Tag: #amediting

The Things We Do For Love – Coming soon

Like Sunday in New York, this is another attempt at writing a romance novel.  I’m one of those deluded fools who believe in happy endings.

I guess that was a ‘spoiler’!

This is the description I’m currently working with.

 

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.  Tonbright, a small village by the sea, is one such a place, but he never expected to find another, 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 had happened.  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:

lovecoverfinal1

 

A fortnight in the life of …

It sounds like the title of a book and maybe I should write it.  Along with the twenty other story ideas that are currently running around in my head.

Is it any wonder I can’t sleep at night.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Who would want to be a writer?

Me!  First in line, every time!

Distractions, distractions…

A writer’s life is a constant battle, keeping the flashing cursor busy, making sure blank pages are filled with words, not doodles, and keeping the ideas coming at a steady rate.

Just like driving down the freeway at a steady rate?

The first is not as easy as the second, and even the second can be a bit of a trial when there are other cars around, or you don’t have cruise control.

Perhaps it’s time for a cruise control for writers.

Or not.

As you can see, I’m easily distracted from what I should be doing.

Writing.

 

 

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of the computer screen, the ever pervasive cursor flashing on a blank piece of digitized paper, and that was as far as I got.

No, the house wasn’t burning down, there was no major catastrophe lurking, nor was a family member or friend in dire need of my help.

I just didn’t know what to write.  The idea factory had closed its doors.

It was not necessarily a problem.

I have been writing, but not in the normal sense.  I have SomNote on my phone and my tablet, and when I’m waiting, usually for doctors or in Government offices, I write.

A bit of this, a bit of that, but usually the YA novel I’m writing for, and not necessarily about, my 13-year-old grand-daughter.

I find SomNote excellent for just putting words down, emailing it my myself and rehashing it later.  It has basically been used to write the first 37 chapters of the novel.

But as for other writing?

‘Strangers We’ve Become’, the follow up to ‘What Sets Us Apart’ has taken a different direction.  As this is the next book to be published, I should be working on it, but instead, some of it is still swirling around in my head.

The other day I went back to have a look at it.  Except for one chapter, possibly two, it’s done and so much better than the original.  Never let anyone tell you there’s not something else to be done after 10 edits and endless re-writes.

‘The Things We Do For Love’, a little story I wrote many years ago, was resurrected almost intact and is also almost ready for publication.  It will be categorized as Romantic Suspense, along with ‘Sunday In New York’.

My serial, the cases of Harry Walthenson, private investigator, has taken a back burner for a while, as I try to get a handle on where it is going.  It is a story now that is so very different than when I originally started it.  I suppose that’s indicative of a serial.

 

After that, Zoe, who first features in ‘The Devil You Don’t’, will be back.  After the trials and tribulations in her first adventure, she finds the past she tried to leave behind has come back to bite her.

The second adventure is called ‘First Dig Two Graves’, because it is about revenge and whether or not it’s best served cold.  And as for whether or not John’s romantic aspirations are fulfilled, you’ll just have to wait a little longer.

That’s my life at the moment, how is yours?

Writing and re-writing, or so the story goes

The process of writing is rewriting editing and more rewriting.

Some time ago l wrote some words.  I didn’t like them.  But it had laid the groundwork for a second draft.

Here it is:

 

Growing up I did not believe l had one of those lovable faces.

My brother, known in school as the best looking boy of his graduating class, said it was a face only a mother could love.

He was mean.

Simone, a girl who was a friend, not a girlfriend, said my face had character.

She was charming and polite.

Looking now, in the mirror, l decided I’d aged gracefully.

I could truthfully say my brother had not, but that was as far as the comparison went.

My overachieving brother was the epitome of success in business, a veritable god zillionaire.  Everything he touched turned to gold.

My ultra successful sister, Penelope, had married into the right family perhaps by chance, but she was also a very learned scholar whose life was divided between her chair at the university and her social life with the rich and famous.

Then there was me.

I gave up on my chance at university because l was not the scholarly sort and didn’t last long.  Sadly l was the first of my family to be sent down from Oxford.

Instead, l took on a series of professions such as seasonal laborer, farm hand, factory worker, and lastly, night watchman.  At least now I had a uniform and looked like I’d made something of myself.

