tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-151846062024-03-16T19:52:30.077+13:00Mike Crowl's Random NotesMike Crowl is the world's leading authority on his own opinions on art, music, movies, and writing.Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.comBlogger2558125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-27824368884525928732024-03-15T19:40:00.002+13:002024-03-15T19:40:24.018+13:00Don't press<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">In my WIP I have at least two major issues I need to
deal with before I can move forward. The temptation is to dig and dig at the problem
in order to make the solution come out of where it’s hiding in the
subconscious. If that’s what it’s doing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve worked on both issues, jotting notes down about
them, thinking about them while walking and so on. No solution has yet appeared. Not a workable one anyway. I have to be willing to say to myself:
‘This isn’t the answer – yet.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s movie <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i>
again last night. This will be the third time I’ve seen it. Quieter in its menace
than some of Hitchcock’s movies, it nevertheless has a very menacing character
at its centrem played by Joseph Cotton. One of the other actors in the film is Hume Cronyn. This was his first movie,
and he went on to make a second with Hitchcock, <i>Lifeboat. </i>He also contributed
to the scripts of two others, <i>Rope</i> and <i>Under Capricorn. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the superb Hitchcock biography by Patrick McGilligan,
Cronyn talks about working on the script of <i>Rope</i> with the director. What
Hitchcock had to say to him is relevant to the subject I began this post with.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwZ_E5UnVxVAKd4IlAepVZ5qFsBsV_485IFGxJJNZrceVMuXRvsla383MV5WxWogUAof9YprKEGqpSYezAN9ZcXGmGHj1HDe1cgO2ioKjWmOqEWSICfi7SKInKFrfSSEK6D19O60tBu_TfwjvSlaghFd4u4CAg2o3IAIWB92fMta3sb70WQYKIA/s450/Hume%20Cronyn.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivwZ_E5UnVxVAKd4IlAepVZ5qFsBsV_485IFGxJJNZrceVMuXRvsla383MV5WxWogUAof9YprKEGqpSYezAN9ZcXGmGHj1HDe1cgO2ioKjWmOqEWSICfi7SKInKFrfSSEK6D19O60tBu_TfwjvSlaghFd4u4CAg2o3IAIWB92fMta3sb70WQYKIA/s320/Hume%20Cronyn.webp" width="213" /></a></i></div><i>Early on in the working relationship I discovered a
curious trick of his,’ said Cronyn. ‘We would be discussing some story point
with great intensity, trembling on the edge of a solution to the problem at
hand, when Hitch would suddenly lean back in his chair and say, ‘Hume, have you
heard the story of the travelling salesman and the farmer’s daughter?’ I would look
at him blankly and he would proceed to tell it with great relish, frequently
commenting on the story’s characters, the nature of the humour involved, and
the philosophical demonstration implied. That makes it sound as though the
stories might be profound or at least witty. They were neither. They were generally
seventh-grade jokes of the sniggery school, and frequently infantile.’<o:p></o:p></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>One day, Cronyn asked the director challengingly: ‘Why
do you do that?’<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>‘Do what?’ asked Hitchcock.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>‘Stop to tell jokes at a crucial juncture.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>‘It’s not so critical – it’s only a film.’ <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>‘But we were just about to find a solution to the problem…I
can’t even remember what it was now.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>‘Good. We were pressing…You never get it when you press.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Cronyn said later that he never forgot ‘that little
piece of philosophy’ Hitchcock offered, ‘either as an actor or as a sometime
writer.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><i> </i></o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">What Hitchcock is saying is that making a big fuss about
trying to find the solution, hammering away at it in frustration, doesn’t work.
‘</span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Don’t press</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">,’ he says.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s like trying to remember someone’s name – and at my
time of life I can forget the names of my grandchildren, or very good friends,
or relations I’ve known since childhood. Pressing on the matter and trying to
grind yourself into remembering doesn’t work. Forget the name and talk about
other things, read a book, or write on some other topic. The name will suddenly
appear. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was going over some of the Psalms of Ascent this
morning. I memorised these a long time ago and they remain with me to this day. Occasionally, however, a word or phrase will go AWOL, or drop out of sight.
