Tag: #amwriting

A movie review, “Honest Thief”

Considering that we are in the midst of a pandemic, going to a movie theatre seems like the least like thing to do.

Hundreds of people packed into a small space for a few hours, just the sort of environment the Coronavirus loves.

Well, we may have zero cases and zero local transmission, ans the theatres can open, theses just a few details first.

Social distancing means areas of seating are blocked of so you and your partner are like sitting on an island. So limited seating. Social distancing in all queues, rubber gloves and masks on all attendants, and hand sanitiser at the door, in passageways and in theatres.

Overkill? Maybe.

But despite the fact there are no blockbusters coming out, there a few interesting films about, one of which was ‘Honest Thief’

It has Liam Neeson in it so how bad could it be?

Actually for starters there were four of us watching the movie in what we designated Gold Class, very comfortable recliner seats and waiter service. And by the way the food cost more than the movie tickets

But back to the movie. Like I said, i came expecting a kick ass movie and that’s just what I got.

The premise is a man who returns from the war, used to being in high risk situations not knowing if the next day is your last, finds he doesn’t fit in, so as all similar people do, you rob banks, and very successfully.

Until you fall in love

Of course you may, by the end of it decide that being in love is not all that it’s cracked up to be, but it’s certainly a good reason to stop.

Until things get serious and you want to fess up.

The bad guys, well they’re bad, and the one man wrecking ball, well, he does what Liam Neeson does best. Think Taken and take it from there.

I always take notice of the others in the film, and was a welcome sight to see the actor who made Michael Weston in Burn Notice famous, playing such a different role. Loved the dog, too. Then there was the bad Terminator guy who just seems to get older, and now playing what might be called character roles. The love interest I didn’t recognise, but later discovered was Kate Walsh, who, I think, once graced Grey’s Anatomy.

As for everyone else, I didn’t recognise them, but no doubt they’ll turn up on TV soon enough.

For me, any Liam Neeson kick ass film gets five stars, and a pity perhaps that it will not get a chance to be seen by more people.

NaNoWriMo – Day 12

AS happened when looking at a large writing list, I got confused.

How hard can it be, you ask?

Well, I have half a dozen ideas that match chapters, and I was trying to get down all of the ideas as bullet points in their respective chapters.

So, you ask, how can that be confusing?

Easy. There’s a point where one of the characters goes down to the dungeons in search of her father who is languishing in one of the cells. Her approach to the dungeons is not be the usual method, but one that affords discretion, but when she gets there, there’s no clear, of safe way to reach him because of the guards posted.

That chapter in the original outline was supposed to be where she does get to see him.

Then, later, I wrote another chapter, possibly two, that seeks an alternate path, and then doesn’t get see him but finds an alternte method of communication.

But, since springing surprises on the reader is not exactly a good idea, I had to go back and establish how she came to realise there was such a means, in a casual conversation with another character.

The confusion?

Not updating the outline properly, and then putting chapters that came later, referring to previous events in the wrong place.

I know that sounds complicated, or confusing, but events can’t happen before the groundwork is laid before them.

So, I spent a valuable hour rearranging the wrongly place chapters, and checked a few others, and finding one in the wrong place.

The job, I fear, is only going to get harder.

Another photograph from the inspiration bin

There is always something strange about certain photographs that is not evident when you take them.

For instance, the photograph above.

While this might look like some vegetation by the side of a river or stream, its that are of blackness behind what looks like steps up from the water level that adds a level of intrigue or mystery.

For instance:

We had spent two weeks slowly going upriver looking for a needle in a haystack. It was an apt description, because there had been quite a large number of likely spots, all of which after investigation, came to nothing.

I mean, the description Professor Bates had given is was as hazy as day is long in these parts.

His recollection: that it was what looked like a cave behind lush undergrowth, with steps fashioned out of stone.

It was all the more confuse. Because when we found him, he was drifting on a rough hewn and constructed raft, half dead from dehydration. We were told he’d been on the raft for nearly a week.

That meant the cave could be anywhere between where we found him at the 10 mile mark, and 200 miles further on based on river flow.

We were currently at the 150 mile mark and the river was losing depth and width, and soon there would not be enough water to continue in the boat.

It was dusk and too dark to continue. We’d been enthusiastic those first days, continuing on in the dark, on shifts, using the arc lamps.

Then after a week, having lights on made us target practise, and after sever brushes with death, and the loss of all the bulbs being shot out, we got the message.

There was the odd marauder during the day, but we had the width of the river for safety.  Now that had gone too, and we had lookouts posted, but seeing into the dense jungle was difficult.

But we got through another night with no activity, and come morning, what looked like the entrance to a cave was not fifteen feet from us.

All we had to was row over and check.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

NaNoWriMo – Day 11

It’s been another day of highs and lows, as the reality of the task ahead of me sinks in.

99 chapters, according to the plan. 99. That’s a lot of writing.

I started today focusing on the second Princess, Ophelia, who needs to find a way of fighting back against the forces of occupation.

The fight for the castle was basically over before it started. A people who had grown fat and lazy, in a realm where there’d been no fighting or any discord for many lifetimes.

It seemed to me that this is possible any time in the world we live in, that a nation with a vastly superior army could just come and take over without anything more than a whimper.

And there are nations out there that actively and subtlety seek world domination. Perhaps it might happen before we realise what’s happening.

But back in fantasy land, Princess Ophelia is on the move, and on reconnaissance, and the question is, will she be caught?

For the statisticians, 2,594 words written today for a running total of 24,992, just short of half way.

I think this story is going to be much longer than 50,000 words.

NaNoWriMo – Day 10

It’s officially time to panic!!!

Before I started today’s block of writing, I loaded up my trust Excel spreadsheet which holds a loose plan of the Chapters to be written in the book.

