Helping Kids To Get Drunk Safer

I woke to a fresh and bright Edinburgh morning – spring is fighting back! Even the bunnies were chirpier than normal when I went to give them their 7am feed. I could have done with some more sleep though, as I could feel my eyes were still heavy even after I’d showered. Late afternoon would be a bad time.

At least there were no homoerotic transsexual dreams with famous authors to blind my thoughts as I went to work.

I read some more of Hunting Jack last night, not actually picking up anything new with regards to the characters or personality, but just really enjoying the story. The writing is very poor, however, which both delights and embarrasses me.

I’ve been reading and studying a LOT lately from Strunk and White and other similar books/websites/articles. The demands being placed on me by some of my editors are very, very strict with regards to grammar, composition, and form, and so I am really trying to get myself into the position where I can apply the rules habitually.

I’m not sure if it’s coincidence, but since I started doing this I’ve also re-written all of my unpublished short stories. On A Monday Morning, for example, (accepted the other day and due to be published in May), was written two years ago. It’s been sitting neglected for a while now after it received umpteen rejections from publications. Suddenly, after I get a kick up the arse for my grammar, do I re-write it after some intense refresher courses, and voila – the damn thing sells!

I see Carling, the company that sponsors the Old Firm, is to remove its logo from all Rangers and Celtic replica strips for kids, in a “bid to promote responsible drinking”.

On kids shirts? Does that mean it’s now accepted that most kids drink alcohol to unacceptable levels? Or do they mean they just don’t want these football strips influencing them so they do start drinking?

Personally, I can’t see what difference it’s going to make. It sounds like a great idea but will it actually have any effect? I don’t remember ever being influenced by the advertising on the front of the strips I wore when I was running around as a youth, and I certainly wouldn’t have been bothered if Carling, or Tennent’s Lager, or any other alcoholic beverage company was.

If the strips had the Durex brand emblazoned on it, would we be worried that children would all be going out and trying to have sex all the time? Or would it be considered good that the safer sex message was getting across to our kids? A Durex sponsorship wouldn’t have make me want to go out and have sex (any more than I already did), in the same way that Ford ads wouldn’t make me want to buy a car, or Mars ads wouldn’t make me want to buy copious amounts of chocolate.

Shouldn’t we be looking at the real problems behind underage drinking in our country instead of blaming it on alcoholic sponsors of football teams? Why not crack down harder on those who sell alcohol to children? Why not find something for the youths to do on a Saturday night, so they won’t want to hang around street corners drinking?

I finished the final draft of the outstanding DWT article and worked through a pile of edits on Slick today, which included a full spell check and manual comment checking. It’s really taking shape now. What I have to do now is make the decisions on the comments regarding shape and plot, which will be somewhat harder.

I have a new article up at DWT: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/top-tools-to-get-started-in-freelance-writing – you know you want to.

Did some work on Silly Poems for Kids Vol.2 and on some outstanding RR Submissions. Can you believe I’m actually on top of everything and all my major projects are being kept on the go at once? No – nor can I!