Paul Schiernecker

Tag: 2016

  • Mazel Tov Cocktails.

    I have heard a lot of Christmas music this month. You don’t get a lot of Hanukkah music. Here’s my input.

  • Workbook

    In February 2016 I spent a week in a gypsy caravan where I recorded twenty songs in the hopes it could become my first album. It was bitterly cold and I had to turn off the storage heater in between takes. I brought home those songs and let them sit for a little while. Then I started tinkering.
    This week I finally finished tinkering and am happy to announce that my first fully-functioning album, Workbook, is available now.
    You can download it for free. All I want is to share my music and enjoy the fact I’ve managed to get this project together. I’m immensely proud and enjoyed the process so much that I’m already planning a follow up.

    Workbook
    I love the idea of now making videos for the tracks. The first of which, for the opening song, Sometime Later, is here.

  • Platform Farewells | Live in session at The Broom Cupboard

  • 5 Tips for Camp NaNoWriMo

    Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 13.44.13Camp NaNoWriMo is run every July and is basically the same as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which goes on in November. Writers from all over the world aim to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I’ve taken part in it for four or five years and won every year.

    It involves having to give up a lot of your life to get it done. The aim is to write 1,667 words a day which over the course of the month means you have written a whole book. Here are my five tips for a successful Camp NaNoWriMo.

    1. If you fail to plan then you will plan to fail
    I know it sounds like nonsense business speak because it is used as nonsense business speak. There is a lot of truth in it though. The way I work is to take the 50,000 words and break it up so it doesn’t seem so daunting. If you can divide it into ten then you can think of these as ten chapters of five thousand words. If you can give those chapters a title and a basis then it makes the task an awful lot easier. If you can break it to 20 chapters of 2,500 words then you can deal with approximately a chapter a day to make the word limit. This is the best way of ensuring you do not become overwhelmed by the task at hand.

    2. Don’t stop
    As a writer, whether you are new to it or not there is a tendency to go back, whether that is at the end of a paragraph, the end of a page or the end of a chapter. Just don’t. Don’t stop. Don’t edit. Don’t give yourself room to question what it is that you are writing. Hemingway famously said to write drunk and edit sober. Get pissed on NaNoWriMo.

    3. Use resources
    There is a wealth of information out there. My Google history during these projects looks like the workings of a serial killer. You would be amazed at the things you have to research for a book. I’m currently trying to understand Quantum Physics. In addition, Camp NaNoWriMo itself is really good. You are put into a cabin with others who are taking part. The one I am in already has a really nice community feel to it.
    Use friends and cabin mates. Query things. If you get stuck then ask them to throw you a curveball or assist with the process of one of your characters. You don’t always have to take their advice but the option is there to work with.

    4. Treat yo’self
    There is a lot of work involved in doing NaNoWriMo. You need to take breaks. You need incentives. Mine is often caffeine. The idea of finishing for the day and having a beer or something nice to eat, going out with friends or however else you choose to unwind can often help as a driver to get that wordcount down. Make sure that you treat yo’self.

    5. Back that shit up
    I have never lost a project but I have lost other work through not backing up in some way shape or form. A lot of the time I choose to email a copy of whatever I’m working on through to myself so I know I can access it wherever I am and in case anything should happen to Hyacinth (my MacBook). I know people who have got 20,000 words in and lost their work. You’ll never be able to replicate it again. Your head was in a very particular space and it’s very hard to grab that again. Take the time at the end of your day to back that shit up.

    Thank you very much for reading and if you have any other tips or want to discuss your project then please drop me a message.

  • Following it up.

    This week saw me having a number of frank and beautiful conversations with people about mental health. Their mental health, my mental health, what they were taking, what I was taking, who they recommend I speak to, who I recommend they speak to. It’s so nice to have kick-started something for myself and others which means this subject gets the openness and respect it deserves.

    A lot of people have told me that what I did last week, what I wrote, was brave. It isn’t brave. It’s something we should be able to talk about in the same way I will tell you now that I’ve had some wicked migraines in the last couple of days which I have taken as being a foretelling of the coming of the end of my days. It shouldn’t be brave to talk about mental health. It’s like any other kind of health. The amount of time I spend listening to people complain about having man flu could instead be filled up with people just as naturally talking about their mental health.

    I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read my blog, everyone who commented, everyone who spoke to me privately about their own concerns. It’s meant the stats have gone through the roof. On the day I posted Citalopramstagram my blog had more hits than on any other day in the four years I’ve been writing. We are all brave. We are all amazing. I am not defined by my mental health but it certainly is a part of me.

