One of the interesting things about sending out a weekly story is that it’s got me thinking about how I write. One thing I’ve seen is that the best stories I’ve written are very fast. Some of the most successful very-short-stories needed very little editing.
I’ve also noticed that when I struggle with a story it rarely turns out well. There are pieces I’ve been tinkering with for years that haven’t quite worked. I’ve got notes for ideas that go back 30 years and have yet to result in anything.
One of the problems with hoarding is that you start to lose track of what’s valuable. By keeping everything, you distract from the things you should focus on. I have over 60,000 words of notes in 180 documents for the South Downs Way project but progress has slowed to a crawl.
A few years back, someone invented a word processor called The Most Dangerous Writing App that deletes your work in progress if you stop writing. Apparently it’s very good for curing writer’s block.
I’m considering doing something similar with all my writing notes. That each time I work on a document, I should make swift and significant progress; and if I don’t I will delete the document.
If nothing else, it will stop me wasting my time playing with ancient ideas, and free up more energy to focus on new things.
The first mention of folk horror on this weblog was in 2018, where I talked about it in relation to Brexit. According to wikipedia, the term dates back to 1970, but its recent popularity started with Mark Gatiss’s History of Horror, which described the ‘folk horror trinity’ of The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan’s Claw and Witchfinder General. In 2014, Adam Scovell described the ‘folk horror chain’ in an attempt to define folk horror, listing four main attributes:
Rural Location
Isolated Groups
Skewed Moral and Belief Systems
Supernatural or Violent Happenings.
There has been something of a boom in folk horror in recent years. In his May 2023 newsletter, John Higgs wrote.
When people tell me about the projects they are working on, it’s now weirder if they don’t involve ritual, folk horror, magic, ancient landscapes or at the very least weird animal masks (those that don’t, curiously, tend to be AI-based)… Because magic always undergoes a resurgence during times of hardship, economic decline and political failure, all this has been baked into the Brexit project from day one.
But in fact, a more appropriate metaphor to draw from The Wicker Man in 2023 is that we’re all living on Summerisle right now. The island is a prophecy of Brexit Britain, ruled over by high-handed autocrats who use the emotive power of invented myth to keep us working for their interests rather than our own, and to distract us from the fact that their crackpot schemes are tanking the economy and alienating us from our neighbouring nations. Ultimately, they whip up a frenzied hatred of outsiders, making them both scapegoats and sacrifice, as though if we could just shut all of the immigrants and woke police in a giant wicker man and burn the lot then everything would be alright.
I’m subscribed to Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, where he answers questions from the public. Cave is frank and honest; many of the responses explore grief, with Cave sharing his experience of tragedy. He can also be playful, sometimes sanctimonious and pompous, but it’s amazing to see an artist being so open with his audience.
One particular quote has stuck in my head, from an April 2022 edition, where Cave from about cynicism:
Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils… Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like…keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
There are so many things in life that are choices that we pretend are not. People are driven into despair, but cynicism is an attitude, an approach to the world. It might not be as easy, but it is better to choose hope.
The Mycelium Parish News is an annual publication produced by myself and Dan Sumption from Peakrill Press. It’s a gazeteer of UK counterculture, inspired by the underground catalogues from people like Loompanics and Disinfo back in the 90s. We produce it as a physical zine as we think that’s an important statement – this is something worth printing, and something worth paying for. When the print run is exhausted, we will release it online. You can buy this year’s issue on etsy, and download PDFs of the 2022 edition.
We started compiling the latest issue in September, with the final text locked down a few days after the Toxteth Day of the Dead. The first copies were out before Christmas. We been mentioned in a few places, with my favourite being from Michelle in the Mycelium newsletter (no relation, although they inspired our name):
Loads of creative capers and happenings have happened this year amongst you beloved discordians, pilgrims, seekers and star seeds. The best place to find out all about 2023’s bountiful harvest of books, events, podcasts, dramatic tributes, vision quests, must-read newsletters, free libraries, people’s pyramids, porcine plays, gong baths, pop operas, poetry, metaprogramming courses, dream symposiums and more is in Dan Sumption and Orbific’s annual almanac, Mycelium Parish News – a lovely new tradition bursting with heart and art
There were three main things I learned from compiling this issue.
Recent changes on social media mean that promotion is hard. We sold a handful of issues when Dan and I announced this ourselves. An announcement on John Higgs’ newsletter sold over a hundred copies. Word of mouth seems to be the only way to get noticed now, and it’s harder to grow audiences than it used to be. I don’t think people realise how important it is to shout about the things you like.
