Pi, and other half-grasped concepts

~ ERWhittington

If my mobile phone camera can’t take a photo of the back of my phone (to show my instagram followers the beauty that is my brand new red phonebox-styled phone cover), does the back of my mobile phone really exist?

Apart from such important conundrums as these, I’ve been at least ankle-deep recently in the structure of the universe, stretching the boundaries of my minuscule brain (‘minuscule’ not in fact being spelled ‘miniscule’, however more appropriate that spelling seems – who knew?*) with research surrounding the link between mathematics and music, nature and numbers.

Let’s talk about pi. Continue reading →

Another thing*

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

I never had an imaginary friend growing up (two brothers; too busy beating each other up**), but I imagine that chuckling quietly to oneself at one’s character’s remarks isn’t too dissimilar to laughing at one’s own jokes, and that constructing entire conversations as a way of recording the voices in one’s head (each with their surprising insights) has got to represent at least a mild foray into a dance with psychosis***. Continue reading →

Two Things

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

1. Writing is always a game of tricking yourself into productivity via reverse psychology (luckily, my subconscious doesn’t ever get the joke); when I sit down and intend to write absolute nonsense, in a mockery of myself, that’s when I write the good stuff. When I sit down to write the world’s most innovative, surprising, heartfelt prose, that’s when I decide I need a walk, and another cup of pomegranate green tea. Continue reading →

Dating; not a series of picnics

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

Ah, dating, that awful, brilliant, awful thing…

I don’t ever want to be a heartbreaker. I’ve had my heart ‘broken’ (let’s say temporarily bruised/punched/squashed) a couple of times. It’s horrific to be on the other side of things, alternatively, and I have even taken breaks from dating in the past purely because I can’t deal with the guilt I’ve felt at being the one to turn someone else down (I know how I want to feel about the person I end up with, and I would rather not accept less). Feeling less for someone else than they feel for you is an awful feeling and communication of that fact is a delicate moment (and I know exactly how painful it is to be on the other side of it). Continue reading →

What’s in a name?

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One of the themes in my novel involves the process of naming, and it’s a motif that is echoed around in both the overall premise of my story and, more delicately, in the history of one of my main characters.

Mystical, practical and logical associations with the power of naming abound in our cultural history, and it’s been interesting to think about and research. (What does it mean to name something? What are the effects?)


Continue reading →

Ray Bradbury: Advice to Writers

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I absolutely love this talk, given by Ray Bradbury, as the the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University in 2001.

I’m attaching it to my blog here as a sort of reminder to come back and watch it again sometime; there’s so much goodness in it.

It also reminds me how much I used to love reading short stories; snippets of life and metaphor (and ideas!) that get into your head before you sleep, making everything whir overnight. Continue reading →

Doing interesting things with my time. (What is success anyway?)

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

On Friday I travelled to Leicester to stay with a good friend for the night and travelled home on Saturday. I spent the train journeys (each punctuated by a jaunt to the horrific metropolis of Birmingham New Street Station – soundtrack: ‘we are sorry to announce…’, whose policy of charging 30 pence and a spin of a turn-stile to use the loo haunts me as possibly one of the most basic acts of inhospitality conceivable*, but there we go…) reading an engrossing book written by a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a little while – I read the first half on the way and finished on the return ride: ‘F**k The Radio, We’ve Got Apple Juice‘, by Miranda Ward.

I’d downloaded it to my kindle a long time ago, then stopped using my kindle, then rediscovered it and found the title pinging up on the home screen, like an idea presenting itself from the depths of my to do list. Continue reading →

5 ways to annoy the world with your online dating profile (or not)

~ ERWhittington ~ 1 Comment

This is a long one… I could probably write at least nine books on the subject of online dating. Maybe one day I will*.

I even manage not to be embarrassed about the fact that I am so experienced in these matters, since anyone who’s anyone (who’s single) has given the world of online romantification a go at one point or another (this is a phrase I hope might catch on), and the fact that I am the world’s most picky, yet naively hopeful, writerly-hermit (with far too many projects and evening engagements for that to even work as a ‘thing’), usually either working from home or in some foreign exotic land (it’s a bit black and white, isn’t it?) means I have become over the months-which-turn-into-years deeply, deeply wise about all things online dating. I’m basically a connaisseur. Or connaisseuse. Or guru. Continue reading →

Spelling music in colours

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

One of my characters is a synesthete.

According to wikipedia (because… well, nevermind), synesthesia is:

‘a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.’

It’s quite unarguable that colours naturally evoke particular moods (or colour therapy wouldn’t be A Thing, as wouldn’t such literary clichés as ‘red = anger’ and ‘white = pure’, etc.), but there is a certain automatic and unselfconscious precision with which a synesthete experiences the connection of disparate sensory experiences that, to me, is fascinating. Continue reading →