Category: Books

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 25

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

Rolf Mayer had always had a dream to travel to other planets, and when he heard that the government was putting together a team of scientists with the express intention of building rockets, he gathered up his few belongings and traveled to Pennemunde to join the group being led by Werner von Braun.

At first, he had been turned away, but a chance meeting with von Braun changed his fortune.  

But, when Adolf Hitler came to power, it seemed that quest to reach the other planets became a quest to build a military weapon that would devastate an enemy city.  He had expressed his opposition to the project, but that was silenced when some Nazi party officials came from Berlin to give those scientists with reservations an ‘attitude readjustment’.

From then on all of the scientists knew when their allegiances lay and that there would be no time for traveling to the stars, even though, secretly, he drew on the experience and knowledge of the rockets they were building and testing to design his own rocket.  One day.

Then, as if only weeks had passed, the war had been declared, and the scientists had to work harder on creating a weapon which, in its first instance became known as the V1 flying bomb.  V, of course, stood for vengeance.

Later, when the enemy had bombed Pennemunde out of existence they moved to Nordhausen.  This place was different, underground where it could not be bombed, but there was something rather sinister about it.  Slave labor, prisoners from a local concentration camp were forced to work there, and the souls that he saw were not fit for work, or for anything else.

At Nordhausen, they worked on the V2 rockets, rockets in the true sense of the word, and it was abhorrent to him that they should be used for wholesale murder rather than their true purpose.  A promotion to Haupsturnfuhere in the SS and making him responsible for the horrific crimes being committed against humanity was the last straw.

He had enough information to create his own rocket based on the success of the V2, and it was time to leave, get away from this place before it killed him too.  There was only one problem, the real SS was watching, everyone and everything.  They trusted no-one, not even their own fellow officers.

Mayer was one of the scientists lucky enough to get a billet to the town nearby.  It was quiet enough, but he believed everyone living there knew what was going on, and worse, they knew about the concentration camp and the evil that went on inside.  Worse still, he knew everyone was watching everyone else, and reporting back to the SS anything out of the ordinary, including newcomers.

One such man came into the town, dressed as Obersturnfurer with one other SS officer in a car.  Everyone knew how impossible it was to get fuel, or if you had a car, a permit to use it except for essential services, or if it was requisitioned.

They were SS, so no one questioned why they were there.  But that didn’t mean that whispers of their presence didn’t filter around the town.  Just the very mention of the SS gave most people cold shivers.

Mayer heard about the two mysterious visitors when he arrived downstairs where he was lodging.  

“They were asking about the people staying here and wanted to see their papers.  I think they’re looking for someone, someone from the factory.”

“Nonsense.  They’re probably here to see some of their friends up at the camp.”

With that, he dismissed the visitors from his mind and went up to his room.  He unlocked the door and went in.  A moment later he realized his room had been thoroughly searched, and the mess left as a warning.  Had someone told the SS of his discontent.  He hadn’t said as much, but attitude and body language would have told a different story.

Then the door closed behind him with a bang, and the moment a hand touched his shoulder he jumped in fright.

There’s been a man behind the door.

“I suggest you do not speak or do anything that might bring attention to us.  Am I clear?”

Mayer nodded.

“Good.”

Another man, dressed in the uniform of a SS Standartenfuhrer, stepped out of the shadows in front of him holding a folder, the folder that contained his drawings and specifications for a more advanced V2 rocket,

Condemning evidence of him being a traitor to the Reich unless he could put a different spin on it.  He waited to see what the Standartenfuher had to say.

“This is damning evidence of your traitorous behavior.  We received information that you were stealing secrets from the Reich?  For whom, Mayer?  The British or the Americans?”

“I did not steal anything.  I work on the plans here in my spare time, away from that place.”  He realized the moment he said it, it might not be the best idea to be critical of anything, because it was always taken as a criticism of the Reich itself.

“Are you displeased with your working environment.  No one else has raised such issues.”

“No, no,” he added hastily, “it was not what I meant.  It’s just difficult to think clearly on problems when we’re under so much pressure.”