The immediate reaction is to think ‘I’m forgetting this Psalm.’ No I’m not. It's only the fact that the brain hasn’t done any work on this Psalm for some time, and
so it has to collect all the information together again, which may take a
moment, or a minute, or five minutes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That word that’s gone missing <i>will </i>suddenly appear, even
if I’m already in the middle of the next Psalm. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which is to say, that the solution to a writing problem will
suddenly appear. However with something like writing, something that requires creativity, it may take not minutes, but days. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Be patient. Don’t press. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">The quotation from the book, <a href="https://tinyurl.com/2ytzo84k">Alfred Hitchcock – a lifein darkness and light</a> – by Patrick McGilligan, comes from pages 402-3 of the
2003 Paperback edition by John Wiley and Sons Ltd. The photograph of Hume Cronyn is courtesy of </i><a href="https://www.themoviedb.org/person/7668-hume-cronyn" style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">The Movie Database. </a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-61673381418901114312024-03-14T20:10:00.004+13:002024-03-14T20:10:40.765+13:00Having a cold but still getting some work done<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">Last four days I’ve had a cold. Started Sunday and then
shifted between suddenly feeling better and just as suddenly feeling quite
unwell. Monday, for instance, after expecting to have a runny nose and cough, I
had next to nothing, and I thought maybe what started on Sunday evening wasn’t
going to amount to much.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then Tuesday arrived and I wasn’t well at all – yup,
<i>just</i> a cold. I know. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And Wednesday (yesterday) came and I started cancelling
things I had to do yesterday as well as today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And of course, just to keep me on the hop, I’ve felt
really well today. Could have done all the things I’d cancelled. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I did some pruning of a rose that had gone crazy and
thinks reaching for the sky is a good look for roses. Helped my wife clean up
the remaining tomato plants – which have done their dash – and deposited the
used soil and dying plants in the compost. (Yes, you <i>can</i> compost tomato
plants, as I discovered at the age of 78. Also potato plants. My mother, who
did the garden in our previous house, mostly, had always said this was a no-no.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Watered the plants in the garden. So far the Council
hasn’t imposed any water restrictions, which is a bit of a surprise because we’re
having a kind of drought - in the sense that we haven’t had any substantial
rain for some weeks. Our plants have been okay, but the grass has turned a
strange shade of yellowy-brown. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the Botanic Gardens, the duck pond has been reduced
to half its size. The little stream that seems to run out of nowhere has stopped.
I’m told it’s been turned off in the meantime because it’s actually a man-made
tributary running off the Oamaru Creek, as I discovered today. I’d been wondering
what its origin was in the three years we’ve lived here. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The gardeners in the Gardens are watering the grass,
because it’s going the same colour as ours, and everyone else’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I’m not doing much on furthering the book. Yet,
during the course of the week, I <i>did</i> come up with an interesting name
for my main villain. I won’t share it with you at this point, because I’m not convinced
it’s the right name. A bit too fancy, perhaps. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I did some more thinking about why the calamity that
happens at the beginning of the book comes about. Still haven’t decided on
this, though I did have fun reading up on some possible things that could have
happened. Actual scientific or practical things; not just magical ones. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I looked further into whether my current narrator
has any reason to be the <i>main</i> character. At this point he’s not giving
it much get up and go – apart from rescuing another character <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in spite of his lack of bravery. But he’s a
bit too much of an observer. This is obviously going to have to change, or he
may find himself in a minor role. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I made a kind of timeline of events that mostly
happen <i>before</i> the book begins. These needed to be in my head, even if
they don’t make it into the book itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All this stuff is important. The book can’t move forward
without a good deal of thinking at this stage. Having given myself a number of
problems to solve I have to solve them. Keeping on writing in a pantser sort of
way may bring solutions to light. Or it may just leave me with a flabby draft. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In my last book, after three false starts involving a
number of chapters that either got dumped or transmogrified in some way into
the book that eventually got published, I found that there were always points
where the creative writing had to stop, or else a lot more digital paper would
be wasted. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And even though writing on its own is enjoyable, it’s equally
possible to get enjoyment out of thinking about how to get your characters out
of tricky spots, or to find out why they’ve done what they’ve done, or what the
history of certain events is, and much more. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s not as ‘easy’ as writing scintillating dialogue and
dramatic description, but it gives an underpinning to the work that will stand
it in good stead. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwCZABJJ9pC1DF6mvzWYzwcJG5UWmSlknUqFMxnBu_SJVSay0hhV8fFPbDR6bhTUy_d3ojuGrO37Dc4m8N2fit9oKFpwFl3Y_HcqvwgTw1Mq7qPgE909visCqoiqLJ1M2kQ8omu6PUy7iaaWzttpYsXguirXTOJulr9BA0SB1wJwLKnm2VbTxHQ/s599/man%20with%20a%20cold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="462" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkwCZABJJ9pC1DF6mvzWYzwcJG5UWmSlknUqFMxnBu_SJVSay0hhV8fFPbDR6bhTUy_d3ojuGrO37Dc4m8N2fit9oKFpwFl3Y_HcqvwgTw1Mq7qPgE909visCqoiqLJ1M2kQ8omu6PUy7iaaWzttpYsXguirXTOJulr9BA0SB1wJwLKnm2VbTxHQ/w309-h400/man%20with%20a%20cold.jpg" width="309" /></a></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; margin: 0.5em 0px;"><i>I had a cold for the last couple of days. Now my nose is running and I have a bit of a cough. I've been going to work spreading my germs and now I'm going to get the blame when every one else gets the cold. The cough medicine is not mine - I just found it on top of the fridge and thought I'd throw it in the picture. </i></p><p style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; margin: 0.5em 0px;">Photo: <a href="https://flickr.com/people/restlessglobetrotter/">Jason Rogers</a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-68007960831188085462024-03-11T12:59:00.002+13:002024-03-12T15:06:21.226+13:00Foreign Correspondent re-viewed & Mr and Mrs Smith noted<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQVxp13dD9-wgNrc1wDEahvtn3avU5adVTNWM-gWnoHOtyIzlOfz4wEApmpMLSOPM7kyFECkmNbeGHgEsBVEUyL-7sd3BixccTu68PksXNRCbjScBL7aRmPftB-iZBurlOXwkK3rUOtDTiWd9aN2NomB5Vz_syGMExV8VSxdZkciKKaVa75AiKmw/s1600/Foreign%20Correspondent.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQVxp13dD9-wgNrc1wDEahvtn3avU5adVTNWM-gWnoHOtyIzlOfz4wEApmpMLSOPM7kyFECkmNbeGHgEsBVEUyL-7sd3BixccTu68PksXNRCbjScBL7aRmPftB-iZBurlOXwkK3rUOtDTiWd9aN2NomB5Vz_syGMExV8VSxdZkciKKaVa75AiKmw/s320/Foreign%20Correspondent.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><br /> Back in 2012 I wrote a post on my <a href="https://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/2012/06/favourite-hitchcocks.html">favourite Hitchcockmovies</a>. I came across it again this morning after checking to see if I’d ever mentioned
