I'm Sick of You Already, Conservative Majority.

As anyone who caught even a passing glimpse of my various social media feeds will know, I'm not happy with the result of the recent UK election. I truly believe that having a Conservative government in power for another term will do irreparable damage to things that make the UK great. Things like the NHS.

I did everything I could to keep them out at the time - that is, I voted for another party. I shared a few stories expressing my desire for change and encouraged people to vote. And I accept that the voting system our country currently has in place ruled the Conservatives the winning party. I also think that our current voting system is hugely flawed, but whinging about that now won't make much of a difference.

Now is the time to be proactive about the things that can be changed. The next five years are going to be a struggle for every poor person, every disabled person, every LGBT person, everyone from a social minority. And instead of sitting back and taking it, I think that the time now is to make sure that the voice of every one of those people is heard. No matter what. I think that now is the time that as many people as possible need to start getting involved in politics, pestering their local MPs to do everything in their power to stop our government exploiting people.

While it means a lot of hassle that we could probably do without in lives that are stressful enough as it is, I think it's necessary.

The election was less than a week ago and already I'm distraught at some of the legislation the Tories are trying to pass, not to mention the horrific way they've arranged their cabinet. The new minister for equality, Caroline Dinenage, voted against gay marriage. The new justice minister, Dominic Raab, also has a funny idea of equal rights, having previously shown opposition to laws that protect both gender and racial equality.

One of the first things the Conservatives did following their recent freedom from their coalition with the Liberal Democrats (who, we are learning, did a lot more over the past five years than most of us gave them credit for) has been to scrap the Human Rights Act. It's all very well them saying they have another idea for how to go about it, but the idea as a whole utterly undermines the importance of human rights in the first place. The fact that they can just do that is horrifying. The one ray of sunshine this situation has is Nicola Sturgeon. Her, and e-petitions.

As well as this, they've pushed to restore the legality of fox hunting, shown support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and pushed forward the "snoopers' charters" bill that will require online organisations to retain and share individuals' private information.

All of this horrifies me. And it's all happened in less than a week. If I'm this distraught at what they can do to this country in such a short space of time, I can't imagine what they'll do to it in five whole years.

I will be doing everything in my power to stop them ruining the UK for everyone who lives here. For everyone who depends on it having a government that actually serves it people. This means I'll be writing about a million letters to my MP.

Who I do not expect to listen much to my concerns.

My MP is Iain Duncan Smith, who is quite well known now for figure-heading a lot of the legislation that caused a lot of people a lot of pain and suffering. His bigotry and total of lack of compassion is clear in his voting record, which shows him consistently cutting benefits, voting against gay and other minority rights and supporting war and nuclear weapon development funding.

I'm ashamed to live in his constituency. Which is a shame because I really like my house. And my area. And if I lived a few streets down, I'd have someone else. And literally anyone would have been an improvement on Iain Duncan Smith, as far as I'm concerned.

But I am still going to try. I will do whatever I can to make his toxic decisions difficult to make. I don't care how much it takes out of me or how impossible it might seem.

I suppose I shall start by writing to my MP about the things I am already taking issue with following his party's success. I will write as many letters as it takes to get his attention, to remind him that he is supposed to represent the opinions of his constituents and that I will make my opinion known at every opportunity.

After that, I'll do whatever else I have to. I hope I'm not alone.

I will not let any government tear apart my country without putting up a fight.

A Reflection on the 2015 Election.

(I really didn't mean that to rhyme, but hey, it happens.)

Last night, I knew I wouldn't stay up until morning watching the election results get gradually revealed. I might have enjoyed it, but I'd been up since 6am so it wasn't going to happen.

I looked away from the results quite early in. Otherwise they would've distracted me or maybe upset me. When I shut down my computer and started winding down, though, the country was in pretty good shape. There were three female Labour MPs in parliament. And no one else. I liked that.

I woke up this morning and everything had changed.

Somehow, the Tories were back in power.

A similar thing struck me then as it had at the last election. My social media news feeds are full of people like me. Loud liberal people. It gave off a false sense of security. Not so secure that I didn't vote, of course. But secure enough that I wasn't too afraid of what would happen come morning. I figured, whoever was going to get in, it wasn't going to be any of the far right crazies and it wouldn't still be the Conservatives, so it's all good. Any of the others would at least have been an improvement.

I was wrong. I don't think I'm the only one to have experienced that this morning.

My news feeds now are full of people saying that they're going back to bed for the next five years.

On the one hand, is hugely reassuring that a lot of the people in my life understand what this means for the country and aren't prepared to tolerate it. Whatever unrealistically comforting impression it gives me of humanity, I'm glad that those are the people surrounding me.