  • Free January

    I have an odd relationship with social media. It’s sort of like eating fast food. You know there’s absolutely nothing beneficial in it but for a little while it’s fulfilling. It gives you something to do with your hands. It’s something to look at. It’s usually pretty bright and shiny and will get something spilt on your trousers. In the end it will kill you and everyone you love. Alright, I didn’t completely think that comparison through. The important thing is that in January 2016 I decided to cut myself off in the name of my sanity.

    For over a decade I’ve been addicted to social media. I was on Bebo and then I was on Faceparty. I was on MySpace and then I was on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. Not a day goes by when I don’t write something pithy and mildly irritating to the masses (approx 700 friends on Facebook, 500 followers on Twitter, 400 followers on Instagram, 250 followers on Tumblr). It’s not a massive amount, I’m not Katanga Jenner (my knowledge of pop culture “icons” is slipping as I approach 30 and this might not even be the vacuous person I intend it to be). I sometimes feel like I owe them something, that if they don’t know what I’m eating then they’re going to struggle to sleep at night. “Sure I have a roof over my head, a wardrobe full of clothes I don’t wear and a fiancé who wants me dead but what does Paul Schiernecker think about the Cuban Missile Crisis?” I hear them crying out as they toss and turn on their pillows. It was this narcissistic tendency that made me decide I should probably give the whole thing a rest. It’s effing dangerous and it’s toxic. It was either give up social media or give up caffeine and you know how I get without my morning coffee enema.
    I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a healthy relationship with social media and I’m not saying it doesn’t offer a great deal of prospects and opportunity to do good, it’s just that it was quite nice to take a break from it.

    The first thing I had to get over was “the twitch” – the desire to reach for my phone like the heroes and villains of the old west would reach for their pistols. Any time I’m on my own, vulnerable or anxious, which to be fair is a fairly constant state of play in my life, I reach for my phone and busy myself in the world of Minion-based mum gags and photos of meal preps and protein shakes. Again, I’m not gym-shaming although I am possibly Minion-shaming. They’re about as funny as finding a lump while scrubbing the key areas in the shower. I found myself still reaching for my phone despite the fact I wasn’t about to shoot down anyone in the town of Red Rock and knowing I had deleted all social media applications from my phone on the evening of January 1st. To combat this, I took a tip from one of my favourite blogs, The Minimalists, and replaced the Facebook app with the Kindle app. I already have an account with Amazon and a Kindle but the app gives access to all the books you have in “the cloud” – that mysterious land above our heads which is slightly better than heaven because someone stole celebrity nudes from it. I also started utilising the podcasts app and am now addicted to The Nerdist, The Minimalists, Stuff You Should Know, Infinite Monkey Cage, Serial and Desert Island Discs. I’ve finally started reading War & Peace properly (currently at 12%) and I’m learning a lot more about the world around me.

    I have however found a new addiction. I’ve started eBaying. I love the thrill of the countdown, the way the digits tick over, the fact that it doesn’t feel like real money for real things until they turn up and smell like other people. I’ve realised I’m going to have to have a clear out of my wardrobe in favour of all my fancy used things from other people. I’ve got far too many jumpers (when I’ve realised I don’t really wear them) and have so many coats that I could warm a netball team (I initially said football team but doubt I could stretch to eleven unless some of them were very small and could fit in a pocket).

    I’ve been able to spend time with the people who matter to me and actually make it count. It doesn’t matter if it’s digging out dinosaur fossils with my girlfriend in the lounge, dancing to The Beatles with my godsons or running around an abandoned shopping centre from a horde of East 15 zombies, I’ve taken a lot of stuff on this month and won at it. There’s something about me that wonders if I will ever return to social media again. I know I’ve missed out on a couple of social occasions as a result of not being on Facebook and if I don’t make some kind of contact I could soon miss my own birthday but I feel like I’m actually connecting with people and enjoying things a lot more and without the desire to prove something to the outside world. I’ve had a number of conversations with a close friend about the nature of our social media selves – the version we promote – and that’s just as toxic. The second it takes to smile for a picture is bookended by the absolute sorrow that is life in the twenty-first century. Is anyone actually happy anymore? Does that happen for anyone? Answers on a postcard of your favourite Beatnik writer please.

    This month I managed to finish a manuscript about depression, plan my next book, start the Insanity workout, help film a promo video, learn to make Huevos Rancheros, read seven books, get addicted to eBay, complete GTA V, run further than ever, remain reasonably sober, book a holiday and enjoy everything presented to me. I’m not saying my life is perfect and I don’t know how much of this is just the positive outlook I try to bring to the first month of the year but the fact remains, this month, without social media, has been a holiday.