<i>Foreign Correspondent</i>, which stars Joel McCrea and Laraine Day, and was released
early in 1940, in this blog. I had, with fondness.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I watched the movie <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijcVyuLNykI&list=PL8Nn95jd6kYVy9GGJx0z7lOkFhMt7Lu_9&index=18">on You Tube</a> last night (Spanish
subtitles included) and it remains an absorbing movie - with some absurdities.
<i>Not </i>unusual for Hitchcock. Though it was shot in the States, it has a large
cast of Brits; many of them had been in Hollywood for some years. The movie
shifts from the US to Holland to London and back. It’s full of studio ‘exteriors’
- most of them wonderfully done, like the full-scale windmill set against a
painted backdrop of the Dutch countryside, and of course, the ocean in the
climax of the movie. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I mentioned in my previous post that there was a great scene
shot from above of dozens of umbrellas, with the hero hiding amongst them. In
fact, it’s an assassin who escapes through them, causing first one umbrella then another
to shift in what is otherwise a settled sea of covers. The assassination scene
is brilliant: first there’s the odd meeting of McCrea with ‘Van Meer’ who for
some reason doesn’t recognise him; it’s only later we understand that it’s a stand-in
lookalike for the old peacemaker, a stand-in who gets shot for his pains. 'Van
Meer' tumbles down the steps while the assassin, supposedly a photographer,
smashes his camera to the ground and begins his escape. This involves other
people getting shot in a busy street, cars and trams everywhere, mothers,
children, and George Sanders (playing the absurdly-named ffolliott – his name
is given an equally absurd explanation) who happens to have Laraine Day in his
car, and who then gives chase with McCrea on board. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The subsequent car chase is both full of Hitchcock humour
and real suspense. In one completely irrelevant scene, an old Dutchman is trying
to cross the road. A car comes whizzing round the corner. He steps back, tries
again. Same result. Beautifully-timed, as an increasing number of vehicles
appear, and the man narrowly avoids being hit time and again before giving up. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This all leads to a long sequence in which McCrea
investigates people doing skulduggery inside the windmill. He continually
managing to stay just out of sight – even though at one point his overcoat gets caught in the
machinery. He manages to get himself out of it just before it’s chewed
up. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There’s a great deal else that’s excellent – the plane crash
into the sea that occurs at the end is terrific, and the way various unnamed actors have their
moment in the limelight both in this scene and in others. Or the attempted murder up on a very high church tower.
This one has a troupe of schoolboys involved for a minute or two, adding to the
edginess of what’s about to happen – especially as there’s a broken bit of
tower off to one side waiting to be repaired. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a much earlier scene Hitchcock has a couple of children
jokingly stealing the hero’s hat. It occurred to me that in his early films
in the US he still had children involved as he had in his British movies. Often
they were quite forward children, like the strong-minded Dutch girl in this
movie, who translates McCrea’s English to the police. They were often relaxed
about doing things adults would have a fit seeing them do these days. But in
his later US movies, it’s rare to see a child. Apart from <i>The Trouble With Harry</i>, which features a young boy who finds the body, there isn’t any of the same ilk as the earlier kids.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, thank you, You Tube, and the people who upload older
movies. Especially when the copies are as clean and bright as when they were
first shown. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Poster for the film courtesy of <a href="https://www.criterion.com/films/27692-foreign-correspondent">The Criterion Collection</a> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Update 12.3.24</i>: I found that Hitchcock's <i>Mr and Mrs Smith</i> is also available (sans subtitles) on You Tube, and watched it last night. By all accounts it was done more as a courtesy to the female star, Carole Lombard, than because Hitchcock was desperate to do it. And why would he be? It was so far out his normal range that it's not surprising it comes across as competently-directed but little else. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The script is funny-ish, but not outstanding; Lombard and her co-star, Robert Montgomery expend a great deal of energy, but the thing rarely lights up. One of the few scenes that made me laugh involved Gene Raymond, who, on discovering that the other two are technically <i>not</i> married because of a legal glitch, makes his play for Lombard. He gets a cold, Lombard plies him with whiskey, and the result is a man who, being teetotal normally, suddenly walks and talks like an automaton, sits by bending the wrong bits first, stands likewise, and on going to step up from one level to another notes that his foot decides this isn't a good idea. Raymond plays it for all its worth. </p><p class="MsoNormal">It's not that Hitchcock couldn't do comedy - most of him films have comic scenes or characters - but the 'screwball comedy' type of movie just wasn't up his alley. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-76951409360376575752024-03-08T16:14:00.001+13:002024-03-08T16:14:28.795+13:00Ways to keep the brain exercising<p> M<span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">y wife and I are going to the USA from late March to
mid-April, to see our son and his wife and their four children. We haven’t
seen the two youngest children face to face before, so we’re looking forward to
that. The youngest will be about three months old when we arrive, so it’ll be
nice to handle a baby again – haven’t done that with any of our family babies
for some years now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I haven’t travelled such a long distance since 2012, so I’m
having to get my brain into gear to deal with a couple of long flights. My wife,
on the other hand, has been to the UK several times in the last couple of
decades. She seems to cope with travelling in a matter of fact way, which is
great. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And there’s a great deal more fiddling around with
phones and devices this time – far more than I did on previous trips.