The Standartenfuhrer shook his head.  “Enough Mayer.  You are coming with us to explain yourself.”

“You need to clear this….”

“We don’t need anyone’s permission, Mayer.  We walk out of here, into the car, and not a word to anyone.  Any trouble I will not hesitate to shoot you.  Understand?”

Mayer nodded.

This wasn’t good.  Arrested by the SS.  There could be only one outcome.  It wouldn’t matter what he said, it would be the cells and then the firing squad.  He’d heard the rumors.

The other SS officer went first, the Mayer, then the Standartenfuhrer, down the stairs and past the owner of the boarding house.  The Standartenfuhrer stopped, and said, “This man’s papers, now.”

The owner stepped back into a room and came out a minute later and handed the Standartenfuhrer the document.

“No one is to be told what happened here.  Not unless you want us to come back and arrest your family.”

“Yes sir,” the owner said, very scared.

The proceeded to the car, got in, Mayer in the back with the Standartenfuhrer, and they drove off.  Only two people saw the whole event, and because it was by the SS, they were not going to tell anyone.

“Where are we going?” Mayer asked.

“Headquarters.  You will be wise to sit, be quiet and say nothing under any circumstances.”

Headquarters was in Berlin, at least that’s where he went to be made an officer of the SS, as a Hauptsturmfuhrer to give him the necessary authority to take charge of certain aspects of the production process of the V2 rockets.

And that included work on improving the guidance system.

But, he noticed they were not going north, but south.

© Charles Heath 2020

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 26

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

When I woke, I was outside the warehouse near an ambulance, and when I opened my eyes, I could see my mother, looking close to hysterical.  Further back, behind her, was Benderby himself, looking concerned.

A voice was saying, on the other side, “Just take it easy.  You’ve had a nasty knock to your head.”  I tried, instinctively, to move my hand there, but it was not responsive.

That scared me.

I tried wiggling my toes, and it felt like something was happening.  That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

Then I realised there were more people around the gurney I was lying on and a lot of chatter about a break-in and possible casualties.  There was only one, wasn’t there?  Me.

I went to say something to that effect when I stopped.  Not a good idea to say two masked assailants came to interrogate me about a map.  Firstly, my mother would be annoyed I was wasting my time on frivolous matters with Boggs, and secondly, everyone would think the blow did more damage to my sanity.

If they were calling it a break-in…

“What happened?” I asked.

I moved my head sideways further and could see the Sheriff standing next to Benderby.  The sheriff moved closer.

“We think one or two unknown persons got past the perimeter security, disabled the alarm system, and broke into the warehouse where you were.  One of the night security guards was doing his rounds when he found you on the floor in the main office.  Can you tell us what happened to you?”

One of the paramedics answered for me, “We need to stabilise the wound, check for concussion and any other side effects before you can question him.  That might have to wait until we get him to the hospital.  Now, I need everyone to stand back.”

And he meant everyone, including my mother.  I guessed they would let her come to the hospital with me, but if not, I was sure Benderby would bring her.  He actually had his arm around her, talking to her.  I didn’t think she liked him that much or was I just delirious?

I was about to tell the paramedic to tell the sheriff to go check on Boggs, but that would only lead to uncomfortable questions, and since Boggs had been so cavalier in putting the assailants onto me, I wasn’t very happy with him.  But I did wonder if they had gone back to him about my lack of co-operation, and what they might do to him.

Or, I just remembered, maybe nothing, because they thought it might be an elaborate hoax.  I was beginning to think that myself, despite Boggs giving me a copy of the map.  When I looked at it, on the surface it seemed to be the same as the one Osborne was peddling.

Whilst getting my head bandaged, I saw one of the sheriff’s men come running up to him, speaking and gesturing wildly.  I thought I heard a name, but the paramedic chose that exact moment to accidentally wrap the bandage around my ear.

Then I heard it, sharp and clear, perhaps as an answer to a question by Benderby.

“It’s Boggs.  Looks like someone gave him a severe beating and left him outside his house.”

The result of an equally forceful interrogation, or had it been a warning not to waste people’s time?

It would have to wait.  I had problems of my own.

