Different this time

Goodness me, it's that time again - that point in the year when I promise myself, not to mention my faithful and very patient readers, that this time will be different.  I really do mean it each time I write a post such as this, even if deep down I have a sneaky suspicion that this holiday will be just like all the others, and that once I'm off the first train or plane I'll forget all about writing, or simply find something more enjoyable to do, like eating or drinking, or generally anything other than sitting in front of a computer keyboard.

Part of the problem in the past however, has been over-ambition.  That, and a healthy dose of perfectionism, combining to mean that I spend so long takig photographs, video and audio that I have scant time left to pen carefully worded prose - and frankly I'd rather write nothing than utter rubbish (though will let you be the judge of how well I succeed in this).

Now I know about bad workmen and all that, but the other problem in recent times has been a frankly awful bluetooth keyboard, which somehow managed simultaneously to omit characters that I had typed whilst adding in plenty that I hadn't.  It meant that a post of roughly this length might have taken me several hours, all the while picking about in each sentence to correct the nonsense that I had inadvertently drafted.  The good news is that my new Griffin Lightening keyboard is making very snappy work of this post.  The downside is that any nonsense present on the page is well and truly down to me!

So, I've spent too much of your precious time telling you what's going to be different this time, and not nearly enough saying where I will be going, and what I'll be doing when there.

Well, suffice to say that this is a big one.  Last year I travelled no further east than the Franco-German border, and as far west only as Madrid.  This year the journey will be of a similar length to the first leg of that trip to Spain, albeit with the twelve or so hours spent in planes rather than trains.  I'm heading somewhere that's been on my bucket list for years but somehow never reached the top, a place whose culture is both all around us and yet in many ways quite foreign.  It is said to be one of the only truly modern non-Western countries and its impact is felt globally.  This year I'm heading to Japan.

Battle for the written word

I've been re-reading a few of my blog posts. It may seem a rather self centred, introspective thing to do, but it was prompted by a comment being left on a long forgotten post and my wish to rediscover it.

The commentor in question said something nice about my style of writing, and looking back through the various articles, I had to agree. Whilst it must be the very epitome of immodesty to praise one's own pros I can't help feeling that some of the text, written months and years ago, still achieves The effect I originally sought to create. Often, at the time of writing, I find myself publishing pieces without reviewing and re-writing them as much as I ought, for fear of never actually pressing "send". It isn't that I don't care about what I write, as I have commented on in the past, it is simply that I would likely never be happy with the words used or the flow of sentences and paragraphs. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find that, in many cases, those words fitted together quite fine and conveyed the meaning in an interesting and engaging way.
What I was less happy to discover however, was my almost faultless trait of beginning interesting sounding series, only to never continue them. At the beginning of so many holidays, it seems, I have begun with the intention of writing each day, chronicling journeys and experiences, only to run out of steam before I've left the starting station. Take, for instance, my recent trip with Mark to Sicily, all the way from London by train. It had the makings of a gripping story, with significant challenges to overcome on the way to a Mediterranean idyll - save for the fact that, in writing it, I got no further than the French Alps.

Another example was my independent trip to Amsterdam with my (now previous) guide dog Vance. Typographically the starting post left a little to be desired, penned as it was on my normal dodgy Bluetooth keyboard, but the tale was truly sunk by my Phalia to write another word after my overnight ferry left Harwich.

So, whilst I can see some merit in the sense of some of my articles, I am left deeply frustrated by my apparent inability to finish what I have begun. It isn't as if there wasn't anything worthy of being written about on these trips. Had I spent the time and effort doing it I am sure I could have conveyed fear and exhilaration which seem to fill most journeys in equal measure - yes, I love travelling, but that doesn't mean it is always plain sailing. I could have happily talked about the contradiction of pleasant monotony on a long distance sleeper train to Palermo, or the frenzied swarms of bicycling locals which infect Dutch streets and make independent mobility a frankly frightening affair. I might have written of walking the circular promenade of Altigia, as if I was experiencing it live, or brought to life the cacophony of a Munich beer Hall. I didn't do any of that however, I was too busy taking photographs and audio recordings, too preoccupied with capturing the "now" to really sit back and think about it.

The tension between keyboard and camera began early on the Sicily trip. My original, indeed only, article from that journey took over three hours to write because I was so distracted with taking pictures every few miles, or recording thoughts live on video or audio. Yes, the writing was certainly hard going with a phone and keyboard combination which wrote the wrong character more often than the right, but The products of combining observation and imagination on paper are often so much more gratifying than the simple electronic capturing of a moment.

