Top 5 Books of 2009
My literary highlight of the year was meeting David Nicholls and Nick Hornby during the Durham Book Festival and telling David that he’d made me cry!
1. One Day by David Nicholls
2. Goodnight Beautiful by Dorothy Koomson
3. Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson
4. The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert

Top 5 Films of 2009
I’m counting this as films I saw for the first time this year even if they were released earlier. I’ve missed out on lots of cinema releases as Gala Durham is so small it has a blink and you’ll miss it approach to showing films!
1. UP
2. Slumdog Millionaire
3. Avatar
4. Night At The Museum 2: Battle Of The Smithsonian
5. Hellboy/Hellboy 2 – The Golden Army

Top 5 TV Programmes of 2009
Another fantastic year for the Beeb. As the number of channels grow I’m starting to think the BBC are the only place committed to real quality and begrudging my licence fee less and less each year. I could have easily listed ten things on the BBC I’ve enjoyed this year, but I’ll limit it to four…
1. Strictly Come Dancing
2. Torchwood (Children of Earth)
3. Doctor Who
4. Have I Got News For You
5. Scrubs

Top 5 Songs of 2009
It’s at this point I note that Kylie has been so busy touring in the states etc this year she hasn’t actually released a single – though she did release ‘Live in New York‘ earlier this month.
1. I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas
2. Number 1 – Tinchy Strider feat. N-Dubz
3. Funhouse – P!nk
4. The Fear – Lily Allen
5. Up All Night – Take That

As I had to come up with a fifth category I decided to finish with Top 5 Celebrities of 2009…

1. David Tennant for being the most entertaining man in 2009 for Doctor Who, Hamlet and everything else
2. Rihanna for getting out of a situation of domestic violence and having the guts to talk about it in the news
3. Eddie Izzard for running 43 marathons in 51 days for Sports Relief (and also for making me laugh lots when I went to see ‘Stripped‘)
4. Chris Hollins for proving in Strictly that if you put your heart & soul into something, and keep at it, you can improve and succeed
5. Gary Barlow for deciding it was a good idea to get a bunch of celebrities to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and as a result raising £3.4million for Comic Relief

In The Writers Tale I mentioned (or rather I used Russell T Davies to illustrate) that there isn’t a particular way to write. In fact, despite me obsessing about having the right ‘voice’ for my stories, the story is the most important part.

Particularly Project No.2 I know I have a very strong story, and though no story is original, through research I’m fairly sure my story is different enough. And good enough to eventually be a popular piece of literature (for a couple of months at least).

Story is more important than anything else. If you don’t have a good story all the other stuff doesn’t matter. My favourite example of this is Toy Story. If you ask people what was outstanding about it they will probably defer to telling you it was the first feature length film to be entirely in CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). That was significant, no doubt. But had it been a bad story it would have been a bad thing. Had it been a bad story it’s most likely CGI would have been blamed, and it might have had a hugely negative impact on an industry from the start. The story was the hero for Toy Story. It was the hero for Pixar, Dreamworks and anyone else making CGI features since. It was a good story that meant a new type of movie became a whole genre very quickly.

Taking part in a book club over the past few months has helped me see how a good story can triumph over bad writing, or a style that a reader isn’t comfortable with. On the other hand a book written well but with a bad ending is a book you probably won’t recommend. We’ve just read the The Time Traveler’s Wife and I know a lot of people find the structure of the book and storytelling style challenging. But despite that it is a popular book. That is because the story compels you to continue, and it haunts you enough to recommend it to other people. Again a great story more than compensates for the flaws. A great story makes the reader or viewer want to make the effort to get through a style that they find challenging.

Stephanie Meyer has come in for a lot of stick about The Twilight Saga. But did she ever say she was trying to emulate the great writers? No. She just wanted to tell a story. Not trying to impress critics. And much as people scoff at grammatical errors, and the style of writing, she has entertained us in our millions. She has compelled us to go and buy her books and read them as quickly as possible. And tell everyone else to go and read them too. In additional she’s made a hell of a lot of women (not just teenage girls, but fully grown women) fall in love with a fictional vampire. The story wins again.

I can’t help but bring Shakespeare into this argument too. Although Shakespeare is a genius, as a 15-year-old teenager Shakespearian language is a total pain. It is difficult to read and understand. It was the strength of the story of Macbeth that made me persevere. I really did struggle with it, but I loved it. It gripped me. It still does to this day. It’s a story that I will find exciting and clever for a lifetime. I really loved it. To this day I find Shakespeare difficult, but I still believe everyone needs to see Macbeth

It is my firm belief (and I have very few firm beliefs) that story is more important than anything else. It can be enhanced by how it is told. It can become legendary. But ultimately if the story is bad then nothing can redeem it. A great story will shine through bad writing or bad acting. Great writing or great acting can never save a bad story.

Over the centuries there must have been millions of stories, fables and myths told, many more than survive today. Stories that were told before people could write, let alone make blockbuster CGI movies. The stories that still exist, survive only because of the strength of the story.

The End.

But nowadays my viewing is much more limited. My guilty pleasures are Neighbours and Home & Away. They were the first soaps I ever watched, when Kylie was a mechanic and Sally was a little girl. In my opinion they are still slightly less scandalous and depressing that our British soaps.

They both get recorded on my PVR (that’s a digital TV tuner with a hard drive to save stuff on) alongside my seasonal favourites of Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing, The Apprentice and Have I Got News for You. But these days that’s about it.

