Gary William Murning Online

This is partly in support of my friend Lottie, who’s been getting quite a bit of flak recently for addressing very genuine and much-needed points in a debate from a position of experienced authority. I won’t go into the details here, and nor will I link to the website where all of this occurred (it’ll send them a pingback, if I do, and I really don’t need them bringing their shit over here!), but if you want to read more about it, all the relevant information can be found on Lottie’s blog.

Let it suffice to say, Lottie addressed one of the difficult questions/subjects — and some found certain comments offensive because they inferred that they meant/could mean that a particular victim was somehow, partially or otherwise, to blame for what happened to them.

Although I was reluctant to get into the debate — because, admittedly, it was not an area that I have any real experience in — it brought to mind something that I had to write about in Children of the Resolution. Heavily autobiographical, I had to deal with my experience of the bullying of disabled children in integrated education during the 1970s and 1980s. Carl, my protagonist and, in effect, the me-guy, stated very emphatically that he’d never been bullied and that, in his experience, the bullying he had seen had had very little to do with actual disability. He was very quick to say that he’d never bought the victim explanation, that some people just naturally attract bullies. It is too simplistic for him. But he did stipulate in no uncertain terms that the reaction of the person being bullied decided whether the bullying continued. Carl was lucky. He acknowledges this and the complexity of the issue and its various scenarios. He’d always been able, even though he’s in a wheelchair, to stand up for himself (pun intended.) He’d never been bullied, but they had tried.

It was a difficult piece to write, not least because I knew that a very good (able-bodied) friend who was reading it at the time had had a pretty unrelenting bullying experience. I was afraid of what reactions I might get but she at least understood the point and agreed with it.

Nobody could ever seriously blame a victim. And I for one would never want it to be thought that I was. But if we are to ever understand the complex dynamics at work in these kinds of relationships, we have to be prepared to ask and be asked the difficult questions. Questions of this kind are not (at least from intelligent, caring human beings) about apportioning blame, they are about finding a way to empower the victim. If we understand, we can fix (possibly.) Gagging people, holding personal offence up as a reason for not addressing serious points that taken objectively aren’t offensive, solves nothing.

So let’s keep asking the difficult questions, even if some people might not want to hear them. Maybe we’ll find the answers, maybe we won’t. I don’t know. But at least we’ll have tried.

My first preliminary email regarding Children of the Resolution has now been written and sent. And so the process begins…

Wish me luck!

1. The.
2. End.

This afternoon finds me grinning stupidly in spite of being just a little bit knackered. As expected, Children of the Resolution is now complete. I’m extremely happy with the end result and now looking forward to getting the edits out of the way and submitting. How it will be received, I don’t know — but if my other novels came close, I find it hard to believe that Children of the Resolution will not find a home. I’m confident, as dangerous as I know that that can be. It deserves to be published, not because I wrote it, not even because I invented it (for the most part, it being semiautobiographical, I didn’t), but, rather, because it is a unique and telling story. If they can’t see that… well, they will.

And so, now, some tennis (watching, that is, not playing!)

A job well done. A bloody good feeling, that.

And, so, Children of the Resolution is slowly coming to a close. The final chapter is almost complete and the epilogue should only take a day or two. The end of next week, at the very latest, should see me proofing and editing.

I’m not sure how I’ll feel once its complete. I do know that I’m happier with it than anything I’ve ever written before. It does everything I want it to do. It tells the story — a fairly unique coming-of-age story — but also succeeds in making the points I wanted to make concerning the first attempts at integrating disabled kids into mainstream education back in the 1970s and 1980s. It says something important but I think I’ve managed to do this without being overbearing, unnecessarily political or heavy-handed. It’s there if you want to look for it, but the story and the characters (largely based on real people and real events) dominate.

That isn’t what concerns me. Leaving those places and times… a part of me wants to remain, to tell all the other stories that I couldn’t tell in this novel, but I know that I can’t. Not yet. Six months spent in one’s past is long enough, I think, and however nice it may have been to stir up some of the happier memories, I wouldn’t want to do it again for a while.

