Day 209

Put it in your own words

…

What exactly does that mean these days?

Perhaps before the advent of computers and spell checkers and grammar checkers, and the vast array of writing helpers available, our writing was our own.

You know, getting sheets of paper, drawing lines on them, filling up the ink well and having a supply of ink available, then with your feather, or purposely made pen and nib, got stuck in.

What came out of your head went down on paper, the nib scratching its way along the lines, and thoughts tumbled out.

It may not have made any sense, but it was your own.

Except, of course, you decided deliberately or otherwise that you would copy someone else’s wprl either verbatim or very thinly disguised.  Yes, there have always been lazy cheats.

I like to think that it was the exception rather than the rule.

Nowadays, you don’t ever have to write at all.  Just a few plot points, and the story is written for you.

No effort, no putting it in your own words.  And unfortunately, it is probably eminently readable.

What is the point?

I will never surrender to AI.  I use spell checkers, but they have very strange ideas sometimes.  It simply means you need to know how to spell.  It can’t be that hard.  We all went to school and learned the rudiments of our language.

Or maybe not. Not if the rumours about students and teachers’ abilities are remotely credible.  I mean, spend half an hour in a crowded pub after the end of the word day, and the conversational language used is terrible.

It seems no one can string a sentence together without at least three or four profanities.  And our regard for others? 

Perhaps a story about ordinary people would be very uninteresting, and we would all have to migrate to a fictional world where respect and conversation without profanities still exist.

So much for the modern youth writing in their own words.

But I digress…

I’m sure that on some level, we all like the idea of picking up a book or reading one using an e-reader that doesn’t have that language or disrespect.

After all, books are what take us into a different world than our own, into the imagination of the writer who has, hopefully, toiled long and hard to put his or her masterpiece down on paper in their own words. 

Day 209

Put it in your own words

…

What exactly does that mean these days?

Perhaps before the advent of computers and spell checkers and grammar checkers, and the vast array of writing helpers available, our writing was our own.

You know, getting sheets of paper, drawing lines on them, filling up the ink well and having a supply of ink available, then with your feather, or purposely made pen and nib, got stuck in.

What came out of your head went down on paper, the nib scratching its way along the lines, and thoughts tumbled out.

It may not have made any sense, but it was your own.

Except, of course, you decided deliberately or otherwise that you would copy someone else’s wprl either verbatim or very thinly disguised.  Yes, there have always been lazy cheats.

I like to think that it was the exception rather than the rule.

Nowadays, you don’t ever have to write at all.  Just a few plot points, and the story is written for you.

No effort, no putting it in your own words.  And unfortunately, it is probably eminently readable.

What is the point?

I will never surrender to AI.  I use spell checkers, but they have very strange ideas sometimes.  It simply means you need to know how to spell.  It can’t be that hard.  We all went to school and learned the rudiments of our language.

Or maybe not. Not if the rumours about students and teachers’ abilities are remotely credible.  I mean, spend half an hour in a crowded pub after the end of the word day, and the conversational language used is terrible.

It seems no one can string a sentence together without at least three or four profanities.  And our regard for others? 

Perhaps a story about ordinary people would be very uninteresting, and we would all have to migrate to a fictional world where respect and conversation without profanities still exist.

So much for the modern youth writing in their own words.

But I digress…

I’m sure that on some level, we all like the idea of picking up a book or reading one using an e-reader that doesn’t have that language or disrespect.

After all, books are what take us into a different world than our own, into the imagination of the writer who has, hopefully, toiled long and hard to put his or her masterpiece down on paper in their own words. 

Days 207 and 208

Writing exercise – A locked room mystery

…

Don’t you just love a mystery?

I don’t, but not one that is impossible to solve. 

Impossible?

I was told that nothing is impossible, and there is always a logical answer to every problem.

I was also told there will always be people who will maintain that the impossible is because of the unexplainable, and we had to look more closely at things that were not of this world.

Those people, the logical people, call crackpots or charlatans. 

There is the unexplainable, but in the end, when we look at all of the facts surrounding a situation, we always find an answer.

But…

We do have unsolvable crimes committed by real people who got away with it.  We do not like to think there is such a thing as the perfect crime.  It is preferable to believe the criminal was very lucky

The crime I was called to, on a dark day and in a sinister house, had all the hallmarks of a perfect crime:  a dead body in a locked room that had only one exit, the door, locked from the inside.