On the other hand, no matter how disappointing things are, that is not productive. It doesn't make a difference. It doesn't get rid of them. It doesn't put pressure on them to pay more attention to their people. It doesn't let them know that we are not prepared just to bend over for them for the next five years.

Instead, let's not go back to bed. Let's use these next five years positively. Let's do what we didn't do last time and be proactive throughout this entire period.

Everyone who is disappointed now still gets a say at some level. Giving in just because we didn't get the leader we wanted is an option, but it will suck for everyone. For everyone who didn't want the Tories back in, I say, make them aware of your disapproval at every opportunity, get involved in local politics and make sure that your representative knows your views on every issue that is raised in the next five years.

Let's continue fighting it and let's do it harder.

Your Pocket Is Not A Good Cause

At the end of last month, the world was talking about the impact of Indiana's recently passed 'religious freedom' law. Memories Pizza was among the first businesses to take advantage of it to refuse to serve LGBT customers. After receiving a huge backlash of people refusing to support such discriminatory behaviour, the pizzeria quickly closed.

And was then suddenly thrown an enormous amount of conservative report. Fuelled by famed American bigot Rush Limbaugh, the pizzeria owners were gifted nearly $850,000 by homophobes across the US.

In reaction to that overwhelming hate, Pizza 4 Equality was founded.

It seems wonderful.

In response to people funding hate and bigotry, Scott Wooledge created the Pizza 4 Equality GoFundMe page to prove that there are more people who would support love and acceptance for non-heteronormative people then would continue to throw money at the late Memories Pizza. The aim was to raised more than $850,000 to put towards Cyndi Lauper's True Colours Fund, a charity which promotes equality for LGBT people. In particular, the money is said to be going towards tackling LGBT youth homelessness, as it is estimated that 40% of homeless youth in America are LGBT teenagers who have been shunned or disowned by their families because of their sexuality.

This is a wonderful idea. The way that this campaign has tried to bring people together is a beautiful example of how humanity can combat hate. I got really excited about it. I even started writing about it in a feel good, 'look at all the nice people doing nice things' style article for the website I regularly contribute to.

And to do that I did some research to make sure I had all the facts right.

And came across this PDF of Cyndi Lauper's True Colours Fund's tax exemption form from 2013, which is marked 'Open to Public Inspection'.

And I was disgusted.

On the front page of it, there is a breakdown of all the money raised for the charity and how that money is then spent.

In the 'Prior Year' section, the money is broken down quite responsibly. Out of a total of $732,141 raised, a reasonable amount was spent on staff salaries and other expenses, leaving a grand total of $418,678 that actually go towards LGBT support.

That's fantastic. That's a lot of money that goes towards providing help for people who are regularly and cruelly prejudiced against in American culture.

But it didn't last.

Look back at that same section of the page to the 'Current Year' section. In 2013, the True Colours Fund raised a hell of a lot more money than the year before - when combining grants and contributions, investment income and 'other revenue' reaching a total of $874,467. That's nearly $150,000 more than in 2012.

That's incredible.

So how did they only have $40,509 going towards LGBT support in the end?

It even says in that one small box, before you look into anything deeper, salaries and employee benefit costs rose in that year from $127,653 to $391,500. That's more than double the amount. There is also a mysterious $391,437 in 'other expenses' - again more than twice the amount spent in 2012.

How is it possible that a charity can raise more money than ever before, and still put less of it towards actually doing good? What is the point in actually being a charity if it puts so little of its proceeds towards making a difference in the world?

Page 10 of the PDF offers a breakdown of functional expenses, noting the $337,951 spent on salaries and wages, on top of the $142,000 salary, plus nearly $8,000 in benefits of Executive Directer Gregory Lewis (found on page 7). Along with spending over $36,000 on 'office expenses', nearly $29,000 on 'information technology' and almost $53,000 on 'travel', their largest expense of $181,243 is categorised under 'Fees for services: Other'.

This is unbearably vague and an insult to the people who have donated money in good faith to this charity. It's disgusting behaviour and it exploits the people that the charity is supposed to support and the people who want to help do that. A lot of money is getting thrown away on unidentified, miscellaneous nothing.

There is no way that this is an acceptable way to use money that people have given specifically to further what is supposed to be a good cause.

And while the True Colours Fund is far from the only charity doing it, it is one that is currently claiming to be making a conscious effort to stand up to exactly that kind of exploitation. At least Memories Pizza was honest about its seediness.

Often, when people want to do something nice within the world, they put money towards a charity that they believe stand for something worth believing in. If the charity then keeps that money, no good is done. People who are entrusted with doing good in the world are doing nothing more than abusing the kindnesses of others. It's morally despicable.

People who want only to do a good deed should not have to do tons of background research into charities to make sure that the money will actually go to a good cause. The money simply should. It shouldn't be an option that it goes into someone's pockets.

