Tag: Challenge

Camp NaNoWriMo – Day 27

The April version of the November write-a-thon is upon us, well, me actually.  I’m not sure hope many others are trying to resurrect an old piece of writing.

The truth is, I’ve been at this story off and on over the past three years, and every time I get a head of steam, something else comes along.

Now I’ve decided to use the April version of NANOWRIMO to get this thing finished, or at least in a first draft state.

Part 3 is now finished and it is onto the laborious work of getting part 4 right.  There will be about ten chapters in this section, and then a short Part 5 which is yet to be written.

Today’s assignment is probably the part I’ve been waiting for, the reading of the will in front of a greedy self-serving avaricious group of family members who have been hovering at the mansion waiting for the ‘old biddy’ to die.

Never have so many waited so long for so little.

Today is going to be one with a smiley face, for all the wrong reasons, I’m enjoying writing this bit too much, and then there will be a sad face, because there is so much more to do, and so little time.  This chapter is far from finished.

Today’s word count adds another 2,115 words for a total of 72,018 so far.

We are going to exceed my original estimate of 75,000 words by at least another 5,000.

 

 

 

What happens when the unthinkable happens?

Today, the unthinkable happened.

It might be possible the coronavirus may have penetrated the fortress walls.

My wife has suddenly got the dry cough, the sore throat, and a damp forehead which may indicate fever.

Three out of five or six symptoms.

It can’t be possible.  She had gone to work, kept strict social distancing, only gone out for essential reasons such as shopping and medical.  Continuously washed hands, everything expected to keep it at bay.

It should be just a bout of the common cold.

But…

We call the doctor, he rang back for a teleconsultation.  Just in case, he gives us the number of the COVID 19 testing center.  We call, and they say to come down.

Yes, testing anyone with any of the symptoms.  It’s a scary thought.

We drive to the center, and I stay in the car.  It’s probably moot whether or not going in myself is going to be a risk, because if she has got the virus, then I’ll definitely have it because there’s no social distancing in families.

And especially those who don’t expect to get it because we’re doing everything right.

Except, I suppose, disappearing completely from the face of the earth.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Now we have a 24 to 72-hour wait for the result.

Bear in mind there have been numerous cases that have the symptoms, got the test, and died before the result of the test was known.  A worst-case scenario, but anything is possible.  Then, if you’ve got a cold, or a flu virus, and then get the coronavirus?

The horrors that have always been so far away just sneaked in the back door, and for the moment we can now understand the plight of those caught up in the pandemic first hand.  And just how frightening it can be to unsuspecting and ill-prepared people.

But let’s not go there just yet.  Crossed fingers everything will be fine.

 

Conversations with my cat – 96

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This is Chester

Once again, it’s Sunday night, and he’s looking for a philosophical discussion.
COVID 19 is off the topic list.

He’s suitably disappointed that the Trump Show is over, as far as we are aware, though he’s not surprised.

But he is worried that two cats have tested positive.

I try to tell him that it is in New York, about 18,000 miles away, where there are over 200,000 cases. We have just over 1,000 and they are all isolated so we cannot be harmed.

I guess it’s hard to convince a cat when his mind is made up.

We’ve also taken the grandchildren off the list of topics too,

They arrive a few hours ago, and studiously ignored him when they arrived. I tried to point out that he was in hiding when they arrived, but again, the stubbornness of opinion is amazing, or normal.

I should be used to this sort of contrariness.

So, what is on the discussion list?

Outlander, Season 5 Episode 10. Well, I say, we haven’t seen it yet, so don’t tell me what the plots is.

He looks at me as if I’m mad. I only get to see it when you do, he says. How should I know what the plot is?  In fact, what is the plot?

Time travel, I say.

Pity we can’t do some of that, he says.

Why I asked, and really, I should know better.

Because I could go back to the day you came to the pet shop and hide. I have given you 18 years to improve, and you’re still the same as you were then.

Discussion over.

Not his favorite food for dinner tonight.

Business as usual?

It would seem that with all the time we have on our hands because of the recommendation to self-isolate, or at the very least, stay at home, I should have no trouble finding time to write.

To a certain extent, this has been the case.

April is another NaNoWriMo month, and I have been using this exercise revising a novel that I wrote a few years back and haven’t had a chance to get back to.  This April thing has been the perfect chance to bring it all together, find out what’s missing, and fill in the gaps.

