Tag: Reference

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 16

I thought since it is Winter here, we could do with a breath of fresh air and colour that comes with the change if season

Living in Queensland, Winter never quite seems to be as cold as it is in the southern states, which are closer to Antarctica.

We have had a relatively mild winter this year and I didn’t have to light the fire once, though we did use the reverse cycle sir conditioning.

But, from now the temperature will be rising as well as the humidity and will hang around until April next year.

Normally this would mean that a large proportion of the population would be planning their summer holidays, but with Covid restrictions, we may not be allowed to leave our state, or only visit states that have no or few cases like us, and definitely no overseas travel.

For people who like to travel, this is a bitter pill to swallow, and especially so for all those retirees who have worked all their lives, and decided to wait until retirement to see their own country and the world at large.

To me, the adage ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today’ seemed appropriate and we decided once the kids were old enough, we would travel far and wide while we could.  It was a wise decision because neither of us are as agile as we used to be.

Seems we were the lucky ones.

Now we are content to see our own country which no doubt will be able to manage Covid to the extent that life might return to a form if normal sooner rather that later.

And if it doesn’t, then I have enough to amuse myself at home. I’m sure we are all familiar with the expression ‘spring cleaning’. We have decided to clean house, and do some renovating.

And it’s a surprise when cleaning out those cupboards, drawers, and boxes, the stuff you’ve accumulated over many, many years. Last I heard, we were taking about getting a large skip, so I suspect this culling is going to be savage.

But, just to be clear, no books will be thrown out!

Sometimes it’s better to say that an expressed opinion is your own

It’s always a good thing to get that across especially if you work for an organization that could misinterpret what that opinion is, or generally have an opposing opinion.  Of course, by saying your opinions are your own, you’re covering yourself from becoming unemployed, but is this a futile act?

Perhaps its better to not say anything because everything you say and do eventually find its way to those you want most not to hear about it, perhaps one of the big negatives of the internet and social media.

And…

It seems odd to me that you can’t have an opinion of your own, even if it is contrary to that of the organization you work for, and especially if their opinion has changed over time.  An opposing opinion, not delivered in a derogatory manner, would have the expectation of sparking healthy debate, but it doesn’t always end up like that.

I’m sure there are others out there that will disagree, and use the overused word, loyalty’.   Perhaps their mantra will be ‘keep your opinions to yourself’.

This, too, often crops up in personal relationships, and adds weight to the statement, ‘you can pick your friends but not your relatives’.

I’m told I have an opinion on everything, a statement delivered in a manner that suggests sarcasm.  Whether it’s true or not, isn’t the essence of free speech, working within the parameters of not inciting hate, bigotry, racism, or sexism, a fundamental right of anyone in a democracy?

Seems not.

There’s always someone out there, higher up the food chain, with an opinion of their own, obviously the right one, and who will not hesitate to silence yours.  But, isn’t it strange that in order to silence you, they have to use leverage, like your job, to get theirs across.

Well, my opinions are in my writing, and whether or not you agree with them or not, I’m sure you will let me know.  In a robust but respectful manner.

Unlike some, my door is always open.

I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 9

What’s the worst that could happen?

…

Captains invariably hated the word ‘problem’. I did too, because it conjured up so many different scenarios, each more scarier than the last, and maginified exponentially because we were in space.

We took a closer look, and it was the sort of damage if it was back on Earth, one would associate with weapons fire, lasers to be exact.

Yes, in the 24th century we had ray guns, handheld, and ship bound.

The only problem was, only the cruise class vessels, like the one I was now on, were allowed to have them, and using them, well, the paperwork alone could keep a complement of 20 working day and night for a month.

Test them, yes, less paperwork, use them, no. There had never been a reason to.

But someone had, and on a freighter, which only meant one possibility, that whatever the freighter had been carrying, had been worth violating a thousand regulations and rules.

And bring their ship and selves out into the light.

It was, of course, Space Command’s worst nightmare realised, that the ideal of space exploration as a united effort by everyone, had a member who had decided against unity.

Unless, of course, the improbably had happened, there was life outside our solar system, and we were dealing with a new planet, or people.

Except I would not expect them to use something as conventional as a laser.

Myrtle had put us very close to the damaged area and taken a number of photographs, and the engineer had analysed the damaged area.

Then, cleared to enter the freighter, she took us up to the cargo doors and waited as we watched them open.

It was the same time the engineer’s hand held computer started beeping.

And a warning light on the console in front of Myrtle started flashing, accompanied by a warning klaxon.

Another vessel had just entered our proximity zone.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 10

It was a relic from the past, put back together by a dedicated group of volunteers who had not wanted the last vestiges of the past to disappear.

Train enthusiasts, the called themselves.

They’d put together a steam locomotive, five carriages, a restaurant car, and the conductor’s car. The original train might have been twice to three times as long, but these days, the tourist market rarely filled the train.

