Tag: Creative Writing

I have to finally get this story done

One can never quite predict when a story might be done, where the line in the sand has been drawn, and that’s it, stop tinkering.

Finally, I’ve drawn that line in the sand.

But are we ever satisfied the story is done, can we not make one more change, it’s just a little tweak, it won’t take long.

Please!

My editor tolerated three ‘minor’ changes.

Firstly, a change of name for a character

Secondly, consistency of word use, such as times and contractions

Thirdly, I wasn’t happy with the overall story, and it needed some more action

It took three weeks to sort out all of those issues, and last night I send the final draft to the Editor.

It’s like watching your child go to school of their first day.  Not knowing what will happen but expecting everything will be fine.

This morning I sat in front of the computer, a blank sheet of paper on the screen.  I know it’s not a matter of starting the next story from scratch; I have so many started and finished, sitting in the wings to be ‘tinkered with’.

It’s my way of savoring the moment.

Just before I dive back into the murky waters.

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 use.

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.

 

We all seek to escape from reality, for a brief moment or maybe longer

And that’s where escapist entertainment comes in.

Television in the form of a comedy, dramedy, or drama, in series format or just a good movie, gives us that temporary respite from everything that’sd going on around us.

For a longer respite we turn to a book, sometimes an action-packed thriller where the plot could be only too real or a flight of fancy that just borders on the unbelievable.  Or maybe a good romance, just to remind us, or reinforce the notion that there can be a happy ending.

But the trouble these days is finding the time as more and more everyday stuff impinges on our lives, making less time for everything else.

Stories have got shorter, e.g. the advent of the ‘novella’.

Mills and Boon head the right idea, making their romance novels fit into 187 pages, not too long and not too short.  I don’t know how they did it, I tried writing one, and no way would it fit into 187 pages, but then it did sneak off into the thriller category.

It might be why science fiction and fantasy books are so popular.  If we’re going to leave this world for a while, why not go all the way to another world.  Things have to be better there, don’t they?

It’s probably why I can come up with so many ideas about being anywhere but here, in this reality.  It is probably one of the most boring existence because I cannot work, and in retirement, other than tormenting grandchildren, gardening, which I never really liked, and house renovations, which there are only so many you can do, there’s very little else.

It’s probably why most of us don’t read or view real life.  We already have that, we don’t want to be reminded of it.

So…

Time to get back to my other reality.

Who wants to go on a treasure hunt, and why does it have to be so hot!

My mind will not rest.

Down here, it is summer, and the last few days have been rather hot, well, it is summer after all, but tonight it is particularly hot.

So, as I can’t sleep, I’m lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, otherwise known as the cinema of my dreams.

Where am I?

Well, the location is in keeping with the weather, hot, humid, and cold drinks are mandatory.

 

I have no idea where or when I got sucked into this game of searching for treasure.  Boggs had been reading some newspaper article relating to a Spaniard who had survived a shipwreck off the coast and had supposedly come ashore dragging his treasure chest, all that he could save from the sinking ship.

I think my priorities may have been slightly different.

Standing on the beach where Boggs believed the man came ashore, we looked inland at the coastal plain now overbuilt with holiday houses and apartments, behind that, some parkland, under threat from the developers, and behind that, the mountains.

I could guess what Boggs was going to say next.

“It has to be somewhere in the mountains, a cave perhaps.”

My map told me there was a mountain face for about 25 miles in either direction and rising to two to three thousand feet up.  I didn’t calculate the area, I just considered it big.

“If he came ashore here, dragging a heavy chest, and barring all of this building, he would take the most direct route inland.”

He pointed in the direction he thought the Spaniard took.

My eyes followed his arm and stopped at a beacon halfway up the hillside. 

That was a long way, pulling a heavy chest.

“Not up the hill, maybe, but somewhere along the base.”

“And don’t you think every man and his dog would have made the same assumption, and covered the ground already.”  The treasure hunt was beginning to bore me.

His expression changed, the sort that told me he might not have considered that possibility.  Boggs was like that, always thinking he had the original idea.

“Perhaps, then, a drink and more thought on the matter.”

We trudged through the soft sand to the bar just off the sand, a small place called The Spaniard.  A sign on the window said ‘Treasure Maps for sale’.

 

Well, the bar was air-conditioned, and the beer was cold.  I have one myself and see where this cinematic experience goes

© Charles Heath 2019

 

“What Sets Us Apart”, a mystery with a twist

David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.
Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.
They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?
When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.
When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.
Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.

http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

whatsetscover

It’s good, it’s bad, and at times it can be very, very ugly

It was as if Microsoft Word was sent down from that place in the universe where a group of torturers sit around a table to find new ways of making our lives just that little bit more difficult.

I mean, most of the time it works really well and behaves itself.

But…

Then there are the times, usually when you are stressed about a deadline, or you are nearly at the end of what you believe to be the most brilliant writing you have ever put on paper.

Then…

Disaster strikes.

It could be the power goes off, even for just a few seconds, but it’s enough to kill the computer.  It could be that you have reached the end and closed Word down, thinking that it had autosaved, all the while ignoring that little pop up that says, ‘do you want to save your work’?