But I’m going to miss the old gang. I’m fairly sure of that. Over the years, for example, I’ve tried to find a way to write the “Johnny”-character (who is based on a childhood friend of mine who died when I was just sixteen) many times, with varying degrees of success. This time, he’s there. I’ve captured him exactly how he deserved to be captured and whilst this is incredibly satisfying, it’s also just a little bit sad, because I very much doubt that I’ll ever write about him again. If I do, I’ll need a good reason — something important that I’d forgotten about… but I can’t really see that happening, and I certainly wouldn’t want to risk doing anything that would cheapen what I’ve already achieved. It wouldn’t be fair to me as a writer, and it wouldn’t be fair to the memory of Johnny.

The second point being the most important, of course.

The manuscript — hopefully, the book — will always be there, though. That in itself is a consolation. I will probably never write him again because I won’t need to. If I want to say  “hi” to an old mate all I’ll have to do is turn the page.

It isn’t a bad life, being a writer.

The end is in sight. I have just hit 101,000 words and I’m incredibly happy with it. Chapter Sixteen will soon be completed and then there will only remain Chapter Seventeen and an epilogue. Two or three weeks work, now I have the voice recognition software (which is proving invaluable!)

More later.

Yesterday, after reading Joseph’s blog post concerning Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 voice recognition software, I decided to order myself a copy and give it a go.

I have used voice recognition software in the past (mainly IBM’s earlier products) and found it actually extremely useful and surprisingly workable, at least when compared to the alternatives — a keyboard being rather difficult for me to use, as I have limited upper body movement. A couple of years ago, however, I switched to using handwriting recognition on a Pocket PC, finding it a little slower, but somehow more natural in the way it felt.

Given my current workrate, however, I have felt that the handwriting recognition system has been holding me back somewhat. Hence my deciding to give this a go again.

And, boy, has voice recognition improved in the past couple of years! The speed and efficiency of it is remarkable. It demands little of the system, other software working away merrily at the same time without any clashes. The recognition rate is, as claimed, in the region of 99%. Correcting the few mistakes it makes is quick and easy — and improves recognition vastly.

As you may have guessed, I’m actually using it to write this. I’ve made only a couple of corrections, it’s taken me a matter of minutes, and I’ve hardly had to move at all!

Remarkable.

Now, however, I’m faced with something of a dilemma. I have only a couple of chapters — three, actually, now that I think of it — to finish on the Children of the Resolution, and I can’t make my mind up whether to use this to complete it, or stick with the handwriting recognition. This might strike you as not being all that much of a problem at all, but my concern is that it may alter the tone of my work, however slightly. I have read through some of my early work, the stuff I wrote using voice recognition, and I don’t really think it will be an issue — not if they are anything to go by. In my earlier work, I sound pretty much the same as I do in my current project, but…

Maybe you can help. Having read the above, answer me this: do I still sound like me?

Today (like, a few minutes ago), I hit 90,000 words with Children of the Resolution. The end is near, I’m over-the-moon with the quality of the writing and, as zonked-out as I am, I can’t wait to continue.

I am, however, going to force myself to have the weekend off. Wouldn’t do to be silly at this stage.

Longer, meatier post soon!

Well, today I reached the point in my novel where I had to, reluctantly, let the character of Johnny — the fictional representation of my childhood friend, GS — die. I expected it to be difficult, whatever I may have said in previous blog posts, but in the end it just happened, much as it did in real life, off-stage and oddly veiled.

I’d thought of tampering with the circumstances — solidly putting the “semi” in the phrase “semi-autobiographical” — and having Johnny die centre-stage, clutching his bosom, so to speak, where my narrator (yes, okay, where I) could see him, but that struck me as crass and intrusive. GS wouldn’t have objected, I’m fairly sure. He liked a bit of drama, and often went out of his way to create it. But I think the off-stage choice is the right one. There’s a dignity about it that I feel is right. Whatever else it might be, I can only be pleased with that, at least.