Thankfully my wife is now experienced in the quirks of dealing with these
things. On my own I would have had no idea what I was doing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thus, just over two weeks out from leaving, things feel a
bit like they’re in limbo round here. People keep saying ‘you’ll be looking forward
to it’ and I keep having this kind of <i>blank</i> in front of me. I think it’s
partly a way of coping with the travelling. I’m happy to get to a place. Getting
there, particularly by plane, isn’t my favourite part. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So it’s not easy to get on and work on the book at
present. But writing these blog posts helps – they’re a way of getting the
fingers into gear before tackling the vagaries of the book itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And another help has been writing Daily Quordle Poems. I
started doing this in mid-2022. DQPs are four-line poems that take the four
words from the Daily Quordle puzzle and use them as the starting words of each
line. The poems may be serious, they may rhyme or not rhyme, they may be witty or
funny or odd. The writer has the choice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ve done DQPs that have the key word at the end of the
line. Or two at the beginning of the first two lines and two at the end. Since
the rules aren’t so strict that you have to stick to them in a Pharisaic way, I’ve
played around quite a bit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And at one point, because the person who was letting us
know what the words were got a bit behind, I’ve written poems of twelve or
sixteen or twenty lines, all with the Quordle words (usually in alphabetical
order, just to add to the mix) as the first words or each line. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are some 1800 posts on the official site –
<a href="http://dailyquordlepoem.com">dailyquordlepoem.com</a> – from a variety of writers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Check a few of them out. Or try your hand at one for own
entertainment. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Here are a couple of mine from the past:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #0f1419; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">LIPID ain’t limpid, like your limpid eyes, my dear.<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419;">TULIP ain’t two lips, though you have two, it’s clear.<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419;">MUCUS ain’t music, though your words are music to my ears. But…<br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">SPADEs is trumps, so
it’s clear, hear this in your ears, I win again, my dear.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;"><i>and this is a catch-up one with two days' worth of words:</i></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #0f1419; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">DINER, perusing the racing guide, at LUNCH, in a<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419;">TRICE, changes his mind re the HORSE, whose<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419;">STYLE is in a state of SULLY after<br /></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">COYLY losing not just
the bettor’s shirt but his INGOT.</span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-90064044214330252712024-03-05T21:08:00.002+13:002024-03-05T21:08:56.050+13:00Intuitive ideas<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-_GF4jXEXsPcYwGdX8MGCH5w-OE_QHYYL2yCssH8oBN2HOujxD0vFODZUf_SqkL3mlqBInQ33o0FisXFLXkGTfdJwSc-9dfSR34KkoJL5na0vu8ku3dcOZk5zDyH41WLHJQ0CIhnlCaxGCJiqvPT4gFTnk8HxqXCuk5cT97URVrcEoaymCD2Xw/s800/General%20Carrera%20lake,%20inside%20Marmol%20Caverns,%20Aysen%20region-Chile.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-_GF4jXEXsPcYwGdX8MGCH5w-OE_QHYYL2yCssH8oBN2HOujxD0vFODZUf_SqkL3mlqBInQ33o0FisXFLXkGTfdJwSc-9dfSR34KkoJL5na0vu8ku3dcOZk5zDyH41WLHJQ0CIhnlCaxGCJiqvPT4gFTnk8HxqXCuk5cT97URVrcEoaymCD2Xw/w400-h300/General%20Carrera%20lake,%20inside%20Marmol%20Caverns,%20Aysen%20region-Chile.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; text-align: start;">General Carrera Lake, inside Marmol Caverns, Aysen region-Chile<br />Photo: </span><a class="new" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nico14uc&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background: none rgb(248, 249, 250); color: #ba0000; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" title="User:Nico14uc (page does not exist)">Nico14uc</a></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">I made a note to myself today: </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Don’t get rid
of intuitive ideas just because you can’t initially see how they fit.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">When writing as
a ‘kind of pantser’ – the best way I can describe myself – odd things creep
into the writing that I know have a part to play but don’t immediatley see how they
fit into the overall plan. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">Two such things
come to mind about my latest book. First, there’s a traumatic event in the
opening chapter. This came out of nowhere even before this book started. Some months
ago I was walking the dog, looked at a particular house and wondered what it
would be like for that house to slide down the hill? I went home and wrote a
chapter that included this idea. But there didn’t seem to be anything else
forthcoming, and I put the chapter and thoughts about that particular book away. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">The idea itself
persisted, and is now in the heart of the opening chapter of my current
writing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">Another idea was
that a character who was supposed to be dead wasn’t in fact dead. This idea had
presented itself in that same discarded chapter, and now has a place in the present
work. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">However, I’ve just
