Hey There

Greetings from sunny downtown Pisa. Yes, that’s right. You may recall from previous newsletters that I was preparing for an overseas trip. Well here I am tripping overseas. I’ve spent the past 6 days on a bus (with 6 more to go) and I’ve met a whole bunch of people who will become characters in future stories. I’ve just finished wandering around Pisa. Home, of course, to the famous – Leaning Tower of. Construction started in 1172, and it took 200 years to build.

It should come as no surprise that they didn’t originally design the tower with a tilt. The reason it earnt its name is because they built it with one side of the foundations on rock, and the other side on – not rock. Is anyone surprised that putting a giant, heavy tower on unstable foundations would cause it to sink into the softer side? Well, the builders were apparently. Because they were caught unawares when the tower started to lean. You may think, as I did, that this all happened a while after it was built. But no. Before they were even halfway through it had started to sink, but they kept plugging along. In an attempt to make up for the wonkiness, they started to make the pillars on the sinky side taller, to try and level it out (and maybe hope no-one would notice). Long story short, it didn’t work. So with a hearty – “Meh. Not my job” – they continued building the famous lopsided tower that I traveled halfway around the world to see this morning.

But why am I telling you this? Not so I can try and justify the trip as business related expense for tax purposes (well, mostly not) I’m telling you because this, and a few other things I’ve seen, have made me realise something I think is important. As a writer, I tend to alternate between declaring I’m no good at this game and that I’m going to give it all up, and reading one of my stories and thinking – ‘Hey! That’s actually not too bad.’  What I realised was, it’s not up to me to decide whether what I create is any good. That’s going to be determined by a magical group called – Other People (like you). And they will decide whether or not it’s going to be successful. I’m sure the people who built an off-kilter Tower didn’t imagine that 850 years later, tourists would flock there to take pictures of themselves pretending to hold it up. Or that out of all the bell-towers that were built around the same time, this poorly-planned effort would become the most famous. In a similar fashion, I saw the Venus De Milo the other day. I can’t imagine the artist tapping off the finishing chisel marks and saying to his sculptor mates – “Yeah, pretty happy with this one. I reckon two thousand years from now, it will be so popular that people will be able to make a living selling tiny bobble-head versions of it.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an impressive piece of work, but it’s essentially a statue with the arms broken off. I saw plenty of other statues that to me seemed just as incredible, without any bits missing, so why is this one – the one? You can carry this forward to now. Why did VHS become more popular than Beta? How does even one Twilight book exist, let alone an entire series?  To paraphrase screenwriter, William Goldman – ‘Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what will work and what won’t. If it’s impossible to know who is going to succeed and who isn’t — then any idea could be the one to succeed.’ So whether you’re writing your own stories, creating art, designing clothes or running a project, you have just as much chance at success as the next one.  Who knows, in ten years time, maybe Colin will have his own Koala-based TV show. Or my story about the genie in Funny You Should Ask gets made into a movie. Maybe a book I haven’t written yet makes Elwood Scott a household name. Who knows? Not me. I’m just like all the others, I’ll keep plugging away and doing the best job I can. The result is up to the Other People.

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Bonus Content

This month – When it’s okay to lie about your name

This is a follow-on from last month, about when it’s okay to lie about your age to protect your personal information.

When you set up an online account (that doesn’t require, or will be used for, legal identification) put the name of the business or service you’re signing up to as your middle name. For example, if I was signing up for an online site called BeerShop, my name would be Elwood BeersShop Scott.

While this doesn’t stop my BeerShop information being leaked, stolen or sold, if I start to receive phishing emails or texts calling me Elwood BeerShop Scott, it tells me where the leak came from.

Knowing which account was breached makes it easier to know what actions to take, and where, while also making it easier to spot those dodgy messages. 

Well, I think that about wraps it up for Issue 11, thanks for tuning in.

See you when I get back. Cheers till next month.