A flair for writing or wishful thinking?

AdMMM

I've always had an interest in writing, not so much reading but suffice to say would keep myself busy with a novel if I found myself with spare time. I used to enjoy writing essays throughout both primary and secondary school and embraced the blogging phenomenon as far back as 2004. To this day I still indulge in the occasional entry on my blog but my problem (or what irks me) is that I've always been told that I have a flair for writing. While obviously I'm flattered that people take time out of their lives to read my musings and subsequently compliment me, I'm very conscious that these people have no background in writing themselves.

I'd very much appreciate if anyone could have a look at the following excerpts from my blog and offer some feedback. In re-reading some of my recent posts, I can see that I've been adapting a more dramatic writing style but this is somewhat unintentional given that I generally just start without carrying out any conventional form of "brain-storming".

Confessions Of A Social Game Addict
By Adam on November 25, 2009

Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Cafe World, Dragon Wars, Vampire Wars, FishVille. Just some of the games whose notifications are overwhelming the home pages of even the most socially awkward of Facebook users. A quick walk through any college library will reveal scores of screens with the tell-tale signs of various farm animals, waiters and roller-coasters lighting up the area for all to see. Even the most casual of Facebook users find it difficult to escape from the clutches of the ongoing Social Game revolution and quite a few have found themselves in a perpetual cycle that consists of moments of pure therapeutic goodness, swiftly followed by spells of inconsolable guilt as you realise that you’ve planned an entire day around your harvesting cycle / cooking times. You solider on though. You’re forced to, lest a friend leapfrog you in the leaderboards.

It can’t just be me.

In fact, I know it’s not just me. I’ve invested (read as: pissed away) days into these games. In Mafia Wars I was a latecomer and was trying to play catch up on those trendy early adapters whose lives had already changed for the worse. The final nail in the coffin of my Gangsta’ career came when I stumbled in the door one night and found myself without any energy to complete Bank Jobs and the like. Out came the credit card. As a complete degenerate gambler (certainly when drunk anyway), I’m not unaccustomed to taking out the credit card at 4am and having a desperate punt on anything from the X-Factor - which I don’t watch - to 40 game accumulators across every sport on offer. I’ve never woken up feeling as guilty after losing money on ludicrous betting as I did after spending €70 on Gold Coins! I wouldn’t mind but the eventual effect it had on my character was akin to upgrading the engine in a Mini… that’s in a race against a F16 fighter jet. I vowed never to play a game on Facebook again and I admit that I briefly felt somewhat superior to those I could see in the libraries feverishly clicking away their lives because I had the good sense to break the addiction.

Then Cafe World came along.

I happen to work in the hospitality industry so I justified my first foray into the world of restaurant ownership as an investigation to see if it was “authentic”. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses! Much to my delight, the game was about as authentic as an autographed photo of Jesus. I had hoped for micro-management of costs and the freedom to create your own meals but instead I was given cartoon characters that flipped burgers on a moldy old stove every 5 minutes. There seemed to be nothing going for the game - which was good, given that I was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t get sucked into a world of misery for a second time. I was just about to abandon ship and return to normality when I spotted the leaderboard at the bottom of the screen. What followed was something that could only be described as the most peculiar time of my life as my online existence deteriorated into trying my utmost to try win what was to develop into a bitter feud between two restaurateurs.

There was no prize. Not even pride was on the line as I didn’t know the person I was entangled with that particularly well. For some reason the mere sight of a big number was enough to motivate us to plough hours and hours into slicing and dicing day in, day out. At some point, the process of roasting and toasting various meals was no longer fun. My restaurant started to look more like a factory than an eatery as I tried to make my formerly beloved creation more efficient in a desperate attempt to hold onto my lead. My moves were quickly matched. It can’t have been much fun for my competitor either given that I was starting to plan my “cooking” around my day of lectures and work. I’m ashamed to admit, but I will, that I was once asked to go into work because someone called in sick but I declined purely on the basis that my 6 Roast Beefs would be spoilt and I’d surrender my lead. It had to stop. For the love of God it HAD to stop!!

