Is the past tense really past it?

I’m not sure where it started. Whether it began in the written word and spread onto the radio. Or did it begin in radio or television news commentary programmes, where journalists want to bring home the vividness of the situations they are reporting? Or was it brought to the forefront with the advent of rolling, 24 hour news, the need for continual update to support the fast paced New York minute society in which we now live? Whatever it is, the present tense is now beloved of both creative writers and reporters, in fact it is beloved by everyone and used instead of the humble past, which has now been all but obliterated by the flexible present.Everything has to be done now. There is no such thing as waiting a few days, or the understanding of the phrase ‘in the fullness of time.’ It would appear therefore that this has been reflected in language. Yet in colloquial language, the past has been ignored in favour of the present for a long time. “He comes in and he says to me…so I ask her, what does she think, and she says…” Immediacy. The point being that the shift in tense is supposed to give you, the listener, the feeling that you are there. In this case it has nothing to do with a fast paced society. It’s just to resurrect the story from the realms of the past. Italians love the present tense – instead of using I am going, they simply use I go, and this also applies to certain aspects of the past tense as well. Yet they are not a nation that demands immediacy. In fact they have no concept of time as we, in English speaking west do. On the contrary, to the credit of the Italians, they very much adhere to the concept that why do something now, when you can do it later?

My personal hunch is that the increased popularity of the present has less to do with a desire to move things on, more a wish to increase empathy. By making the scene more immediate you pull people into it, you make it seem as if they were there, experiencing all the emotions that you want to draw their attention to by placing them actually in the scene, rather than directing their attention to it from the outside, from the safe distance of time. I enjoy writing in the present for exactly those reasons. So far I have limited my use of the present tense to one short story in a forthcoming small collection of short stories that is going to be appearing soon called Eye of the Beholder. In a story set in the mythical past, I used the present tense and loved using it because it somehow felt so much more poetic and suited the whimsical, almost dreamlike feel I wanted the story to have. Originally I experimented by mixing up tenses as I slipped in and out of the minds of the characters in my first book Fables and Forgotten Thoughts. But in the end I abandoned my experiments in favour of making the narrative flow, for fear that if I left it the way I wanted it to be, the narrative would jar, for fear that the text wouldn’t work. As one of my kind and ever honest friends commented, “You might think it is awfully clever, and perhaps it is, but pity your poor reader. Sometimes I didn’t understand whose mind I was supposed to be in!” What I pared Fables down to was a neat more user friendly narrative, but I only ever used the present for speech and people’s thoughts, and only ever with the disclaimer of ‘he thought,’ ‘she mused,’ ‘he exclaimed,’ ‘she murmured.’ My narrative obeys convention and sticks neatly to the confines of the past tense. Perhaps it was cowardice on my part, a desire to get it right, to not alienate the reader, a worry that my experiments with narrative consciousness would not work, would simply be bad writing, leaving confusion and frustration in their wake, rather than giving my audience the character understanding that I wanted them to have.  I can’t decide whether this decision was cowardice or prudence. Perhaps I could cheekily suggest you read the novel and find out?

Could the secret drug of ‘Limitless’ be inspired by coffee?

Napoleon loved it, Voltaire was addicted to it, drinking 50 cups a day and it is better on the continent. These are just a few facts about a substance beloved by many: coffee. I myself am a huge fan. Ever since I lived in Italy and started drinking the ‘hard stuff’ so different from the expensive drool served out by chains that dominate the UK. To me coffee is more than just a drink, it is fuel. I would actually say that some of my better creative ideas are a result of its influence, which does worry me slightly. Voltaire’s predilection for the stuff suddenly doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous after all.

For those of you who haven’t seen the film ‘Limitless’, the premise is that a drug is discovered that enables the consumer to use all aspects and parts of the brain. I have a theory that there is a division within our minds between conscious knowledge that we can access relatively easily, and unconscious knowledge that is in our minds, notwithstanding the fact that we are not aware that we possess it.  The trick is trying to tap into that source, and coffee certainly helps out there.