Reading those initial chapters pre-seeding empty books it seemed as though I did not, could not, trust myself to recall and relay events without those pictures and sounds of actuality to back up the memories. It was, I think, a strong desire to convey the experience to a wider audience in a way which could be digested, understood easily, and a belief that in order to do so properly one needs to film and photograph as much as possible. In my head, I could see the cut-away shots that would be needed to make my video flow, or the photographs which would help me and others to understand or appreciate a location long after it had passed. If I couldn't see the detail of a landscape or building the photographs and video would help me to review it later, and somehow this seemed more important than the feelings and thoughts triggered by the experience itself.

So, five months after Sicily I have over 4000 photographs still waiting to be organised, two hour long videos produced but plenty more footage to edit, hours of audio uploaded to the Internet and a solitary blog post which says more in its few paragraphs than most of the other electronic memories put together.

I may yet manage to write a little more about some of my most recent trips, dredging up memories from the depths of my brain, but what I would really like to do is find The inclination to take a few less photographs, video shots and audio recordings and focus a bit more on the written word. Perhaps by standing back and thinking that every picture counts, as we all did before digital photography, and not feeling that I have to chart every single second live, I can create the space to achieve this.

Wasting time

Well, that was a waste of time, wasn't it?

Whole hours spent agonizing over words, scrutinizing analogies and, yes, learning how to use that frankly ridiculous Medium website, and what was the sum total of my efforts? Not a single comment or retweet for my article on photography and visual impairment.

But it does at least raise one important question, which I shall attempt to address here: who am I writing for?

Like most people who write I do so for a plethora of reasons. First and foremost I want to do it. There is little more cathartic after a long day at work, or a particularly frustrating experience, than putting thumbs to screen and penning a few lines which encapsulate my thoughts. I suppose it is a self administered therapy of sorts, a consultation with myself, or maybe with my imagined reader.

... Which brings me onto the second point: I write to be read. Yes, I know it's obvious, a little dull, a truism if ever you saw one, but it bears repeating. How sad would it be to talk and not be heard, to present yourself well but never be seen? Whilst much of the pleasure in writing can be found in wrestling with ideas which won't form words, or words which appear intent on standing out of line, breaking rank and not following orders, much too lies in imagining the reader's reaction, and knowing that thoughts once locked inside your head are being set free to blend with others, contributing to the rich discourse of life.

And there's a third reason, one which may not be new in and of itself, but which has surely been given greater momentum by the social media explosion over the past decade. For some, writing for oneself, being read occasionally is quite sufficient, but for the tweeters, flickrers and booers on the right side of the digital divide only world dominating viral notoriety will do. And whilst my ego is insufficiently bloated, or my talents adequately exaggerated to expect a worldwide following, like so many I cannot help but want a piece of the action. It isn't enough to know that my words are out there for others to read, passively waiting for somebody to pass by with the time and inclination to pause and absorb their meaning. In a world where everyone blogs, where noise frequently drowns out those who are truly worth listening to (amongst whom I certainly do not count myself, just for the record! ), an article or account will survive to be read only if it is publicly liked, shared, served up on a plate and pushed in people's faces. There must be countless people who, like me, have had a go with websites like Medium, but whose carefully crafted prose will never make the daily email or be featured on the front page, and is therefore destined for eternal obscurity in a lost corner of the web.

In truth, being noticed comes down to three factors, talent, hard work, and a healthy dose of luck. I can think of several bloggers I read on a regular basis who truly embody the first two of these, people who sit down every evening of every day and pen a fifteen hundred word essay, or who have the kind of writing style which flows naturally from head to screen to the reader's mind. I neither work hard at my writing, nor am especially good at it, and so realistically shouldn't expect the world when clicking "Publish". But then there is luck, that mysterious third factor, lurking unseen in the corner of the room, waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting writer, delivering a positive push up the rankings or highlighting a slip, mistake or ill thought out point and posting it high for everyone's attention. In other words, the chance of writing something which captures the attention sufficiently, or strikes a note apt for the moment, is tempered somewhat by the risk of having one's mistakes showcased in a similar way.