spent a good deal of time this afternoon trying to figure out why this person
should be known to be dead when he isn’t, and how this fits into the story. I’ve
made some progress, though it sometimes felt like going round in circles as arguments and counterarguments fought for survival.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">On the other
hand I still don’t know how the traumatic event I spoke about connects to the
whole story. I only know it does. Time and hard work will give me a way forward
on it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">One other
example. In one early chapter of the WIP a cavern with an underground lake and
a rowboat presented itself. I noted at the time, <i>make sure the cavern has
something to do with the story, or it will have to go.</i> It’s a mystery
I yet have to solve. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">These three,
along with a number of other odd ideas, or words that came out of characters’ mouths, or
phrases that I threw in out of nowhere, are all intuitive thoughts. There's
something about them that makes me say, <i>This belongs</i>. It’s my job to
figure out how it belongs and what it will do to the story. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">I anticipate more
hours spent trying to work these things out. And I need to do it sooner than
later since I can’t move forward confidently without knowing what these things think
they’re doing in my book. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">It's all part of the writing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;">Hence the note I
made to myself today. The process of writing relies not just on our skills, but
on our subconscious throwing what might be called spanners into the works. To mix
the metaphors, these things are then worth pursuing down their own particular rabbit
holes. <span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-35825079175211211032024-03-02T20:26:00.001+13:002024-03-02T20:26:33.559+13:00The Great Escaper<p> You know when a movie starts off slow – three shots of waves
crashing in, a long shot of a man standing on a beach looking at the sea, more crashing
waves, the man in close up, and so on – that generally the pacing is going to
be off. There are ways to start slow and there are ways not to. If a movie doesn’t
engage in the midst of its slowness, then it’s likely not going to engage full
stop.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Which is what happened with <i>The Great Escaper</i>,
starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson as an elderly husband and wife in a
care home. Not only did it start slow, it managed to maintain this slowness for
a good deal of its running time. Everything stretched out as though old age is
all about slowness. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jackson brings some life to the piece, but very few of her
scenes are with Caine, so she’s left playing to actors whose storylines are barely
filled out. Caine, on the other hand, pro that he is, manages still to make a
very believable character even in shots where the camera just sits looking at
him while he’s looking at something else – the sea, often; John Standing at
times; a bus that he’s not waiting for. Caine must have wondered if anything
was ever going to move in the film. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I find myself with very few supporters in regard to the
slowness of the movie. An amazing number of reviews, both from members on
imdb.com and from media reviewers, say that the thing could have been maudlin
but isn’t. They ignore its chronically slow pace.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well it could have been maudlin and it is. Even worse when
poor old John Standing comes into the story and spends almost the entire time
being maudlin, like some puppy without a home. He’s an alcoholic, so he drinks
a lot; he’s an atheist, so he has nothing better than his present life to look
forward to; he can’t forgive himself for something that he only had an innocent
hand in. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then there’s the chirpy black guy who’s lost his legs. He
starts off being one of the most chipper characters in the movie. By the end he’s
fallen into the maudlin trap as well. Good grief. You long to get back to Jackson,
who in spite of her pains and illness and not having much longer to live, still
gets on with life. (In real life she outlived her husband by seven days.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Caine actually does a terrific job with a part that’s well
and truly underwritten. Jackson, in her last film, does the same, <i>an</i>d she
has a bit more material to work with. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We could have gone and watched <i>Dune II</i> but having seen
the first part some time ago I didn’t think it was going to be my wife’s cup of
tea. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ah, well, we got to see the <i>The Great Escaper</i> for
free, courtesy of my wife’s employer, so in some senses it wasn’t entirely a
wasted night. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXECLeA9p_Ghdm6U9O3FVv5ldrtB2Zj0sqKRE1WcCz_UF9387RdbpLxLLTjDy1qR_uSWCI7yGIy740TEpRTFw0u-5y_xFJtnX5X_SVtzTjAD2MFH1OUf-IfGqDn7UBmcFYqxgXiXzENBxYGNIidZP-_tGAQapbqEzDjuLQnEkaJJwO8J5h3zTuRg/s1556/The%20Great%20Escaper%20Film.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="882" data-original-width="1556" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXECLeA9p_Ghdm6U9O3FVv5ldrtB2Zj0sqKRE1WcCz_UF9387RdbpLxLLTjDy1qR_uSWCI7yGIy740TEpRTFw0u-5y_xFJtnX5X_SVtzTjAD2MFH1OUf-IfGqDn7UBmcFYqxgXiXzENBxYGNIidZP-_tGAQapbqEzDjuLQnEkaJJwO8J5h3zTuRg/s320/The%20Great%20Escaper%20Film.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-41192046198347465092024-03-02T16:21:00.000+13:002024-03-02T16:21:13.075+13:00Backstories and bios<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">I remember reading a novel some years ago in which the
