Tag: #amediting

You know what it’s like…

There are good days and there are bad days

Today is a bad day.

You know how it works, the night before you set out everything you’re going to do.

What could go wrong?

All those irritating little things have been taken care of, especially so you could spend this one day so you can ‘stick to the schedule’.

Those re-writes you were working on last night were great, you were killing it, and, now, this morning, in the cold hard light of day, they’re just not coming together.

Then there are the three obligatory phone calls:

The first, the urgent request for a small job, one you just know when the word ‘small’ is mentioned in a pleading tone, that it’s going to take a lot more time than you have

Followed by the family member with a crisis (and how often is that crisis a storm in a teacup)

Then, to add insult to injury, the cat got shut in a cupboard, the hiding place that he thinks I know nothing about and is making loud noises, his way of telling me to open the door.

Followed by another, no there’s four this morning, my friends the Telstra scammers from India.

Concentration?  Gone!

Picture next morning.

No distractions.

Computer on, pages sitting in front of you, phone off the hook, no annoying calls, ideas are flowing.

You start…

The computer dies, there’s something wrong with the hard drive, and that’s where the real panic sets in.  Delays and distractions you can deal with, a dead hard drive and you haven’t backed up your work for a week?  That’s a full-blown catastrophe.

Maybe tomorrow…

We all need a little attention now and then

When I was last in Europe we decided to get the Eurostar, from London, through the Chunnel, to Paris Disneyland.  Not exactly as fast as the Japanese bullet trains, but faster than anything we have in this country.

You are hurtling along at up to 160 kph, though it feels a lot faster, and then you begin to brake, and it seems like nothing is happening, except for some outside friction noise, and the speed dropping.

I feel like that now, on my way to the bottom of the abyss.

At the end of that fall, it is something referred to as hitting rock bottom.

I’m told once you hit rock bottom the only way is up.

The question is, who do you know that has fallen into the abyss and come back to tell you about it?

Put into layman’s terms, hurling down the abyss is like having a severe episode of depression.  There are different types, some worse than others.  Hitting the ground is roughly the equivalent of looking for a way out that eases the pain and not finding one, and that, for some people, is a quite drastic answer.

But the sign that the free fall is braking, like the express train slowing down, is a sign that you’ve seen the light, that there are external forces that can render assistance.

I see them now, the hands of friends, the hands of people I don’t know, but who are concerned.

Writers like any other professional people are the same as everyone else, but with one rather interesting difference.  It is a profession where a lot of the time you are on your own, alone with your thoughts, your characters, your fantasy world, which sometimes so frighteningly drifts into your reality.

Some of us will make a fortune, some of us will make an adequate living, and live the ‘dream’ of doing the one job they always wanted to, and most will not.

I’m not rich, I’m not one who gets an adequate income, yet.

But I will get out of this abyss.

I can feel the brakes.

My eldest granddaughter, who is 15, tells me the fantasy story where she is a princess I’m writing for her is brilliant.

The free fall has stopped.  I step out into the sunshine.

All I needed was a little praise.

It’s good, it’s bad, and at times it can be very, very ugly

It was as if Microsoft Word was sent down from that place in the universe where a group of torturers sit around a table to find new ways of making our lives just that little bit more difficult.

I mean, most of the time it works really well and behaves itself.

But…

Then there are the times, usually when you are stressed about a deadline, or you are nearly at the end of what you believe to be the most brilliant writing you have ever put on paper.

Then…

Disaster strikes.

It could be the power goes off, even for just a few seconds, but it’s enough to kill the computer.  It could be that you have reached the end and closed Word down, thinking that it had autosaved, all the while ignoring that little pop up that says, ‘do you want to save your work’?

It’s been a long day, night, or session.  You’re tired and your mind is elsewhere, as it always is at the end.

You always assume that autosave is on.  It was the last time, it has been since the day you installed it however long ago that was.

So…

When the power comes back on, you start the computer, go into Word, and it brings back all the windows you had open when the power failed, and the one with the brilliant piece you just wrote, it’s just a blank sheet.

Or up to where it last autosaved, which is nowhere near the end.

Or it didn’t save at all.

You forget the software updated recently and that always brings changes.  Usually unwanted changes.

By which time you have that sinking feeling that all is lost, deadline missed, brilliant work lost, it’s the end of the world.

You promise yourself you’re going to get Scrivener, or something else, where this doesn’t happen.

Or if you’re like me, you put the cat on the keyboard and tell him to sort the mess out.

Save, you idiot, save …

It’s late at night and there are twenty other story ideas that are currently running around in my head instead of the story I should be working on.

These ideas are impinging on the current story, and somehow are finding their way onto the page.

Writing, cursing, deleting, re-writing, deleting, cursing.

I’m working on the latest book and it is not going well.  I don’t have writer’s block, I think it is more a case of self-doubt, laced with a healthy dose of second-guessing.  It’s why I can’t concentrate.

