Tag: Challenge

NANOWRIMO Day Two

nanowrimo-blog-banner-2019-journal

Finally, the ship got clear of the wharf, avoided a collision with a barge the strayed a little too close, and had me as captain of the Titanic, worried about people drawing parallels with the barge becoming an iceberg.

But…

I got the first two chapters done, more or less as I wanted them, but, as you would expect, once you start writing, there are minor shifts in the way it plays out.

It’s fine, however, and I’m not going change it.

The story is running according to the script, and it worries me.  You know how it goes, everything’s great until the engines break down.

Perhaps I should be more optimistic rather than pessimistic.

But, sadly, not so much written today as I’d hoped.

Smoother seas tomorrow one hopes!

Conversations with my cat – 61

20160902_094127

This is Chester.  This is just before he jumped on the bed and started scratching at the cover.

In the first place, he’s not allowed on the bed.  Somehow he seems not to have got that memo.

In the second place, I don’t like being woken up with a rather shrill meow in my ear.

What, I ask, in a rather grumpy tone.

He sits on my stomach.  Maximum effect for a cat that’s heavier than it looks.

It’s national cat day.

Rubbish, I mutter.  I’d know if it was or wasn’t, it comes up on the computer.

It’s national cat day.  You have to do what I tell you.

As if that doesn’t happen every day.

I throw the cover over him and he disappears.  Get out of that, I say, and I’ll think about it.

In the meantime, I go down to the computer and have a look.  National cat day?  Not our national cat day, it’s in the United States of America.

I hear the jingling of his bird warning system coming down the passage, then a moment later he appears at the door to my office.

Got your wires crossed mate, I say.  It’s in America, not here.  Back to the boondocks for you matey.  I’m going back to bed.

I think I just noticed a cat can shake his head like a human.  Or maybe not, it’s too early in the morning to be bothered about it.

 

 

Conversations with my cat – 61

20160902_094127

This is Chester.  This is just before he jumped on the bed and started scratching at the cover.

In the first place, he’s not allowed on the bed.  Somehow he seems not to have got that memo.

In the second place, I don’t like being woken up with a rather shrill meow in my ear.

What, I ask, in a rather grumpy tone.

He sits on my stomach.  Maximum effect for a cat that’s heavier than it looks.

It’s national cat day.

Rubbish, I mutter.  I’d know if it was or wasn’t, it comes up on the computer.

It’s national cat day.  You have to do what I tell you.

As if that doesn’t happen every day.

I throw the cover over him and he disappears.  Get out of that, I say, and I’ll think about it.

In the meantime, I go down to the computer and have a look.  National cat day?  Not our national cat day, it’s in the United States of America.

I hear the jingling of his bird warning system coming down the passage, then a moment later he appears at the door to my office.

Got your wires crossed mate, I say.  It’s in America, not here.  Back to the boondocks for you matey.  I’m going back to bed.

I think I just noticed a cat can shake his head like a human.  Or maybe not, it’s too early in the morning to be bothered about it.

 

 

Conversations with my cat – 60

20160903_010425

This is Chester.  Once again we have a standoff.

This time it’s over the scratching post, and, I guess, where I’ve put it.  Silly me, I didn’t think it mattered where I put it.

But, you’d think he would be grateful I spent nearly a whole day building it for him.

And many more hours trawling the pet shops trying to find a replacement that was better than the last one.  It’s amazing just how much these people want to charge for something that I could make for a lot less.

So I did.

Is it possible that Chester wants me to spend a fortune on a new scratching extravaganza?  it’s not as if he knows anything about money, and costs, and effort.

Or does he?

I’m beginning to think this cat is a lot smarter than he looks.

Still, once again I pick him up, get the low growl because he knows where I’m taking him, and then put him on the top level.

Perhaps it’s the smell of the new carpet.  It certainly makes my nose wrinkle and doesn’t do much for allergy sufferers, but it is new, even if it is an offcut.  Surely he couldn’t be offended at that, could he?

Perhaps I’ve won.  He’s sitting there looking at me.