author plainly thought that his background notes about each main character should
be included at some point in the book. This led to an absurd climax where everything
stopped while the author gave us the backstory for one of his characters right
in the middle of the action. Not just a paragraph or two, but pages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Writers often create long, detailed backstories for
their characters, and it’s a great temptation to put most of this into the book
– though hopefully in a more subtle way than the author I’ve mentioned above
did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">But for the most part, backstories should remain where they belong, in the files, not the book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfwlT3kplLDymbKc3tIFVhEsxhq6l401AYkjGxklwrmADKk-IdndIIy_PTPn7Y83yvNQoXl1b2wLhQr_Y76RQ4JzwMXJ0uEb5vzqpGPqFh21Rng_SILMQmLITfOgzTavgG-F-2W4slMhXrAzh5OS7TRD4bn0SDlwc4ysjX-3DQVMXb7OMP2zs_Cw/s4627/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4627" data-original-width="3085" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfwlT3kplLDymbKc3tIFVhEsxhq6l401AYkjGxklwrmADKk-IdndIIy_PTPn7Y83yvNQoXl1b2wLhQr_Y76RQ4JzwMXJ0uEb5vzqpGPqFh21Rng_SILMQmLITfOgzTavgG-F-2W4slMhXrAzh5OS7TRD4bn0SDlwc4ysjX-3DQVMXb7OMP2zs_Cw/w133-h200/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>I wrote something similar during <i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yt27k3ff">The Counterfeit Queen’s</a></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">
long evolution. Needing a bit of forward movement while struggling to find more of the story, I wrote at least two chapters, maybe three, in which
the villain gave her side of events.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">What I found interesting was that in the course of
writing those chapters I discovered some new ideas and some connections in the plot
that I hadn’t seen before. These chapters, which were never intended to be part
of the book, were far more fruitful than I realised.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Re-reading them sometime later, I thought, </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">I should
use these in the book. They’re great! I could make them the opening chapters, and…</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Thankfully the wiser part of my brain prevailed and I left
them out. They would have stopped the story getting up and running by putting its main
character on the back burner for several pages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">But I still recommend this approach as a way of seeing the
story from a different viewpoint. Or as a way of using the brain’s creative
energy in a different way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">I’ve sometimes tried to write two of these in a row.
That doesn’t work for me. The creative energy pours into the first character’s
discussion of themselves, and there’s nothing left over for another character. And that just makes you feel like a blah kind of writer again...</span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-63168426895800853212024-03-01T15:58:00.002+13:002024-03-02T16:21:51.594+13:00Don't rush, let it simmer<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">So I continued to write chapter 8 last night. And kept
feeling…’this isn’t very good…’</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">What choice do I have at this point, as a kind of
pantser? I can scrap the words and start afresh, and hope things take off
differently the second time. Or I can analyse why I’m feeling disgruntled with
this piece of writing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">If I choose the latter course, I can ask: why does what’s
happening in the this particular chapter seem all too familiar? Haven’t I pursued
a similar path in one of my others books? Characters heading off </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">somewhere</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">
in </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">some sort</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> of special machine. Without knowing where they’re going.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Yes, this does seem too familiar. If I was a reader of
this series (in the proper order) I’d be thinking, </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">He’s doing the same old
thing again</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">, and possibly I might toss the book back on the shelf, or drop
it in the returns section at the library.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">There's also a sense of the </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">twee</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> about chapter 8. That
is, the magic is all a bit too cute, especially for a book that started out on
a drastic and life-threatening note.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">It feels too </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">cosy. </i><span style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">T</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">he characters are
settling into doing what they would normally do. And not only doing it, but
being given the chance to do it by the author in the guise of one of the other
characters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">The end result is, if I’m bored, the reader’s going to
be bored. And they won’t be asking why.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">What about the other approach I mentioned: scrapping the main idea
behind the chapter? This means writing something new, of course. I’ve done it
before – in </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">The Disenchanted Wizard </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">I often went off in the wrong
direction, and had to drop sections that were twee or cute or cosy or whatever.