I always imagined that being able to watch and record whatever TV I wanted would mean I would end up with hours of television to get through. But it’s quite the opposite. More often than not I reach for a DVD when I fancy some visual stimulation. Though the idea of TV on demand is a nice one in theory, in practice it ends up being another thing that I feel I have to do. If there is hours of TV waiting to be watched then it becomes a chore to watch it. I find Friday Night with Jonathan Ross far more enjoyable if I happen to catch it when it’s being broadcast, than if I have to catch up afterwards. I don’t find this world of on demand entertainment convenient, I find it exhausting.

Growing up in the days of the VCR you were able to record things, but if you went away for two weeks you could only manage a maximum of four hours (oh the joys of getting a few 240 minute videos for Christmas!) though I can’t actually remember leaving anything to record when we went away. I mainly used my videos to record movies, which is something I also tend to use my PVR for these days. Most of the time I just watched what was on TV when it was on, though in my later years I recorded Buffy (which coincided with dinner time) and watched it as soon as the episode had finished recording!

My younger self who was desperate to get Sky would be appalled at what I am about to say.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I find myself agreeing with people that compare a majority of our programming to junk food. It isn’t healthy or nutritional for our brains. For me having more channels and more choice means that I miss out on the really good stuff. Whenever I look through the TV guide I can’t find one thing I want to watch on all the channels that I have. I no longer watch adverts so I don’t see what’s coming up that might actually interest me. I’m sure that I’ve let quite a few fascinating documentaries pass me by because I just can’t be bothered to search for them amongst the repeats and complete rubbish on offer. When there were four channels (it took me a long time to accept Five as a legitimate channel) I’m sure there was much more quality. Maybe it’s just rose tinted glasses?

So if anyone has any ideas how I can avoid the chaff, and locate the wheat, that would be great. I don’t want to hate television. I think it is a fantastic invention to learn from and to unwind to, but I’ve lost the excitement about watching stuff on the box and I’d like to get it back!

Struggling to decide on what to blog, considering the birthday of a three year old isn’t exactly the party to end all parties, I have settled on Disney Princesses. I am that tired that it has come to this.

For months my niece has wanted a Sleeping Beauty cake. She loves Sleeping Beauty. I wonder whether this will lead her to believe that when she’s older she just needs to have a good long lie in and a prince will come along and wake her up. It’s probably just because of the word ‘sleeping’, she is very fond of sleep. In my opinion though Sleeping Beauty and Snow White got it very right, have a kip whilst all the drama is going on, and then wake up for the big party with the gorgeous guy at the end. Of course that isn’t real life. If only it was.

My Disney Princess was (and I guess still is) The Little Mermaid. There can be worse role models. She went off and did stuff. Ariel didn’t wait about for some man to come along and rescue her. She was proactive and found a way to get what she wanted. Sure she got it a little wrong along the way, but she had amazing friends and it all worked out in the end. She was open-minded, inquisitive and friendly. Not to mention stubborn, determined and tenacious (Prince Eric was hard work though!). But for Ariel it wasn’t just about the man, she wanted to be human before his pretty face showed up, he was just an extra incentive to actually get on with making it happen.

Apparently I also used to watch Beauty and the Beast repeatedly. I’m not even going to start analysing that story versus my past relationships. But I’m not sure that it’s wise for little girls to repeatedly watch a story where a woman manages to “save” a man who seems to have some serious issues.

I have to admit that despite being an adult, and having developed a level of cynicism, there is still part of me that can still sit down and suspend reality for long enough to watch a Disney movie and thoroughly enjoy it. I know fairytale endings don’t exist in real life. Real relationships are far from perfect. You don’t meet the love of your life wandering through a wood, burst into song, get married and live happily ever after. You have to work at relationships and get through the ups and the downs. But every so often there should be a little magic. Surely that’s not too much to wish for?

This is one of the ways Twitter comes in handy (another way is moaning about nPower, but more of that another time!) Rather than make the decision for myself I just narrow down the options and then ask the opinion of others. I did this for the first time a few weeks ago and thanks to that I finally watched ‘The Green Mile’. It has been on my must see movie list since it came out and it’s one of those movies that seems to provoke gasps if you admit to having not watched it. Especially when you add that the DVD has been sat on your shelf for a couple of years.

Last night I did it again, although admittedly slightly more high tech than just asking the question I set up a poll. This time the result was ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ which was as enjoyable as the reviews lead to believe, whilst being not what I expected at all!

Contrary to popular belief I quite enjoy letting other people make decisions (some of the time!). I think I might have a weekly poll and try to make it through my unwatched film collection by the end of the year!

It’s always worrying when I get distant from my writing. Some past projects have evaporated completely. But this one I have been so excited about, unlike anything before. Being ill has been a blip and although on occasion it’s felt like a fight with my concentration I am determined to get to the end.

Whilst my body still needs to rest and recover, it’s nice to have some brain action back and write again. My train of thought isn’t so keen on complying with a linear route. It can often be found meandering to a chapter far in the distance, before I’ve understood exactly how I will get there. Yesterday I wanted to get the story out from start to finish so when I jump about I have a bit of context about the place I land.

In developing the story I’ve found myself imagining how it would play out as a film. Three songs have established themselves as the beginning (the prologue), the middle and the end.

Yesterday I had to fit the pieces in between. How does A get to B? What happened in the past that meant B became C? How does history reveal itself? Like an irritating toddler I asked myself “why?” repetitively.

The writing will start again shortly (as will the copious tea drinking), but I’m hoping that some of the decisions over the past 24 hours will give me the confidence to put out a synopsis to you guys in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime you can listen to the songs are helping to keep this story going!

Beginning (Dreaming of You – The Coral)
Middle (You and Me – Lifehouse)
End (Drops of Jupiter – Train)