I was one of a group who made it their mission to visit and rate every vintage train, not only in this country, but all over the world. It was a sad state of affairs when I first began, with locomotives and carriages dropping out of the system due to lack of funds, but more disheartening, the lack of government assistance in keeping it’s heritage alive.

It seemed money was short, and there were better things to spend it on, like two brand new 737-800 jets just to ferry the prime minister and government officials around. Just think of what that quarter of a billion dollars could have bought in heritage.

But it is what it is.

What I had before me was one of the most recent restorations to check out, and on first glance, it was remarkable just how lifelike and true to age it was.

Of course, I was of an age that could remember the old railway carriages, what were called red rattlers because of the ill fitting windows that went up and down, allow fresh air, or in days gone by, smoke from the locomotive hauling the train. I had not travelled during the last glorious years of steam, but the carriages had lived on briefly before the advent of the sterile aluminum tin cans with uncomfortably hard seats.

These carriages were built for comfort, and my first experience had been a five hour trip from Melbourne to Wangaratta, in Victoria, on my way to Mt Buffalo Chalet, a guesthouse owned by the Railways.

That too had been a remarkable old chalet style guest house with a room and all the dining included. I always left after the week having put on weight. Breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner, every day, and high tea on Sunday.

But this carriage, the polished wood that had shellac rather than varnish, highlighting the timber’s grain, the leather seats with generous padding, the curved ceilings with hanging lights, windows the could be opened and closed, allowing fresh air to circulate.

There was also a carriage with the passageway, and five or six separate compartments, each sitting six passengers. I remembered these well, having quite often ridden in one to work for some years when the country trains still ran.

It was always remarkable how a sight or a scent could trigger such memories.

For this carriage on this train, it used to ply the Gympie to Brooloo branch line from about 1915 onwards.

That was the history. It only went as far as Amamoor these days, it was still long enough to capture the sensation of riding the rails back in what is always referred to as the good old days, even if they were not.

Now for the ride….

…

© Charles Heath 2021

Christmas shopping

I hate Christmas

I hate shopping

Could there be a worse time to do the one thing that drives you bonkers?

Perhaps there is, but never a time when so many people are wandering aimlessly around looking for stuff that no one really needs.

And in the process, trash the shelves, and leave the store in such a mess that anyone who thinks shopping in the afternoon is a good idea, is left with little more than a dumpster dive.

Christmas shoppers are a very distinctive breed. First identified but the stultified manner in which they shuffle along the mall walkways, stopping to look vacantly at the wares in the windows, unable to figure out whether the sizes would fit their victims, sorry, giftees.

Or whether the sheer unadulterated inappropriateness would work, because we all know many of the gifts we receive are unwanted and even if they had a degree of acceptability, it was the wrong size, the wrong colour, for a different age group, or needs batteries.

It’s called grandparents revenge.

As for parents gifting their children as a surprise, well it’s a well-known fact they don’t have a clue about the younger generation and what they want.

We made a conscious decision years ago to only buy what the children wanted, no surprises, unfortunately, but never getting it wrong makes it worthwhile.

Of course, what the children want is something else and it took us a while to realise they were using us to buy stuff their parents had strictly banned. Yes, interesting lesson learned.

It only proved how desperately out of touch each generation is with the one below, and worse for those two generations adrift.

Two items of special note, are the number of parents who go shopping with their children, and the level of blackmail used to get their best behaviour, that overused phrase, ‘misbehave and you’re getting nothing for Christmas’ flogged mercilessly to death.

The other is the number of unwilling spouses who would prefer to mind six rotten little kids than brave the dumpster shelves, or worse, the endless racks of clothes that would be more suited to cleaning the house rather than being worn.

I say this out of experience, because in my day girls’ clothing did not have large chinks of material missing or whole swaths of exposed skin

I’ll be leaving the Christmas shopping to someone else from now on.

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 2

It’s the obvious items in the photograph that you see first, or that your eyes go to first.

The ocean, the beach, the buildings. You can see a shopping mall with MacDonald’s sign above it.

Yes, it’s late afternoon, and you can see long shadows of the buildings.

So, if I asked you what did you see in this photo, what would your reply be?

From a thriller writer or murder mystery writer’s point of view, it’s what you don’t necessarily see.

So, for the purposes of the story, the opening line for the world-weary detective, handing the photo to his partner, “What’s is it you can’t see in this photo?”

A partner that hadn’t been on the job very long, in from the suburbs, and had seen little more than break and enters car theft, and school kids hi-jinks.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“You want to be a detective, or be looking for old ladies cats?”

His partner takes the photo in hand and looks at it again.  There has to be a reason why the old man had given it to him, or perhaps there wasn’t and he was just playing with him again.

No, he thought, there has to be something…

And then he saw it, quite by accident.  A hand, a gun, and following the line of fire, at the end, what looked like someone in the bushes.

In a photo taken from a higher floor of the building over the road, looking down on what was supposed to be a rooftop recreational area.

Only there had been no report of a missing person or a gunshot wound in the last seven days.

“When was it taken?”