At least, that was the first report I was given by my partner Detective Sargeant Wilson, newly promoted to the detective branch, enthusiastic, and it came out in an explosion of words.

At least she had arrived properly and hadn’t blundered around the crime scene like my last partner had when he first started.

Downstairs in the living room, occupying six of the seven lounge chairs set around the fire, warming those within a range of about twenty feet. Beyond that, there was a chill in the air, not all from the cold.

Outside, a shard of bright light was followed by a crack of rolling thunder, after which the rain became torrential.  I half expected the roof to be leaking.

I was introduced to the six, each including the victim part of a group who paid a small fortune to stay the night in a “genuine” haunted house.  The group were all from the same family: the grandfather, Anton Giles; the father, William Giles; his third wife, Lucy; William’s eldest son, David; his eldest daughter, Winnie; Oliver, and Bertie.

The family get-together was the grandfather’s idea.  William Giles’ current wife was younger than all his children, and the animosity from those children could be felt in the room.  It was obvious the grandfather had a reason, and looking around at the group, finding out what that was would be the same as extracting teeth.

It was also clear, from the venue’s management, of which the manager and two assistants were present, that the murder, mock or otherwise, was not part of the “entertainment.”

An inspection of the room, opened with a spare key by the manager when a preliminary search for Anton had failed to locate him, showed the other key was in the room; then the door was locked from the inside, the victim had been shot at point-blank range by someone he knew because there were no defensive wounds.  The gun was next to the key, and Anton’s watch and wallet were missing, suggesting robbery with violence.

There were no secret doorways or entrances to the room other than the normal door.  The cupboard, full of clothes, didn’t have a secret back.  There was no trapdoor under the carpet, and there was no vent in the walls or roof big enough to take an escapee.

There were no guests or staff on the site or in the house; the caterers had left after dinner, and would not be back until morning, if the rain stopped, because my car was the last to get over the causeway.  If it rained much more, we would be lucky to leave in the morning.  I arrived alone, and my partner arrived a half hour earlier with three constables, one each at the exits.

No one was leaving.

One of the six, or one of the three staff members, could be the murderer.

When I came into the room,  Wilson was standing by the fire, notebook at the ready. The six were seated by the fire, the three staff in the background.  It was a large room, and it took a few seconds to reach the fireplace and get a first look at the family, as Wilson introduced them.

When that was done, I was about to speak when William Giles’ eldest son, David, said, pointing at his father’s latest wife, Lucy, “She did it.”

William glared at the son and said, “Don’t start this again.  It’s clear you don’t like her, but she is not a murderer.  You obviously, on the other hand, must have after he wrote you out of the will.”

“I did nothing of the sort.  And we have only your word on that; he never said he had changed his will.  Unless, of course, you have a newer will, but it would have to be a fake.  He said he was not leaving anything to a paedophile.”

A clear reference to the father marrying a young girl.  She didn’t look very old, but a quick ID check Wilson had called for would soon sort that out.  Appearances were always deceptive.

“Let’s not forget how mortgaged to the hilt you are, Davey.  Hopeless with money, always asking Gramps to bail you out.  I heard home tell you there was no more in that well.  No wonder you killed him.  You got your own version of the will?”

All this talk of a will.  Sometimes, it was useful to let the suspects banter.

But then, time for a question.  “Was this gathering for another reason, other than bonding?”

Oliver snorted.  “Bonding.  Every time we get together, it’s a surprise one of us isn’t murdered, and now it’s happened.  Greed, that’s what this family thrives on.  We were here for an important announcement, and I’m guessing Anton was going to tell us if he was leaving us anything.  Worth billions, he was.  If you are looking for a motive detective, there it is.”

Whilst Wilson hadn’t contaminated the crime scene, the rest of the family had, once the door had been opened, and everyone would have fingerprints all over the room, and Winnie had fainted on seeing the body.  It was, Wilson said, a dog’s breakfast.

It was a family accurate assessment.  And worse, we could not get forensics in until the flooding subsided.

I noticed that Wilson collected all paperwork from the grandfather’s room, locked with the key in his pocket, odd because of the other missing items, and then after a quick search of the other rooms, but no will or anything to do with inheritances was found.

