn’t sustainable, which I think is right – The Guardian website is brilliant, but the Guardian business is pissing money – and that the future is going to come with a price tag.

    Will it work?

    I’m trying to imagine how you’d charge for online content. Straight news, presumably, would remain free – it’s not particularly unique – and everything else would be behind some kind of pay wall. Would it work? Would you flinch if, when you went to read a Charlie Brooker column, you had to pay 1p, or if Media Guardian was completely off-limits to non-subscribers? If Techradar made all its news free but its features, reviews and columns subscribers-only, would you stump up? If Q asked for 10p for its exclusive, in-depth interview with [insert your favourite pop star here] would you stump up the cash?

    I’m not sure I would – not on a computer screen, anyway. I’ve written before about my truly terrifying newspaper and magazine bills, and I’m quite sure that I’d pay a sub for e-paper versions (provided the e-paper was good enough, like the new big Kindle for newspapers or a lighter, full colour version for mags). But I don’t think I’ve ever paid to read an article online. I tend to balk at registration, let alone payment. A bundle – pay for the print version, get free access to extra stuff online – might work, but online-only… I’m not convinced.

    What about you? Can you imagine a way in which paying for content – with the exception of stuff that businesses will put on expenses, such as Concrete Today or whatever – could actually work?

  • High street electrical shops: bloody miserable

    Der der der der der! I woke up this morning! Der der der der der! Went to a well known branch of a high street electrical chain! Der der der der der! It was rubbish! Der der der der der.

    The slightly more coherent version is over here:

    It’s a depressing old world at the moment.

    The combination of a global recession, swine flu, impending climate Armageddon and the continuing existence of OK Magazine are enough to make anyone feel down.

    But if you fancy cheering yourself up a bit then we have the answer: pop along to your nearest high street (or more likely, retail park) electrical retailer.

  • The wisdom of tramps

    One of my world-weary .net columns has made its way online:

    I’m not suggesting that social networks are bad. But again and again I’m finding that I seem to be living in a different world to the tech triumphalists [with] their sunny Californian positivity.

  • Just what the Internet needs right now: tax

    From the You Couldn’t Make It Up department:

    you’d need a very special brand of lunacy to decide that the best thing to do right now would be to put a tax on internet ads and broadband connections. Guess what? The government’s considering exactly that…

    To appreciate the genius of the idea, you need to know what the monies raised will be used for. You’ll need to take a deep breath. Ready? Okay then. The broadband tax will make broadband more expensive in order to ensure that rolling out broadband isn’t too expensive.

    The Internet ad tax will make advertising more expensive in order to help out broadcasters whose advertising revenues are plummeting because advertising is too expensive.

  • Free costs money. Who’s going to pay for it? Er, you

    Me, on Techradar:

    We’re so used to the idea that everything online should be free that we don’t even think about it.

    Of course the iPlayer should give us HD video for free. Of course Spotify should stream music for free. Websites? Free. News? Free. Video? Free. Software? Free.

    There’s only one problem. Free costs money, and there isn’t enough of it.

  • Who should you sneer at online?

    It’s all very confusing: one of my recent .net columns is up on Techradar:

    Print out this cut-out-and keep guide, pin it to your monitor and you’ll always know exactly who to look down on…

    If you’re on Bebo, you’re 14. If you’re on MySpace, you’re not in a band and you’re not an imbecile, you’re pretending to be 14 and you’ll soon be on the front of the local paper.

    One of the sites I slagged was Asmallworld, the exclusive social network for the filthy rich. I was amused when, just after this column hit print, a designer posted it on Asmallworld and the responses proved me right.