Admittedly, while each person’s tolerance of it is different, it is used by most to force alertness on a sluggish and unsuspecting brain. Some people just like the high. If you’ve never been affected by coffee, you’ve never had the good stuff. It gets you going as it contains a selection of different stimulants including corsetone and adrenaline which stimulates a ‘fight or flight’ response. The most obvious and well known stimulant in coffee is of course caffine. Sedation or sleep is caused in the brain when a neurotransmitter called adenosine binds to its receptor; caffine blocks these receptors, making it impossible to feel as tired, increasing activity levels by altering a natural process in the brain. Perhaps it is that alert feeling that is the answer to unlocking any creative block I might be going through at the time. For the scientists out there, you can read more here.

Caffine is not only a stimulant but a psycoactive drug. Just to put that in perspective, so are amphetamines and cocaine. It certainly goes a long way into explaining the correlation between increased verve for life in those counties with decent coffee, in compaison with countries where coffee isn’t a part of the culture. Where does the best coffee come from? Places like Brazil, Java, Colombia, places known for passions that rival their warm weather; a Milton Keynes blend just wouldn’t have the same ring to it. Our passions are very different over here, perhaps that is why we have traditionally adopted tea as a favoured drink instead; just enough caffine for a gentle buzz, but heaven forbid that we should actually get fired up about anything as a result of something a bit stronger. Not before 6pm anyway. Yet we are some of the most enthusiastic drinkers in the world. Strange.

Coffee then, apparently possess powers above and beyond normal drinks, superpowers that even alcohol, with all its devoted fans cannot aspire to. Its chemical make up goes a good way to explaining why it has inspired me on so many occasions. So if coffee actually has the power to alter the processes of the brain what does this mean for those people who drink it, people like me? If I didn’t drink coffee would my capacity for ideas shrivel and halve? Should I be worried about this? Or does coffee just access ideas that would appear eventually, only more slowly?

Do you know what? I don’t care. I have to say, I owe a good deal of my first book ‘Fables‘ to inspiration brought on by 1 euro double machiatto at my local cafe when I lived in Bologna, so sod it. I am sure I am not on my own by admitting that I have a lot to thank coffee for, while being aware of its potency. There is nothing quite like a well blended cup of the stuff, particularly at this time of year when it is grey and quite frankly despicably uninspiring outside. After all, all the best things in life are bad for you to one degree or another.

Chapter One.

Click here to download Chapter One of ‘Fables and Forgotten Thoughts,’ free.

The whole book will be available in the New Year from Amazon as an e-book.

Is writing a book a symptom of madness?

The idea of blogging is a new and slightly dangerous one for me, because so much nonsense goes through my head that I wonder if I can work out exactly what is interesting or coherent enough to write about. This could be risky.

I thought I would kick off by telling you about what the process of writing is like, or at least how it was for me. The most obvious thing I can think of to compare it to is madness. It is, for instance, quite normal to spend time babbling away to oneself about people that only exist in a made up region in the realms of imagination.

For me, writing is a need, a desire to share something that goes on internally and trying to fit it to what is going on in the world around you. Sympathetic friends give you the token five minutes listening time as you ramble on about your characters as if they were real, before you realise that the look in their eyes has become a mixture between a sort of glazed boredom and mild panic. To the relief of both of you, you change the subject. It is your duty, because although they would love to sympathise properly, nothing you talk about makes any sense until they have read the book, and paradoxically that is the last thing they are capable of doing until you’ve finished it. So for the most part you keep what you are doing to yourself.

The worst part of having to do this is that you are really never sure that what you are doing is any good. There is no point in soliciting an opinion until you have finished and can present a whole picture, but by then it will also be too late. What if the finished work is utter rubbish? You will have wasted at least a year, possibly more. So it is easy to see why many never get past the half way stage. By no means would I describe myself as confident, but I am obstinate. Extremely obstinate. So I have finished. The result? Well judge for yourself. I hope that you enjoy it, because I can honestly say that my highest aim is to entertain. And you will give me an excuse to call my madness ‘creativity’.