It would not be enough for my parents who every year didn’t say it out loud but the disappointment was always there in their expressions.

My brother in his usual blunt manner said l was a loser and would never change.

My sister was not quite so blunt.  She simply said it was disappointing so much potential was going to waste.  I only asked her once what she meant and lost me after the first four syllable word.

Finally, I’d taken their comments to heart and decided l would not be going home to the family Christmas holiday reunion.

I told my boss l was available to work the night shift over the holidays, the shift no one else wanted.

It was he said a time for reflection.  He hated his family as much as I did so we would be able to lament our bad luck through the long cold hours from dusk till dawn.

It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicenter of the North Pole.  I’d just stepped from the warehouse into the car park.

The car was covered in snow.  The weather was clear now, but more snow was coming.

It was going to be a white Christmas, all I needed.  I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.

As I approached my car, the light went on in an SUV parked next to my car.  The door opened and what looked to be a woman was climbing down from the driver’s seat.

She closed the door and leaned against the side of the car.  “Graham?”

It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time, my ultra successful sister, Penelope.  From what I could see, she didn’t look too well.

“What do you want?”

“Help.”

My help, I was the last person to help her or anyone for that matter.  But curiosity got the better of me.  “Why?”

“Because my husband is trying to kill me.”

The instant the last word left her lips I saw her jerk back into the car, and then start sliding down to the ground.  There was no mistaking the red streak following her as she fell.

She’d been shot from what appeared to be a sniper rifle, which meant …

 

It still needs work but I’ve got the gist of where I want to go.

The idea is not to make a character so loathsome no one would want to read about him.

This will evolve and you can if you like to come along for the ride!

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

Driving in suburbia

It was one of those beautiful Autumn mornings, blue sky with a smattering of clouds but a sunny day all the same.  It’s Sunday so there is not as much traffic on the road.

Anyone with any sense would be going to their favorite coffee place and settling down to your choice of coffee and perhaps a toaster or muffin to accompany the conversation.

This is what’s happening at the cafe we go for coffee.  9:00 in the morning it is packed.  But great coffee is hard to find, and this is apparently great coffee.

It’s that in-between time before it gets windy, cold and wet, with the sort of chill you can feel in your bones, rather it’s the time when you have a barbeque in the mid-afternoon and get home before the cold sets in, or take the kids to the park for some healthy exercise.

Today I have to take a drive from one side of suburbia to the other, taking a network of main roads with rather anonymous names such as North and South

We travel through the older suburbs, those with a collection of red or white bricks and timber dating back to the fifties and sixties.  They are not, for the most part, in a good state of repair, and rather than looking ramshackle, it’s more like they are slowly decaying.

Fences are rotting or falling over, extensions like they have been glued on rather than added by an architect, and paint either fading or missing.  For the most part, people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, and too busy to worry about maintenance.

Some have been bulldozed and replaced, blocks are cleared awaiting new development, others are being renovated.  Any way you look at them they are still worth a great deal of money being relatively close to the city.  Nut it’s a double-edged sword, worth a lot, but costing more to keep.

It’s a location we could never afford.  Because we were not affluent we were pushed out to the less expensive outer suburbs.  This was of course 50 years ago, and now those outer suburbs are now the new inner suburbs and people are buying up to 50 km further out in the new estates.  When I was young these suburbs were farms and open land.

It also surprises me that people would want to live on the main road because with traffic as it is heading into the city, it would be difficult to leave or return by car.  At least for these people, public transport is better than in the outer suburbs.

Because it’s Sunday my trip takes a lot less time, except for those unpredictable traffic lights, some of which I missed and took a while to cycle through the other traffic before it was our time to move.  It’s the only disappointment of the modern era, the fact roads were never made to handle the traffic, and the fact they now have to bulldoze homes to make way for roads.

Pity they didn’t lay down the foundations of a proper transport system, much like they have in major European cities.

A strange hour of the night

It’s 1:20 am on this side of the world.

It’s a time where most people are in bed asleep, but it’s the curse of being a writer that I’m sitting here, cursing the keyboard, and wondering where the next word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter is coming from.

