Video killed the radio star

It finally happened – I made it on to YouTube. Surprisingly, it wasn’t in a video of me slipping on the ice and falling on my backside in front of hundreds of students. Nor was it me holding up a baby and trying to get it to say ‘pizza’ so that millions of people around the world would comment on how cute my son/daughter was. (Please note: I do not have a son/daughter and do not have one in ‘the oven’, as it were, either…)

In fact, my YouTube debut comes in the form of a 6 minute clip of my Christmas play, ‘Who’s the Baby?’, and to be fair I’m not actually in the clip apart from my name appearing in the credits at the end along with a link to my website, but it’s a start nonetheless.

In an act of remarkable technical boldness (remarkable being a slight overstatement), I’m going to try and post the video link here:

Here it is–the world’s first chance to slate/praise my play…

It may not be the greatest piece of art ever created – in fact, I wouldn’t even begin to suggest that it might be – but it’s out there at least. And, as people sometimes rudely say when they burp, ‘better out than in’…

I’ve been quite a geek today, playing around with my websites and adding things like audio previews and this video clip to try and make everything look a little more jazzy. I suppose I should probably have included some actual jazz too, but it didn’t seem to fit the mood.

My mother-in-law has also posted on YouTube today and this one is a video of her granddaughter bending her toes (no, I’m not going to post the link here – but you can search for ‘bend your big toe if you like milk’ if you really want to…). Shall we take a vote on which video is likely to get the most hits?

Aside from website creation, I’ve been enjoying pretending to be other people again, writing monologues from the perspectives of teenage girls, men who almost got killed by their own fathers, and much more. Looking forward to getting my monologue collection out there soon!

Slightly self-indulgent of me I know but I’m just going to post my links one more time and then scamper off behind the settee before anyone shouts at me…

http://samlentonwriter.webs.com/

http://www.contemporarychristiandrama.com/

Sorry. I’ll be good next time and spend a few paragraphs complaining about pavements or something equally outrageous. Talking of outrageous, I’m pleased to see London was a little calmer last night, although less pleased to see Manchester getting in on the act. I know this blog has done some great things in the past (well, when I say ‘done’ I do of course mean, ‘failed to do but gave it a jolly good go’) trying to sort out our issues with rain and rubbish, but there would surely be nothing greater we could do than help in some way to put an end to this rioting. And so, if you know a rioter or someone who looks like a rioter (that’s right, we’re thinking of you) then why not send them to this web address for a good old read? Nothing stops people from mindless acts of violence like a good old read of a blog. Or so I assume anyway…

Alternatively (or, I should probably say, ‘additionally’), we could all start praying. Prayer’s always a good idea. Arguably, even better than reading this blog.

Panic

Listening to The Smiths this afternoon might not have been my wisest move. Hot on the heels from singing along to the words ‘Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham’, two songs later I was on to ‘London’ and now I’m about to listen to ‘Shoplifters of the world unite’. It is perhaps the most inappropriate playlist I could have chosen given the events of the last couple of days and yet it was, I promise you, entirely unintentional.

I certainly don’t want to make light of any of the events we’ve witnessed in London, Birmingham and elsewhere, particularly last night when Sky News stopped being a repetitive flourish of 15 minute headlines and became the gripping movie you just can’t stop watching. Unfortunately, the truth that hits you is that this simply isn’t a movie and, in fact, the building burning down on live TV is not some exciting explosion from a Bruce Willis film but rather the building from which five generations of a family have sold furniture to the community. Everything gone in a few moments of mindless violence. It is, quite frankly, heart-breaking and I pray that somehow we have seen the end of this or, at the very least, the worst of it.

I’m sorry for the slight break between the previous blog and this one. I’ve been creating two websites that I am ready for you to have a look at now and so I hope that you will enjoy having a browse and will feel free to offer me your honest thoughts once you’ve taken a look. You’ll notice that the blog has been doubled up on the personal site and that there are some other materials to check out. There is still a lot to be added though and so do check back when you can to see more!

Here we go…

Firstly, my personal site to provide news of my writing and to showcase some of my work: http://samlentonwriter.webs.com

(This will, hopefully, have a better web address in the future but this will do for now!)