It's fair to pay charity CEOs and Directors and whatever other big administrative roles pull in such huge cheques a comfortable amount of money, because their job is important in making a difference in the world. But when it leaves so little left to the actual charity, they may as well not bother running a charity at all. For all the good it really does.

If You Want to Run a Country, Grow the Fuck Up.

I am quite openly disappointed with the state of politics in the UK. I think a lot of stupid decisions have been made in the time I've been paying attention to it, particularly in the last five years. I think that not enough is being done to educate people about politics for the general public to properly understand it, unless they go out of their way to learn. Which is difficult because political journalism is in an equally pitiful state.

Most of the things reported about politics is either scare-mongering or stupid. A lot of the governmental decisions reported are the ones that wind people up or cover up something more serious or just make it look like politicians are doing something more than wasting tax money. Of the rest, most political news is only scandal - MPs have been claiming expenses they're not entitled to or having sex with someone their not supposed to, somehow.

Or it's gossip.

Recently I was flipping through a Metro and saw an article that had no other news but that a Labour MP thought Ed Milliband was a wanker.

I don't really care what anyone thinks of anyone else. People are entitled to their opinions. And Ed Milliband isn't doing a great job of making Labour look great right now. So it's not an unreasonable opinion to have.

But it's not the kind thing that political journalism needs to be focussing on. Most of the places that actually convey useful, worthwhile information are private blogs that are committed to making sure that someone reports properly on politics because the media sure as hell isn't going to.

More importantly, it's nothing like professional to talk that way about the representative of your own party. Firstly. it makes him look childish and immature. And it shakes people's faith in the whole party. How can anyone expect them to run a country if they can't even keep their own MPs from calling them petty names?

I tried to find the article on Metro website, but I couldn't find it online. But it's not like there aren't plenty more instances of MPs slagging each other off like stroppy teenagers.

Nick Clegg was a guest on Adam Hills's The Last Leg recently and got a huge laugh by intimating that he thought Boris Johnson was more tosser than statesman. Which doesn't generate faith in the his commitment to the coalition, but it was at least on a comedy show, designed to make people laugh rather than educate people about the political situation of their country. In that kind of setting, it can be excused.

But when politicians and MPs bickering at and about each other makes the mainstream news, then it makes the country as a whole look petty and silly. If the people in charge of running the country can't even treat each other with respect, as adults and colleagues, as people who have a serious job to do and need to work together to it, then how can any of the general population feel comfortable depending on them?

It's getting worryingly common seeing people with this kind of authority behaving like toddlers. It's no wonder the UK is in worse shape than it has been in years.

Right now, the person who seems to taking politics seriously - and getting attention for it - is Eddie Izzard.

His intention to run for London mayor has been publicised for a while now. The vast majority of interviews concerning it focus on how he'll make the shift from comedy to politics work. But when he speaks about other politicians, he does it with respect even when he disagrees. He said of David Cameron:

“He is center-right, so I’m okay with that. He’s not my party — ‘It’s more about the few than the many.’ He said he wouldn’t take apart the National Health Service, and he sort of did.”

And that's it.

He doesn't call him a prick or a wanker or a tit or a waste of public funding. Which I sometimes do. By speaking frankly and tactfully, he acknowledges that it's up to Cameron to make the decisions he wants to while he's in power. He isn't petty or childish or mean. He recognises the difference in their political views and the right of people to hold views that contrast to his own. And he doesn't judge any person's character or personality because of it.

He knows that there isn't space for bickering and name calling when it comes to something as  important as running a country.

I can call politicians a tit. I am 21. (For three more days.) I am less than a year out of university. Most importantly, I am allowed to be immature sometimes because I am not in charge of a fucking country. Comedians can call politicians a tit. It's their job to make people laugh. And the fact is, it makes the general public feel good to mock the people in charge, the people who make the rules that in turn make them feel exploited.

It's different if you are also a politician. If you have any responsibility over other people's lives, you have to work together with the people who are supposed to be doing it with you. You don't achieve anything by squabbling. And you definitely can't be trusted with governing other people's lives if you don't understand that.

Izzard is about the only person behaving like an adult and it's ridiculous that there aren't more people treating the government of our country like the serious deal that it is.

I Want Mars, But Not Like This

Since Curiosity landed, the scientific community has been all kinds of excited about mankind's plan for Mars. While generally, the most reputable organisations are keeping fairly low-key about their plans and expectations beyond learning a few bits of stuff, some people got really excited.

For a while, there was a fair amount of talk about Mars One. And it did seem legitimately cool. And, while it didn't seem likely to happen immediately, it didn't seem all that far-fetched in the long run. It admitted that it was a fairly new project that still required a lot of work and it was backed some really cool people, including Nobel Prize-winning CERN scientists. Who else are you going to trust with your trips to Mars?