It’s why I’m thinking about the next story and not staying on track.

This leads me to be over critical of what I have written and much pressing of the delete key.

Then …

only to realize that an action taken in haste can be regrettable, and makes me feel even more depressed when I realize the deletions are irrecoverable.

Damn.

That is not supposed to happen because the great God Microsoft told me that auto save was running.

But, it appears even God’s can’t save deleted data if it is ‘in between’ saves.

I think I’d be happier in a garret somewhere channeling van Gogh’s rage.

Lesson learned – don’t delete in haste or anger or when tired, save it to a text file so it can be retrieved when sanity returns.

I was not happy with the previous start.  Funny about that, because until a few weeks ago I thought the start was perfect.

What a difference a week makes or is that politics?

Perhaps I should consider adding some political satire.

But I digress…

It seems it’s been like that for a few weeks now, not being able to stick to the job in hand, doing anything but what I’m supposed to be doing.  I recognize the restlessness, I’m not happy with the story as it is, so rather than getting on with it, I find myself writing words just for the sake of writing words.

Any words are better than none, right?

So I rewrote the start, added about a hundred pages and now I have to do a mass of rewriting of what was basically the whole book.

But here’s the thing.

This morning I woke up and looked at the new start, and it has inspired me.

Perhaps all I needed was several weeks of teeth gnashing, and self doubt to get myself back on track.

And, perhaps that first cup of coffee in the morning!

What happens after an action packed start – Part 14

It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

 

It was the smell, all hospitals seemed to smell the same.  Antiseptic.

And the first face I saw was Breeman’s.

How?

If  I could speak, which for some reason I knew I couldn’t, the first question would be, ‘Where am I?’

“Welcome back,” Breeman said.  “You gave us a few days of grave concern at the crash.  You’re in the base hospital, and lucky to be alive.”

OK, a few days missing, but lucky to survive?  I got out without a scratch, or did I?

I looked sideways and down.  Nothing but bandages, and, yes, plaster.  Broken bones?

“How you survived being thrown from the wreckage is anyone’s guess.  A search party found you last night, almost dead.  Broken legs, shattered shoulder, ribs, even a skull fracture.  The doctors are astonished.  So am I.”

She was holding my hand, a very unlike commanding officer thing to so, and it looked like a tear in her eye.  Perhaps our so-called casual fling was a little more than that.

“But you rest.  I’ll come back later when you’re better.”

Last I remember, except for some sore ribs, I’d been intact, and unharmed from the jump out of the helicopter.

Now, it appeared, I was the very epitome of a crash victim.  What the hell had happened to me from the time I was in the cell, getting that injection, and now?

Clearly, the people in the other camp didn’t want me to die.  But, surely they realized I would tell Breeman about my experiences at the camp.

Or not.  If anything, what I would have to tell them would be considered the ramblings of someone in very bad condition, mind wandering in the desert while fighting for his life, and then on return, ramblings fuelled by very high doses of painkillers.

And the fact none of it could be corroborated.  It was unlikely any flyover would locate the base if anyone was foolish enough to fly in the no-fly zone.

And, pushing the paranoia limits, I guessed that they would have someone in the base who was feeding them information, that’s how they knew so much about what was going on here.

I would have to lie low and choose my friends carefully.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

OMG, it’s Friday again

Someone, many years ago, told me that once you turned 65 the weeks just flew, you know, like when a day was a long time, days will seem like hours, weeks like days, and years, well, it’s like watching the time clock on a time machine.

That last week went really fast.

But…

I finally knuckled down and got some work done on the multitude of writing projects I’ve got going on.

Mainly, the story I’ve been calling ‘The helicopter story that’s been keeping me awake, got not only a title, but a plan and some structure.  As well as being written to the fourteenth episode, and where the fifteenth will be the end of part 1.

The story will have three parts and will become a novella.  The title, “Under the Cover of Darkness”, and Part 1, “Crash Landing”.

Sometimes these interludes just disappear without being finished.  This one, I’m happy to say, has been writing itself.

Hang in there for Episode 15, and then the start of part 2.  You will be surprised.

Another that I have been calling ‘Treasure Hunt” was a whimsical idea that cropped up because of something I’d seen, or perhaps read, and it appeared to me.

It had two Episodes and then ran out of steam.  I picked it back up, actually loading the raw file by mistake, and thought, why not look at it while I’m there.  I wrote a third, and then had an idea, something like a tangent and outlined it, the closed the file.

Another day.

That was a couple of days ago, and the ideas had some time to run around in the back of my mind, it now has a few more episodes and a sketchy plan of where it might be going.

Then there’s Betrayed, we maybe it will be called that.  It’s the third time I’ve put the title up for grabs, and it might not happen again.

It too got a third look, and a possible plot line, but I think I’m going have to rework the start to accommodate the possible new direction.

It’s on the backburner.