So, perhaps I should actually be grateful for the relative obscurity that my posts enjoy. I don't have the external pressure of living up to expectation, of writing so often that blogging begins to interfere with the other things I hold dear in life, and by keeping my head down I avoid the considerable risk of having it shot off. And I can still enjoy writing for myself in the knowledge that the small group of people likely to read it will appreciate the effort and think about the points made.

So, was it really such a waste of time taking time to think about my experience taking photographs from a different perspective to most people? Was it really so taxing to mould an account which conveyed my thoughts adequately? No, writing is a pleasure, having it read is a bonus, being understood is the real holy grail.

Unfinished articles: Abandoned stories

Rather ironically I wrote this post a little while back, bemoaning my inability to finish and upload my posts, and then failed to finish it.  I publish it now, worts and all, for your interest.

Oh dear, somehow I knew it would end up like this. That, no sooner had the metaphorical gangplank been raised, signalling the start of my adventure on the Clyde, and the knots and cleats of sailing reality replaced the hopes and dreams of imagination, then my enthusiasm for dedicating an hour or two to penning interesting prose would fade away irreversibly. And somehow, despite being aware of the danger, the risk that the anticipation I had built amongst my readers would be dashed against the rocks of disappointment, I allowed it to happen.

I lie here now, tapping away on my iPhone screen in the middle of a late Spring night, I could make myself feel a little better about the situation by telling you that it always was an inevitable outcome. Sailing is a demanding activity, physically, mentally, and occasionally emotionally, and there simply isn't sufficient capacity in the human mind - I mean my very human mind - to dedicate to the rather frivolous and peripheral task of charting the days events in writing. But, whilst it is certainly true that the time available to me for blogging was a limited commodity, usually eeked out from moments otherwise reserved for sleeping, eating or engaging socially with one's crewmates, the form of writing used, and the expectations made of myself, were a conscious decision for me. By this I mean that I choose to write long, hopefully expressive sentences, carefully conjure images in the mind of the reader, and generally sweat and squirm over every word and clause until I'm absolutely happy, or at least as happy as I ever will be, with the results. It is me who chooses to write in a manner which takes time and effort. Me who eschews brevity and embraces verbosity. I am my own worst enemy.

And so it was, that I found myself stirring in the early hours as the good ship Avacet rocked gently on her moorings, exploring my immediate environs with pensive finger and gentle touch in search of my elusive virtual notepad, and indulging in cerebral gymnastics, painting pictures of sight and sound with the humble English word.

It was by no means a shore. Indeed, writing has long been a release for my thoughts. However, that isn't to say that capturing a day's worth of senses recorded in my head, and translating them into script which conveys adequately the holistic experience, is a simple and uncomplicated task. As something of a persistent apprentice in the profession of perfectionism, I am inclined to interrupt the writing process every sentence or so to correct a misplaced word or rework a clunky passage. I'm doing it now in fact, stopping in my tracks to consider how the informal "clunky", set amongst more greater eloquence, might prove abrasive to the eye or ear, and stop the reader dead in their tracks. And, as I rummage for the right words or rhythm the story I am attempting to relay ebbs gently from my mind.

Lying there flat out in the coffin like space between the central bulkhead and the wall of assorted belongings constructed between my cabin companion and myself, I fought a constant battle between the forces of imaginative writing, accurate storytelling and a creeping fatigue which frequently threatened to immerse my body in creativity sapping lethargy. The previous day's events - the powerful gusts which began striking our sails with relentless regularity, the apparently permanent list of the saloon which made tea making a perilous activity, and the sheer joy of peering through a porthole to see conical silhouette of the Scottish Holy Island rising steeply from now calmed waters - loomed bright and bold in my head. The words too, which would bring them to life when applied to a webpage were not difficult to find. But their relentless refinement taxed my already depleted resources, resulting in stunted stamina and a growing impulse to succumb to sleep so as to be refreshed for the morning's tasks.

Pushing back against the urge to close my eyes and rest my mind, I ploughed on for another paragraph or two. But by now the pressure was becoming too great, and the very real need to put down my pen was becoming fixed in my brain. The sentences became shorter. Workmanlike reportage replaced evocative imagery, and the very foundation of my writing, the enjoyment of playing with words to enact scenes from memory or imagination, began to shift in the sand. And before long, that mind, once active with thoughts and ideas, would relinquish its burden and relax into slumber, leaving the stub of a story hanging lifelessly like a beautiful bridge to nowhere.