“Two days ago?”

“And no reports of a shooting, or a body?”

“No.  And yet the person who took this swears he saw a body, but by the time he came back, there was nothing.”

The detective handed his partner a second photo.  Time-stamped five minutes later.  With no gun and no body.

What will happen next?

I just want to be finished

Just when you think that the story is done, and you’re on the third re-read, just to make sure…

Damn!

I don’t like the way that chapter reads, and what’s worse, it’s about the tenth time I’ve looked at it.

It doesn’t matter whether the last three times you read it, it was just fine, or, the editor has read it and the chapter passed without any major comment.

I think the main problem I have is letting go.  For some odd reason, certain parts of a story sometimes seem to me as though they are not complete, or can be missing a vital clue or connection for the continuity of the story.

That, of course, happens when you rewrite a section that is earlier on in the story, and then have to make ongoing changes.

Yes, I hear the stern warnings, that I should have made a comprehensive outline at the beginning, but the trouble is, I can change the ending, as I’m writing it and then have to go back and add the hooks earlier on.  Not the best method, but isn’t that what an editor is for, to pick up the missed connections, and out-of-the-blue events that happen for no reason?

I find that often after leaving a finished story for a month before the next reading, the whole picture must formulate itself in my head, so when I re-read, there was always a problem, one I didn’t want to think about until the re-read.

Even then it might survive a second pass.

I know the scene is in trouble when I get to it and alarm bells are going off.  I find nothing else to do but look at it.

So, here I am, making major changes.

But, at least now I am satisfied with where it’s going.

Only 325 pages to go!

Why is writing so hard

In just about every book about how to be a good writer, there seems to be a pile of problems that at some time in a writer’s life will need to be overcome.

Writer’s block

Don’t have it.  The ideas pour out of my head like water over a waterfall

Don’t use abstract descriptions in your writing

Damn, I do that all the time

But, back to writer’s block, is that where you write 37 chapters and there the story stops?

Oops.

Plan your book and have an outline so you can write it from start to finish

Plan?  What Plan?

That only happens when I’ve written the book and prior to the first edit, I make a precise of each chapter to make sure of continuity.

Plan your characters and give them a timeline

Oh God is that why characters’ names are often changing as the story progresses.

Believe it or not, I’m working on this issue.

Manage your time.

Still can’t get it right.

Write at least a thousand words a day, no matter if it’s rubbish or not.

Does that include writing for social media?

Apparently not.

At least this is one of the requirements I follow religiously. Sometimes it’s a lot more words but a least some writing finished up either on paper in on the word processor.

Now it’s time to write those thousand words.

Look, there, I’ve at least got one part of time management under control.

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 1

We think of tropical Queensland having pristine white beaches and azure sparkling seas.

Not necessarily so.

This used to be a mangrove swamp.

Perhaps this is what happens when you mess with the natural environment, you’re left with something that’s not very nice.

There’s no beach, no sand, and sometimes not a very pleasant odor.

We can imagine what this might have looked like before man turned up to urbanize the area. In the background, there is an inlet and on either side lush vegetation.

It must have looked very inviting once upon a time. Now the shoreline is completely built on, the vegetation that was once there completely cleared, and the inlet leads to a marina.

Perhaps the story here might be about greedy destructive property developers who care not for anything but profits.  But in their quest to destroy, there is always someone else aiding and abetting, someone in government.

But what if there was an even darker secret hiding just below the surface, and about to be uncovered.  How far would someone go to preserve that secret?

 

Timelines, deadlines, and disasters

Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people who work well to timelines, so the very thought of using something like Microsoft Project to get my writing into some sort of timeframe, with deadlines, seemed, to me, to be a bit extreme.

Say for instance the major deadlines for a writing project are

  1.  Write an outline, with as much detail as possible, with an overarching plot, characters, key points in the novel, and scouting for locations
  2. Writing.  This could be broken down into chapters, but more practicable would be sectioned, each consisting of a number of chapters.
  3. Editing, planning for one, two or three, or more edits
  4. Proofreading
  5. Send to editor

Clearly if I was going to take this approach, then I would have to allocate hours of the day specifically for writing and doing all those other writer chores in less time, and with fewer distractions.

And, it might work for a more dedicated author.

But…

I did make a new years resolution that I would try and do things differently this year.

Except…

I set a goal to restart editing of my next novel on 1st Feb. I thought, setting it so far into the year it would be easy.

It would give me the time to clear up all the outstanding, get in the way, distractions, and be free to finally finish it.

But there’s always something else to do, other than what we’re supposed to be doing.

For me it used to be going away, spending long, sleepless hours flying from one side of the world to the other had fuelled my imagination more than I expected and where this used to be the impetus to write more stories that that had not happened yet this year.

I have other stories of course, all in carious stages of writing, but if only I could focus on one story at a time.

So…

I’ve tried to set some new, more realistic goals to finish playing with these other stories as soon as I can, so come the first of March, I can resume work on the next book to be published.

Or not.