Tag: Author

NANOWRIMO Day Five

Remember a few days ago I was looking at a separate first part, and that will be the case. It was not what I originally planned, but it is a work in progress.

Now, having worked on the next part, this is now developing into a section of its own too, and will serve as an introduction to the second main character. I had planned it differently, but this is better.

This section is starting to all but write itself too, which is a good sign, because I’m at over 2,000 words for the day, and the story isn’t done yet.

But, I’m taking a step back, just in case I jinx myself.

Later…

Sitting staring at the ceiling and looking ahead, a few notes for what’s coming vs what I planned, and the work so far will form part 2.

Part three is going to be the main story, where the two main characters come together, more through the circumstances of their first meeting that something that was consciously planned

The vicissitudes of life

I’m currently sitting in my car waiting to pick the grandchildren up from school wondering where that dream of the glamorous life of an author went.

Can it be said that any author leads a glamorous life, except for maybe J K Rowling, James Patterson and a handful of others?

That dream is of course only a dream.  I did not start this writing caper to become rich and famous or live a glamorous life.  I started It, and it continues in the same vein, that I have a lot of stories in my head that I want to get on paper.

If anyone else wants to read them, then that’s a bonus.  If I happen to make enough money, rather than live high on the hog, an expression my father often used to describe the rich, I would happily invest in programs that get young people reading more.

It also strikes me that it would be difficult to write a literary novel in the vein of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters, to name a few because modern day life has no real meaning like it did then.

Instant news, instant communications, and the rest of the country, as well as the world, so close we can go anywhere, and communicate instantly.  In the days of classic literature, they survived on periodic letters, and traveling to another part of the same country was very arduous.  Just the receipt of a letter could girl a chapter, the trip to and the visit to a relative could girl several.

But those tales of life were always about people of means, not the ordinary people.  Stories that have the minutiae of daily life do not appeal.  No one wants to read about their lives, they want to be transported to another world where there is no such inanity like cooking, cleaning, washing and picking up children.

I’m using this time to write another episode or chapter, or, in this case, a blog post.

As any parent will tell you, it is the calm before the storm.

Conversations with my cat – 62

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This is Chester.  You wouldn’t think he would have an interest in horse racing.

But…

He does.  Today, in Australia, is the day the Melbourne Cup is run.  It seems to be the biggest thing on the racing calendar, not only in Melbourne but the rest of the country.

Chester, as usual, doesn’t seem to think it’s all that great.

He wants to know why the cat races are not televised.

What cat races?

It seems he had been watching Fox Sports, and there’s dog races, greyhounds he says.

I’ve heard of them, even went once or twice when we lived in Melbourne, where there was a dog race track.

\Well, he says, if they can race dogs, they can race cats.

I appear a little sceptical.  What are they going to chase?

Mice.

Isn’t that a little cruel, I mean, you’ll get the animal rights people up in arms.

Over mice, he snorts.  No one likes mice.  But if it’s a problem, why not rats?  Everyone hates rats.

So, I say, you’re up for it then.  We could make a killing.

A shake of the head, and nose in the air.  “Of course not, I’m a pedigree cat.  That’s for the alley cats.  I’ll be watching from the Royal box thankyou.”

Going to church on Sunday

This is my least favored option for spending a Sunday morning, but having married a Catholic and agreeing to adopt Catholicism, it’s one of those things that has to be done on rare occasions, usually a child’s milestone.

Yes, we went through our children’s moments like baptism, first communion, and confirmation, or these days in a somewhat different order.  Then it came to the turn of our grandchildren and today the last child is making her first communion, and there will end our involvement till the last rites.

Hopefully.

Church to me doesn’t hold any real significance.  It doesn’t mean that I would debunk the idea of religion and I firmly believe that if anyone believes in God, then that’s their right.

And it seems there are a lot of believers.  I’m sitting in the church now and it is packed.  It might be that it’s a captive audience given that it’s a first communion for grade three students and others. but given the enthusiasm of the children involved, I’d say the church was about to get over a hundred new followers.

Of course, a lot depends on the enthusiasm and devoutness of the parents who may wish to spend their Sundays in a different manner, but I suspect there are many here who will continue their devoutness in some form or other.

As for me, sadly, I will continue to use the only day of the week it’s possible to sleep in.

In a word: Bark

Here’s the thing, a bark is the sound made by a dog.  Isn’t it?  Apparently, it can also be from a fox or a seal

Not necessarily.  A man or woman can bark orders, especially if they are in the army.