Equally odd, even though Wilson at the time was unaware of what she was looking for.  Clearly, the old man had brought something with him, and the murderer may have taken it.

A call to the old man’s lawyer was next on the list.  A change in the will would make things interesting.

“I did not kill Anton.  He didn’t like me, true, but none of you do either, and none of you are dead if that’s your criterion.  The rest of you children, well, I’d be disgusted to call you my own.”

It sounded weird to hear from a girl younger than all of them, sounding more mature than her years.  It’s probably not.  They all looked and sounded like they had a privileged upbringing.

I had wealthy parents and a boarding school education, but my parents made me work, starting at the bottom and earning my keep and respect the hard way.  There was no free ride for any of us in our family.  Whatever bias I might have had was left at the door.

“If this were a gathering to discuss inheritance, where are your grandfather’s papers?  They were not in his room and were not stored in a house safety deposit box with other valuables, as management requested.”

I looked at each of the six faces, and the only one that didn’t bear intense scrutiny was Lucy.  It might be that she had a guilty conscience or just that she squirmed under intense observation.

Or it was an indicator.

Wilson just returned and motioned for me to join her outside.

She handed me a carefully folded document that had ‘Last Will and Testament of Anton Giles’ dated two days before.  I unfolded the pages and went to the last.  It was unsigned.

A quick scan showed it was short and to the point.  None of the family was going to inherit.  Bottom line, there was nothing to inherit, the total sum up for grabs, a little more than ten thousand pounds.

“Where did you find it?”

“In Lucy’s underwear drawer.”

I sighed.  “We’re not going to get one grain of truth out of any of them.  How long between the murder and your arrival?”

“About three hours.”

“Long enough for all of them to search the house, his room, find out the truth, kill him, and get their stories straight.”

“Even the house staff?”

“All of them.”

“Do you think it was Lucy?”

“Because of this?”  I held up the will.  “No.  I bet there are about twenty of them hidden around this place, and not one is the real will.  The old man was playing with them, failing to realise how it would affect one of them.  One of them may have the real will.”

“How will we know?”

Uf or when the next person dies.”

I might not have come to that conclusion if we had not found the fake will.  This was more than a family bonding. This was a weekend deliberately designed to torment his child and grandchildren before delivering the bad news.

I should not have answered the Superintendent’s call. 

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Days 207 and 208

Writing exercise – A locked room mystery

…

Don’t you just love a mystery?

I don’t, but not one that is impossible to solve. 

Impossible?

I was told that nothing is impossible, and there is always a logical answer to every problem.

I was also told there will always be people who will maintain that the impossible is because of the unexplainable, and we had to look more closely at things that were not of this world.

Those people, the logical people, call crackpots or charlatans. 

There is the unexplainable, but in the end, when we look at all of the facts surrounding a situation, we always find an answer.

But…

We do have unsolvable crimes committed by real people who got away with it.  We do not like to think there is such a thing as the perfect crime.  It is preferable to believe the criminal was very lucky

The crime I was called to, on a dark day and in a sinister house, had all the hallmarks of a perfect crime:  a dead body in a locked room that had only one exit, the door, locked from the inside.

At least, that was the first report I was given by my partner Detective Sargeant Wilson, newly promoted to the detective branch, enthusiastic, and it came out in an explosion of words.

At least she had arrived properly and hadn’t blundered around the crime scene like my last partner had when he first started.

Downstairs in the living room, occupying six of the seven lounge chairs set around the fire, warming those within a range of about twenty feet. Beyond that, there was a chill in the air, not all from the cold.

Outside, a shard of bright light was followed by a crack of rolling thunder, after which the rain became torrential.  I half expected the roof to be leaking.

I was introduced to the six, each including the victim part of a group who paid a small fortune to stay the night in a “genuine” haunted house.  The group were all from the same family: the grandfather, Anton Giles; the father, William Giles; his third wife, Lucy; William’s eldest son, David; his eldest daughter, Winnie; Oliver, and Bertie.

The family get-together was the grandfather’s idea.  William Giles’ current wife was younger than all his children, and the animosity from those children could be felt in the room.  It was obvious the grandfather had a reason, and looking around at the group, finding out what that was would be the same as extracting teeth.