© Charles Heath 2019

What I learned about writing – What can be explained is not poetry

The Unexplainable Truth: Why Yeats Said ‘What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry’

W.B. Yeats, the towering figure of Irish literature and a Nobel laureate, often seemed to speak in riddles that contained profound universal truths. One such truth, delivered not from a stage but in a quiet moment with his son, Michael, cuts directly to the soul of creativity:

“What can be explained is not poetry.”

This deceptively simple statement is not merely a critique of literary analysis; it is a philosophy of art, a defence of mystery, and a guide for how we must approach the most cherished parts of our existence.

If poetry is built from words—the very tools of explanation—how can the final product simultaneously resist understanding? The answer lies in the fundamental difference between information and resonance.

1. The Reductionist Trap: Explanation as Destruction

When Yeats dismisses explanation, he is pushing back against the modern impulse to dissect, categorise, and summarise. Explanation seeks clarity, certainty, and a definitive endpoint. It wants to give you the meaning in a neat bullet point.

But for the poet, this act of definition is fatal.

Think of a poem like Yeats’s own “The Second Coming.” If you were asked to explain it, you might say: “It is about the breakdown of societal order, historical cycles, and the fear of a looming, savage future.” This is factually correct. But by the time you have finished this explanation, the poem itself—the terrifying rhythm, the shocking image of the “blood-dimmed tide,” the sheer visceral dread of the “rough beast, its hour come round at last”—has completely evaporated.

The Elements That Resist Explanation:

  • Rhythm and Sound: Poetry operates on the level of music. You can explain the notes on a score, but you cannot explain the feeling of the music’s vibration in your chest.
  • Ambiguity: A great poem holds multiple, often contradictory, truths simultaneously. Explanation forces a choice, killing the rich tension that gives the poem its power.
  • The Ineffable: Poetry deals in the realm of the subconscious, the spiritual, and the deeply felt human condition—areas that words can only point toward, never fully capture.

As the great poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, “A poem should not mean / But be.” If you can swap a poem for a paragraph of summarised meaning without losing anything vital, it was never truly poetry to begin with.

2. The Domain of True Art: Mystery and Aura

If explanation is the enemy, what elevates language into poetry? It is the successful creation of Aura—that inexplicable shimmer of authenticity and power surrounding a work of art.

Poetry, painting, and music—when successful—establish an immediate, emotional connection that bypasses the logical mind. They don’t give us facts; they provide us with an experience of being human.

A true poem resonates because it touches a nerve we didn’t know existed. It uses familiar words in unfamiliar arrangements that create a shock of recognition: Ah, yes, I have felt that thing, though I lacked the words for it.

This resonance cannot be taught, explained, or quantified. It is a mystery that the poet labors to create, and a mystery the reader must consent to receive. The poem’s job is to compel you to stop asking why and simply start feeling.

Art as a Sacred Language

For Yeats, an artist and a mystic, poetry was a sacred endeavour that tapped into universal symbols and mythic memory. This is why his poems are so dense with swans, spirals, gyres, and masks. These are not symbols to be easily decoded; they are portals meant to shift the reader’s consciousness.

To demand an explanation of a spiritual experience is to completely misunderstand the nature of the sacred. Yeats viewed poetry in the same light.

3. Beyond the Poem: Embracing the Unexplained Life

Yeats’s dictum is not just a lesson for the classroom; it is a profound commentary on how we live. The things we value most highly in life are often the things that defy bullet points and clear definitions.

If we can fully explain something, we often lose our sense of wonder for it. The minute we treat life as a logical equation, we forfeit the magic.

Love, Grief, and Beauty

Consider the deepest human experiences:

  1. Love: Can you truly explain why you love a particular person? You can list their qualities (kindness, intelligence), but those are merely the ingredients. The love itself—the specific, irrational, overwhelming devotion—is the chemical reaction that cannot be explained. If it could, it would be a transaction, not love.
  2. Beauty: Why is a specific sunset breathtaking? You can explain the atmospheric condition, the refraction of light, and the Rayleigh scattering effect. But none of that science touches the awe you feel when watching the sky turn orange.
  3. Grief: Grief is not a set of stages to be rationally completed; it is a primal force that washes over you. No explanation can contain the depth of loss.