It’s been a long day, night, or session.  You’re tired and your mind is elsewhere, as it always is at the end.

You always assume that autosave is on.  It was the last time, it has been since the day you installed it however long ago that was.

So…

When the power comes back on, you start the computer, go into Word, and it brings back all the windows you had open when the power failed, and the one with the brilliant piece you just wrote, it’s just a blank sheet.

Or up to where it last autosaved, which is nowhere near the end.

Or it didn’t save at all.

You forget the software updated recently and that always brings changes.  Usually unwanted changes.

By which time you have that sinking feeling that all is lost, deadline missed, brilliant work lost, it’s the end of the world.

You promise yourself you’re going to get Scrivener, or something else, where this doesn’t happen.

Or if you’re like me, you put the cat on the keyboard and tell him to sort the mess out.

There are few words that are so universally noncommittal as ‘maybe’

This word, where I live, had taken on a new meaning.  We have telephone scammers who ask your name when you answer the phone, and when you say yes, they hang up.

It doesn’t take much imagination to consider how they can use that recording.

So, I now answer the phone with ‘maybe’, which confuses the real callers who want to know if it is you.

Of course, ‘maybe’ is one of those words that can have so many meaning, but the best one is to use it while you have time to think of a proper answer.

For example, did you get the potatoes?  You haven’t been out, it slipped your mind, or you just plain forgot, but run with a ‘maybe’ so you can judge the reaction.

Angry face, you know no matter what, you’re in trouble.

Genial face, you know that it didn’t really matter and all is forgiven.

Then there’s the person who doesn’t know you and comes up to you in a crowded room.  Are you [put name here]?

Maybe.  We want to know if we’re in trouble, or if it for something good, or that it is the husband or wife of the person you’ve3 just spent the last twenty minutes in animated conversation with.

Using ‘maybe’ in writing probably isn’t the best word to us, but I like defying the experts.  You can always find a ‘maybe’ or two in any of my books.

Is there a correlation between writing and running?

I can see how it is that a writer’s life can be a lonely one.

I’m often sitting in front of the computer screen, or in a large lounge chair with my trusty tablet computer, writing the words, or staring into space!

Sometimes the words don’t make any sense, sometimes the thoughts leading to those words don’t make any sense.  Sometimes the most sensible person in the room is the cat.

I’m sure his thoughts are not vague or scrambled, nor is he wrestling with the plots of several stories on the go, getting locations right, getting characters to think and do their thing with a fair degree of continuity.

The cat’s world is one of which chair to lie on, where is that elusive mouse, be it real or otherwise, and is this fool going to feed me soon, and please, please, don’t let it be the lasagna.  I am not that cat!

Unlike other professions, there is no 9 to 5, no overtime, no point where you can switch off and move into leisure time.  Not while you are writing that next bestseller.  It’s a steady, sometimes frustrating, slog where you can’t just walk away, have a great time, and come back and pick up where you left off.

Stories have to be written from beginning to end, not a bit here and a bit there.

So much so it’s a bit like running a marathon.  You are in a zone, the first few miles are the hardest, the middle is just getting into a rhythm and getting your breathing under control, and then you hope you get to the end because it can seem that you’ve been going forever and the end is never in sight.

But, when you reach the end, oh, isn’t the feeling one of pure joy and relief.

And, yes, perhaps you’ve just created another bestseller!

It a ‘Houston, we have a problem’ moment

Our hero has survived the crash, now he’s stuck in enemy territory

 

This was supposed to be a milk run.  There had been no reported activity in our zone and the pilot had decided to go up just the log some more air time.

He was hoping after reaching a 1,000 hours so he might be able to move to fixed wing aircraft and then move on to becoming an airline pilot.  Unfortunately, he was not going become anything now.

That didn’t explain why we encountered a convoy out in the desert, especially one with a rocket launcher and English speaking soldier types.

Did we stumble across another outfit running a secret operation and mistook us for the enemy?  It didn’t seem the case, our helicopter was distinctively marked just so we wouldn’t be mistaken, and then there was the fact the man knew my name.

How could that happen?  It would need someone back at the base to tell someone of the fact the helicopter was going up and who was in it, and there weren’t too many people who knew that information.

And only one who knew exactly when and where we would be.  Unless, of course, the pilot had strayed into a no-fly zone.  There was only one that I knew of and it was nowhere near our flight path.  Of course, it wouldn’t take much to bamboozle me in the air because I had no sense of direction.

Unless the pilot had another agenda.  I could hardly tell where we were because desert all looked the same to me, and navigation wasn’t my strongest point.

After the first few miles of very bumpy road, I managed to get into a sitting position and look in the direction we were heading.

More desert.

Ten minutes later I could see an encampment in the distance, literally an oasis in the middle of nowhere.  A secret base camp or something else?

As we got closer I could see it was mostly covered by camouflage so it couldn’t be seen from above. Clever.  Chances were we had no idea this place was in the desert.

 

Who or what is waiting for him?

 

© Charles Heath 2019