And then this happened.

And it broke my heart.

I won't say I had the best hopes in the world for Mars One, but I really did love the idea. I thought that if something like that could really get done, then maybe humanity was finally learning something. It would finally learn to work together, to watch how a society can work when it started over from scratch. It could teach us so much about what we're doing wrong here on Earth and make a huge difference to the way society is run.

And that's on top of all the cool stuff we'd learn about Mars.

Which would have been a lot.

And would in turn have taught us more about the universe, the solar system, our own planet. We could have made so much progress from being there. It is literally a whole other world for us to explore and learn from and utilise.

And even if Mars One didn't work out like it had hoped to, it would have at least made some kind of headway in getting us to Mars. Having a well written plan might have been enough to make a difference to what other organisations are doing about space exploration.

So I feel bad for everyone involved. I'm happy that I missed out on what looked like an incredible opportunity.

I'm aware that, given Lansdorp's response, there is room to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I don't think I want to. I'm sick of putting my faith into people who claim to care about something other than profits.

And what disturbs me is that once people decide this is a scam, they'll start to gradually stop caring about the genuine ventures people want to take. All too often, people make assumptions based on one experience. Or one high-profile story. And it does damage to the enthusiasm behind legitimate enterprises. And it's going to happen now.

I'm still excited about exploring Mars - about exploring all of space. I'm still going to follow Curiosity. And Cassini. And the Voyagers. Because I enjoy learning about the universe. I think it's the most exciting thing there is. Space didn't do anything wrong.

But I'm disappointed in people. And, while that's not new, it still hurts.

The Giant Vulnerability Purge.

At the end of this month, I will turn 22.

Me in a blanket decorated with penises.

There is no longer a milestone birthday until I am 40. I’m about as prepared to be a grown up as I’m ever going to be. I have a first class degree and can hold down a steady job. Just because I’m surrounded by people who would swear I behave like a five-year-old 95% of the time I’m with them doesn’t make that any less true.

But I’ve still got a fair amount of sorting-out to do before I’m properly on track. I’m not too upset about this because I know a lot of people in about the same position as me who aren’t doing as well. People who don’t have the same prospects as I do, despite having done basically the same amount of work. I also know I’ve got a great group of people around me who will help me and support me in everything I do.

But I also have a problem I should probably work on if I ever want this to go anywhere.

The thing I’ve wanted to do as a career forever has always been writing. 

Always. 

But I’m hugely self-conscious about it. I don’t know why I am. I remember a time when I wasn’t. I remember shoving my stuff in everyone's faces. If there was a particular instance which made me change my attitude, I don’t recall it. But I don’t like showing people my work any more, unless I’ve written it specifically with the intention of giving it to them. I don’t know why that is. I know that my inner critic can be a bit harsh sometimes, but I also know that that can be a positive thing, if I can use it properly. And I know that that's not really the problem. I can be as happy with a piece as I think I'm going to get and still not want to show it to anyone. I can read back something I've written and think "Yeah, this one is good!" And still keep it to myself. Just because.

I’ve thought about this a fair amount now, because it’s an issue I’ve had for a while. And by ‘a while’ I mean years. Apart from the stuff I've had to share at uni, I don’t remember sharing very much of my own writing with anyone since I was about fifteen or sixteen.

And the conclusion I have come to is that the best way to get over this is to lay out everything I’ve done and see how people react. Truthfully, I don’t especially expect people to react much at all. 

But I think that the act of doing it will be nonetheless therapeutic. I might learn something about myself. I might actually get some responses from people. If anyone actually reads this. I probably won't. But at the very least I’ll feel productive while I’m doing it and proactive for a short time afterwards. And having it out there will, I hope, do something to reinforce what I'm supposed to be doing.

I’m going to try to put this as chronologically as I can. But I don’t know how well I’ll do.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer for a living. Like all kids, I occasionally decided I’d rather be astronaut, but writing was the rock to which I always clung when there was nothing else.

Books were always my thing. I don’t remember it personally, but my dad loves telling the story of how he took me to Toys R Us and said I could pick any toy I wanted. And I picked a book. He says he was so proud. (Cue daddy issues theory about why this stuck with me. I won’t argue that that isn’t a possibility. But I don't especially care either. If I love something, I'd like to be left in peace to love it, no matter what the root of it.)

Lots of people read stories to me. I got a bedtime story every night. There were stacks of books at my house and both grandparents' houses that I read during the day.

I learned to read by myself at a really young age. My mum was a child carer when I was young, so we had loads of proactive learning toys in the house for when other children came round. Things in my house were labelled so I could read what they were. My mum practiced teaching on me with educational toys and games. Words came easily to me.