Now, if only I could read his mind!

 

 

 

When you’re not in the right headspace…

It’s late at night and my mind is drifting into other story territories, what I once thought was the realm of the writer’s mind, to be working on five stories at once.

Anything but what I should be doing.

These ideas are impinging on the current story, and somehow are finding their way onto the page.

Writing, cursing, deleting, re-writing, deleting, cursing.

I’m working on the latest book and it is not going well.  I’m gping through a serious bout of self-doubt.  It’s why I can’t concentrate.

It’s why I’m thinking about the next story, simply because I don’t think this one is good enough.  I’m not sure why; the editor is happy with the way it’s shaping up.

But these periods of doubt cause me to be over critical of what I have written and that leads to a lot of pressing the delete key.

And then to suddenly realize that an action taken in haste can be regrettable, and makes me feel even more depressed when I realize the deletions are irrecoverable.

Damn.

I think I’d be happier in a garret somewhere channelling 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.

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 I suddenly feel my head is in the right space.

 

 

Where does time go?

NaNoWriMo starts in a few days time and I thought I had it under control, the preparatory work that is.

Nothing could be further than the truth.

I was looking at the outline last night, and it was as if I had the finished book in my hands and I was doing the second reading, part of the endless editing process.

Plot holes bigger than sink holes were appearing before my eyes.

The start is, quite frankly, lame.

There something missing in the middle and there seems some disjointed writing that seems to have no relevance to anything before, so..

Back to the drawing board and …

Panic.

What I need is some thing to hook the reader from page one, not put them to sleep.

OMG.

How the hell am I going to get this mess into some sort of shape before the start.

I guess there’s no time like the present.

What’s on the menu?

I’m finding it hard to get back into the groove.  I suspect I was not in one before, but I was writing, and the stories were coming together.

My biggest accomplishment for the latter part of 2018 was writing 50,000 words for a NANOWRIMO book.  It’s interesting that it seems to be the only time I can focus my mind on writing.

As it happened, the creative mind was organised and the ideas and words flowed.  I know it was just supposed to be raw writing, but I even had time to rewrite the start.  As we all know, by the time you get to the end, a lot of stuff at the start needs to be fixed, especially in light of plot changes and continuity.

Now, looking at the document on the screen, I have the job of editing and re-writing.

Perhaps I should give that a few more months before I start.  There’s something going on at the NaNoWriMo site that says to leave it until they run the re-write month in April, or something like that.

That month came and went, and the file had not been looked at since.  Perhaps later this year.

Then there’s the sequel to What Sets Us Apart, called Strangers We’ve Become I’m writing.

Here’s the thing.

It was done and dusted, and I was doing a final read before handing to the editor.  That was a mistake.  I seem to be one of those writers that can’t let it go.  I should not have done the final re-read!

I don’t know if anyone else has the same problem, but as soon as I had finished it, I had a feeling (oh no not one of those feelings, I can hear the editor saying) and something was not quite right.

I hate it when I am in one of those moods, and looking at it, I could see where there was a problem and began the re-write.  Problem is, it affects later on, so there’s going to be cuts and additions.

So the question is what do I attack first?

Start a new novel, work on the old novel, or … ?

Perhaps I should just pour another drink and go back to watching the ice hockey?  The Maple Leafs are up and down this year, and that’s equally frustrating.

Decisions, decisions…

Don’t get ill on a Monday, or any other day if you can help it.

But definitely a Monday because as I was about to learn, it seems to be the same as a Saturday night.

And as entertaining (in a warped humour sort of way)

I had chest pains and difficulty breathing, so my daughter called an ambulance.  I’ve been taking a raft of pills for psoriatic arthritis and although they’re not doing much for arthritis, they’re certainly contributing to other problems, like breathing.

There was a momentary suspicion that it might be an impending heart attack, but no, I hadn’t seen the latest electricity bill yet.

Two things stood out:  the quick arrival of the ambulance from the time the call was made, it was a matter of minutes and the efficiency and professionalism of the ambulance staff.