At this stage of the month, I’ve covered most of the written and partially written chapters and worked out what’s needed to finish the story.  It may not get finished in the time that I have left.  The last word count was about 68,000 of approximately 80,000.

I’m not sure how I originally intended to get this done in 50,000 or so words.

However, in a day or so I will get to the interesting bit, but I can’t tell you what that is.  You need some mystery remaining so you’ll eventually buy the book.

The other exercise that has been far more time consuming, and perhaps a little more satisfying is the A to Z Challenge where a piece is written based on a letter of the alphabet, and I decided to come up with a specific phrase and write a story around it.  Yes, 26 stories in 30 days.  That’s quite a job.

It began well with stories that were one and a half to two pages long, but over the days, they got longer, three, four, and the most recent was six and a half.  I didn’t mean to, but it sort of flowed out.

April the 26th, a Sunday, it is quite literally a day of rest.  And the time to try and get a story ahead.

Or not.  Today I get to work on some blog posts.

This month I have also been following world affairs in relation to the coronavirus, and it is very interesting how different countries approach the problem  Fortunately we live on an island and have been able to keep the damage to a minimum.  Also fortunate for us, we have a federal government that is bending over backward to help the state governments, and there’s no political point-scoring.

The situation is far too dire for that sort of nonsense, and the opposition parties at all levels know that to make waves will immediately and all but permanently alienate the electorate.  Instead, they are providing constructive advice, and assistance wherever possible.

Of course, like everyone else, we have social distancing, unessential services closed down, and a large number of unemployed.

Proportionately, I would have to say we are as badly off as everyone else, and it’s going to be hard to get back to where we were.  Certainly, none of us will be traveling anywhere any time soon, nor will we have any overseas visitors for a very long time, so any tourism will come from within.

I guess it’s time we all got to see our own country.  In the past, the pity of it was that it was cheaper to go overseas than to travel anywhere at home.  Perhaps that might be one of the lessons we learn from this crisis to reasonably price plane tickets and hotel rooms.

If they do, I’ll be the first on the plane.

Camp NaNoWriMo – Day 26

The April version of the November write-a-thon is upon us, well, me actually.  I’m not sure hope many others are trying to resurrect an old piece of writing.

The truth is, I’ve been at this story off and on over the past three years, and every time I get a head of steam, something else comes along.

Now I’ve decided to use the April version of NANOWRIMO to get this thing finished, or at least in a first draft state.

Part 3 is now finished and it is onto the laborious work of getting part 4 right.  There will be about ten chapters in this section, and then a short Part 5 which is yet to be written.

Today’s assignment is Chapter 43 and I’m spending time working on this and outlining the chapters to come.  We are nearly at the end of Part 4.

Today is not going to be one with a smiley face, because there are too many distractions.  This chapter is far from finished.

Today’s word count takes me to the end of Chapter 43 and adds another 1,297 words for a total of 69,903 so far.

 

 

 

 

Putting the COVID 19 virus to one side and resuming a sort of normality…

I write about spies, washed out, worn out, or thrown out.

It’s time for me to go on with my next book.

The first sentence of a novel is always the hardest. Like I guess many others, I sit and ponder what I’m going to write, whether it will be relevant, whether it will pull the reader into my world, and cause them to read on.

And that’s the objective, to capture the reader’s imagination and want to see what’s going to happen next.

The problem is, we have to set the scene.

Or do we?

Do we need to cover the who, what, where, and when criteria in that first sentence? Can we just start with the edge of the seat suspense, like,

 

The first bullet hit the concrete wall about six inches above my head with a resounding thwack that scared the living daylights out of me. The second, sent on its way within a fraction of a second of the first found its mark, the edge of my shoulder, slicing through the material, and creasing skin and flesh. There was blood and then panic.

Milliseconds later my brain registered the near-miss and sent the instruction: get down you idiot.

I hit the ground just as another bullet slammed into the concrete where my head had just been.

 

It can use some more work, less commas, perhaps shorter, sharper sentences to convey the urgency and danger.

Perhaps we could paint a picture of the main character.