Well, that’s what I started with, but since I’ve been melding old and new together, and the story is coming together, I needed to go forward and make sure the chapters to be written followed the storyline as it is now.

That was a shock. After an hour of moving stuff around, going over what’s been written, and checking the word counts, up to yesterday there was a disparity of 12, from the NaNo total of 20077, the sheet told me I had 20089.

So far so good.

Then I listed the headings of all the chapters to go and it came out as 99. Yes, 99 chapters. And I have got about 40 written. So let’s do the math, 20 days, 59 chapters, that’s 3 chapters a day.

Is it possible?

It might. If I start cutting now, but even then, it’s still a monumental task.

Stick with me and let’s both see how this goes.

For the statisticians, todays total is 2,321 words, for a so far total of 22,398.

I was looking for some good news…

And it seems there is some. The might be a vaccine for COVID 19, if everything goes well. I mean, we know that it’s for 90% of people, but we don’t know how long the immunity lasts, something tells me the tests need to go on for a few more months before they have answers to critical questions.

They also say there is another treatment available that can be given to people just turned positive, and who are expected to suffer badly from COVID, and that it will lessen it’s effects.

But, and there is always a but, it depends on who gets it first, and that seems to me to be who put up the most money. I doubt a small country like us would be able to match the bigger countries so I guess we’ll have to wait in line.

Good news on the vaccine, bad news on where we are on the globe.

I also just read an article of the last flight of a 747 Jumbo Jet. That plane change the face of flying for us, tucked away over 12,000 miles from anywhere, and I got to fly in a very new British Airways 747 many years ago and it was an amazing experience.

It’s sad that such a plane is no longer financially viable.

It seems airlines bottom lines are driving the planes we fly in these days, and it will also see the end of the Airbus A380. I’m glad I convinced my better half to fly in one when they were quite new, and it was an amazing experience that such a large aircraft could be so quiet and comfortable, even tucked away in the sardine can down back.

Looks like this is turning out to be bad news…

Which brings me to the event that no one wants to be reminded about, the fact Election Night on CNN didn’t run for the ‘Election Night’, it ran for over 4 days straight. Aside from saying the same stuff over and over about 200 times in 300 different ways, surely people could count faster. The only excitement was when new figures came in.

I wasn’t really interested in the outcome, just purely the numbers, until the networks (TV I’m assuming) called it for Biden. How could a media network call the winner of an election. Isn’t that the responsibility of the electoral bodies? And oddly enough, I was expecting civil war to break out in the streets of the states where there were ‘contentious’ issues.

Let’s hope for the ordinary family who just want to get on with their lives, not get COVID, and get back to work, it doesn’t.

NaNoWriMo – Day 9

With the first three sections down, I’m now onto the fourth, the series of events that kicks off the quest.

I’m juggling a lot of characters at the moment, and it’s getting difficult to get the time line of each event, and character, in chronological order. I don’t want to have a character at two events when it is not possible.

So, slowing down the process, I have implemented a chart, much like a spreadsheet, detailing events, characters in it, and when. Overall, there is a timeline, so I can see when two events are happening at the same time.

And this is hard to put to words because only one scene can be written at a time, and sometimes this makes the story a little disjointed. I’m working on how to minimise it, and make sure everyone ends up where they’re supposed to be, before, during, and after.

So much for that.

Something else I had in the back of mind, one of those thoughts you have just before going to sleep, and thinking about the next part, I think I will make a slight change to one characters motivation, the one I had in mind for a while doesn’t fit the new narrative of the new chapters written.

I guess it happens, as you proceed, things change.

NaNoWriMo – Day 8

I have roughly written the first 3 sections of the story now, about 16 chapters of varying sizes, and I’m up to the cataclysmic event that sets the real story in motion.

I sometimes find that setting up the story can sometimes take longer than writing the part I really wanted to get to.

Equally, I sometimes find that I will write a chapter, or piece that is further on in the story, because inspiration for that seems to fill my head rather than for the part I’m trying to write.

Oddly, sometimes when I finally catch up, it fits right in, perfectly.

And sometimes it doesn’t.

But this usually only happens when I have roughly mapped the story out in outline form, which, because I want to get this finished, I have done.

Progress today was excellent, and I’m pleased with the parts I’ve done, or revised simply because when I was looking at it, it didn’t look right. Perhaps I’ll be less fussy as the time runs out and there’s much to be done.

For the statisticians, I wrote 1,782 words today, for a total of 17,439 so far.

NaNoWriMo – Day 7

I don’t feel like this book is getting anywhere fast, but I have managed to complete the first and second sections, after a fashion. Some editing is going to be needed.

That basically gets the introductions to the principal characters out of the way.

Now, it’s onto the a rather horrible few chapters where there’s fighting, death, mostly death (those who saw The Princess Bride will know what this means) and general mayhem where in the confusion a daring escape is made, and a mission of utmost importance is carried out.

And this before the real story gets underway.

The next day or so will tidy these chapters up, and then we can get onto the fun part.

For the statisticians, todays effort was 2,551 words for a total of 15,657.

NaNoWriMo – Day 6

I’ve turned my sights on the other side, what might be called the bad guys. Oddly what was going through my mind was the old Hollywood maxim that bad guys wear black, and as I was writing their introduction to the story, I had two if them definitely dressed in black.

It also speaks of dark times that are coming, and might easily be mistaken, at the beginning, of just another storm front that heralds the cold and bitter winter.

And it also sows the seeds of what causes a certain event that invokes a period of upheaval in the realm, and those that are major players at the outset, and some who find themselves thrust unwillingly into fray later on.

There will be other events before we get down to the main story.

As for the logistics, todays word total is 2,028, for a total so far of 13,106 words. Progress is being made, but today was a little difficult.