Challenges...

You’ve probably noticed this, frankly I’d be surprised if you haven’t, but I’ll say it anyway: Why has the media become so obsessed with challenges?

I’m not talking about challenges like scaling Everest or searching out the source of the Amazon. I’m not even thinking about the challenge of trying to get a parking space within a mile of a supermarket entrance if you’re not disabled.

I’m talking about the artificial obstacles that are considered critical for a challenge to be interesting. Take the X Factor, for example.

It’s a music competition, that’s what it is. People sing, lobotomised people vote, and the winner with the biggest dream, who always wanted it, wins. To eek it out over the 2/3rds of the year its on they have to come through rounds. Fair enough.

But to make it even more interesting to its viewing public (who, lets face it, would find The Sky at Night interesting if they could vote off a planet each week) some of the contestants have an unseemingly impossible obstacle to overcome – like coming from Northern Ireland, or voluntarily taking drugs. Come on, its not their fault.

While I’m on the subject of the X Factor, do me a favour – consider the maths. Nearly a million people turned up for auditions. Did the judges watch every act? Get real. They saw the ones they wanted to see – those that would fit into the tightly scripted format of the show. The Mousetrap has more spontaneity in it.

Anyway I digress. The reason I’m heading towards the New Year with a rant is this false sense of challenge is becoming a mainstay of travel books. It is not sufficiently interesting to read about someone travelling around Ireland – they have to be towing a fridge. I’m not having a go at Tony Hawks who did the towing, but why did he follow it up with trying to get a piano to his house in France? Would he indeed have bothered with the piano move at all if he didn’t think there was sufficient challenge in it to fill a book? For me the piano was the most irritating part of the book. I suspect his publishers - flogging a winning formula until its so mind numbingly boring you’ll only find it in a pound shop is a common theme.

Why do publishers get so obsessed with the need for a spurious challenge? Even Slash, my editor wanted to know what my hook was.

‘There isn’t one. It’s about the journey.’

‘Mmm… he said, rubbing his chin and drinking another glass of Rioja (which is quite a skill). ‘No hook eh?...’

Bill Bryson went around Britain on public transport. Some may say that that in itself must have been some challenge, but he didn’t tow anything. Eric Newby got up one day and took a short walk in the Hindu Kush. And he managed it without a piano. Paul Theroux jumped on a train in America and got off in Patagonia. In between he chatted to a few people, contemplated his naval, and looked out of the window. It was a brilliant book.

The great thing about all these wonderful books is that the challenges are all do-able. Anyone could, with a little effort admittedly, experience the written page in real living Technicolour.

The journey is not the challenge at all. The challenge is holding your readers’ attention for 200 plus pages.

This brings me to my challenge. I lost over 30,000 words of my book just before Christmas. Now this next statement might sound a little dramatic to you, but I assure you its true: it was like bereavement. And I don’t mean to belittle anyone who’s suffered a loss this year (you know who you), but the truth is I hadn’t realised how emotionally attached I’ve become to my book.

Anyway, after a Herculean effort I’ve recovered the missing words – manually – by re-writing them, and I am now back to the point at which I lost most of my book – the gobbing restaurant.

It meant writing 5000 words at each writing session- that’s about 15 pages of a book each day. Doesn’t sound much? Try it – now that’s a real challenge…

Consequences

Consequences: Friend asks for some copies of some photos - I burn them to a CD - Lose all of my book in the process - that's 50,000 words, or about 150 pages, or if you still can't work it out about 100 solid hours of work - I also lose 30,000 words of another book and 20,000 words of other assorted pieces...

Moral: never do fucking favours

I'll be back if I ever get my data back...

Slasher's Back

Have you ever wondered how long it takes for your brain to forget how stupid you are? It’s about a month. How do I know this? I’ll tell you.

You might recall I recently told you about Slasher the Editor pouring me into my train after an eight-hour lunch that involved very little in the way of solids.

I met him again last Friday. It started innocuously enough.

‘Book, coming on nicely Slash, just under 40,000 words, I’m in China now.

‘Drink?’

Something tugged at my brain when he said this, a brief flash of alcoholic carnage, a tiny niggle, but nothing I could form into a proper thought.

‘OK. So do you think I should take, say, the first 10,000 words and polish it to see if we can get a publisher interested?

‘Another?’

An alarm bell started ringing, but in the distance, like it was coming from somewhere down the street.

‘What I thought was, I’d get them over to you, and you could give them the once over.’

‘Wine I think now, beer’s a little gassy,’ he said.

More alarm bells, closer this time, perhaps next door.

‘Then I could do any re-writes before I go to Libya.’

‘Another bottle? Shall we go onto red?’