The Archives folder for </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">The Counterfeit Queen </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">is full of rejected
chapters, chapters that were just filling up the gaps. You have a sense for it
after a while as a writer. You usually feel something’s off, but you’ve forged
ahead in spite of that and now you realise you took a wrong turn.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEice-wjxeZJg1LPQfwRPuJ6JyIwJaL3z97KVnr5z0AzhfxBj9JSijcDi9pQV3nKvLL4KCGmhNJ67uzTdbeOKQb4d6leUw7JJveQyc4iM_fO8EE_XzSgczYZHWJPji7Fjg_gK-ULXpw-hTGLDb0oFS_TExLJOBuFXbo9cYUd4LhquDRYVn9RJN09PA/s798/Monopoly%20Board.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="798" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEice-wjxeZJg1LPQfwRPuJ6JyIwJaL3z97KVnr5z0AzhfxBj9JSijcDi9pQV3nKvLL4KCGmhNJ67uzTdbeOKQb4d6leUw7JJveQyc4iM_fO8EE_XzSgczYZHWJPji7Fjg_gK-ULXpw-hTGLDb0oFS_TExLJOBuFXbo9cYUd4LhquDRYVn9RJN09PA/s320/Monopoly%20Board.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">So, back to Jail and don’t pass Go. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Counterfeit Queen </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">not
only went back to Jail without passing Go, she found a whole new way to start
the book, a way that tied everything together in a much more satisfactory
fashion. That occurred somewhere about year three, I think.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">In Andy Martin’s book </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reacher-Said-Nothing-Child-Making/dp/1101965452">Reacher Said Nothing</a>, </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">he
details how Lee Child goes about (or used to go about) writing a new book. He would
start on the same day each year (a bit of the superstitious) and write an
opening. It might consist of only a few paragraphs. These would include an idea
he had in mind, but hadn’t developed in any way. When I say ‘idea’ it might be
barely an idea.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Then he’d go off and do other things. He probably wouldn’t
write anything else for a few days. He’d let his subconscious go to work finding
points in what he’d written that had potential to create mystery and thrills.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Which says to me, </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Don’t be afraid to leave the book
alone for a few days. </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">Even this morning as I lay in bed thinking that I wasn’t
much impressed with chapter 8’s progress, I already had a thought about a different
approach. As this point, mid-afternoon, I’m not much impressed with that
either. Time to let things simmer for a day or three.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">In my <a href="https://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/2024/03/backstories-and-bios.html">next post</a>, I’ll look at a couple of other options for
when you reach this point, options which may help to lead you forward.</span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-91959667319246402102024-02-28T16:50:00.003+13:002024-02-28T16:50:41.194+13:00Explaining my process<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhONPfapxP0qfhPr8I4LovJUnepsyXIaVr9F-reX8fhaVjRr6PmgKdilh8eQ9peTCWGN2zy82mBa1H_XBEzfbra9XiyXPwEYqt4i0SltuFji_CHVU4FgajY2ETO9hnaptOR1fw-0cU1M7_D4HCR6glq5Dvvo7lpiZpPZMJ-ztcCm6jM_ZnE1AYypQ/s800/New_Sheffield_Markets_-_Work_in_Progress_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3243056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="800" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhONPfapxP0qfhPr8I4LovJUnepsyXIaVr9F-reX8fhaVjRr6PmgKdilh8eQ9peTCWGN2zy82mBa1H_XBEzfbra9XiyXPwEYqt4i0SltuFji_CHVU4FgajY2ETO9hnaptOR1fw-0cU1M7_D4HCR6glq5Dvvo7lpiZpPZMJ-ztcCm6jM_ZnE1AYypQ/s320/New_Sheffield_Markets_-_Work_in_Progress_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3243056.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Work in progress on the New Sheffield Markets, 2012<br />courtesy Wikimedia Commons</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">So what have I been doing over the last week or so in
regards to the WIP. (I only discovered today that companies use this same
acronym for </span><i style="color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">their </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt; text-align: justify;">Work in Progress meetings. Fair enough. I’m sure we writers
are generous enough to allow them to pinch our writerly acronym.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let me say first that there isn’t a lot of <i>forward </i>progress,
in the sense that no new chapters have been written, and chapter 8 remains at
about 600 words, which is where it’s been for a week or two. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is this a problem? No, because I’ve been <i>consolidating</i>,
for want of a better word. By which I mean that chapters 1 to 7 have all been revised,
and in at least three cases, substantially rewritten. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But wait, you say, <i>Aren’t you some kind of a pantser
when it comes to writing? <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yes, I am – but as I pointed out in <a href="https://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/2024/02/writing-at-your-own-particular-pace.html ">this post</a>, my
approach to writing has been refined over four previous books, and seems to be getting
refined still further with this one. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At this point I’m satisfied enough that the first seven
chapters I’ve written are keepers. That still may not be the case ultimately. However
they’ve got enough structure and detail in them to give me a good starting
point. I’m not just writing an initial draft and moving forward until the last
page, as a pantser might, but I’m going back over these chapters to make sure they
hold together as well as I can currently make them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I say, they may not even turn up in the final book. It’s
happened in the past. But what they’ve done is give me new characters whom I hadn’t
even known existed until I started writing, characters who are taking shape and
giving me surprises. And on top of that, they keep saying things that give me
clues as to where the book might ultimately go, clues to the underlying plot,
for instance. Already some of these ‘clues’ have been ditched – at least for the
time being - because I don’t see them as being important enough, or having
enough of a seed to take me forward. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Other clues, however, have opened up possibilities and
surprises for me – and hopefully one day for the reader. I make notes about
these in the <i>comments</i> column in my Word document (yup, Word is good enough
for me) and also discuss them in a separate file which becomes increasingly
chaotic as further ideas turn up and other things are rejected. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is it a problem to have a chaotic file like this? I used
to think it was, and would worry about not being able to find things in it. Occasionally
I’d read a section through and discover something I’d forgotten I’d made a note
about was now being used in the story. As though it was a new idea. Or I’d
laugh at some of the thoughts I’d had as to where the story was going, and
wonder why I’d given them house-room. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With my last book I began to use this file increasingly for
structuring what was coming in further chapters because things - as they should
- got increasingly complicated in the story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was also a good place to pour out my woes when I’d
pushed one of my characters into a corner and didn’t know how to get them out again.