When I was a really little kid, I’d carry around a notebook with me and write stories in it. I still do. Except, now, it’s more likely to have To Do lists and article ideas in than actual stories. Sometimes that's because I type them up directly on my laptop. But often it's not. I remember being very young – in the Four Plus, or Year One, at a really early stage of my education – and writing a story about Tom and Jerry in my brand new notebook while the other kids in my class had playtime. It was what I enjoyed doing.

Back then, when my huge handwriting took up most of the page, the stories I wrote were awful rehashes of other stories I’d been told. Obviously. I was five. I’m not going to pretend I was some kind of original genius.

Whenever I slept at my nan’s house, she would always tell me a story about a group of little girls who all conveniently had the same names as me and my cousins. It was the same story every time. We – they – went wandering in the forest, came across a cottage, found some kittens and lived happily ever after with our new pet kittens. Not a great story arc, but I must have written it out a dozen times in various forms before I could come up with anything of my own.

After school, there were always tons of other kids in my house because of my childminder mum. I remember very vividly that we’d make picture books. We’d have a piece of coloured card for the front cover which we could draw a picture on and we’d make up the pages ourselves. A big picture on each one and a story or a description or something underneath. Then they’d all get stapled together and then we had a book by us. I remember enjoying that.

I was about three when my dad went to university. I used to try to help him. Another story he tells that I have no recollection of is the time when I stole one of his Business Studies course books. I read it cover to cover in front of him. I wanted to prove that I could help him to convince him to stop kicking me out of the study. Even though my contributions were basically just to sit on his lap and mash the keyboard.

Eventually, the only way he could get me to leave him alone was to get me my own computer. Well, to start with, it was a keyboard with a floppy disc drive plugged into a TV and a joystick. But it was fine. It had a Noddy game on it and a keyboard I could mash.

When he got a new computer for himself, I got his old one. I had his hand-me-down computers practically until I left for uni. By that point, I had grown out of Noddy, but this one had a new game.

Microsoft Word.

Yeah, I was that kid.

I no longer needed the endless supply of notebooks. I had unlimited paper now. And I wrote my stories on my computer. Every day. I’d come home from school and I’d read or write for most of the evening. Even when I played video games, I had my notebook and my reading book right next to me and I’d grab them at every save point and cut scene that took longer than five seconds.

I remember having friends round to my house and not wanting to show them any of my actual toys because Word was better. For me. Sometimes, they agreed. I remember spending afternoons with the kids I got on with best just writing stories together.

I’d write all the time. I’d write stories and print them off and give them to people for their birthdays. I'd write stories and show them to my parents and grandparents and friends and cousins just for the hell of it. I’d write stories and forget about them. I don’t remember much of what I wrote because so much of it has blurred into the white noise of generic memory since I’ve grown up. I was young and immature enough that it probably doesn’t really matter.

Every weekend, I'd go to my paternal grandparents' house and play with my cousins. And for a long time, we'd spend that day writing a play. By which I mean, I'd spend that day writing a play and then in the evening my cousins and I would perform it for our Nan and parents. I remember that being a lot of fun. For me. I don't think my cousins enjoyed it as much, especially not as they got older. That stopped altogether when they became teenagers and started having their own lives. My younger cousins never put up with my bossing them around like that.

When I was twelve, my nan collected coupons from the Daily Mail (forgive her, she bakes great cakes) and when she had enough, they would publish my book.

So I had to write a book.

I hadn’t ever committed to anything that big before. I’d always wanted to write books, but I’d never finished anything of that length. If anything ever got longer than a few pages, I tended to let it trail out to nothing. I had so much that was unfinished. I had never really planned anything properly.

I still didn’t plan anything properly. I had very little concept of sitting down and planning each point and knowing what was going to happen next. I didn't even know how long a story was going to be when I started writing it. I had no idea how many words made up a book or how many pages on a Word document made up a decent amount of book-sized pages. I sort of assumed that once something was done, I'd just know and it'd probably be long enough that it mattered. I hadn't ever been exposed to any writers who had gone through the writing process, so I made a lot of childish assumptions. I might have thought to Google it, back when it was the only real interest I had, but I wasn't allowed the Internet for a stupidly long time. (Which I maintain is silly because, even now, in total control of my own Internet and with no restrictions on it whatsoever, I still very rarely come across perverts or porn.)

Then, I liked to go on an adventure with what I was writing. I wanted writing to feel like reading.

For anyone who doesn’t know, this is literally the worst attitude to have if you want to be a half way decent writer. I became aware of this not long after that first abysmal book attempt and I understand it a hell of a lot better now. But as a writer you have to know every single tiny detail of your story world, even if it's completely irrelevant to the story you're telling, even if the reader will never know.