These are the poetic aspects of life. They are what make living rich, maddening, and profoundly meaningful. They require us to accept ambiguity and to tolerate the fact that the most important truths lie just beyond the reach of language.

The Call to Wonder

Yeats’s quiet lesson to his son remains a powerful challenge to us today: In an age where every phenomenon is instantly broken down by algorithms and summarised in 280 characters, are we losing our capacity for wonder?

If we insist on explaining everything, we risk reducing the rich tapestry of existence to a dry instruction manual.

True poetry—in literature and in life—requires us to put down the defining pencil, step away from the summary, and simply stand in the presence of the powerful, beautiful, bewildering thing that is.

The challenge of the reader, the lover, and the appreciative human being is to honour the mystery that remains when all the explanations have failed.

What truths in your life have you accepted as unexplainable? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 180

Day 180 – Rest periods for compulsive writers

…

The Inescapable Itch: How Compulsive Writers Finally Unplug (and Why They Dread It)

For the compulsive writer, the blank page isn’t just a workspace; it’s a nervous system. To stop writing is, in many ways, to stop feeling the pulse of the world. But even the most prolific ink-stained wretches occasionally find their pens running dry, or their minds fogging over with the static of over-output.

How does a writer whose baseline is “compulsive” actually step away? And more importantly, is the silence of a break actually a form of creative death?

The Williams Paradigm: The Panic of the Still Moment

If you want a masterclass in the agony of the “break,” look to Tennessee Williams.

Williams was a man possessed. His plays—A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—seemed to bleed out of him in a fit of architectural necessity. He didn’t just write stories; he exorcised ghosts. For Williams, the act of writing was a frantic attempt to outrun his own inner demons.

When Williams wasn’t writing, he wasn’t “relaxing” in the way modern self-help gurus suggest. He wasn’t taking a spa day or practising mindfulness. He was vibrating with a specific, high-frequency anxiety. He famously equated the downtime between creative bursts with a kind of spiritual oblivion.

He didn’t take breaks by choice; he took them when the exhaustion became too heavy to carry. But in those quiet intervals, the “boredom” he felt was actually a confrontation with reality—a reality he found far less interesting and far more terrifying than the worlds he built on paper.

Why the Break Feels Like a Grave

For the compulsive writer, a break feels like “death” for three distinct reasons:

  1. The Loss of Control: When you are writing, you are the god of a small, contained universe. You decide who lives, who dies, and how the dialogue flows. In the real world, you are subject to the messy, boring, and uncontrollable whims of traffic, groceries, and small talk.
  2. The Shadow of the “Interior”: Writers often use work as a distraction from the recursive loops of their own thoughts. When the writing stops, the inner monologue—usually the one questioning your worth or replaying old embarrassments—gets the megaphone.
  3. The Identity Crisis: If you define yourself as a “Writer,” then a day spent not writing is a day you aren’t “being” anything. You feel like a malfunctioning machine.

How to Take a Break Without Losing Your Mind

If you are like Williams—wired to the page—you can’t just stop. You have to “pivot” your compulsion. Here is how the pros handle the hiatus:

  • Change the Input: If you can’t stop the output, change the channel. Switch to a medium that doesn’t feel like “work.” If you write prose, spend your break painting, gardening, or cooking. You are still creating, but you’ve let the part of your brain that handles syntax rest.
  • The “Low-Stakes” Journal: Give yourself permission to write in a way that doesn’t count. Take a pocket notebook where you are forbidden from writing anything “publishable.” Write about your lunch, the colour of the sky, or how annoying your neighbour’s dog is. It keeps the muscle moving without the pressure of the performance.
  • Embrace the “Restless Walk”: Williams often found his best ideas while walking. If you’re bored, don’t sit still. The brain that is compulsive needs movement. A three-mile walk can settle the nervous system while allowing the subconscious to keep filing away plot points.

The Verdict: Is It Boredom or Fuel?

Is it boring? Yes.