It was also clear, from the venue’s management, of which the manager and two assistants were present, that the murder, mock or otherwise, was not part of the “entertainment.”

An inspection of the room, opened with a spare key by the manager when a preliminary search for Anton had failed to locate him, showed the other key was in the room; then the door was locked from the inside, the victim had been shot at point-blank range by someone he knew because there were no defensive wounds.  The gun was next to the key, and Anton’s watch and wallet were missing, suggesting robbery with violence.

There were no secret doorways or entrances to the room other than the normal door.  The cupboard, full of clothes, didn’t have a secret back.  There was no trapdoor under the carpet, and there was no vent in the walls or roof big enough to take an escapee.

There were no guests or staff on the site or in the house; the caterers had left after dinner, and would not be back until morning, if the rain stopped, because my car was the last to get over the causeway.  If it rained much more, we would be lucky to leave in the morning.  I arrived alone, and my partner arrived a half hour earlier with three constables, one each at the exits.

No one was leaving.

One of the six, or one of the three staff members, could be the murderer.

When I came into the room,  Wilson was standing by the fire, notebook at the ready. The six were seated by the fire, the three staff in the background.  It was a large room, and it took a few seconds to reach the fireplace and get a first look at the family, as Wilson introduced them.

When that was done, I was about to speak when William Giles’ eldest son, David, said, pointing at his father’s latest wife, Lucy, “She did it.”

William glared at the son and said, “Don’t start this again.  It’s clear you don’t like her, but she is not a murderer.  You obviously, on the other hand, must have after he wrote you out of the will.”

“I did nothing of the sort.  And we have only your word on that; he never said he had changed his will.  Unless, of course, you have a newer will, but it would have to be a fake.  He said he was not leaving anything to a paedophile.”

A clear reference to the father marrying a young girl.  She didn’t look very old, but a quick ID check Wilson had called for would soon sort that out.  Appearances were always deceptive.

“Let’s not forget how mortgaged to the hilt you are, Davey.  Hopeless with money, always asking Gramps to bail you out.  I heard home tell you there was no more in that well.  No wonder you killed him.  You got your own version of the will?”

All this talk of a will.  Sometimes, it was useful to let the suspects banter.

But then, time for a question.  “Was this gathering for another reason, other than bonding?”

Oliver snorted.  “Bonding.  Every time we get together, it’s a surprise one of us isn’t murdered, and now it’s happened.  Greed, that’s what this family thrives on.  We were here for an important announcement, and I’m guessing Anton was going to tell us if he was leaving us anything.  Worth billions, he was.  If you are looking for a motive detective, there it is.”

Whilst Wilson hadn’t contaminated the crime scene, the rest of the family had, once the door had been opened, and everyone would have fingerprints all over the room, and Winnie had fainted on seeing the body.  It was, Wilson said, a dog’s breakfast.

It was a family accurate assessment.  And worse, we could not get forensics in until the flooding subsided.

I noticed that Wilson collected all paperwork from the grandfather’s room, locked with the key in his pocket, odd because of the other missing items, and then after a quick search of the other rooms, but no will or anything to do with inheritances was found.

Equally odd, even though Wilson at the time was unaware of what she was looking for.  Clearly, the old man had brought something with him, and the murderer may have taken it.

A call to the old man’s lawyer was next on the list.  A change in the will would make things interesting.

“I did not kill Anton.  He didn’t like me, true, but none of you do either, and none of you are dead if that’s your criterion.  The rest of you children, well, I’d be disgusted to call you my own.”

It sounded weird to hear from a girl younger than all of them, sounding more mature than her years.  It’s probably not.  They all looked and sounded like they had a privileged upbringing.

I had wealthy parents and a boarding school education, but my parents made me work, starting at the bottom and earning my keep and respect the hard way.  There was no free ride for any of us in our family.  Whatever bias I might have had was left at the door.

“If this were a gathering to discuss inheritance, where are your grandfather’s papers?  They were not in his room and were not stored in a house safety deposit box with other valuables, as management requested.”

I looked at each of the six faces, and the only one that didn’t bear intense scrutiny was Lucy.  It might be that she had a guilty conscience or just that she squirmed under intense observation.

Or it was an indicator.

Wilson just returned and motioned for me to join her outside.