It was at this point I had a distinct feeling of deja vue.

Slash, being a wily journalist of the old school, recognised in my face the dawning of a very nasty memory, and quickly asked a question to distract me.

‘Do you like Rioja? Shall we order a bottle of that now?

The rest, as they say, is a blur.

The time between each encounter was about a month…

At least, in the intervening period I’ve been quite productive. My book is edging towards 45,000 words, which may not mean much to you, but represents hours of work for me.

And I’m just about to get to the gobbing restaurant. As the name suggests it is a combination of eating and hoiking, and I’ve written it so many times in my head, I can’t wait to get it down on paper.

The experience of writing a book is strange. It’s like doing the trip all over again. When I read my notes I am transported back and it triggers even more memories I haven’t committed to paper. It makes for a vivid recollection, and I recommend you keep a journal whenever you travel. Its more fun than looking at photos. And you make note of the weirdest things. My notes are littered with record of my digestive transit, or lack of it, but I don’t remember making a conscious effort to record it. Also you pick up on your mood, in a way that photos rarely convey.

This is reflected in my writing. On reading back the last 40,000 words I can see that Russia was like a death march compared to China’s quick step. That’s not to say I didn’t see the funny side in Russia. I mean who wouldn’t find something to laugh at in a death march, they always look so bloody daft, all that leg lifting and morose timing.

But listen, now I’m waffling, which is a literary sin. I better get back to work. Which is just as well, because my brain only has about a month before it forgets how stupid I am…

Virtual Madness

I’m going to make a bold prediction; one day we will live entirely in a virtual world. Frankly I can’t wait.

Work will be done from home, and commuting will be something our grandchildren will look back on and laugh at. The concept of travelling to concrete and glass high rises, in a tube of metal, filled to the gunnels with sweaty human beings, spewing out pollution from the carbon residue of a billion year old forest, will illicit the same response we give to a 1950s film on the health benefits of smoking.

Yes, this new virtual world is the new Nirvana. I look forward to the day I can play my round of golf on a cold, wet, windy day, from the comfort of my bed. It sounds like heaven. All I’ll have to do is slip on my virtual golf kit, select a suitable golf swing from a pre-selected list on my Phone-Interweb-Widget device and go round in 11 under par.

Some people will be ahead of others in arriving at the virtual Promised Land. Take the company I’m working for on the Libyan project – they have a virtual office.

What does this mean? Well, to some this is enlightenment. No one travels to a central point because there isn’t one. Need a meeting? Conference call over the World Wide Interwebby thing. Need to access an important client file to see what the Managing Director likes to be given for Christmas? Simple, computer networks can be accessed from anywhere. What about getting feedback on that presentation? Doddle E-mail is made for sharing.

And they’re not the only ones at it. Take my credit card company. I can ring them and spend virtually all my life in their phone system gathering information. It’s like walking into their office, picking out my file and having a read.

Of course there are some things that don’t, on the face of it, fit into this brave new virtual world. For example, half way through writing this Blog entry I had to go and collect someone from the hospital who had undergone an Endoscopy. For those of you that don’t know what that is, the first three letters of the word are significant. The remaining letters branch from the root word, telescope, and as a final clue I’d like to offer you another word - insertion.

If the truth be told, this highlights a significant problem with virtual worlds. Endoscopies really are pointless if performed on a virtual arse.

In actual fact there are a few flaws with my other two examples too. I’ve spent about 10 days being trained on a piece of software so that I can train people on it in Libya. The training has been delivered virtually. All manner of things have gone wrong, not least the lack of compatibility between the trainer’s computer software and the computer software on the machine I’m using. You could say we are each in the same virtual office, but not the same room. If we were really in the same room the training could have been completed in half the time.

Also, I didn’t enjoy the half a day I spent in my credit card’s virtual world. No office in the real world forces you to make choices on every single aspect of your visit. That would be bizarre.

“Welcome to our office, would you -1, like to enter, 2 - like to leave, 3 – break in through the back door.”

‘1 – enter.’

“Congratulations on entering our building, do you 1 – want to speak to Reg, 2 – want to throttle Reg or 3 – want to club Reg to death

‘3 – club Reg to Death.’

“When clubbing Reg to death would you like 1 – a baseball bat, 2 – a cricket bat, 3 – a plank of wood

Its easy to see how tedious this could get, especially when, after going through 100 layers of options, you’re deposited in India and speaking to Sanjay pretending to be Reg. Further, he will have no idea of the options you've already chosen so you will have to repeat them. This would, of course, not be necessary at all if Reg had answered the phone at the beginning of the process.

Right, now what was I going to talk to you about today? Ah yes, my book. Good news.

It’s virtually finished…