About The Rogue Verbumancer
A chemistry graduate consumed by the demons of apathy and disinterest. Likes tea and cheese. Sleeps less than he should.
So that’s February done and dusted then. Today’s post is coming to you from that strange a magical leap day that tacks itself to the end of February every four years. A place of wonder, mystery and Gregorian convenience. For me, at least, February has not been a month conducive to much writing. I do most of my writing on lazy weekends, sitting in my jim-jams, in front of a computer, drinking tea and slowly tapping out the odd word here and there. There were scant few such weekends this month. I’ve been off on a series of mini-adventures, gallivanting off into London to sample the musical styling of a German metal band and then a jaunt back to my quaint former home of Nottingham for a good old dinner and booze-up. The latter left me a little drained. I took Monday off from work planning to finish off this month’s wordascope in a blizzard of frenzied activity. Instead I spent the whole day sprawled on the sofa trying to work out if I was feeling sick or just really hungry. I eventually concluded it was a bit of both, although it was not so much “gut-rot” as it was, perhaps “gut-mould.” Any time in the evenings over the last few weeks was rapidly devoured by odd bits and bobs like cooking, and more recently work. Specifically defining my goals for the coming year in the strange and alien language of Managerial Moonspeak.
Although I feel as if I’ve made very little progress writing-wise this month my computer seems to disagree. There’s a file sitting snugly on my hard-drive that seems to contain about 2000 words, I’m not entirely sure how that happened. Can’t really complain about something like that can I?
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Leave a comment | tags: Callis, Faces in the Woods, Fantasy, Pictonauts, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
Well here we are then. This Friday the blog turns one. I’m not entirely sure how that happened. I started out on my journey into the seething maelstrom of the blogosphere with no destination in mind, no plan, no back-up, no ideas worth a damn. I left myself at the mercy of whatever fevered and diseased thoughts popped into my head, flying my blog airship by the seat of my mind-pants. Because my mind does indeed have pants, for it is a decent and upstanding mind that does not believe in gross public mental-nudity. Over the year the blog’s evolved from a rudderless catastrophe to a blog where I talk about writing and share what I create as I vainly try to make my way into a world saturated by a million other wannabes. The blog is still a catastrophe, but it is, at least, a directed and focused catastrophe.
I honestly didn’t think I’d make it as far as I did. I thought I’d try my very bestest the churn out a post a week, on something, anything. I expected to make it a couple of months before losing patience and motivation; the blog-ship would start to list dangerously, it’d start to lose lift and I’d start sinking through the foetid clouds like a big, fat stone made of cloth and iron. Finally crash landing in the great blog-graveyard beneath the swirling mists of words, the place where the discarded shells of old blogs lie strewn across the landscape, their corpsey husks half buried in toxic, black mud. This didn’t happen. I’m still going, fifty-seven posts and I’m still going. Sure, there was a blip in July but I was moving house and had no internet. As soon as I had internet I fixed that, I kept going. And I sure as hell don’t plan on stopping.
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6 Comments | tags: Birthday, Blog, Bon Anniversaire, Highlights, Ramblings, Thanks | posted in Ramblings
I am going to make a meandering and circuitous route towards a point, so please bear with me.
This, in many ways, is a week that a small part of me thought that I would never see. Way back in the mists of time when I was still in high school, before even my GCSEs I was a very different person to what I am today. That person is very much a stranger. Admittedly we share similar traits and predispositions, but the similarity is that of freshly hewn marble and a finished sculpture. In these less than halcyon days one of my now tragically estranged friends made a prediction, an eerie prophecy that has rung down through the years. I suspect it was made in jest, a throw away comment, but it’s niggled at the back of my mind for an awfully long time.
“By the time you’re 25, you’ll either be dead or sectioned”
For years I used this pronouncement of my inevitable doom as funny little anecdote when talking to people in the pub. Normally people who still lingered in that awkward purgatory of “not being complete strangers but not yet friends.” We all laughed, fun and merriment was had by all. Then I turned 25 and suddenly it wasn’t quite so funny.
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2 Comments | tags: Birthdays, new beginnings, New Tools, Prophecies, Scrivener, Writing | posted in Ramblings
As many of you know, I am a big fan of Twitter. 
Through its cyber-witchcraft I keep in contact with old friends and converse with strange people I never have, and probably never will, meet. People with beards, people with hats, people with kids, people with cats. It’s an interesting place filled with interesting people. Recently, one of the myriad of misfits, misanthropes, malcontents and musers I follow posted something on their blog. The person in question is a lady operating under the pseudonym of Porridgebrain. She’s one of those artsy types. She draws, she knits, she takes fancy artistic photographs, she also writes. Her blog hosted a wee writing workshop thing until it fell by the wayside last October. It has now, however, been raised from the grave. Once a fortnight a word is posted people write things based on that word, fun is had by all. Last Monday she threw up a post with the prompt of Second, and I thought I’d have a bash at it. Continue reading
5 Comments | tags: Clocks, Poetry, Seconds, Seconds Out, Tick-tock, Time, Writing | posted in Writing
So we finally arrive for but a brief and fleeting visit to the greatest of all months, February. I like February, not simply because it is the month of my birth (although I suspect that does bias me in some way), but because February is unique, flexible, changeable. February doesn’t play by anyone’s rules. With perhaps the exception of the rules of the Gregorian Calender, but you don’t mess with him, for he is well hard. February is the cool month, standing out from the crowd with it’s 28 days. Were February a person it would wear a leather jacket and have the strange and arcane powers of jukebox necromancy. It’s is also literally cool, well more cold really. The temperature of February being, on average, lower than the rest of the months of winter. Winter, of course, being the greatest of all the seasons, and even though having to pay for my own heating has lessened my love of winter, my love of February remains strong.