She handed me a carefully folded document that had ‘Last Will and Testament of Anton Giles’ dated two days before.  I unfolded the pages and went to the last.  It was unsigned.

A quick scan showed it was short and to the point.  None of the family was going to inherit.  Bottom line, there was nothing to inherit, the total sum up for grabs, a little more than ten thousand pounds.

“Where did you find it?”

“In Lucy’s underwear drawer.”

I sighed.  “We’re not going to get one grain of truth out of any of them.  How long between the murder and your arrival?”

“About three hours.”

“Long enough for all of them to search the house, his room, find out the truth, kill him, and get their stories straight.”

“Even the house staff?”

“All of them.”

“Do you think it was Lucy?”

“Because of this?”  I held up the will.  “No.  I bet there are about twenty of them hidden around this place, and not one is the real will.  The old man was playing with them, failing to realise how it would affect one of them.  One of them may have the real will.”

“How will we know?”

Uf or when the next person dies.”

I might not have come to that conclusion if we had not found the fake will.  This was more than a family bonding. This was a weekend deliberately designed to torment his child and grandchildren before delivering the bad news.

I should not have answered the Superintendent’s call. 

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

More about my novel

…

Willoughby.

Son of a Russian spy.

It seems ironic that he would end up becoming a spy himself, if that’s the right word for it.  He thinks of himself as one of those people who help to keep the general population safe in their beds at night.

It’s an interesting generalisation for a job that requires the person to do things that others wouldn’t do if they had a choice.

We like to think that those who are on that last line of defence, or the front line, or even on the thin blue line, will do what is necessary when the occasion demands it.

Policemen deal with criminals
Military policemen deal with military criminals
Federal or national police deal with country-wide problems
State police are for internal state matters.

Problems of an international scale that affect our country are dealt with by a different type of police.  In England, the differentiation is that MI5 is internal, and MI6 is external. In the USA, the FBI is internal, and the CIA is external.

I’m sure countries all over the world have their own organisations.

Writers like to invent their own, and I’m no exception.  I like the idea that we have organisations like that in Australia. I believe that the external force is called ASIO, but it’s rather shadowy, and they don’t advertise.

We also like to hide their offices in plain sight, much like the way Ian Fleming hid the 00s behind a company called Universal Exports or something similar.

The thing is, it’s more fun to create that organisation that lives in the shadows, run by some man who is about a hundred years old, with a very posh accent and no sense of humour, or by a woman who has a thorough no nonsense attitude, who would pass for the local busybody that runs the post office in a small English village.

As for the spies, sorry employees, they need to have military training, preferably seen action in some hellhole like Afghanistan, Iraq, or better still as a mercenary in Africa.  The more jaded the better.  Having no steady relationship with any woman, the last being with a high school sweetheart, who married the safe guy and had two point four children.

Thus, coming into the mid forties, the next bullet quite possibly having his name on it, the job is beginning to look a little passe.  Of course, and there is one other small problem: the people you’ve been hunting down and killing want retribution, and won’t stop until you are dead.

And worse still, one of your own people is trying to kill you, not because of what you did, but just because of who you work for.

Nothing personal.

Don’t you just love it when someone says that?

Well, that’s where the story starts…

More about my novel

…

Willoughby.

Son of a Russian spy.

It seems ironic that he would end up becoming a spy himself, if that’s the right word for it.  He thinks of himself as one of those people who help to keep the general population safe in their beds at night.

It’s an interesting generalisation for a job that requires the person to do things that others wouldn’t do if they had a choice.

We like to think that those who are on that last line of defence, or the front line, or even on the thin blue line, will do what is necessary when the occasion demands it.

Policemen deal with criminals
Military policemen deal with military criminals
Federal or national police deal with country-wide problems
State police are for internal state matters.

Problems of an international scale that affect our country are dealt with by a different type of police.  In England, the differentiation is that MI5 is internal, and MI6 is external. In the USA, the FBI is internal, and the CIA is external.

I’m sure countries all over the world have their own organisations.

Writers like to invent their own, and I’m no exception.  I like the idea that we have organisations like that in Australia. I believe that the external force is called ASIO, but it’s rather shadowy, and they don’t advertise.

We also like to hide their offices in plain sight, much like the way Ian Fleming hid the 00s behind a company called Universal Exports or something similar.

