This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
Coming soon!
Tag: #amediting
Trying to pick up the pieces
I can see how it is that a writer’s life is one that, at times, has to be shut off from the outside world.
It’s a bit hard to keep a stream of thoughts going when in one ear is some banal detective show, and in the other, a conversation that you have to keep up with. I know how hard it is because I’ve tried doing three things at once, and failed miserably in all three.
So, out I slink to the writing room and start by re-reading the previous chapters, to get back into the plot. I should remember where I am, and get straight to it, but the devil is in the detail.
Going back, quite often I revise, and a plotline is tweaked, and a whole new window is opened. God, I wish I didn’t do that!
Then I get to the blank page, ready to go, and…
The phone rings.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Phone answered, back to the blank page, no, it’s gone, got yo go back, blast, another revision, and back to the blank page.
Half an hour shot to pieces.
The phone rings again.
Blast scam callers. I nearly rip the cord out of the wall.
All through this the cat just watches, and, is that a knowing smile?
It can’t be, I’ve just learned that cats can’t smile, or make any sort of face.
I’m sure his thoughts are not a vague or scrambled, or wrestling with the ploys of several stories on the go, getting locations right, getting characters to think and do their thing with a fair degree of continuity.
The cat’s world is one of which chair to lie on, where is that elusive mouse be it real or otherwise, and is this fool going to feed me, and please, please, don’t let it be the lasagna. I am not that cat!
Unlike other professions, it’s a steady, sometimes frustrating, slog where you can’t just walk away, have a great time, and come back and pick up where you left off. Stories have to be written from beginning to end, not a bit here and a bit there.
It’s a bit like running a marathon. You are in a zone, the first few miles are the hardest, the middle is just getting the rhythm and breathing under control, and then you hope you get to the end because it can seem that you’ve been going forever and the end is never in sight.
But, when you reach the end, oh, isn’t the feeling one of pure joy and relief.
Sorry, not there yet.
And no comment is required from the cat gallery, thankyou!
In a word: Not
You will not go outside, you will not go to the movies.
The word not, when used by your parents when you are a child is the key in the lock keeping you from having fun.
It is the very definition of everything negative, and much harsher than just a plain no.
That you will ‘not…’ has been the gateway for many an exploit or adventure, because anything you have done contrary to the ‘not’ is all that much sweeter.
Until you get into trouble, but, then, isn’t that how you learn life’s lessons?
But if you are a programmer like me, not takes on a whole new meaning in a language like,
‘If not like …. then’
meaning in layman’s terms if something isn’t like a specific value then do something else.
Hang on, isn’t that a bit like reality?
This is not to be confused with the work Knot which is,
A blemish in a piece of wood
The speed of a ship, winds, and sometimes a plane
But basically,
Something you tie to keep your shoes on, or around your finger to remind you to tie your shoes before getting on the 36-knot high-speed ferry made of knotty wood.
It is also something you find in tangled hair and is very painful trying to remove it.
It is also an unpleasant tightness in body muscles and you need a masseuse to get rid of them.
“The Things We Do For Love” – Coming soon
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
The cover, at the moment, looks like this:
It’s nearly the end of another month
And where am I in the greater scheme of things?
I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
With ‘The Things We Do For Love’, the final edit is about halfway through, and in a mad moment, I decided to flesh out Chapter Thirty, which was altogether too brief and didn’t say how certain events came about. That’s been rectified now, and instead of one chapter, it’s now five.
OK, I know the reason for editing is to reduce the size of the book and weed out unnecessary words, but I assure you this is for plot continuity more than anything else.
I’m still not happy with Chapter Twenty Nine, but I’ve revised it about seven times now, and I think one or two more might do it. I should learn not to keep tinkering and leave it to the editor to sort out.
Being Inspired, Maybe has finally come back from the editor and there’s a pile of pages sitting in my in-tray … waiting.
As for my four episodic stories, the treasure hunt, the surveillance exercise gone wrong, the world war two story, and what started with a helicopter crash and became way too complicated, they all need new episodes.