Not all people share my love of February however. An Old English word for February was Solmonath which means mud month, which if we’re honest is less than flattering. Although wikipedia tells me that the Finnish, for February is helmikuu, meaning “month of the pearl” which is quite beautiful. My blatant theft from wikipedia aside we should probably get down to business. What with it being the first of the month and all, you folks probably want a picture for the Pictonaut Challenge. You can be so needy sometimes!
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3 Comments | tags: Faces in the Woods, February, Kekai Kotaki, Pictonauts, Short stories | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
So here we are at the end of January, another month pissed away into the onrushing winds of merciless time. Time is such a dick sometimes, strutting around like it owns the place. Abstract concepts, eh? They’re bastards the lot of them. My futile struggles against the crushing inevitability of existence aside, it also means that it’s time to draw another instalment of the Pictonaut Challenge challenge to a close. So there’s a lining to this cloud. Whether it’s a lining of silver or a lining of a slightly less shitty brown on a wallowy, brown cloud of shit depends entirely on your point of view. Either way, you cannot begrudge my claim that there is, at the very least, some sort of lining.
So then, The Reliquary? What did you make of it?
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1 Comment | tags: Cyber-punk, Pictonauts, river blyth, Sailors, Sea, Short stories, The Reliquary | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
In the past I have made my opinions on eBooks very clear, I’ve waxed lyrical about the virtues of bookmarksand my joy and delight in all things solid and real. This love for solidity and realism has made me realise something about which I didn’t bring up in my initial tirade against them, something which in essence is far removed from a simple personal preference, something which has slightly sinister overtones. The rise of the internet and the relentless march of technology and data which followed has made a profound impact on modern life, it has changed the very way we view the world. This change isn’t static either, it’s a change that continues to evolve and shape society. I’m just not entirely sure if it’s a good thing any more.
Toasty
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4 Comments | tags: Books, Devaluation, eBooks, Internet, Knowledge, Luddite, Technology, Words | posted in Ramblings
I like getting things in the post. I always have and I certainly hope that I always will. The thing about post is that there’s always a little sense of anticipation before you tear back the crisp white paper fold of the envelope or rip into the resilient grey plastic of those weird waterproof jiffy bags. Amazon even have a tiny little cardboard pull strip on their small packets, It never seems to work properly though. The delight of opening the post is like a tiny, little, private birthday present, or a brief personal Christmas. Getting post of any sort, for me at least, makes me feel important almost special. And then there’s the little guessing game before you open as you try to work out what’s inside, as you test the weight and check the return address info on the back. It’s an almost spiritual experience. Were I to get a letter from the bank that simply read:
Dear Sir,
We have spent all of your money on whores and caviare. We decided this was the best use of your money as you are poor and by extension unimportant.
Love and kisses
Fat-Cat McBankerson
New Bankerson Bank Corporation
– “We are proper gits”
I would, of course, be slightly miffed that I wasn’t at least invited round to Fat-Cat McBankerson’s swinging bachelor pad for of an evening of snorting caviare off a hooker’s belly (that’s what you do with caviare right? I wouldn’t know, I’m poor.) But I would still be happy I got a letter. I like post. Post is fucking magical.
Last week I received something that I’ve been awaiting with bated breath for quite some weeks. Inside two, yes two, waterproof, plastic jiffy bags (sealed at opposite ends no less) all the way from Lake Stevens in Washington State, Americaville, came this sexy little thing:
That’s not glare from the window, that’s dramatic lens flare!
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1 Comment | tags: Jeremy Soule, Mail, Music, Post, Skyrim, Soundtracks | posted in Ramblings
You never realise how much you’ll miss something until it is gone. Something which had previously been mundane and common place leaves a yawning void. I have been recently betrayed by my keyboard. In that, the letter “c” has completely ceased to function. Now I’m in the purgatory of a depleted alphabet until such time that I get round to buying a replacement. But of course it can’t replace it with any old keyboard. Oh no, it will have to be the same model as the one I’m currently using. A model which is plagued with the inherent problem of letters ceasing to work. In the case of the keyboard before my currently one it was the cluster of “b, n and m” that stopped working. Why do I remain so faithful to this fundamentally flawed lump of technology? It’s because after using this type of keyboard, with its ever so slight curved arrangement of the letters, since 2005 I find it extremely inconvenient and discomforting to use anything else. This was the keyboard on which I taught myself to touch type, I know where the keys are, I can feel every tiny, little nuance it has and I so love the distinct clack of the keys, when the fury of the writing is upon me it sounds like the bastard child of a thunder-storm and galloping hooves. But in the interim I must make do.
It taunts me
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1 Comment | tags: copy-paste, keyboards, Lipograms, Ramblings, The letter c | posted in Ramblings
Today is a time of new beginnings and fresh starts, a time for contemplation, reflection and meditation on what has been and gone and what is yet to come. It is 2012, what wonders await us all? With it being the first of the month it’s time for the Pictonaut Challenge begin once again. If you’ve recently made a resolution to do more writing this year then the Pictonaut Challenge should serve as a nice little start. Only a thousand words a month, hardly anything in the way of rules and no real pressure to perform, how can any right thinking writer resist?
A new year always carries with it a little bit of mystery. No one really knows what’s in store, it is unknown and unknowable. This month’s picture has an air of the unknown about it, something I think is most fitting to the dawn of a new year.
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1 Comment | tags: Mystery, new beginnings, New Year, Pictonauts, Resolutions, Short stories, The Reliquary, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
The Rogue Verbumancer 