Packing over 100 envelopes, including a number to other countries, was harder work than I expected. Luckily John’s announcement came just before Christmas, which gave me a little longer than normal to fulfil the Etsy orders. Everything went out on time, but it took several hours. It’s something to consider if I ever try a larger project.
Given how important word of mouth is, it’s important for projects to be easy to share. Listing something in the magazine requires describing it. It’s often hard to work out which URL to share; and I’m grateful to anyone who provides clear copy that I can use for a summary. This is something I’ve been pondering for my own writing, where I have no simple description of what I do, no simple elevator speech. Seeing how hard it was to share other people’s work has made me much more aware of this. If you want something to be shared, you need to make it easy to share.
A superyacht, or even a medium-sized motor yacht, is the most polluting single object a person can own. There are no reliable estimates of how much carbon the world’s 6,000 superyachts pump into the atmosphere but one study of billionaires’ footprints found yachts were the single biggest contributor, ahead of private jets.
Some of the buyers aren’t thinking about the carbon costs of their yacht, which is as expected. What’s most interesting is that some people are aware, but it has not changed their behaviour:
“You know that it’s something to worry about, but then again there are so many problems that we cannot fix,” said Giorgia Covolio, whose husband owns a yacht. “If I cannot solve it myself then I cannot stress too much about it.”
Jennifer Rodriguez, a friend, agreed. “If Bill Gates doesn’t stress about it, or Leonardo DiCaprio, then we won’t stress about it.”
…
Several attenders used identical arguments to those from regular rich people defending habits such as flying on holiday or driving an SUV. Some said their carbon footprints were not as big as those of even richer people. Others pointed to sources of pollution that were bigger in absolute terms, such as cargo ships, factories and multinational corporations.
The article interviews Frederik, “a sustainability student from a yacht-owning family” whose family had actually reduced their fleet to only two. Jonathan, a friend, draws a distinction between people who use the yachts to show off and those who need them for private times with their family, saying “The most valuable moments I’ve had were on the boat.” One charter operator notes that the guests sometimes check to make sure the water served is not from plastic bottles.
It’s now 35 years since Margaret Thatcher spoke at the UN about the dangers of climate change. Since then we’ve made no progress. Relying on people to choose to reduce carbon use as a personal choice – something promoted by carbon fuel companies – is just not working. Everyone has the same excuses, the same needs. Very few people are willing to reduce their carbon use by themselves.
The true cost of such luxury is paid for, in part, by the rest of society. The top 10% of earners in the EU emit 24.5 times as much planet-heating CO2 through their transport as the bottom 10% do
A specialness spiral is when you wait for the perfect time to use something, then end up never using it at all. “An item that started out very ordinary, through repeated lack of use eventually becomes … seen more as a treasure”
I heard a story from my sister’s in-laws of a neighbour who kept all their best china on a dresser, rarely used. One day the dresser tipped over, broke everything and it was wasted. Then there’s a quote from Emma Burbeck, who wrote a list of things she wished she’d done differently. Among them, “I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.”
This is something I’ve been prone to, until I read Craig Mod quoting a friend of his about what to eat from your pack when hiking: “Always eat your best thing. That way you’re always eating the best thing you’ve brought.”
Saving the best for last seems a somewhat puritain attitude, and risks never getting to enjoy that thing.
[They] have LinkedIn profiles that tell you their job titles. But this is where things get odd: search the name of the company they work for – a name I have agreed not to print – and you’ll find little information about the work Reuben and Peggy do. You could click through every page on their company’s website and leave with no idea that it creates the most beloved crisp flavours in the world.
The article talks about the work of seasoning houses, the companies that create new flavours for crisps. It turns out there are specialist flavours for each country, along with limited edition runs, all catering for different palates. Sweet Mayo Cheese Pringles. Lasagne flavour Lay’s. Rose-petal crisps. Cola or butter caramel. Every flavour you can imagine.
There are characters, such as a Michelin-starred chef who wears “two smart watches, one on each wrist,” and tales of research trips, as well as references to surveillance tools used by Pepsico (owner of the Walkers and Lays brands) to spot growing trends:
PepsiCo uses a tool that “slurps up” every restaurant menu on the internet. “You look at which ingredients are starting to feature; you can see the number of restaurants in Europe using smoked paprika, the incidence of black salt in restaurants in such and such a region,” he says.
It’s feels like a strange science fiction novel with lines like “Kellanova also uses AI, which Merzougui says can predict trends up to 10 years in advance.” But this also feels too strange to have been predicted by a novelist – a world where sophisticated computer systems are used to sell crisps.
