Tag: #amwriting

Mobile phones

There is a saying ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’.

For a long time, in days before the current technological age, I didn’t really understand what that meant.

Until now.

How many times, in the last few days have I heard the question, “Where’s my mobile phone?”.

It seems we can lose almost anything else but, without the phone, we are completely lost.

The same now applies to all of our household appliances.

Then, the other day I heard, “We aren’t able to do very much because the microwave oven is broken.”

How did we manage in the days before we had such devices?  I know my grandmother used to have a wood stove and cooked everything, bread, roasting meat, cooking fish, vegetables, cakes, puddings, even make a cup of tea.

I don’t think I ever had a cup of coffee at her house, but I have a lot of memories of some amazing food.  No such thing as electric kitchen appliances, or a microwave oven, not in that house.

We had the same experience ourselves when one of the fridge/freezer units broke down, and severely restricted what we could cook and store, especially the freezer.

And perhaps that’s the problem.  We take so many things for granted and live a life that is centered around convenience.

What would happen if those conveniences were taken away?

Certainly, for me, I know, what it’s like to lose the use of a kitchen appliance and having to improvise, but I’m not sure how we would react if we had a real catastrophe.

We try not to think about what it would be like to lose electricity altogether, just a short blackout is enough to frighten us.

But, I haven’t lost my phone yet.

Let’s hope it never happens.

#NaNoWriMo2017 Update – Day 10, 11 & 12

At last, the story is coming together.

The first seven chapters, with the necessary revisions and additions to provide stepping stones for later events, have been amended.

The next chapter has been slightly revised.

Chapter 9 is still under construction and can be written later.  The information on the characters in this chapter will be drawn upon for later events, and it doesn’t have to happen straight away.

Chapter 10 is now done and has tied up several loose ends.

I have now been able to sit down and do the forward plan for at least three more chapters, and I know what will happen next.

Stay tuned, anything can happen between now and the next report!

#NaNoWriMo2017 – Day 9

So, we won’t talk about day 8.

Day 8 never happened.  I want to believe that I went to bed at the usual time, and slept for 24 hours.

Except I didn’t.

What happened?  A now plot twist came out of the new writing, and you guessed it, I had to go back and write some new lines to accommodate it.

Who said writing is fun?

Then, of course, a new idea pops into my head while having the first cup of coffee for the day, and …

Well, you know the rest.

Roll on day 10!

#Nanowrimo Update – Day 6 & 7

Finally, I’ve ironed out the wrinkles in the start, and go to move on.

I have a plot line that I’m working on and will run for about three chapters.

That means the next plot line will develop from this writing.

Sorry, only a short report, writing to get on with …

#Nanowrimo Update – Day 5

So you think everything is running smoothly.

Think again!

So, here’s the thing …

I changed the start.  It was bothering me.  Bothering me so much I couldn’t sleep.

Parts of the first chapters were alluding to events which didn’t seem to add up, so I wrote the whole piece so I could draw upon it later on.

Yes, I like the idea of full-on action to start, bullets flying, people dying, and heart racing tension.  I call it the ‘James Bond’ start, like what happens at the start of a James Bond film.

And, yes, you guessed it, I now have to make changes down the line in the first four chapters, now delaying the completion of chapter five for day six.

OK, stop whining and get writing!

 

#Nanowrimo update – Day 4

There’s a fork in the road.

It could be worse.

Chapter two now seems to be about what it should be about and leads into chapter three.

But …

Oh no, here we go … that inevitable but …

Chapter four is now relatively new writing which requires a new chapter five, ready to give an extra twist to the plot.  It hasn’t changed radically, but marginally.

For now.

Chapter five, tomorrow’s task, is completely new and will require some extra thought while I’m asleep.

Or perhaps I should make a few brief notes now!

 

 

NaNoWriMo Update – Day 3

How quickly things change.

Chapter two is now chapter three and I need to add some new words in what will become chapter five because of a small change in chapter one.

The plan is changing, but that is always the case when you start delving into the motivations and actions of characters, and how they may react to a certain situation.

I had sketchy outlines of characters to begin with, but they, like the plot, will evolve as I move forward.

Nothing like writing a story where the end is still not clear in my head.

Outside it is very hot, and inside where the writing is happening, I need to be cold, cold as Scotland in winter with snow, so getting into the scene is going to be quite difficult.

I wonder how low I can turn the air conditioner …

NaNoWriMo Update – Day 2

The best-laid plans of mice and men …

All come to grief when you begin writing.  Sure, you have a plan, it may be meticulous, it might be scrambled, it might be almost perfect.

I thought mine was almost perfect.

Then chapter one started and I reached a fork in the road.  This way or that, or another altogether.

It was a possibility I didn’t see in the planning stage.

Will it affect the outcome?

Too early to tell.

Part of chapter one has now become chapter two, and the ripple effect had changed the number of chapters.

The good news, 2,241 words written.

Let you know more tomorrow!

NaNoWriMo – Progress update

After spending a number of harrowing days trying to plan, plot, and replot, sort out the characters and their characteristics, discover locations and read up on them, learn as much as possible about the props, it was time to let loose the pencil.

But, sadly, all the plotting in the world does not translate to instant words on a page.

I started writing.  Great.

I hated what I wrote.

Deleted it.

Started again.

The blank page was staring back at me, daring me to write more of those terrible words, disorganized thoughts, random passages that had no connection.

No, it’s not writer’s block.

It’s pressure, the pressure of having to write 1,800 odd words in a day, this day, and tomorrow, and the day after that.

Enough!

I go outside and look at the mess in the backyard, the one I’ve been promising to do something about for the last 10 years.  Perhaps it’s now time.

As rubbish goes into the bin, ideas form, passages start writing themselves in my mind, plot lines seem to materialize and make sense.

I go back in and write.

Day 1 over, 1,916 words written.

Just think, come tomorrow I have to go through all this again.  Sigh!

That word ‘happy’

“I’m happy to be being here.”

Yes, I actually heard that answer given in a television interview, and thought, at the time, it was a quaint expression.

But in reality, this was a person for whom English was a second language, and that was, quite literally, their translation from their language to English.

Suffice to say, that person was not happy when lost the event she was participating in.

But that particular memory was triggered by another event.

Someone asked me how happy I was.

Happy is another of those words like good, thrown around like a rag doll, used without consequence, or regard for its true meaning.

“After everything that’s happened, you should be the happiest man alive!”

I’m happy.

I should be, to them.

A real friend might also say, “Are you sure, you don’t look happy.”

I hesitate but say, “Sure.  I woke up with a headache,” or some other lame reason.

But, in reality, I’m not ‘happy’.  Convention says that we should be happy if everything is going well.  In my case, it is, to a certain extent, but it is what’s happening within that’s the problem.  We say it because people expect it.

I find there is no use complaining because no one will listen, and definitely, no one likes serial complainers.

True.

But somewhere in all those complaints will be the truth, the one item that is bugging us.

It is a case of whether we are prepared to listen.  Really listen.

And not necessarily take people at their word.