The thing is, it’s more fun to create that organisation that lives in the shadows, run by some man who is about a hundred years old, with a very posh accent and no sense of humour, or by a woman who has a thorough no nonsense attitude, who would pass for the local busybody that runs the post office in a small English village.

As for the spies, sorry employees, they need to have military training, preferably seen action in some hellhole like Afghanistan, Iraq, or better still as a mercenary in Africa.  The more jaded the better.  Having no steady relationship with any woman, the last being with a high school sweetheart, who married the safe guy and had two point four children.

Thus, coming into the mid forties, the next bullet quite possibly having his name on it, the job is beginning to look a little passe.  Of course, and there is one other small problem: the people you’ve been hunting down and killing want retribution, and won’t stop until you are dead.

And worse still, one of your own people is trying to kill you, not because of what you did, but just because of who you work for.

Nothing personal.

Don’t you just love it when someone says that?

Well, that’s where the story starts…

Day 206

Learn your craft before bending the rules

…

When we go to school, we learn to write.  It’s all part and parcel of learning the alphabet, then learning simple words to show how the letters of the alphabet are used, and then we learn to string those words together into sentences

Not in a jumble, but according to rules, requiring such things as a subject, nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, predicates, until it all becomes so complicated that we all but give up.

Of course, in grade three, at eight or nine years old and with another two or so years to go, giving up is not an option.

I learned English, and my biggest enemy was the school books written by Rideout and McGregor, two authors whose ears must have burned until the day they died.

From elementary or primary school, we move to secondary or middle school, and there it is assumed we know everything going there is to know about writing good English.

Wrong.

Our essays come back drowned in red or green ink, scrawls almost illegible, but the teachers whose frustration levels are off the charts.

Judging by how most people speak these days, it’s probably a blessing we don’t write each other letters anymore.  And texts, the new communication method, I do not understand at all.

So, if we are hoping to become writers, then we need to have learned the Lagrange and all its nuances, even though those who read it might have trouble understanding.

Just be glad the editor at the publishers is old enough to have been around when schools were actually teaching good English.

I know my teachers tried and tried and had some measure of success.

But in this day and age, we have spell checkers, grammar checkers, and this thing called AI.  You would think that a robot would have the language down pat, but sadly, it’s only as good as the programmer who invented it.

But here’s the rub.  It’s all we’re going to have in the future because no one wants to learn; they just want what the phone and computer manufacturers offer because it’s easy, and they don’t have to think.

People are even writing books using AI.  Where does that leave us who are doing the hard graft?

But I digress, like I always do….

We can not get rid of teaching our language, and we must insist that checkers of any sort should be used with caution.

Otherwise, like many languages from the past, it will become extinct along with who we are and where we come from.

Day 206

Learn your craft before bending the rules

…

When we go to school, we learn to write.  It’s all part and parcel of learning the alphabet, then learning simple words to show how the letters of the alphabet are used, and then we learn to string those words together into sentences

Not in a jumble, but according to rules, requiring such things as a subject, nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, predicates, until it all becomes so complicated that we all but give up.

Of course, in grade three, at eight or nine years old and with another two or so years to go, giving up is not an option.

I learned English, and my biggest enemy was the school books written by Rideout and McGregor, two authors whose ears must have burned until the day they died.

From elementary or primary school, we move to secondary or middle school, and there it is assumed we know everything going there is to know about writing good English.

Wrong.

Our essays come back drowned in red or green ink, scrawls almost illegible, but the teachers whose frustration levels are off the charts.

Judging by how most people speak these days, it’s probably a blessing we don’t write each other letters anymore.  And texts, the new communication method, I do not understand at all.

So, if we are hoping to become writers, then we need to have learned the Lagrange and all its nuances, even though those who read it might have trouble understanding.

Just be glad the editor at the publishers is old enough to have been around when schools were actually teaching good English.

I know my teachers tried and tried and had some measure of success.

But in this day and age, we have spell checkers, grammar checkers, and this thing called AI.  You would think that a robot would have the language down pat, but sadly, it’s only as good as the programmer who invented it.

But here’s the rub.  It’s all we’re going to have in the future because no one wants to learn; they just want what the phone and computer manufacturers offer because it’s easy, and they don’t have to think.

People are even writing books using AI.  Where does that leave us who are doing the hard graft?

But I digress, like I always do….