But here is the secret that Tennessee Williams eventually realised: Boredom is the soil in which the best ideas take root.

When you are constantly writing, you are mining your storehouse of ideas until you hit bedrock. You are repeating yourself because you haven’t given yourself time to experience anything new. The break, as terrifying as it feels, is the process of refilling the well.

You aren’t dying when you put the pen down. You’re simply waiting for the tide to come back in. And trust me—if you are truly a compulsive writer—the tide always comes back. You’ll be back at the desk before you know it, pen in hand, wondering why you ever missed the silence in the first place.

…

In a word: well

At first, you would think this word has something to do with your health.

You’d be right.  “Are you well?” or “Are you well enough?”

Of course, it can cause some confusion, because how do you measure degrees of wellness.

Reasonably well, very well, not well, or just well.  Not a good descriptive word for the state of your health, maybe.

How about what if the team played well.  Not health this time, but a standard.

There’s ordinary, mediocre, as a team, brilliantly, and then there’s well.

It seems it can be used to describe an outcome.

Well, well.

Hang on, that’s something else again.

What about, then, we use the word to describe a hole in the ground with water at the bottom.

Or not if it is a drought.

A lot of people get water from a well, in fact in the olden days that was a common sight in a village.

What about those environment destroyers, oilmen.  They have oil wells, don’t they?

And when I went to school, there were ink wells on every desk.

Messy too, because I was once the ink monitor.

But if the well’s dried up?

It becomes a metaphor for a whole new bunch of stuff.

OR what about a stairwell?

And at the complexity of it all, for such a small word, tears well up in my eyes.

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

The novel ‘Echoes from the Past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The Birthday’.

My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.

Thus, the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.

So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.

So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.

I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.

And like all rewrites, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.

There was motivation.  I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample.  I was going to give them the re-worked short story.  Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’

Originally, it was not set anywhere in particular.

But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself.  We were there for New Year’s, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.

One evening, we were out late and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow; it was cold and wet, and apartment buildings were shimmering in the street light, and I thought, “This is the place where my main character will live”.

It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected.  I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.

I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went, so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.

Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller Centre is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.

The original main character was a shy man with few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party.  I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble.  No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.

Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule and begins a relationship?

But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

…

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

newechocover5rs

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything: red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

…

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone, one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much; it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there were several sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and a costly mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt, he would soon find out.

His mother and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time, he couldn’t help himself, and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation that ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days, he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, it literally made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head, trying to prevent a recurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact that his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall, cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile that Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticised trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

365 Days of writing, 2026 – 180

Day 180 – Rest periods for compulsive writers

…

The Inescapable Itch: How Compulsive Writers Finally Unplug (and Why They Dread It)

For the compulsive writer, the blank page isn’t just a workspace; it’s a nervous system. To stop writing is, in many ways, to stop feeling the pulse of the world. But even the most prolific ink-stained wretches occasionally find their pens running dry, or their minds fogging over with the static of over-output.

How does a writer whose baseline is “compulsive” actually step away? And more importantly, is the silence of a break actually a form of creative death?

The Williams Paradigm: The Panic of the Still Moment

If you want a masterclass in the agony of the “break,” look to Tennessee Williams.

Williams was a man possessed. His plays—A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—seemed to bleed out of him in a fit of architectural necessity. He didn’t just write stories; he exorcised ghosts. For Williams, the act of writing was a frantic attempt to outrun his own inner demons.

When Williams wasn’t writing, he wasn’t “relaxing” in the way modern self-help gurus suggest. He wasn’t taking a spa day or practising mindfulness. He was vibrating with a specific, high-frequency anxiety. He famously equated the downtime between creative bursts with a kind of spiritual oblivion.

He didn’t take breaks by choice; he took them when the exhaustion became too heavy to carry. But in those quiet intervals, the “boredom” he felt was actually a confrontation with reality—a reality he found far less interesting and far more terrifying than the worlds he built on paper.

