A platform of collective creativity

For some time I've been convinced that sooner or later I'd have an idea which I would feel confident enough to pursue.  For years I've been coming home with a head full of the next big thing and my patient wife has sat across the dinner table, listening to my excited rants.  But then life splashed cold, fresh water in my face and jolted me back to sensibility, responsibility and reality.  Trying to run a business, keep a high-maintenance wife (her words not mine!) and then starting a family unintentionally thwarts opportunity and the years pass by.

Before I knew it I was knocking on the door of my 40th birthday so decided that I should mark the event.  But how?  The answer lay in achievement and I settled on completing the London Marathon.  Eddie Izzard had just completed his mind blowingly impossible 43 marathons in 50 days which had got my wife and I off the sofa and my good friend Philip Gamble had done 2 marathons in quick succession.  And so I trained...  Training wasn't the most pleasurable experience of my life and so I started a blog, mainly to chart my training journey from novice beginner to marathon day.

I didn't realise that people were reading my blog.  These blogs don't give you that kind of feedback unless people leave comments.  But occasionally I'd see a friend who would say that they'd read my blog and found it mildly entertaining.

A short while after the marathon I had a 40th birthday meal.  I'm not a self-celebratory kind of person but I felt that I should do something.  My sister Debbie was there and she spent quite a bit of time after the meal with me, Philip and his lovely wife Sam.  The next day she said "you and Phil should really do something together, both of you are coming up with great ideas but you never do anything about it".  I agreed that she was probably right and half-heartedly promised that we would.

A week or so later I saw Phil and he commented about my marathon blog, saying how well it was written and how entertaining it was.  At that point he mentioned that he'd got an idea for a sit-com and asked if I'd like to write it with him.  Write a sit-com?  I've never done anything like that before - hell yeah, count me in.  So we started piecing together a 12 episode series whilst juggling our lives as usual.

I then decided to look at Twitter and somehow gained a reasonable crowd in a shortish period of time.  There's a lot of wrong-uns there and most of the crap that people tweet just makes you shake your head in wonder.  But then every now and again a stroke of genius will appear on your timeline which will make you stop for just a moment.  It was those instances, coupled together with the sheer volume of people you have potential access to which gave me an idea.

See I'm not so good if I'm asked to create something from a blank page.  Draw a line on it and my imagination will populate it with a million characters.  I just need a start.  So what if you started a story, maybe the first page of a book and asked your followers to continue it.  What if they re-tweeted the idea to their followers and in turn their followers etc... What about if everyone knew about it and contributed to the story.  Just imagine if the media got hold of it...  What if it got the nations attention... I held the idea for a week and then the next time I saw Phil I asked him what he thought.  Boom!!  The road of endless possibility opened in front of us.  He expanded the idea beyond my horizon and between us we talked about how it could be done.  Before we knew it we were commissioning a website to be built, discussing PR campaigns, writing press releases and lunching with our new lawyer.

So all there is left for me to do is bring it to your attention.  Technically the only way that this is going to fail is if no-one knows about it.  So do me a favor, check it out and tweet the link, post it on your Facebook wall and tell your friends.  After all, that's what friends are for - www.thebigstorychallenge.com

The Social Network

A friend of mine and I are creating a new platform for writers.  Like most people with a "new" idea we think it has the potential to be very big and successful - I guess time will only tell...  My business partner in this new venture, a friend of 27 years recommended that I watch "The Social Network" - the film about how Facebook was founded, created and grew to be what we know it is today.

Now I'm not saying that our project is anything like Facebook, far from it.  Ours isn't a social network, nor a community site at all but watching the film last night what it did show me was how a single idea can change the world.  How we may feel like just a tiny drip in the ocean that is the world but a good idea can come to anyone and if you have the balls to pursue it... well even the sky isn't the limit.

During the film though it brought awareness to me about relationships.  How closely forged friendships can be torn apart - not necessarily just by money but by enthusiasm, drive and single-mindedness.  In the film the relationship between Mark Zukerberg and Eduardo Saverin, the two founders of this phenomenon (albeit Eduardo was portrayed as the money and business man to Zukerberg's genius) was ripped apart by these factors (plus the inevitable new friends that good ideas and success brings).  Occasional nostalgia marred by courtroom lawyer tactics.

A great film though which really highlighted the saying "be careful what you wish for, cos you might just get it".

Back to school

And so, the end is near...  Ah yes, the end of the kids holidays.  For us it has been the first long summer holiday to deal with.  Reece is 4 and has been at pre-prep school for the last year so we've had to contend with terms and their half-terms and holidays - not easy when you are both working and trying to juggle dropping-off and picking-up amongst the abundance of holidays they seem to get.  Seriously, I never remember having that much time off school!

Our solution to this quandry?  Have another baby.  Hhhmmmm....   All in all it has actually worked very well for us.  Gem gave up work at 38 weeks pregnant in the knowledge that Lincoln would be born at 39 weeks (c-section to due us producing big babies) and that just so happened to coincide with the start of the long summer holiday.  For Reece that's 3 days short of 9 weeks.

But looking back it has actually gone quite quickly and very well.  I promised myself that I'd have 1 day every week off work so we could do things as a family.  In reality I've had 3 days but more due to the fact that things have happened outside my control which has meant that Gem has had to spend time with her family.  But all in all it's been fun and Reece has had a great time, mixing family, fun and friends every week plus he's got to spend lots of time with his new brother which has been invaluable.

On Tuesday he goes to school, not pre-prep but real, proper school.  I go back to the school run and Gem gets some much needed time to rest and sleep whilst Lincoln naps - time will only tell if she takes advantage of that but I think we already know the answer.