We can not get rid of teaching our language, and we must insist that checkers of any sort should be used with caution.

Otherwise, like many languages from the past, it will become extinct along with who we are and where we come from.

Day 205

Writing should not be motivated by money. It must be for the love of it

…

In my mind, there are two types of writing.

One is where it is done as a paying profession, in which, in most cases, you might be a journalist.   It can be a long, hard slog, working away on the bread-and-butter news.

Once you have established a reputation for producing award-winning stories, you can move on to more serious stories.  One would assume that’s when you are adequately recompensed commensurate with your ability.

Still, it’s not like writing a string of number one best-sellers and becoming a multi-millionaire.  Hard slog and determination to begin with, but as time passes, sometimes the work becomes more pedestrian.

Of course, those number one bestseller books often are borne out of the material used in those halcyon journalistic days and a fitting reward for all the hard work.

This, of course, is not meant to denigrate anyone; it is simply an opinion of some observations I have made over the years.  Nor is it sour grapes because I’m not one of those mega-rich authors. 

I definitely fit into the second type of writer living in my imagination garret, sacrificing everything for that first brilliant novel

How many times have we seen the spouse work slavishly at two or three jobs just to keep the place going while the struggling writer finishes that great novel?

And more often than not, living it up, having affairs and not really making any progress at all.  Or is that the Hollywood trope?

I have written that first novel, and about thirty more, but success eludes me.  I’m pragmatic, though.  One day, I get my break, but until then, it’s Amazon self-publishing and writing for the love of it, not the money.

It’s true that describes quite a lot of writers put there, the ones that burn the midnight oil because they don’t give up their day job, typically the ones that don’t make an adequate living from book sales.

And yet some do.   They are excellent authors, their books are very readable, as good as their number one best-sellers, but can’t quite crack the big time.

These are the people we aspire to become, because those truly wealthy from writing are far and few between.

Day 205

Setting a story in an invented world

…

We are all born with an imagination.  It’s just whether we choose to use it or not.

Some people have every reason to want to disappear into an imaginary world of their creation because life is too hard or impossible in reality.

I was there for two reasons.

The first, because I loved reading books, stories about brave people, stories about children who had holidays by the sea, and children who got together to have adventures.

Of course, if you were like me, it was Enid Blyton, the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. I must have read and reread those stories over and over.

As I got older and the stories got more sophisticated, right out of the school library, my desire for adventure only grew.

Yes, we went on holiday, but there was never anything like what happened in those books.

Until…

We were allowed to stay at my grandmother’s house, who lived in the country.  It was by a highway, it was at the end of a lane, it was only a very large block of land, and it was a huge house, lots of rooms, and a place where an imagination could run wild.

My grandmother lived alone.  She was a hoarder.  She had lots of old musty books and stories that were much different from those I read.

She had a wing of bedrooms, one for my mother, her sister and her brother and a spare, rooms filled with stuff, which is why when she went off to bowls and left us on our own, we used to explore.

Those rooms have files of magazines, old documents from the garage her husband, long deceased, had run.  History.

Then there was the outside, now in disrepair.  Two garages and old cars rotting away.  A workshop that had all manner of tools, an overgrown garden of the sort one usually found in towns.  There was an outhouse adjoining the laundry, very scary to go to at night, and almost as much during the day.

It was like stepping back in time, long before we had all the modern conveniences we have today.

Hers used to have a large fountain, a rose garden, a croquet lawn, a fernery, and a glasshouse.  We recovered some of it, particularly the fountain, and it was incredible.  Those gardens would have been magnificent.

Inside the house, there were tables, luxurious lounge chairs, 1930s furniture, cupboards, a wooden stove, and an ice box, an almost perfect reminder of what it had been like long before we were born.

My brother didn’t see it, but then he never really had an imagination.

The second, because of the horrible things that happened yo us, if I hadn’t been able to escape, I don’t think I would have made it to adulthood.

A vastly different world was needed, one I could almost walk through a portal into, a place where I could escape.

A child in a boarding school in the English countryside, a pilot in a Sopwith Camel flying over the trenches of WWI, a seaman on a destroyer in action against the Germans in a great sea battle, and an Explorer in the middle of the jungle in Africa, going down the Nile, or the Zambesi.

Anything but who I was and where I was.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025