The other two, an icy rescue, and motive means and opportunity are still in limbo. After all, there are only so many stories you can write at once.
Perhaps a crossover is in order, like in the Flash, Supergirl and others universe.
If only there were enough hours in a day.
Sigh.
Now NANOWRIMO is almost upon us and I have to get my next story for it into the planning stage with an outline and summary of chapters and daily schedule that will accommodate 1667 or something like that words a day.
Double sigh.
And the cat, well, just don’t get me started!
Being Inspired – the book
Over the past year or so I have been selecting photographs I’ve taken on many travels, and put a story to them.
When I reached a milestone of 50 stories, I decided to make them into a book, and, in doing so, I have gone through each and revised them, making some longer and into short stories.
50 photographs, 50 stories. I’ve called it, “Inspiration, Maybe”
It will be available soon.
I still hate editing!
It’s that story again, you know, the one from the 1970s or around that period.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
But before we get into that, I always thought that editing was exactly that, editing, removing the slack, the bits a story could do without, tightening up the plot.
At times, I think I’ve lost the plot!
So, Chapter Twenty Nine used to be Chapter 19. Yes, you heard it right, I’ve added new chapters, more words, and expanded the story from 340 pages to 386, as it stands at the moment.
I just finished working on page 202.
I took what is one of the pivotal moments in the story and practically re-wrote it.
But…
You know how it goes. That first critical rewrite doesn’t sit too well, and for the next twenty-four hours, it mulls around in your head, where there’s a ferocious debate going on.
It was right the first time.
It was too wordy and too repetitive and needed amending
Did the slash and burn go too far
What is being sold here?
24 hours, and a headache and a half later, I look at it, and it’s bugging me.
Yes, I went through it again, line by line, and reworked it, shed words, added words, and dropped a page. It now ends on page 201.
And yes, I might just read it again tonight, dammit.
But that’s my problem. There is always one chapter that causes me no end of trouble and sometimes takes a month, even two before I get it right.
It still doesn’t feel right.
Maybe I’ll leave it and move forward, see what that brings. Perhaps somewhere in my mind is the answer, that I’ve forgotten something important that needs a hook back here.
Pardon me while I get a couple of paracetamol for this headache.
More tomorrow, maybe.
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.
Coming soon!
“The Things We Do For Love” – Coming soon
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
The cover, at the moment, looks like this:
I hate editing!
It seems that writing the novel is not the hard part. I have no trouble getting the words on paper.
It’s the editing I hate.
For instance, the latest book on the chopping block was one that I wrote nearly 40 years ago, and it shows it’s age. The location is nothing like it used to be, the working conditions were totally different, and it was in an age before computers and mobile phones.
So, editing is difficult because I want to leave it in the period it was written.
Do you know how hard it is not to get the MC to pick up a mobile phone and call, or, for that matter, send a text?
This was an age of telephone communication, where public phones were the mobile phone of the age, and telegrams were the text equivalent.
If you wanted to say something, you had to arrange a meeting, and then say it face to face.
How on earth did anyone get anything done, how did people meet, and then communicate?
Oh, yes, letters.
Ask a ten-year-old today what a letter is, and you might get an answer of ‘bills’, but only if their parents go to the letterbox and pull out those dreaded window-faced envelopes.
Was every relationship basically long-distance, even when you might, in reality, be only one or two suburbs away?
It’s being hard to cast my mind back to those old days, and try not to let the 2019 trappings creep in.
Of course, there are the other problems of writing from back then, it is a bit messy, but the core of the story doesn’t need tampering with.
It is also a reminder of how easy relationships are these days with the constant bombardment of calls and texts to keep the dream alive, and, sadly, how easy it is to break up.
Back then you would have to survive from meeting to meeting, perhaps once a week, or maybe, if you worked in a city, once a day, briefly. The idea of telephone communication would sometimes be offputting because you dreaded the possibility of talking to a parent.
Perhaps we should go back to those days because it seems to me that more people of my generation are still together because back then it required a different kind of commitment to keep it going.
OK, time to climb back in the time capsule!
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 