In other news… I’m taking tomorrow off, and heading out I don’t know where. Possibly onto the moors again — see if I can find out anything more about Austin Wright. I can’t help wondering, Why Fylingdales? What’s he, an ex-remote-viewer, doing out there? It has to be significant.

If you see me on the news tomorrow evening being detained by sweaty military types, you’ll know I’ve got a little carried away with my research

I always find the North York Moors an inspirational place to be. It’s somewhere that always leaves me feeling uncluttered and open to possibility. Today, whilst out near RAF Fylingdales, this was especially true — for ’twas there I “found” the first glinting traces of my next novel, tentatively titled, We Are Watching.

Let me introduce you to Austin Wright. Austin is a quiet guy. Quiet and solitary. He spends time, too much of it, out on the moor… remembering… remembering the night ten years before when his wife disappeared, three days after a remote viewing experiment in which the two of them had taken part… remembering and putting together the pieces… putting together the pieces and planning…

Thematically, I want to touch on faith (Austin never wavers in is belief that his wife was “abducted”) — using stylistic motifs borrowed from thriller and conspiracy-based fiction, whilst keeping it, in effect, a “literary” novel. I have a healthy respect for genre fiction, but that’s not what I’m good at; We Are Watching will at heart be an exploration of the relationship Austin shares with his “abducted” wife, but with a plot that moves, twists, doubles back on itself and (I hope) surprises.

Now, please excuse me while I go finish Children of the Resolution

Ah, yes, a day to “rise up singing”, as the song says. Endless blue sky, sunshine, the double Begonias looking pretty — and Bertrand Russell for company. What more can a bloke ask for?

Summer has indeed arrived and, because it may not be here for very long, I’ve been making the most of it — getting my 1,000 words written and then relaxing in the fresh air reading Religion and Science whilst listening to the kids out the back bounce enthusiastically on their trampoline (actually not as annoying as it might seem; the rest of our neighbours are either “getting on a bit” or just plain boring, so a couple of bouncing kids gives the place a bit of life.) I like this time of year. Not too hot, not too cold, the longer, brighter days making reading easier on the eyes.

It helps that Children of the Resolution is going well, of course. I know exactly where I am with it, what needs to be done and when it will be done by, so that when I allow myself a little relaxation time, I don’t find myself irritated by buzzing-fly problems in need of fixing. Turning off has always been difficult for me. I’m the type of writer (well, this applies to the non-writer in me, too) who will suddenly fall silent as an unsettling thought takes hold, and the only solution is for me to follow the thought to its inevitable conclusion. This can be time consuming, and not something I want happening when I’m trying to recharge. But planning this novel as methodically as I have has helped reduce these incidents to a bare minimum. I can therefore sit in peace with Bertrand, and talk to the Begonias.

Children of the Resolution is entering its darker phase, however, and I’m especially glad that the weather is such a glorious contrast to the inner landscape of my novel. I think it would be more of an emotional drain if I saw that darkness mirrored around me. Writing about the death of a friend in childhood… oddly, it’s not as difficult as one might expect. Writing is what I do. I’m involved, but (while I’m working on it, at least) it’s an involvement primarily with the project, with getting it right and being fair to the characters who inspired it. But still, it stirs a few memories: the cruelty of it all, the injustice, the “trench-humour”, the stupidity of some adults, the impossibility of — at times — saying the right thing and, perhaps most of all, the sense of a life unlived. No great insights. Not really. Just simple truths that, I suspect, are best contemplated in warm sunshine.

The real Johnny, I believe, wouldn’t have thought much of that, though. He would have sniffed his indifference and told me to put it away and finish it during the darkest days of December. “Mer-more atmosphere, that way,” he would have stammered. “Can’t ber-beat a ger-gloomy atmosphere to make you feel like you’re rer-really alive.”

And he’d probably have been right. In his own, unorthodox way, he usually was.