Why the Break Feels Like a Grave

For the compulsive writer, a break feels like “death” for three distinct reasons:

  1. The Loss of Control: When you are writing, you are the god of a small, contained universe. You decide who lives, who dies, and how the dialogue flows. In the real world, you are subject to the messy, boring, and uncontrollable whims of traffic, groceries, and small talk.
  2. The Shadow of the “Interior”: Writers often use work as a distraction from the recursive loops of their own thoughts. When the writing stops, the inner monologue—usually the one questioning your worth or replaying old embarrassments—gets the megaphone.
  3. The Identity Crisis: If you define yourself as a “Writer,” then a day spent not writing is a day you aren’t “being” anything. You feel like a malfunctioning machine.

How to Take a Break Without Losing Your Mind

If you are like Williams—wired to the page—you can’t just stop. You have to “pivot” your compulsion. Here is how the pros handle the hiatus:

  • Change the Input: If you can’t stop the output, change the channel. Switch to a medium that doesn’t feel like “work.” If you write prose, spend your break painting, gardening, or cooking. You are still creating, but you’ve let the part of your brain that handles syntax rest.
  • The “Low-Stakes” Journal: Give yourself permission to write in a way that doesn’t count. Take a pocket notebook where you are forbidden from writing anything “publishable.” Write about your lunch, the colour of the sky, or how annoying your neighbour’s dog is. It keeps the muscle moving without the pressure of the performance.
  • Embrace the “Restless Walk”: Williams often found his best ideas while walking. If you’re bored, don’t sit still. The brain that is compulsive needs movement. A three-mile walk can settle the nervous system while allowing the subconscious to keep filing away plot points.

The Verdict: Is It Boredom or Fuel?

Is it boring? Yes.

But here is the secret that Tennessee Williams eventually realised: Boredom is the soil in which the best ideas take root.

When you are constantly writing, you are mining your storehouse of ideas until you hit bedrock. You are repeating yourself because you haven’t given yourself time to experience anything new. The break, as terrifying as it feels, is the process of refilling the well.

You aren’t dying when you put the pen down. You’re simply waiting for the tide to come back in. And trust me—if you are truly a compulsive writer—the tide always comes back. You’ll be back at the desk before you know it, pen in hand, wondering why you ever missed the silence in the first place.

…

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself, as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters, Harry and Alison, other issues are driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact that he has a beautiful and desirable wife, his belief that she is the object of other men’s desires, and, in particular, his immediate superior’s.

Between observation, the less-than-honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, and she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, is that nothing is ever what it seems.

…

Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 24

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

While waiting for Carlo and Chiara to return with the villagers, and taking some time to consider the plan that had almost formed in my mind, I went back to my room, which, I was guessing was once used for wine storage, because now that I had taken a moment to stop and consider my surroundings, I could smell the aroma of spilled wine.

With a little more light, I could see the arches within which the bottles would be stacked.  I’d also noticed while I’d been outside, that there were vines everywhere, albeit in bad shape as the people who tended them had either left, or been taken away, or shot.

Red grapes if I was not mistaken, though I had no idea what the variety might be.

If the war dragged on much longer, it would do a lot of damage to the wine-growing districts, and I doubted, when the Germans were here, they had any interest in tending the vines, but just drink the wine, and then probably not with the appreciation it deserved.

That had certainly been the case up at the castle before fate turned against me.  Perhaps that was where all of the wine from this cellar had been taken for safekeeping, once the locals thought the Germans had gone forever.  Maybe that was the reason why Leonardo spent so much of his time at the castle, the free wine.

Jack had returned from what I assumed was an inspection of our new quarters and was sitting on the ground next to me.  I wondered what he made of everything he had seen.  It was certainly not a dog’s life being caught in the middle of a war.  

“It’s a fine mess we’re in,” I said to him, and he looked back with uncomprehending eyes.  I would have to brush up on my German.  Or maybe Italian.  It only just occurred to me that he was probably someone’s dog from around here.  We’d only run into each other a few miles away.

“Yes, and I’m sure if you spoke English you could tell me a thing or two.  But, alas, you can’t, so a piece of advice.  Try to keep out of trouble, and by that, next time I go out, you might want to stay here.”

I shrugged.  Things must be bad; I’m talking to a dog.