Heart attack ruled out, they still considered it wise to go to the hospital for a more rigorous check.

One never turns down an offer to ride in an ambulance, it is a better way to get to see a doctor in a hospital without having to wait hours in the emergency waiting room.

Wrong.

It was mad Monday at the hospital, and people were arriving by ambulance on the same scale as buses delivering children to schools.

I was about third or fourth in line.  The triage section was full.  We were parked in the passage, an hour wait for a bed.

Not the hospital’s fault, it was just emergency overload, and a lack of beds from the weekend admissions not having been discharged.  After all, the hospital, as large as it is, has to service a lot of people.

A bed became available two hours after arriving, the ambulance people can now get onto the next job.  Several more severe cases were ahead of me, and next door, a suicide watch patient.

The nurse was very efficient and sorted out the details, took blood for tests, monitored heart rates and asked all the appropriate questions.  I was one of five or six she was attending to.

Then the suicide patient went ballistic, and for a few minutes, while restrained by security, she was sedated.  It provided an insight into what hospital staff have to contend with, aside from the usual minor problems, like mine, car accidents, drug addicts who want to fight everyone, and drunks caught up in fights or falls.

I guess Monday was not a night to visit the emergency department.

Five hours after arriving I was discharged.  The doctor had recommended I stay, but there were no beds available, and it had already been a long night.

As I left another two patients were arriving, the emergency waiting room was half full, it was midnight, and it was only going to get worse.  To be honest, I was glad to escape, one of the lucky ones to walk out under my own steam.

The same could not be said about a number of others.

 

 

How significant is a Twitter biography?

I’m back to obsessing about my 280 characters bio on twitter.

So much so that I have been trawling through thousands on other bio’s trying to understand what makes a good one.

Quite a lot preface theirs with Dad to or Mom to x wonderful children.  I think that goes without saying, so moving on.

Quite a lot advertise services using hashtags which is a great idea, perhaps in the hope people are looking for said services and will follow them, then to DM them with more information.

I haven’t quite mastered the art of doing that, so I’ll let that one slide for the moment.

But …

That brings up the relevance of using hashtags in the bio.  That gives me a bit more scope to make it to the point.

A quick search of relevant hashtags reveals:

writer, author, thriller, mystery, adventure, writing etc.

All are useful but it doesn’t really carry any pulling power.  We need something that grabs the reader’s attention and do it in the shortest, most succinct manner.

I am a writer, a wordsmith, who, I was once told, swallowed a dictionary.  But, in the light of the current task, you’d think it would be just a ‘walk in the park’ instead of the proverbial ‘pain in the neck’.

Perhaps I could compose a riddle that comes back to the answer of who I am, but who has the time to sit and work it out.

I think that might be a little pretentious.

So, back to square one.

At the moment all I have is ‘aspiring writer’.

It’s not possible that’s enough, is it?

NaNoWriMo 2019, I’ve just put up my novel for this year

Nanowrimo graphic

As I have for the past few years, once again I’m going to try and put out 50,000 words.

The title of the novel will be “Betrayal”, though that might change as the novel progresses.  Sometimes a better title comes to me later on in the writing.

It’s another spy thriller, though with a slightly different angle this time, and I’ve spent the last few days working on an outline which is, to say the least, very general at the moment.

I know how it will start.

I know how it will end, or at least I think I do.  Having an end in mind is quite new for me because I tend to write and see where it goes, like being in the reader’s seat and not knowing what will happen next.

Over the next few days I will refine the cast of characters and then work on some of the introductory plot points.

Right now, as I’m writing this, I can see a rather dank prison cell somewhere in Moscow, where one of the main characters is languishing.

The other, in rather different circumstances, has just got through the throes of a semi amicable divorce and is considering how the next chapter of his life is going to be written.

That, of course, could change in the next twelve hours, after I’ve slept on it.

It’s now 2am here and time to get some sleep (or either pleasant or unpleasant dreams, depending on the character whose shoes I want to step into).