Imma Charge You Like the Light Brigade

Hello giant clams,

As threatened a little bit back now, I'll be charging you with this post if that's quite all right. The title is a silly reference to a poem you might know – we were forced to read it in school in England repeatedly until we all started screaming. And the poem is in turn a reference to when the British launched an assault against the Russians in the mid 1800s. Which does get me thinking a bit about why as English speakers we have such weird names for countries that have entirely different names for themselves.

The Japanese call their country Nihon, Hungarians call Hungary Magyarország (Major-ru-sag, I think), and if you're from the country Georgia, you'll call it: Sakartvelo. If you introduced yourself as Alice and I replied, “Hey Jeff, nice to meet you,” I bet you'd start fantasising about taking my legs off with a scythe.

I initially thought there'd be a short and easy colonial answer about why we've ended up being so stupid about substituting the names other people have given their own lands, but it turns out to be extremely boring and complicated in the fashion the real world usually is. A load of the names we use in English are derived from the names the countries themselves used to use – the Qin Dynasty for China for example – and to be fair, the Chinese hardly call the US the United States but: Měiguó – the beautiful land, so yes. All these are 'exonyms' anyway, as the linguists will know, and language is extremely silly, and I'm not sure why I'm laying all this on you.

With the last post, some of you were kind enough to say not to rush anything until it's done. I appreciate that sitting around the apartment, hanging out with the cat, and writing stuff in a Word document when it seems fun is a pretty fucking indulgent thing to whine about, but that was a huge balm, thanks. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing until it's done – perhaps you've had the same experience in your own work, and the waiting around is quite a scary experience since you can't just make it work because you want it to. It's a bit of a weird metaphor, but if you meet someone rather special at a party, it'd be a bit off-putting if you suddenly jumped to proposing. Sometimes you bump into a weird ideology or a good line of Epictetus' and get terribly enamoured, and desperately hope it will bloom into a script, but the hoping never really works – you just have to wait to see what it'll do in your head if you leave it a few weeks. Usually it goes nowhere. Every now and then you get fixated and carry on and have no idea why. And in both cases, it's a ridiculous way to pay one's rent. So, I can only compare it to falling in love, which is just as mysterious really. Lots of creators (I hate that word; I'd prefer to be called a video bullshitter, frankly) seem to put stuff out every week or so, and while that looks fun, I think I'd just make nonsense out of the pressure of obligation - I don't have the internal industry. So yes, thank you for waiting, friends.

I spend the time recently alternating between the new script and trying to finish the new book, and both will only come out to play when they feel like it. I am extremely excited to share the new book with you - I've been playing with several of the plots for years, and it now feels like taking the most cathartic of poops. I'm quite sure I asked this before in a previous post, but while the idea of providing Patreon pins and badges or whatever else for you kind folks seems terribly trite, if there's something you're interested in or would like to see more of, do let me know - I can't tell you how grateful I am that you're still here. The new book is basically five rather long short stories all knitted together in a way I hope is at least not horrible to read, but a bunch of plots got abandoned and thrown out halfway through and never ended up in the cake. When everything's ready, I'd be more than happy to share all the discarded junk with you (wow, what an offer! Trash!) if you'd like to know just how much worse it all could've looked. If you write, or make stuff of any kind, I'm sure you're aware how weird it is abandoning those things you believed in so strongly while you were working on them, and how much they keep meaning to you all the same now they're gone.

Anyway. I hope you're still alive and having a fun time on the Great Earth. Again, a huge thank you for the support, and if you could give me just a little longer to finish everything up, the cat and I would extend more gratitude than we can even explain – especially her, her English is awful.

Massive love as ever,

Ex

P.S - I've been editing these days to this in the background a whole bunch. Isn't it great?