Paul Schiernecker

Author: Paul

  • You may call it a sickness.

    Today is the first of December.
    I’ve decided to try and start another novel.
    I’ve been sat on a trilogy for about four years. I’m going to try and continue the momentum I showed during NaNoWriMo to take me through that. If I continue I should have them all done by March. That’s a big deal. This is something I’ve put off for far too long. I kept promising myself that I would get round to it at some stage but it feels like after writing two novels that I am comfortable within my writing style and can therefore take on a bigger challenge. The first two were fun because they both have roots in truth. This new one is something completely different, complete fantasy, completely of my own imagining. That’s quite a cool thing to start work on, it’s all my image, it’s all my thought and my pattern and whoever knows what else. I just hope it doesn’t leave me any time soon because the joy of writing is something I need.
    Stay tuned.
    I may hit a wall.

  • Back to it

    I’m back on the commute. That’s fine because its Friday and I have the rest of The Great Gatsby to read.

    Yesterday I managed to wrap most of the Christmas presents I have bought and I recorded a new video (here)
    I also went to the dentist for the first time in five years. It wasn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened. It was better than I had built it up to be.
    I didn’t manage to finish redrafting but that’s fine. Kate is reading at the moment and fighting back the tears I believe. It’s a real weepy. I call that a success.
    As far as my weekend plans go I’m out tonight for dinner and then tomorrow The Sultan is being delivered. That’s my new mattress. I wish I had given it that name. Aside from that I really need to get another microphone lead and start recording or I could write. Something will happen no doubt.

  • House Of Cards (demo) review by James Lloyd.

    I recently recorded a new demo.

    Hear it here.

    James had this to say on it. It’s the best review I think I’ve ever had:

    Well that was shit. Look what you made when you could of spent that time with me getting high doing fuck all…… I’m kidding I really liked it. Prefer your voice on that one. Radiohead do have a track of the same name tho and a nice 13 seconds of dead air

  • Paul Schiernecker’s Day Off

    Today is my last day off this year (not including Christmas and Boxing Day). After this it is solid work. I’ve been thinking about starting another novel, despite the fact I haven’t finished redrafting the current one. That’s what I should really get done today.
    Instead I’ll make a stupid video about moustaches and go to the dentist. I wish that was me just being wacky, that really is my intended course of action for the day.
    I made a list of things I wanted to do with my four days off. It is composed of six items. I have achieved two. I don’t think even if I worked all day on the others I could get them done. Maybe I should give it a go though, what’s the worst that could happen. That’s it. That’s what I’ll do today, try and do all the things I said I would do today. I won’t be able to record a whole album today though. That’s a bit rich, even for me.
    Salut.

  • These two sides of my brain need to have a meeting.

    I have a terrible habit of dropping myself in it. I get this from my mother’s side. No wait, actually. I get it from both sides. I seem to often get caught trying something, I’m that guy. The one who takes a joke too far. Recently I was at the cinema with my incredibly beautiful and talented and long-time suffering girlfriend, Kate. I think it was when we saw On The Road actually. We sat at the back of the tiny studio screen and there were four other people in the room. A couple in their sixties/seventies sat directly in front of us. I was fine with this. There’s plenty of space but why not sit right in front of me, it’s cool. After the trailers finished they decided to move to a more central location and got up. As a joke I stuck my middle finger up at them and nudged Kate to show how funny I was being. She quickly shot me daggers and as I stared at her perplexed I was filled with horror because the old man had turned back for some reason to find me swearing at him and his wife. That’s the kind of stupid thing I do. It’s not big and it’s not clever but I think it will get me a quick laugh so I do it anyway.

    Last night I decided to make a brilliant satirical comment on a post on Tumblr. I have a horrible feeling that someone is about to turn around in the dark and see my middle finger pointing at them again. This post was basically saying that it is terrible that New York got flooded and everyone was worried about it and yet at the moment Britain is flooded and nobody seems to care.
    I decided the best thing I could do was place a flippant and disrespectful comment below this and see what happened. It turns out you get called a “fucking idiot”. I said (and you have to remember that it’s brilliant and satirical) that anyone who dies in a flood in Britain was just doing their bit for natural selection. Funny? Right? You’re still reading aren’t you? Hello.

    Yeah. I thought that was quite good. Then I remembered that I was posting onto the Internet where people aren’t sane and reasonable and don’t know how hilarious I am. That is known as hitting a wall. I’ve had one response so far which I can only assume is from the person who wrote the original comment. They have however posted anonymously making the “fucking idiot” comment and saying that I obviously don’t know what natural selection is because it is mostly old people who die in floods and they’ve had their children already.
    I’m in turmoil now because I don’t know whether to prove them wrong or just be quiet. I have a horrible feeling that I know which it will be.

  • Always in the last place you look.

    This morning I was going to start recording. The first problem of the day arose when I couldn’t find my microphone lead. I still haven’t found it, just so you know, there will be no microphone lead conclusion to this post, it’s still missing, presumed lost of stolen.

    While I was looking for it I started clearing the stuff out from under my bed. I realised that I had a lot of stuff under there. There were old law textbooks and cuddly toys and a cassette player and a lot of dust. It was like an awful version of the Generation Game. I started just pulling it all out and putting it to one side and realised that there was no reason for me to put it back. It doesn’t do anything. It’s just stuff collected under my bed so I took four bags of stuff to the tip and ate some cake.
    The end.

  • Shopping.

    Today I’m going to try and find some clothes.
    I’m doing this alone. I have a habit of making terrible choices when left to my own devices in this fashion. Then again I once went shopping with my friend Mex and he convinced me to buy a brown leather jacket.
    Yesterday Kate took me shopping, and we found some cool stuff. Basically everything I want seems to have elbow patches on it at the moment. Does that mean I’m growing up…. into a substitute teacher? I know that’s just a fashion thing at the moment.