Obviously, my writing was hollow and had no idea what it was doing. For a twelve year old, it wasn’t bad, I suppose. If I looked at any twelve year old now and someone told me they’d written a seventy thousand word manuscript, no matter how much it sucked, I’d be impressed

But because it was me, clearly I was a terrible child and should have put more effort in. That’s just how internal critics work.

At least, it’s how mine does.

Trying to think clearly, I believe I'm stuck somewhere between being way too harsh on myself and hugely underestimating the skills of many twelve-year-olds. I don't know much about twelve-year-olds now that I'm not one.

I cringe when I think of that book. I know it's irrational, but I don’t like the fact that it’s there, a testament to how clumsy and clunky and unorganised my writing used to be. When I was twelve. When I was literally a child. When I was barely into double figures and couldn't spell a lot of long words, despite desperately wanting to be able to use them.

My point is, I got it done. 

I didn’t plan it. I made the whole thing up as I went along. I hadn’t got out of the habit of including all my friends in the story. But at least this time, they were characters, not just plagiarised directly from real life. My editing was half-arsed at best. Most of it was completely unedited – I just scrolled through the pages not reading a single word, thinking “eh, it’s probably fine. All this bit is fine.”

But I spent all day every day on it. I filled my notebooks with it. I got home and locked myself away from everyone and typed up what was in the notebooks and wrote more and more and more until the sound of my keyboard was keeping my parents awake. It helped having a deadline to stick to – the submissions only lasted so long and then coupon offer closed. And I was determined to get my book published.

And I did. It was called The Black Dragon. There are four copies of it in the world. I think my mum has one. My nan has one, displayed in the same cabinet as my dad's dissertation. She hasn't read it all the way through. My dad has one framed above his fireplace in a circle of photos of me and my siblings and cousins. I sent the last one to my friend Heidi, who had a dragon named after her, who had moved to France just after I started it.

My dad was impressed with it. Sort of.

He pointed out the typos to everyone. But I also overheard him telling someone that he couldn't have done it and that he thought it was brilliant that I’d decided to write it from the perspective of the dragon. As if it had been a conscious decision that I'd put loads of thought into.

After that, I decided I would not write anything shorter than that. If I’d done it once, I could do it again. And I didn’t see the point in writing anything less. It didn’t get attention. People didn’t care about anything less.

(Despite having cleaned out three Bedfordshire libraries, in all of my obsessive personal reading, I’d never really come across anything that took short stories seriously as a literary genre. I didn’t properly until I reached university. Now, I think they’re cool. They’re fun, and Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning was all kinds of beautiful. But … deep down, it’s still books that does it for me. I think it probably always will be.)

So that’s what I did.

I continued to suck at writing long fiction. I got naturally better just because I was doing it more often. The same way you improve at anything. And because I read a lot. But generally, I still made all the mistakes you’d expect someone with no advanced technical training to make.

English teachers loved me. I got top marks in every English class I was ever in. I was dedicated and, when I was asked to write a story, I handed in twenty pages the next day. I got top marks the whole time.

And in my spare time, I was at home writing books. Vague, unplanned, weird books based on passing fancies and Adam Ant lyrics. But they were words on a page the length of your average book and that was what counted as far as I was concerned at the time.

Since that first one, I finished five more. I still have the manuscripts. Saved on the first computer I wrote them on, and every computer I've had since, and every memory stick I used to transfer them over. As clunky and hideous as they are.

They didn’t get published by the Daily Mail. Thankfully.

But my dad did decided to self-publish them on Lulu.com. He wanted to get a real copy of them each for himself. At first, I let him. He has the stack of them at home. I think they’re still available online, if anyone really wants to see. Even if I would rather you didn't. I’ve wanted him to take them down for a while, but we haven’t spoken about them much. I updated them once with a re-edit. They got next to no attention, and I'm quite pleased with that.

I’ve flicked through the bound copies at my dad's house more recently and, objectively, they’re not that bad. For a child. I’ve seen published writers make some of the same technical mistakes and typos. And they’re not uninteresting. As far as children's ideas go.

But there’s just a giant part of me that thinks I can do better. And it won’t listen to the part of me that says it doesn’t matter because it happened so long ago. Because people will know I did it years ago and not consider it representative of what I do now. And yet I still judge.

While I never stopped writing, I became more critical of myself – more like I am now – I haven’t finished anything that length since I was about sixteen.

I remember starting something when I was seventeen. And when the circle of friends who inspired it fell apart, I gave up on it. I started something the summer before I left for university when I was eighteen. And in the first few months of my Creative Writing course, I listened to everything they said about technical skills and planning and ambition and I think I panicked because I gave up on that one a few weeks into my first semester.