Left field?

Maybe it will come down in the next shower of rain, which, by the way, is part of a cell where we have light rain turning into heavy rain turning into torrential rain, then becoming drizzle like before there is no more rain.

Then, repeat.

It’s distracting, it’s peaceful, it is loud, I can hearing pouring down the path beside the house like a babbling brook.

OK, you get it, the rain is distracting.

This time of night is usually productive, a sudden thought that came to me in the shower is now being fleshed out as the next major scene in the book.

Someone is being shot, run over, tortured for information, or laughing in the face of the hero, or heroine, just before he or she learns a lesson in not aggravating the hero or heroine, as the case may be.

Maybe the rain will help, someone is standing outside, in the rain, getting very wet, running surveillance. Maybe they are in a car, and the rain is so deafening they can’t hear themselves think, or their boss on the phone telling them to go home.

Maybe I should just go to bed, and start again tomorrow, oops, in the morning!

On renovations and editing

There are a lot of words in the English language that can strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of men and women.

Two are renovations and editing.

We are currently deep in the first and it’s running something like this:

Firstly, we are updating the ensuite, and this has been relatively painless.

Secondly, we are fixing up the outside of the house.  The intention was to put in a retaining wall and build a stone garden with succulents.

Ah, the best-laid plans!

This led to, let’s render the walls, get rid of the unsightly bricks.

Fine.

But before that, we need to repaint the roof an appropriate colour to match the walls.

Fine.

Got the roof done, got the walls rendered.

Now we need a carport.  Fine.

Back to the garden, and so on, and so forth.  Much is still to be done.

It’s like editing, a chore that I’m beginning to like less and less because it’s taking on the dimensions of a renovation.

It isn’t a matter of correcting spelling mistakes, sentence structure errors, or badly place punctuation.

It’sd a matter of weeding out the superfluous text, cutting and more cutting, taking out anything that does not propel the story to a logical and unexpected end, let alone having to rewrite at the beginning because of an afterthought later on.

Starting to sound like the garden, rendering, roof scenario?

It’s harder editing than writing.

So many words, so much brilliance, ending up on the cutting room floor.

Perhaps it’s time to go back to the renovations.  They seem more fun than editing.

No?

 

 

Writer’s block

There is this thing called writer’s block.

There are days when I think I have it but the more I have thought about it while staring at that blank page, it occurs to me it is more likely I cannot put words to my thoughts.

In fact, I have been staring at this page for nearly half an hour.

There are no fewer thoughts of what I might write about going through my head at this time or any other time.

It’s a matter of what words I want to put on the page.

Those thoughts are spread evenly between three different stories I’m working on, this particular blog piece, and two other stories I should be editing.

And thrown into the mix ideas for more stories, fuelled by something I just heard, or read.

Perhaps I should put these aside temporarily and take a more simplistic view.

On this side of the world, it is spring.

It is raining lightly but persistently and when I look outside I’m reminded there are a dozen jobs that need to be done in the garden.

So, perhaps when the rain stops …

 

 

Writer’s Block

There is this thing called writer’s block.

There are days when I think I have it but the more I have thought about it while staring at that blank page, it occurs to me it is more likely I cannot put words to my thoughts.

In fact, I have been staring at this page for nearly half an hour.

There are no fewer thoughts of what I might write about going through my head at this time or any other time.

It’s a matter of what words I want to put on the page.

Those thoughts are spread evenly between three different stories I’m working on, this particular blog piece, and two other stories I should be editing.

And thrown into the mix ideas for more stories, fuelled by something I just heard, or read.

Perhaps I should put these aside temporarily and take a more simplistic view.

On this side of the world, it is spring.

It is raining lightly but persistently and when I look outside I’m reminded there are a dozen jobs that need to be done in the garden.

So, perhaps when the rain stops …

 

 

 

The Things We Do For Love – Coming soon

Like Sunday in New York, this is another attempt at writing a romance novel.  I’m one of those deluded fools who believe in happy endings.

I guess that was a ‘spoiler’!

This is the description I’m currently working with.

 

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.  Tonbright, a small village by the sea, is one such a place, but he never expected to find another, 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 had happened.  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:

lovecoverfinal1