    Is it wrong that I quite like going shopping on my own? I don’t just mean for clothes either. I like food shopping on my own as well. I think I just love my own company. I’m awesome.

    The shops don’t open for another two hours. What the hell do I do for two hours?

  • Making plans.

    It’s Sunday morning. I have a cup of tea. This is how I like things to be.
    That rhymes. I didn’t do that on purpose, I don’t think. Nobody is awake yet. I’m not entirely sure who is actually here to know if anyone should be awake yet but nobody has appeared and I’m assuming by the shut doors on the landing that there are people sleeping behind them. That’s why I’m being as loud as I can this morning. I’ve done some exercise, put on my skinniest jeans and storyboarded what could be the next sketch of You & Me & Him & Dad. I’m hoping it will be up by the end of next week.

    I’ve got a couple of days off. Usually people use this time to unwind and catch up and chill out but I tend to try and get as much done as I possibly can. I’ve made a list and I’m checking it twice. I’ve got an awful lot of Christmas/Hannukah stuff to prepare. I’m going to make a start on some new recordings. I’m going to finish redrafting Visions and I need to buy some clothes. Recently I decided to get rid of anything that I didn’t need. It was a brilliant move and I’m still sure I could cut out a lot of other stuff. Who knows, if I get the chance this week I may have another stab at it. I do need some new jeans though, and some shirts. I’ve decided that with my promotion should come the kind of Paul who wears shirts to work. I’m not going to go in wearing a suit every day because that isn’t me at all, and while I can get away with wearing what I want I think I should but you can wear a shirt and not be in a suit (look at Woody Allen). I also need to buy some presents and try and wrap everything up. I hate leaving things until the last minute and knowing that I have a month to go until the day is making me prepare like I’m going to war.

    The other night I was at the Rochford beer festival and my friend Mike remarked on something that I can’t get out of my head. We seem to be going through a quarter life crisis. This bodes well for us as it means we will live to a hundred but this year we have all entered into some kind of outlandish competition or achievement and it is completely distant from the kind of things we would usually do. At school and college we were part of the grunge/stoner set and as such any kind of sporting prowess was left to everyone else but this year one of us is training for the marathon, one of us completed a triathlon and I’m prepping for a trek across the Sahara. It’s so distant from our usual characters and we concluded that it was us trying to prove ourselves as men. I might try and write something more on that at a later date, let me know if you have any views.

    Thanks.

  • What NaNoWriMo gave me.

    As if you haven’t had enough of me going on about writing and about how I’ve finished already I’m now going to try and delve into exactly what the experience has done for me, what I have learned along the way and how I’m going to take that forward in my writing and my life.

    It’s possible to write something worthwhile in three weeks.
    Despite what Capote may have believed about Kerouac’s style of writing, it does seem to get the job done. Who’s to say that it has to take years to get a story together? The fact is that the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo is something that I hadn’t written a word of before November 1st, as it well should be but I spent a lot of time thinking about it before then. I first had the idea over a year ago and I’ve been flipping it over in my mind since then. At times it felt as if the words weren’t something I was thinking of, it had been turned over and churned up so many times in my head that it almost became automatic. Reading it back there are some really strong points to it, and some really good scenes and with a little bit of a redraft I would be happy to send it out into the world. It’s a strong story.

    I can write other than as myself
    I have a habit of writing from the point of view of ‘attractive, twenty-something male with narcissistic tendencies’. With Visions Of Violet I decided to try something completely different and completely out of my comfort zone and write as a woman. I’ve always been very aware of the way men write female characters. For me in particular they always seem to just feed into the male characters, almost to act as ‘a bit of skirt’ in the story. Yes, I write like a sexist 70’s boss. First reports indicate that I have managed it, that I have created a realistic female character.

    I can set myself targets and achieve them
    I’ve never been one for deadlines, I often leave things to the last minute under the assumption that I work better under pressure but I was very careful with NaNoWriMo. I spent as much time as I could writing. I took my laptop to work each day. I wrote on the train to London. I wrote on the train back. I wrote through lunch. I spent weekends locked away working, and it has paid off. I’m free to move onto the next project.

    The first one wasn’t a fluke
    It took me nine months to write my first novel Situation One. It took me a further three months to redraft it. Although Visions is half the length, I still wrote it in three weeks and plan on doing a quick redraft now before leaving it to settle before picking it up again in a month’s time.
    I was worried that because Situation One was pretty exclusively based on things that had happened to me that I wouldn’t be able to finish something that ended entirely in fiction. The truth is that I have pulled from things I know for this book, as I hope most writers do. I once asked Graham Linehan (via Twitter) if he had any advice for new writers and he said “show, don’t tell” and I try to stick to that with my writing. It’s an excellent piece of advice.

  • That should be that then.

    I am planning on writing a review of my NaNoWriMo experience but it will have to wait until the weekend, when I am not being battered about on a commute. It’s like a tossed salad up in heeeerrre! I’ve sent the first draft of Visions Of Violet to a couple of people and I am redrafting it but I’m onto the next project, and given how I spent the best part of an hour changing all my guitar strings last night I suppose it should be a set of recordings. The Christmas thing has moved slightly off centre, I do still have plans for it but I would like to record a near enough acoustic album. I have ten tracks, I make that an album.
    I want it to sound as natural and organic as possible, I’m prone to throwing all sorts of MIDI trickery in over my tracks but these I would like to keep to just a vocal and guitar tracks wherever possible. When I can I want to record live and where impossible I will just layer guitar over. I’ll wait to see what it sounds like before I start blowing my trumpet (purely metaphorical). That’s next though. Should be good.