Even though it was the most planned thing I’d ever done.

I decided I’d go back to it later and started on a new project.

I never went back to it.

I told myself that, if I was going to take this seriously, I needed to be doing a lot more, with more structure behind it. I gave myself a personal target of 5000 words per week outside of my school work. And I hit it. Every week. They weren’t necessarily good words. But that’s what editing is for. I felt alright with that because we were told over and over again at uni that editing can perhaps be more important to the final product than the actual writing of it.

Sometimes, I’d knock the 5000 words out in a night. Sometimes, I wouldn’t. I'd struggle through those 5000 words a couple of sentences at a time. But I’d always be there by the end of the week.

And then I gave up on that project too. I lost faith in the plan. Probably with good reason. It was kind of rushed. Based on a vague idea. I could have finished it and gone through with it and edited the hell out of it and maybe got it some attention. But I don’t think it would be the kind of attention that would be ideal. Even if it was the kind of attention I might have wanted, for a bit.

It was about then that I decided I wouldn’t bother to write anything that didn’t have some kind of deeper meaning to it. I didn’t want to preach, or anything like that. I didn’t want to tell anyone how to live their lives or what to do.

But I still read so much that most of the books I consume blur away into a grey fuzz unless they really stand out. There are few that are still vivid to me despite not having read them for years. Some for a good reason, some for a bad reason. But at least they stood out.

I wanted to write the things that stood out. The things that make people feel something. I wanted to write the kind of books that you had to calm down after.

So I stopped churning out words. I had started making plans, but they weren’t great plans. They were still quite vague and I hadn’t put much thought into representation or overarching metaphor or even emotion very much. I just had a sort of cool story that I hoped would still be cool if I expanded on it.

And now that I was doing it properly, that wasn’t enough for me. I could’ve tossed out a Fifty Shades rip off if I wanted to. I know a hell of a lot more about BDSM than Erica James, I can promise that. But I didn’t want to.

I wanted to be so much better than that. I still do.

But I felt a bit out of depth with my planning.

So I focussed on other things. I wrote some short stories, some for uni, some for myself. I didn’t really do much about them. They were for me to practice. I think I did okay. I still like some of them, which is about the most I can hope for right now. I wrote and produced a bunch of short films. I’ve blogged about them before. Some of them went really well. Only one of them went really tits-up. And we’ve made our peace with that one. I tried poetry (I got really into Phil Kaye) but I don’t think I did it all that well. I don’t think I’ll go back to it too much. I wrote a comedy set for a module at university and that was brilliant. It was loads of fun. I have friends – friends who are comedians, in fact – who tell me I should do it again. But … I don’t know. Maybe it’s because it’s more effort going into something that wasn’t what I wanted to do long term. Maybe I’m just judging myself some more. I suspect it's more to do with being more comfortable doing it around other people who have only done it once. I don't really want to do it around people who are good enough at it that they're attempting a real career in it. I started this blog. For a while, I maintained it fairly solidly. Then it started overtaking my university work. And I relaxed for a bit. And then I got a bunch of part time jobs around university and this and I slacked a bit with it. But I’m hoping to get back to this more often now. I think I can manage that at least.

I wrote some articles in my first year of uni for a friend of a friend who was running a website. I stopped when it changed to vlog format. He started a new website shortly after I left uni, and now I get paid regularly to write seven articles a week for him. I enjoy that.

Writing for the site keeps me sharp, keeps me good at writing for deadlines, and gives me some sense of hope that I still might be a proper writer one day. One that doesn't need a day job. Theatrical sigh.

And it’s nice to be able to say that I get paid for my writing. Even if it’s not a lot. It feels nice. And hopefully it looks good on my CV. And James promises to be an excellent reference if I apply for any writing jobs.

I have half a plan left over from my Novel Writing module in my third year of university. Sometimes, I decide I’m going to get back to that. I have some other ideas I’ve jotted down that I’d like to get on with. At some point.

I have a nine-to-five day job to pay the bills. That takes up a lot of my time. What with writing seven articles a week as well, I don’t find a lot of time for other writing, and I’m mentally drained more often than I’d like to be.

Or maybe I’m still just scared. And I just tell myself I’m exhausted and busy. Because the part of me that has judged me really harshly before is now more afraid than ever because I don’t have a tutor there to tell me specifically and objectively what I’m doing wrong.

As if any of my old teachers wouldn’t reply if I emailed them.