Good progress all round.

Writing about writing a book – a novel twist

I have decided to write about the process for me to write a book, working on the book at the same time.

You will join me on the rollercoaster.

It can be found:

https://writinganovelblog.wordpress.com/

It’s the first 30 days, and I haven’t given up yet

 

Saturday has come and gone

Although the main reason for its existence is to follow Friday, in some cases, it is the first day of the weekend.

Once upon a time, Saturday used to be a working day, you know, those days when we worked a 48 hour week.  Then it became a 44 hour week and we only worked in the morning.

Sd time progressed, we started working 40 hour weeks and had both Saturday and Sunday off.  Sunday, of course, was always a non-starter.  The churches made sure you were able to go to church on Sunday.

As time progressed, weekends started to begin of a Friday, with the day in question being granted by employers as a Rostered Day Off, provided you made up the time during the preceding two week period.

Now it seems the standing joke is we should work weekends, and have the week off.  Odd, it hasn’t quite caught on yet.

But, as usual, I digress…

After a week that got out of control, Saturday was supposed to pull it back into some sort of shape.

In a sense, it happened.  I looked at that list of things I had to do, picked one and got on with it.

PI Walthenson now had the intro to the plot diversion, and I’ve started putting the final edited versions of episodes 46 on, on the blog, ready to post them next week.

That done, I moved onto the helicopter story, otherwise titled ‘What happens after writing an action-packed start’, currently sitting at Episode 8, and now, with a solid few hours, had episodes written to 14.  These will be edited and transcribed to the blog for publication this or next week.

I never thought maintaining material for a blog would be so hard.

But…

Now I can say last week wasn’t a total disaster.

It’s good, it’s bad, and at times it can be very, very ugly

It was as if Microsoft Word was sent down from that place in the universe where a group of torturers sit around a table to find new ways of making our lives just that little bit more difficult.

I mean, most of the time it works really well and behaves itself.

But…

Then there are the times, usually when you are stressed about a deadline, or you are nearly at the end of what you believe to be the most brilliant writing you have ever put on paper.

Then…

Disaster strikes.

It could be the power goes off, even for just a few seconds, but it’s enough to kill the computer.  It could be that you have reached the end and closed Word down, thinking that it had autosaved, all the while ignoring that little pop up that says, ‘do you want to save your work’?

It’s been a long day, night, or session.  You’re tired and your mind is elsewhere, as it always is at the end.

You always assume that autosave is on.  It was the last time, it has been since the day you installed it however long ago that was.

So…

When the power comes back on, you start the computer, go into Word, and it brings back all the windows you had open when the power failed, and the one with the brilliant piece you just wrote, it’s just a blank sheet.

Or up to where it last autosaved, which is nowhere near the end.

Or it didn’t save at all.

You forget the software updated recently and that always brings changes.  Usually unwanted changes.

By which time you have that sinking feeling that all is lost, deadline missed, brilliant work lost, it’s the end of the world.

You promise yourself you’re going to get Scrivener, or something else, where this doesn’t happen.

Or if you’re like me, you put the cat on the keyboard and tell him to sort the mess out.

Nothing is infallible, computers or memory

It’s late at night and there are twenty other story ideas that are currently running around in my head, instead of the story I should be working on.

These ideas are impinging on the current story, and somehow are finding their way onto the page.

Writing, cursing, deleting, re-writing, deleting, cursing.

I’m working on the latest book and it is not going well.  I don’t have writer’s block, I think it is more a case of self-doubt.  It’s why I can’t concentrate.

It’s why I’m thinking about the next story and not staying on track.  And that pesky outline, or synopsis, or whatever it wants to be called has gone missing under a pile of paper.

Next resolution, clean up this goddam mess!

This leads me to be over critical of what I have written and much pressing of the delete key.  Only to realize that an action taken in haste can be regrettable, and makes me feel even more depressed when I realize the deletions are irrecoverable.

Damn.  Whatever happened to ‘undo’?

I think I’d be happier in a garret somewhere channeling van Gogh’s rage.

Lesson learned – don’t delete, save it to a text file so it can be retrieved when sanity returns.

If it returns…

I was not happy with the previous start.  Funny about that, because until a few weeks ago I thought the start was perfect.

What a difference a week makes or is that politics?

Perhaps I should consider adding some political satire.

But I digress…

It seems it’s been like that for a few weeks now, not being able to stick to the job in hand, doing anything but what I’m supposed to be doing.  I recognize the restlessness, I’m not happy with the story as it is, so rather than getting on with it, I find myself writing words just for the sake of writing words.

Any words are better than none, right?

So I rewrote the start, added about a hundred pages and now I have to do a mass of rewriting of what was basically the whole book.

But here’s the thing.

This morning I woke up and looked at the new start, and it has inspired me.

Perhaps all I needed was several weeks of teeth gnashing, and self doubt to get myself back on track.