Secondly, I’ve created a website to host and distribute the writing I do for churches: www.contemporarychristiandrama.com

As I said, there’s a lot more to add but at least it gives you an idea at the moment of what I’m putting out there.

OK, now this is much better – I’m listening to a song about a boy having a thorn in his side. Should be safe there. Saying that, the next one (which has just begun as I type this) is ‘Money changes everything’…

Cold Turkey

Right, time to put an end to this blog break and relieve the heart palpitations threatening the lives of my readers. 21 days is simply far too long to go without an entry. I suppose I should have realised that before I went away and set up a guest-blogger (like the supply teacher everyone prefers) to continue the merriment while I lay on the sunbed in Turkey.

Talking of Turkey, you probably don’t want to hear about just how beautiful the weather was, just how relaxing it was to spend 11 days lying around doing nothing, just how enjoyable it was to have the chance to read for hours on end, just how pleasurable it was to eat out at restaurants every meal or just how good the local lager was. So, I guess I won’t say anything about that then…

If it makes you feel any better, I did have to go through the experience of a 5 hour delay at the airport, which also gave me a taster of what it might be like to be homeless as I tried to sleep on a bench or on the cold floor outside the toilets. 12 hours after I’d been resting on a sunbed and here I was with not even the slightest bit of padding for my poor little head. I know many people have had far worse airport experiences, so I won’t allow this to become a ‘woe is me’ moment but it was tiring and frustrating nonetheless and did give me a slight glimpse of what many people have to go through on a daily basis. Not good.

I have to admit that I did check my own blog a couple of times while away (which, on the plus side, has now added Turkey to the list of countries from which someone has viewed my page – give it a few weeks and I’ll forget that it was me and will assume I have a new follower), just to check that everything was OK and that no-one had left me an urgent message saying that they couldn’t cope without an update. In fact, I found it quite difficult to detach myself entirely from this new ‘I’m a writer!’ persona I’m nurturing at the moment, and I scribbled down the opening chapter of novel number 2 one day mid-way through the holiday, along with a sketchy plan for the novel as a whole, which included features such as arrows, half-finished numbered lists, question marks and squiggly lines crossing out ideas. Desperate to read it yet? Strangely, it already has a title (and a far better title than novel number 1 to boot). Even stranger, the word ‘boot’ in the previous sentence gives you a massive clue as to what the novel is about. I mean, I’ve effectively given it all away if you think about it. Just play a little game of word association and it won’t take long to end up at the key word of the title. One clue: it rhymes with flu. Hopefully it’ll turn out to be just as contagious…

I also met a lovely family who spoke to me as if I were undoubtedly the next great author, for which I am very grateful, and so I do hope that if they have ended up reading this blog and if they come across the novel on its imminent launch that they won’t end up being too disappointed!

The next few weeks are big weeks in the life of Sam Lenton. They’re still 7 days long, in case you think I’ve struck a deal with God for a bit extra, but they’re days in which various writing projects are coming to a head and so I am hopeful that there will be news to share in the forthcoming blogs. If these entries become a little more self-centred than usual (I know, I struggle to see how that’s possible either) then I do apologise and I ask you to put it down to youthful exuberance and innocence rather than arrogant triumphalism or whatever else might spring to mind. Besides, there’s always the return to work at the end of August to bring me back down to earth anyway.

It’s good to be back.

Kindling

After writing a novel and a daily blog entry last week, it’s hard not to feel like a bit of a slacker this week. There’s been no novel, no play, no monologue. In fact, there’s barely been an email and just a single tweet. It’s almost like I don’t exist.

Lots of thinking has happened this week though and it mainly surrounds the issue of what to do with the big lump of writing I completed last week. It turns out that I may not need to go through the whole rigmarole (I’ve always wanted to type that word) of applying to dozens of publishers, receiving rejection letters and finding myself curled up in a little ball underneath the desk, as the lovely people at Amazon have gone and created something called Kindle Direct Publishing that may well provide an alternative path to glory. Or, at least, provide an opportunity for me to ‘get it out there’, as they say, and enable people to read this thing once and for all (or twice, if you fancy a re-read). I may have naively missed something crucial about all this that sends me crawling back to the space beneath the table but as it stands it looks quite tempting. It’s also possible to use a website such as Createspace or Lulu to provide print copies of the book on demand, so that might be an additional option.