And then, their bark might be worse than their bite, this usually refers to newspaper editors and school teachers.

You can theoretically be barking up the wrong tree, and believe me, I’ve done that a few times myself.

People can be barking mad.  Just go to any old spooky hospital that is named Belleview, and has a basement.  How do I know this, I’ve seen a lot of old black and white movies.

Then there’s that other type of bark, the outer layer of a lot of trees, and can be very useful as a top layer of a garden to keep the moisture in.

It can be thin sheets of chocolate with a thin layer of nuts or other confectionaries.

You can bark your shins, that is, scrape the skin off when you trip over a tree with bark.

Or just to complicate matters, there is also a barque, usually a three-masted sailing ship, though you don’t get to see many of them these days.

NANOWRIMO Day Four

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I’m still working on the start and it’s writing itself, so the time I spent on preparation is paying off.

I have a spare hour or two after writing the chapter and start thinking about the start of the next section.   I had some hastily scribbled notes on how I think I wanted it to run, but it’s a bit wordy and needs to follow the start.

I’m going to throw the second main character in the deep end, and break his story slowly, in a series of memories.  Nothing better than to be dodging bullets in the first sentence.  Maybe.  I’m having second thoughts about the bullets.

Maybe not, but there will be something or someone to contend with.

But, back to the start.  It’s not going to be the usual interaction between the two characters, and I’m still a little unsure if the fate of either will be as I originally planned.  There’s a chance something will change, but, as we all know, that might make something else planned for later, change.

Let me sleep on it, and see what I think in the morning.

Figures of speech

I found this explanation on the internet: ‘a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect.’

We as writers should not use these in our writing because most people might not understand their use.  I think it sometimes adds a degree of whimsy to the story.

I remember some years ago when I working with a Russian chap who’d not been in the country very long, and though he had a reasonable use of English, was not quite up with our figures of speech.

And made me realize when he kept asking me what they meant, just how many I used in everyday speech.

Most of these figures of speech use descriptions that do not necessarily match the word being described, such as ‘I dance like I have two left feet’.

And that pretty much sums up how good I can dance.  But …

‘Like a bat out of hell’, not sure how this got into the vernacular

‘Like a bull in a china shop’, describes a toddler let loose

‘More front than Myers’, as my mother used to say, but in context, Myers is the Australian version of the English Selfridges or Harrods or Paris Galleries Lafayette.  It refers to the width of street frontage of the stores

‘As mad as a hatter’, though not necessarily of the millinery kind, but, well, you can guess

‘As nutty as a fruitcake’, provided your fruitcake has nuts in it

You can see, if you get the references, they are somewhat apt, and, yes, they sometimes creep into my stories.

 

NANOWRIMO Day Three

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Overnight I had a brainstorm.  You know how it is when you start writing, you get to the end of a chapter, and thoughts turn to the next chapter, or, quite possibly the overall structure of the book.

This part I’m working on now seems to lend itself to a separate section, and I’m tentatively calling this Part One, and it will deal with a specific set of events that will lead into the start of the main story, which, at the moment will seem like we’re in a different world.

But that’s the inevitable situation when you are charting the two major characters, one who comes from the very sort of background the other aspires to get into.  When we pick up his character, it’s in a place he never expected to be and has to try and move on from there.

However, I’m not even ready to write that part of the story, and I have to get my mind back in the current game and come back to that later.

The trouble is my mind is not going to stop fretting about it, and I hope it doesn’t affect what I’m trying to write now.

Ok, Chapter five …

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!

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Is it cybersickness or something else?

There’s this new affliction going about.

Everyone seems to be talking to themselves and I think it has something to do with smoking, perhaps a side effect.

You know how it is, you are walking by and someone near you starts talking.  You think they are talking to you, but they are not.

And then they take a puff of a cigarette.

It’s not an uncommon assumption.

But the thing is, if you take a closer look you notice they have a Bluetooth device in their ear and they are really talking to someone out there in cyberspace.

Or for the uninitiated, they’re talking on their mobile phone.

Not many years ago men in white suits would be collecting these people and taking them to an asylum typically called Bellevue.  The stuff of 1950’s horror films.  You really didn’t want to be caught talking to yourself.

It, of course, has a number of symptoms, this condition we’ll call cybersickness.  Like, for instance, wandering aimlessly and either bumping into people or in front of cars on the street.

Is it the voices in their head telling them what to do?

Can we say we have just created a viable excuse for these people, or should they be locked up?  Maybe we’re too late because I think a lot of them are already living in their own world.