Novels are not being read in the same way that they were thirty years ago. They have remained part of the cultural conversation in the media, but there’s not the same level of excitement and buzz around books as when I was younger. This could be an effect of my own ageing, but a lot of the evidence seems to back it up.
But, at the same time, people are reading more than ever. Even with the push-to-video, a lot of people’s time is spent reading text-based websites. At some level, this is a zero-sum game. Every minute spent reading Facebook is time that could be spent reading a novel (Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, once declared that the company’s biggest competitor was sleep). But it’s interesting how novels have failed to capitalise on this growth.
I wonder if part of this is that few novels reflect the way that people read online, the discordant, chaotic nature of it. How the threads of different stories are merged together, sometimes with wildly different tones – what the Content Mines podcast referred to as ‘structural dissonance’.
Some theories have it that people read novels to get a coherent experience that they are missing from life. I’m not suggesting that is done away with. Rather, I’m interested in a medium/style that reflects the stream, the way we are reading now. Having the narratives more broken up.
I’ve read some novels which reflected this, but they were intentionally written as novels about the Internet. The closest thing I’ve found are novels written as oral history, like Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant or Daisy Jones and the Six. I like that people can skip characters they are not interested in. They can follow the whole thing in different ways. Just like we do with the Internet. The text is more than a relentless line of paragraphs.
I don’t know what qualities of language make a piece alive rather than dead, but I know exactly what Glück meant. Sometimes I read back a piece I’ve written and it has no spark, no energy.
A lot of the time, it comes about because I’m too focussed on an idea of a finished piece without thinking enough about the characters. A lot of the pieces I’ve tried to write for the South Downs Way have ended up like this. I’ve worked and re-worked some of them but they have not come to life.
I’m sure there must be something in the sentence structure that makes a piece come alive; or maybe it’s in the point of view.
Knowing that I tend to overthink ideas and kill them, I’m working more with the text. I’ve started writing more in longhand instead of just on screen. I try to think less about my goal and have more faith that I’ll end up there. Zen archery. I’m cutting down my distractions so I can give each piece more attention.
One of the most interesting things about writing is that what works for one person won’t work for another. Someone else’s methods will likely not work for you. But I am trying new things, and some of them seem to work.
December has been another month of feeling tired and fatigued. Looking back at my monthnotes over the last year, this has been a constant complaint, so I need to do something about it.
Christmas was December’s main event. Despite starting preparations in November, it still felt a little rushed. I had Rosy, Olive, Sally and Hannah come for Christmas celebrations early in the month, and cooked Christmas lunch for the family the following week. Christmas Day itself was spent in Hebden Bridge, enjoying some peace and quiet, followed by a lovely succession of visitors after Boxing Day.
Dan and I managed to get the Mycelium Parish News out so that the first copies arrived with readers in time for Christmas. A mention in John Higgs’ mailing list brought in an avalanche of orders and the necessary fulfilment, which I am still working through. I’m pleased with this project and have already started writing a document for the 2024 edition.
I’ve continued the Substack mailing list, but need to migrate this as Substack have doubled down on their support for Nazis. The work on True Clown Stories continues, with the pre-launch page now up – signup to be notified when the kickstarter begins!
It’s been another month of reduced steps and bad diet. I walked 236,064 steps in total, an average of just 7,614 a day. The highest number was 15,567, walking Libby the Greyhound in Hardcastle Crags. The one positive is that I’ve kept up with my physio exercises, but I now need to move onto actually starting the couch to 5k programme.
Her name is Sashimi, she’s a black cat in Blackpool
I’ve continued to struggle with reading, apart from Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X. After failing to get into this in May, I consumed it over a few days. Novels seem to be working better for me than non-fiction lately. I also read Nina Allen’s Conquest, which had rich and beautiful writing.
Watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has felt like a chore, given that the show simply does not have enough kaiju in it. I also watched season 2 of Oz, having picked up the complete show as a cheap DVD box set. It’s very weirdly paced, but I’ll probably be happy to watch a season every year or so. The return of Dr Who has been triumphant, which is a relief after some dodgy series in recent years.
My ongoing exhaustion led me to spend a few nights playing Ghost of Tsushima. The play loop of video games is compelling but ultimately most are banal, so I decided to give up on that.
Due to time pressure, our team’s Delivery Lead wrote the Christmas quiz using chatGPT. The team figured this out due to an incorrect answer and a couple of weird questions.