And then I got word. “I surrender” was the gist of it. I was skeptical though. I was only too aware of the possibility of being tricked into leaving my guard down and being left helpless as they rode off with the prize (which was what again?). It turns out that they weren’t that sick and twisted though (had they done that I would have been positively bouncing off the walls for weeks!). I could return to my normal life i.e. the one that didn’t involve logging into Facebook at every available opportunity to see if I could better utilise my fictitious cafe.

Never again.

While my wee scar gently weeps.
By Adam on November 5, 2009

Mess. Definition please. A state of confusion and disorderliness. Welcome to my life.

Last Saturday confirmed all my suspicions. It’s 2:30am and the music has stopped, the lights are on and I’m as hungry as a size-zero model in a McDonalds for the first time in their life. I step outside the Forum and it’s raining cats and dogs. My fancy dress plan was initially going to be a crude attempt at my role model and idol, Captain Morgan. It didn’t work out that way though.

I had dug through the end of my wardrobe and eventually rustled up a Death costume from yesteryear. It was nothing to get excited about except for the hood that covered your entire face to create an air of mystery which admittedly granted me the freedom to dry hump (amongst other things to be fair) everyone in sight, all whilst remaining anonymous. Hoods are dangerous though.

Cats and Dogs are bouncing off my face and the only thing on my mind is a chicken burger freshly harvested by some Polish slave worker in Hill Billies. My friends are all creeping about outside the Forum, either catching up with old friends or going in for the kill on the haplessly unaware! I wanted no part of such debauchery though and instead opted to pull over my hood, put my head down and run into town where I could get all the breast I wanted. And then I could go get chicken.

I probably got a hundred meters before childhood memories suddenly came flooding back. See, when I was about 3 years old, and this is one of my earliest vivid memories, I was oddly environmentally aware. I had just finished a Loop The Loop ice-lolly and wanted to dispose of my lolly pop stick in the safest possible way so I broke away from the tight grip of my mother and ran down towards the nearest bin at the bottom of the street. Proud of completing my civic duty, I turned around to my mother to wave in delight. My mother got quite animated, obviously immensely proud of me. I woke up twenty minutes later.

As it turns out, the only thing between me and the bin was a lamp post.

In retrospect I think I got away quite lightly. I did kill a tooth though. How do you kill a tooth? Simple really. You run as fast as you can towards a bin, turn around and wave to your mother and then look back just in time to wrap yourself around an iron pole and knock yourself unconscious and sever the nerves in your gums.

Fast forward seventeen years and I’m once again hurtling towards a pole only this time I have a ****ing black veil across my face which gives me the same eyesight as a 90 year old World War II veteran. I know the road though and manage to maneuver my way around a few obstacles. I think I’m in the clear and put the proverbial foot down. I notice three people eating chips outside the Ballybricken Chipper. It’s the last thing I notice.

“OOOOOOOOOOHH” is all I hear in chorus as I suddenly come to a stand still. Actually, a “stand still” is a very generous description of myself. A collapsed mess would be more apt. I pull the veil back over my head and see a pole standing over me. One of the avid chip eaters from across the road comes over to see if I’m okay while I can still hear the unmistakable ring that’s created when Pole meets Skull. Either that or they were going to rob me. I’m conscious though and they go back to their fish and chips.Bastards with their food. I send a text to my friend which simply read “****ing Pole. I’m in a bad way”. When he arrived, fists clenched, he demanded to know where the dirty foreigner had gone. I should have saved face and cut my losses by admitting that some greasy Pole started on me and attacked me for no reason. Instead I told him the truth. To summarise, it pretty much went like: “I’m a ****ing retard who runs into iron poles for the craic”.

It’s then that I notice I’m bleeding. I’m so preoccupied with with wiping my face and trying to keep up with my friends (who I was ironically running away from in the first place) that I then walk into another pole. If I was trickling blood in the first place, I was pumping at industrial pace now! I was bungled into a taxi and sent home. It was probably for the best but I ended up not getting any food which was the reason why I turned into a unsighted Usain Bolt in the first place!

I took a photo of myself which kind of made me look like some kind of rape victim but thankfully I got a text the next morning that said I wasn’t raped but went into a Pole instead. Had I finished that double Morgan’s and Coke that was knocked out of my hand before I left, that text probably would have been appreciated much more.