I know that I have a huge problem with the publishing industry in itself and I won't pretend that that isn't holding me back. I don't like how driven by money it is. I have the same problem with film and music and I go out of my way to back Kickstarter projects and listen to new stuff on Soundcloud because I don't believe that what makes the most money is what is definitely the best. And the writing industry is the same. It's why clickbait articles exist. Because writing that is all style and no substance appeals to the lowest common denominator makes money. And so it gets the most funding and marketing by the agencies that profit off it. Learning about the publishing industry in university, about how they market you and about how they decide what they can do with you and about the sacrifices you have to be willing to make if anyone is going to take you on, put me off getting involved in altogether.

I've looked into self publishing and I don't like it. It has too much of a negative reputation attached to it. Too many people self-publish truly shitty stories that it's not worth trawling through it all to find the stuff that might be good. And I am desperately sorry that I feel that way, but I do.

I've thought about generating an online presence - being active on Twitter and blogging a lot and maybe throwing some stories around and hoping that people will start recognising my name. From every angle, it seems that that's going to be the best way to go about this. To gather a bit of a following and then maybe get an Unbound book going and hope that I'm popular enough that people will fund it. And there isn't a reason I haven't put more effort into that. Into keeping up this blog and sharing stories in different places. Into actually telling people I still write sometimes.

Not unless it's just this self-critical sense of it all being so scary and impossible. I was in a big London Foyles recently and I wandered through five floors of books. And I love going to huge, flagship bookshops and seeing all the literature and getting excited by all the words I can have.

And now that everything is starting to feel all real, like I have to be a proper grown up now and that there's no more chance to put this off, it's daunting. Seeing bookshops with five storeys of literature and knowing that I have to compete with that after I've got the attention of a publisher. It's exhausting just thinking about it.

But there.

There is my purge. And it is going where people can see it.

I need people to. When I was started the Novel Writing module in my third year, the first thing we were asked as a group was if anyone had completed anything that was novel length, even if it sucked. By someone who I knew to be lovely and supportive and honest and who I knew at the time would've been impressed by that, but would be disappointed now knowing that I didn't say that.

No one else in the class raised their hands. So nor did I.

And I didn't even make an excuse to myself for why I didn't want to.

At that point, I’d been regularly posting to this blog for a year. I’d been sharing my fiction with my teachers and classmates more than I had in years and I was getting consistent Firsts and generally pleasant feedback on basically everything I wrote. And I still didn’t want to share the things that I used to do, even though they were things that I’d tell anyone else to be proud of.

So I needed this. So that you can tell me I’m judging myself too harshly and that I achieved more than most teenagers do and that all I have to do is stick with it. Because that is the obvious response to something like this

What I needed was to put this where everyone can see it. Because I have friends that already know this, and they tell me to be proud of it and to tell everyone. And even though I respect and value their opinion more than most other people, I still don't do it. If it's out there already for people to find and know and challenge me with, then I have no excuse. But I have to be the one to make that decision.

Whatever happens next, writing this has been nice. I feel alright about things. I am aware that in places, I seem terribly self-deprecating and miserable about it all. But I actually don’t feel bad at all. Surprisingly. I was sure I’d feel more trepidation about publishing this where I know people are going to see this. Maybe it's because I don't actually expect anyone to look at it. I definitely don't expect anyone to read to the end.

But I’ve got this strange feeling that it’s about time.

Failing all else, I just wrote more than 3500 words in less than three hours. And that’s got to count for something.

People Are Flinging Shit At Me.

I've recently been introduced to a new smartphone app called Fling. If you don't know what it is, it's your generic photo-sending app but, instead of sending it to a specific person or group of people that you select, it flings it to a random 50 people who also have the Fling app.

A friend of mine told me she was enjoying it and advised me to have a look at it if I got bored.

Then I got bored.

I thought it sounded like a laugh. Honestly, my gut reaction to that description of it was somewhat naive. My first thought was how much we could learn about the rest of the world. I thought about all the things I didn't know about culture in other countries that I'd pick up from the things that strangers found interesting enough to share. I thought how cool it would be to take it round a museum and share the things that fascinated me with people who weren't there.

And after using it five seconds I realised that that's actually quite a childish thought.

Because obviously people aren't going to send interesting things. They're not going to send the kind of exciting things you'd get excited about. They're going to send photos of their duck faces and their genitals and, for some reason, their knees.

I've been using it for not even two days and I've lost count of the times I've seen "mycock4urtits". As if there aren't boobs aplenty to be found on the internet. Without the hassle of asking for them. Or risking having a stranger mock a photo of your dick. (Because that's what girls do. We judge them. I promise.)

And yet, I am going to keep Fling. I am going to try to resist the urge to send photos of "no one cares" scrawled on a Post-It note every time I get a selfie or a testicle. And I am going to take it to museums and galleries and parks and places that are exciting and interesting and I am going to try to use it to educate some strangers.

I'll probably fail. But, I'll also enjoy knowing that I tried.