Martina stopped outside the entrance.  “I heard voices.  Who are you talking to?”

“The dog.  He’s the only one who’s making any sense at the moment.”

“Are you sure he’s not a German spy.  Or, in fact, it’s a he?”

“You probably know as much as I do.  Anything happening?”

“Carlo’s back with a dozen or so of those who want to stay alive.  Chiara has a few more.  The rest have other places to hide if they need to.  We’ve told them to expect a raid.  Leonardo and a few of his men have been out looking for you and told everyone that you are a German spy and that he’ll pay them a lot of money for information about where you are or who’s hiding you.  He doesn’t understand everyone hates him, they always have.”

“Good to know if I run into him, he won’t be happy to see me.”

“This plan of yours?”

“Wallace will be getting edgy about the men he sent out, those men we ambushed at Chiara’s place.  It depends on who he sends, and where they go, but I was thinking we could prepare another ambush at Chiara’s.  All we have to do is wait because I’m sure they’ll get there eventually.”

“And if I know Leonardo, he’ll send them straight to my farm.  He knows that both Carlo and I, and the other two you’ve met were the other four who refused to join him in going up to the castle to make peace.  It seems he’s made a bad choice.”

“Wallace didn’t.  He needs someone like Leonardo to find us.  You’re probably right.  I was thinking Carlo and I could go.  No sense sending all of us, and if anything happens, there will be someone left to carry on.”

“You don’t sound too confident.  You are a soldier, aren’t you?”

“In a manner of speaking.  But I was not trained to be a commando, and not necessarily on the front line, or in this case behind enemy lines.”

“You’re not one of those rich kids whose father bought a commission, so you didn’t have to fight?”

Interesting the ideas foreigners had about elements of the army.  I was not sure if that was done anymore, at least not in this war.

“I have poor parents, that is if they have survived the bombs falling on London.  Refused to give in to Hitler’s aggression.”

I tried to convince them to go to the countryside, just to be safe, but one of the places they thought of going, had also been bombed, so as far as they were concerned, nowhere in England was safe.

“But yes, they did teach me how to shoot, and I know my way around several different types of gun.”  My mind flicked to the sniper rifle and the damage that could do.  

I’d be definitely taking that with me.

I saw her turn her head, and then heard the sound of new arrivals.  Chiara had returned.

“Time’s up for planning.”

I told the dog to stay, but as usual, he ignored me.  We went back into the main cavern where a dozen more people were settling in various places along one wall.  They looked as though they’d packed for a reasonably long stay.

But what worried me was the way they looked at me.  Those rumors Leonardo spread, I was hoping no one believed him.  Above the sound of voices, I could hear Marina speaking to them in Italian, hopefully, to tell them I was not a threat.

I found Carlo. 

“I have a small job to do.  After our last exercise at Chiara’s my old commander will no doubt send someone down to the village to seek answers, and I’m hoping you’ll come with me so we can convince them of the error of their ways.”

He smiled.  There was no mirth in it, and I knew I didn’t have to say anything more.

I saw movement coming from a group of people, and among them the boy I’d met earlier, Enrico.  He had jumped up off the floor when he saw me and came over.

“What are we going to do now.  I mean, we’re not going to sit here and do nothing.”

Boyish enthusiasm.  He had not been shot at yet, and to him, it was all a bit of a game.  I remembered back to the start of the war, and the number of boys who lied about their age, hardly waiting for the war to be declared.  They had no idea what a real war was, and if they had known, they would not have been so recklessly enthusiastic.

“You’re going to stay here and protect your family and all the others here.”

“No.  I want to be useful, fight the bastards.”

Carlo gave him one of his dark stares.  “You will stay here and help others if anything goes wrong.  Out there,” he pointed towards the entrance, “out there, if you’re not careful, you will die.”

Martina had seen him talking to us and came over.

“Enrico, we’ve talked about this.  Go back to your family.”

A last pleading look in case we changed our minds, then he reluctantly returned to his group.

Carlo handed me the sniper rifle and a pistol, a luger, probably captured from a German earlier, when they were in occupation.

“Good luck,” Martina said.

© Charles Heath 2019-2020