He tentatively has the name of Jackson Galworthy. He has always aspired to be a ‘secret agent’ or ‘spy’ and but through luck more than anything else, he was given his opportunity. The problem is he failed his first test and failure means washing out of the program.

What had ‘they’ said? When the shit hits the fan, you need to be calm, cool, and collected. He’d been anything but.

Maybe we’ll flesh the character out as we go along.

OK, I just had another thought for an opening,

 

Light snow was still falling, past the stage where each flake dissolved as it hit the ground, and now starting to gather in white patches.

It was cold, very cold, and even with the three layers I still shivered.

What surprised me was the silence, but, of course, it was a graveyard beside an ancient church, and everyone who had attended the funeral service had left.

It was a short service for the few that came, and a shorter burial. No one seemed keen to hang around, not with the evening darkness and the snow setting in.

I stood, not far from the filled grave looking at it, but not looking at it. Was I expecting it’s occupant to rise again? Was I expecting forgiveness? I certainly didn’t deserve it.

The truth is, I was responsible for this person’s death, making a mistake a more seasoned professional might not, and the reason why I was shown the door. I had been given very simple instructions; protect this man at all costs.

It was going to be a simple extraction, go in, get the target, and get out before anyone noticed.

A pity then I was the only one who got that memo.

 

It’s a start, but with the TV going on in the background, Chester complaining about something, and the weeds in the yard are getting higher, there’s too much else going to consider this even a start.

It’s an idea.  Perhaps I can expand on it later.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

 

It’s still a strange world

I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to turn on the tv anymore.

I get it. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and everyone wants to get back to work, but is it worth the cost of lives?

It raises the question, how much is a single life worth?

Apparently, to some, nothing. We see various countries rebelling against the so-called notion we should be social distancing, staying at home, and stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

It seems some countries, and a section of their population, just don’t care.

And the pity of it is, all those that do the right thing will inevitably forgive those that break the rules, even if they spread the disease because of their foolhardiness.

Our citizens will die, but we will be reluctant to call them murderers. They will find some way to hold the more sensible nations to ransom, simply because they have something we all need, something we turned over to them because we were naive. In a sense we still are.

Consumerism and capitalism, and dare I say it, greed, at its very worst.

But, the alternatives, fascism, communism, and dictatorships is unpalatable.

Something else we have discovered because of this world pandemic is our own stupidity in considering that a global economy was the way to go. All of a sudden everything we had moved to China, and elsewhere offshore, has come back to bite us. No whitegoods, no clothes, everything but food. At least we haven’t sold all of that down the river. Yet.

This is one hell of a wake-up call.

We need to address that self-sufficiency we no longer have. We need to bring back manufacturing, we need, in other words, to become self-sufficient again. No matter what the cost. It seems ems that in sending away everything meant that we sent away out national pride as well.

Made in Australia is something of a hollow joke. Now we get labels that no longer say, Made in Autraliaits now what percentage is made in this country, and that isn’t a lot.

I suspect it’s the same for a lot of so-called western countries, including the United States.

This isn’t going to be the first or the last time this sort of problem will happen. ln fact, it’s only going to get worse. The thing is, are we going to learn from it?

Yes, we need to fit into the rest of the world but, no, we don’t need to sell our souls to do it.

We need to do something about it, now, while we can. This pandemic might just have a silver lining, if only we recognize the opportunity for what it is.

 

Camp NaNoWriMo – Day 25

The April version of the November write-a-thon is upon us, well, me actually.  I’m not sure hope many others are trying to resurrect an old piece of writing.

The truth is, I’ve been at this story off and on over the past three years, and every time I get a head of steam, something else comes along.

Now I’ve decided to use the April version of NANOWRIMO to get this thing finished, or at least in a first draft state.

Part 3 is now finished and it is onto the laborious work of getting part 4 right.  There will be about ten chapters in this section, and then a short Part 5 which is yet to be written.

Today’s assignment is Chapter 42 and I’m spending more time watch TV for the 25th April Anzac stories.  It’s quite moving hearing the last post played on the bugle, and even though we are mostly quarantined, the minute’s silence is observed – in silence!

Today is not going to be one with a smiley face, because there are too many distractions.  This chapter is far from finished.

Today’s word count takes me to the end of Chapter 42 and adds another 1,526 words for a total of 68,606 so far.