It’s now Thursday and most of my face has healed. After about a day of washing, I managed to get rid of all the caked in blood to reveal the actual size of the cut. I probably could have done with a stitch or two but I think I can live with another scar. It’s not like I was going to become Nivea’s next big thing by brandishing the man tan on national TV! To compound the idea that a stitch would have come in handy is the fact that I now have blood trickling down my face again. Apparently random people love picking at random peoples scabs. They should just get their own to be fair.

I can’t get away from the fact that it’s another scar and another embarrassing story to go with it! The last scar I earned goes about halfway down my shin after I mistimed a jump between two walls while running and took a healthy chunk out of it. I swear that the next scar I get is going to be for something heroic like falling out of a tree after rescuing a blind cat. Knowing me I’ll probably just clock another pole - I’m an expert at this stage!

Summer Bee Here
By Adam on April 28, 2009

One sure fire way of knowing for certain that Summer has arrived, or at least when mother nature thinks it has, is when you see me running down the street with my head darting in all directions and my arms flailing. No, I’m not on fire - I’ve seen a bee. Or a wasp. Or pretty much anything that can fly and sting me! I can’t fly, or sting people for that matter and that’s why bees - but especially wasps - terrify me to the point that I’m comfortable running down the street looking like a mental home escapee.

It all started when I was 5. I had used all my smarts that I’d developed at the time to craftily trap a wasp behind some curtains. I was still at the age (or at least at the mental age) where you find the sound of bugs being squashed to be hugely entertaining, so I wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity. I didn’t know it at the time, but the wasp had material science on its side and my planned attack had an Achilles heel that would scar me for life!

I carefully lined up the wasp with my thumb and bit down on my tongue to improve my concentration and ensure I wouldn’t miss and give my prey the opportunity to flee… or attack and kill me. Just at the right moment, I pounced.

I’ll never forget the pain.

It was as if my thumb was being dropped in and out of a bed of nettles whilst simultaneously being hit with a hammer! As I mentioned though, my plan was doomed to failure. The curtains were net curtains which are about as thick as a single sheet of rationed World War II toilet paper and as I found out on that fateful day, are no good at stopping small needles with sacs of venom from finding their way through and into my beloved thumb!

The sting only took a few days to clear up but from that moment on I felt as if every wasp I saw was planning on avenging their distant cousins death. I wasn’t so scared of bees though and I think it’s easy to explain why when I compare the two creatures to minority groups. The bees are the Jews - hard working and if they’re targeted for something they generally don’t retaliate and move out to some desert somewhere and at worst whimper about being a cursed, persecuted race or some nonsense like that. The wasps on the other hand are the Italian-Americans - feisty and aggressive and if you hurt one of them you can be sure that his family and friends will be after you like flies on **** and sooner or later you’ll find yourself tied up in the back of a car that belongs to someone called Antonio who happens to be involved in “Waste Disposal”. In other words, you don’t **** with wasps… or Italians!

I haven’t been stung by a wasp since. Once bitten, twice shy and all that jazz. The fear is still omni-present though and once a wasp gets into my “personal space”, I freak out and bolt down the road. If a wasp gets in my face, I see no possible way of getting it to **** off without being reminded of the nettle-hammer combo all those years a go!

So while many people are donning shorts in this spell of good weather, I’m holed up, praying for rain, sleet and snow so all those flying, venomous freaks will freeze and starve. Maybe then I can actually enjoy a Summer for once without spending it running through streets!

Grievous

I have not read all the above you posted. I do think you are a capable writer.

My problem with blogs is: Everybody is doing them. What's makes one blog more special than the other? Who wants to read somebody rant on about facebook telling them something they already know?

You should take a shot at fiction and see how you fair.

EileenG

It might be because you are blogging, but it seems to me that you are showing off a little when you write. Phrases like "I'm not unaccustomed" don't entice me to keep reading, I feel like you are talking down to me. If I picked up a book with this style of writing in it, I would be reluctant to buy it.

As I said, it may just be your blogging style. Try putting up some samples of how you would write to a friend or write fiction for contrast.