This was it. This was the moment John Mitchell had been waiting for. His heart was thumping, he could feel it in his temple, could hear his pulse echoing in his ears. A crackle of static interrupted the rhythm. “Don’t forget to breathe, Mitch,” came the raspy voice of his engineer. Mitch gripped the steering wheel tighter, his gloves hiding the white of his knuckles. From fourth on the grid, …

I have found myself analysing blogging a little too much recently, but one thing has occurred to me that I hadn't really thought about before. The blogs, or entries therein, that are based around a specific structure are very, very interesting. For example, on this very corner of the interweb, I have a couple of ongoing projects - the Film Watch live blogs, and the Great Gardening Adventure. Now, I …

Don't you just hate those blogs where people analyse what they're doing to such a degree that they actually talk about little else? Well, I apologise in advance for this post, which is just a quick thought about why people blog. As far as I can tell there are three reasons, and these are quite general categories. To connect with people. You want to find people that are interested in …

First, I have to preface this entire blog post with the fact that writing for BellaOnline was an honour. I am grateful that they selected me to write for the site, and I learnt a lot from the experience. I was signed up at the very end of January 2007, and have written for them for just over two years. Just a few days ago, I resigned from my site, …

Did anyone else realise that along with the new redesign of Delicious, they're pushing delicious.com instead of the del.icio.us crazy url? Apparently they've always had the .com domain but redirected it. Now they're a bit more popular, the crazy url is a bit too complicated, so it's delicious.com from here on in. I've stopped embedding my delicious links in this blog, in the hopes that it will make me write …

We had the previous tech dilemma of whether to buy Photoshop to help me be more interested in pictures, but not really being able to justify buying Photoshop because I don't take enough pictures. Here's another. I want to blog more on Smarter Than Your Average, I have things to say about the state of the web and I want to share them with you. But I find that I …

Design revamp for '$100 laptop' I always thought the old one looked like a cartoon, and whilst aimed at kids, I found it quite off-putting. The new one looks beautiful. Twitter: Something Is Technically Wrong Well, I gave up already. Gyllenhaal confirmed for 'Prince of Persia' Firstly, I didn't know there was a film. Secondly, that Gemma Arterton is everywhere right now, and I still haven't seen her in anything. …

Twitter appeals to the short-form writer in me. I used to run a site called 101 Words, which essentially a short post every day about random stuff, but that was crucially 101 words long. Exactly. It became quite an art to fit all your thoughts for the day into 101 words. Twitter is the same kind of thing. There’s something about having a short space to get your message across …

Ever since I saw Live Writer, I knew that Microsoft had it in them to be good. They know what they’re doing when it comes to marketing to the masses but for us geeky individuals, they leave a lot to be desired. Live Writer has the essence of greatness, in that everything you need to blog to many different platforms is all in one place and it is unbelievably easy …

I don't know if I mentioned it, but I sent a script off to the BBC. BBC Writersroom encourages unsolicited scripts, and they'll get read and examined for scriptwriting talent. I got my script back yesterday, just over two months since I sent it in, and obviously, they didn't like it. Big shock. It's only the second story I've ever finished, and the first script I've ever written, so I'm …

We met up with a friend a while ago and went for a drink with him. Discussing our jobs, I expressed dissatisfaction with mine, and he said: "What would you rather do?" "I want to be a writer," I replied. Oh. My. God. I said it out loud. I want to be a writer. I went on to talk about how I want to write scripts for television and that …

With a couple of spare evenings, I thought I'd get some more writing done. I've not been doing very well of late. There was a brief period when I wrote three chapters in quick succession and then everything came to a halt. I've been struggling with a conversation that two characters have to have to make the story progress onwards. I can't seem to get the mix of dialogue and …

Writing I'm always telling myself that I'm a writer, but just lately there has been very little evidence to support that theory. I'm too much of a perfectionist and every time I start to write something, I can't get past the first chapter without thinking it's absolutely useless and quitting right there and then. The new plan is to actually get things written. I've been writing a few things, and …

I've been looking into some interesting software for helping people get the most out of their writing. Whilst mine has very much taken a back seat for the last year or so, it's still something I think about from time to time. I note down ideas, plan chapters, scribble out some dialogue, that sort of thing. I downloaded a nifty little piece of software called Writer's Cafe, and I really …

I'm trying to do lots of things with this page, but I'm getting confused with all the folders and stuff. Mostly, it's just experimenting which is fine, but I have lots of things that I want to use and no real outlet to use them. I also need to think of a new name, given the lack of stories that have appeared on this website, I can't really warrant having …

I was inside and I decided I wanted to go sit out, so I got out the blanket that I sit on and everything, I just got settled with my notepad to write some poetry and then just as I started getting creative, it started to rain. Damn the English weather!

Today, I was driving through Dartmoor and winding around those intriguing roads. Into my head popped an amazing story, and I was visualising it being adapted from the book to television, on the BBC. Of course, the big obstacle is writing it, but at least the dream is there.

I hate computers... I updated this once already today, well, yesterday and it just disappeared. Typical. Today was the longest day of my life, second after second ticked by slow as ever. I even wrote a poem called Bored. Says it all really, doesn’t it? When I got home, took a nice shower then settled down to watch some Buffy. Looks like I'm gonna have to speed watch and get …

I’ve spent most of the weekend sorting through all the junk I came back with from my trip home. I found a poem I wrote when I was eleven, I didn’t realise I wrote stuff when I was that young. I thought it was a recent thing. We were also looking through this old tin box with toys and things in and then we came across these really old exercise …