 

 

 

 

Way, way back when life was so very much different…

It’s a weird word that describes a process where a bunch of people get together and throw ideas around, though others may have different permutations on what brainstorming is.

Reading through the current blogs sent to my reader, the word ‘brainstorming’ got my attention.

I use it, well, I try to use it.

I’m working on a YA novel, you know the sort, a far off land where there’s kingdoms, kings, queens, princes, and princesses, witches, no dragons and the jury’s still out on a unicorn.

I have two grandchildren, both girls, who wanted me to write a story for them.  Not that thriller stuff, or murder, but what sort of life they’d like to have in they could live in a different world.

Fortunately, both still have an imagination, a prime requisite for them to transition through their childhood to young adult, smoothing out the bumps.  They are avid readers, so I have an untapped source of ideas.

Or so you would think.

This is how it started:  I told the eldest, 16 years old, to stop acting like a princess.  She didn’t get the inference because it was an ‘adult’ concept when dealing with children.

What she did say was how she was going to be a princess when she grew up.  I said there were not enough real-life princes to go around, a point she took on board with all the aplomb of a 16-year-old, so it graduated to becoming a princess in a story.

Somehow she ended up with the name Marigold.

She decided Marigold was going to be a haughty, self-indulgent, spoilt brat.  That condescending tone, those flicks of the hair, those sharp put-downs, a princess indeed.   It was as if she already had acting lessons from the Disney ‘bad princess’ school of acting, according to her mother.

And she was in the wizard of oz, perhaps she was channeling the wicked witch of the west.

But …

As all haughty and condescending people do, the princess is taught an invaluable lesson in humility when her Kingdom is invaded, her brother, next in line to the throne, murdered, the king thrown in the dungeons, and her mother stabbed and left for dead.  She flees the castle and her betrothed prince who is leading the invasion of their Kingdom and is suddenly both unworthy and dangerous

The first few ‘brainstorming’ sessions saw the addition of two sisters (her two cousins, one 13 and other 10), the first a healer (another name for a witch as witches are outlawed in her Kingdom), who likes to play with alchemy but doesn’t yet know about magic spells and other special talents all of which she will need if she’s going to save her family and the land.

The younger, of course, had no specific role except to get under feet, and practice her workmanship with a wooden sword carved by her older brother.

It’s been done before, but this is without the Knight in shining armor, and where a young princess who has never had to fend for herself, has to come to grips with a completely alien environment, and the fact none of her companions believe she is going to be of any help whatsoever.

Several sessions later we came up with the quest.

What has surprised me, for a generation of children brought up with video games, endless violence, and the endless pressures on youth these days against what I had in my day, they have this amazing ability to take a step back and see themselves in such a different light.

I’ve always had an overactive imagination borne from a time where we didn’t have any of the facilities children have these days.  We had to make our own adventures, not live them out on TV and in video games.

I dragged them into my world, and now, together, we have a bond that will never be shaken.  I am the storyteller, they are Marigold, Ophelia, and Nerida, princesses.

They are as different as chalk and cheese.  Ophelia wants her own story, the princess who battles against the magic within her.  Nerida has a quite simple aim in life, having been taught swordplay by her brother, she wants to slay a dragon.

The first story is about two thirds finished, and I was told the other day, there are at least another ten stories yet to be told.

I guess it’s time to go back to ‘brainstorming’.

Camp NaNoWriMo – Day 24

The April version of the November write-a-thon is upon us, well, me actually.  I’m not sure hope many others are trying to resurrect an old piece of writing.

The truth is, I’ve been at this story off and on over the past three years, and every time I get a head of steam, something else comes along.

Now I’ve decided to use the April version of NANOWRIMO to get this thing finished, or at least in a first draft state.

Part 3 is now finished and it is onto the laborious work of getting part 4 right.  There will be about ten chapters in this section, and then a short Part 5 which is yet to be written.

Today’s assignment is Chapter 41 and it’s difficult going.  I’m going to have to stop looking at Trump’s COVID briefings because they’re starting to sound like something out of a science fiction book.

Today is not going to be one with a smiley face, for reasons other than lack of progress.  I’m sure I’m not hearing right, we’re not being asked to inject ourselves with dettol, are we?

Today’s word count takes me to the end of Chapter 41 and adds another 1,970 words for a total of 67,080 so far.