So, what do people think about Kindle anyway? Sales have been amazing and it looks like the way to go but I haven’t gone there yet myself and so I’ve not really got much of a sense of what it’s like to sit down and read something on one for more than 30 seconds. The good thing, it seems, is that you don’t actually need a Kindle to read something on Kindle, as you can download Kindle software for your PC or laptop and read it on there. It still seems a bit weird though and I wonder how many people would take a punt on an unknown author, however captivating the name ‘Sam Lenton’ might be?

Lots of thinking has also gone into creating at least one website, possibly two, over the next couple of months and so I hope to be able to provide you with a link soon. Obviously, anything you can do to tell the world about me would be greatly appreciated. Try, if possible, to focus on the positives…

A brief cat update: we had a glorious repeat of the tongue-stuck-on-collar incident of a couple of weeks ago last night. Unfortunately, she seems to now be able to shake her tongue off the collar herself (admittedly with some effort) and so it’s clear that she needs me even less than I thought she did. On the plus side, hopefully the chances of ‘death by tongue-on-collar’ are diminishing by the day.

I’m afraid there’ll be a bit of a blog break for the next two weeks, as we are heading off on a much-needed holiday. The house will still be occupied though (by more than just the cat), so I’m afraid there’s no point publicising this news to your burglar friends. If, by the way, you do have burglar friends then can I please encourage you to work with them to get them to reform and change their ways? Burglary is wrong. There, I said it.

If the news of the blog break is coming as a devastating shock, remember that the previous 34 entries are still alive and well and so you can re-read and reminisce at your pleasure. Also, every entry apart from last week’s special blogs has the title of a song as it’s title, so I have effectively prepared a summer playlist for you. Why not try it out on Spotify? And, if that’s not enough, then I guess you could just compose a sonnet or whatever it is that the kids get up to these days.

See you in August!

Mini-blog-journal-type-thing Day 5

So, the writing week has come to an end. I feel like we’ve been through a lot together in these mini-blogs. We’ve covered all sorts of vital information, such as the number of cups of coffee I’ve had in the day, how many white vans have been parked outside and what the public (well, my street) must have thought as I marched purposefully towards my house yesterday evening clasping a larger-than-usual onion. You even know how many words I’ve written and how I’ve felt about it all. It’s like candid camera: the blog version. I mean, they say you should be careful about what you put on the internet, but I’ve just gone and put it out there like some sort of shameless exhibitionist. *Slaps wrist*

Here’s the good news: I actually finished the first draft!

I wasn’t expecting to succeed this week, particularly as I hadn’t looked at the novel for months, but I’ve had a really good week and I can now happily tell you that I’m at the print-it-out-and-discover-if-it’s-any-good stage. Let’s hope it is. If only to avoid it being a significant waste of paper.

Sadly, this is likely to be the end of the daily journals, as I need to return to my real job next week and so it’s not likely that I’ll have the time to experience interesting things, let alone write about them. The blog will continue sporadically though, as always, and will continue to press ahead with its primary aim of solving the world’s problems. We’ve pretty much dealt with rain and political revolution, so the prospects are good.

And now, by popular demand, here’s the final daily overview:

Words written: too hard to tell and quite a few have been deleted today, so I may even be in the red…

Lamp turned on/off: 8(ish) – why can’t the sun just make up its mind?

Tomb Raider games purchased in the Steam sale: 1

Sense of regret that I wasn’t at work this week: Absent

Length of a visit from a friend: 19 minutes

New websites created by members of my family: 1 (http://goingdeeperwithgod.com/index.php)

Best Google search: Girls names beginning with R (well, why do the thinking when google can do it for you?)

The feeling that I simply eat too many sausage rolls: moderate to high

Optimism Level: 85%

Chances of completing first draft of novel this week: 100%

That’s all for the mini-blog-journal-type-things that have documented my 5 days as a proper writer. If these have been the only 5 days I ever have then I will look back on them fondly and with much gratitude.

Thank you for being with me through them!