If I went back to these notes now, I’d find that various solutions would have
been tried and found wanting, and then out of the blue the ‘right’ solution had
turned up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s still a kind of scrapbook, notebook, or junk box
even, where anything and everything finds a home. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know many authors use writing programs like Scrivener
and Atticus that have all sorts of places to fit things so that you don’t lose
track of them. I’ve tried some of these, and found them more work than
I want to do. By the time I’ve set everything up and followed the manual in detail I
could have written a few chapters, plus added to my structuring/note-taking file.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m sure many writers find them useful, but they’re not
for me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So what’s to come? In the next few days I’ll take
another look at chapter 8 in the light of changes made in the previous
chapters, and see where my characters will take me from here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-41760428475285847702024-02-26T19:46:00.004+13:002024-02-26T19:46:49.286+13:00Being interrupted<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the great skills I learnt when I worked for the
local City Council – a fairly minor cog in a large organisation – was that it
was possible to be interrupted fairly regularly and still get my brain straight
back onto the job I’d been doing.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Interruptions of all kinds get in the way of writing. And
our concern is that we’ll lose that impetus and that thought we were in the
middle of. But the brain copes.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m sure all would-be, fledgling, and persevering
writers have all read stuff about setting aside a certain part of the day for
writing and nothing but writing.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some suggest first thing in the morning. In my case that’s
the best time for me to be spending time reading my Bible and praying for
people. I don’t want to give that up, even for writing.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But apart from that, early mornings aren’t good for many
part-time writers: kids have to be got off to school, breakfasts eaten and lunches
made, last minute ‘I forgot to do my homework!’ problems dealt with and so on. Both
fathers and mothers are involved in these sorts of things to various extents.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Someone will say, ‘I’m well past that time of life.’ Good,
you’re fortunate, but even in retirement the most carefully-laid plans for
spending time writing get interrupted for all sorts of reasons. Sickness, your
partner’s health or another family member’s health; maintenance on the house
that you have to do because it’s too expensive to get someone in; weeds in the
garden need attention unless you think a wilderness is a good look.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And most of all, if you’re still married, or have a
partner, <i>their </i>needs also have a part to play in the daily round.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And at whatever age you are, if you have a partner or
spouse who thinks that writing gets done between the cracks when they happen to
be looking in the other direction, you not only have the ongoing issue of
actually <i>making</i> time for writing, but of justifying having time to
write.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I try to write every day, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes
it gets into the evening and, being in my eight decade, or rather, closer to my
ninth, I run out of steam altogether.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There <i>are</i> spaces in most days. Take them when you
can, and focus. You’ll still get interrupted, but you will, little by little,
get the work done. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3YkR4FnhZIIVLJ9hjB5vnRDsQqB1i7o2VbvCrYf-48_zg9ks6_FSV3so1cl7F7ea84E1yWTwTMVKtLJK1AZRk-F5Cl4ZXplhD_JwsMxGcbOkZzCcwZHka6Yt2lT7F4kZawW_FEJuvla4PKbcITos8AckYmVX7j21NbMW7AEPB6TNgyi3aQzioUg/s800/LOOKS_LIKE_YOU_WERE_INTERRUPTED.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3YkR4FnhZIIVLJ9hjB5vnRDsQqB1i7o2VbvCrYf-48_zg9ks6_FSV3so1cl7F7ea84E1yWTwTMVKtLJK1AZRk-F5Cl4ZXplhD_JwsMxGcbOkZzCcwZHka6Yt2lT7F4kZawW_FEJuvla4PKbcITos8AckYmVX7j21NbMW7AEPB6TNgyi3aQzioUg/s320/LOOKS_LIKE_YOU_WERE_INTERRUPTED.svg.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">courtesy <a class="new" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Nicolebrandi18&action=edit&redlink=1" style="background: none rgb(248, 249, 250); color: #ba0000; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13.3px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none;" title="User:Nicolebrandi18 (page does not exist)">Nicolebrandi18</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 334.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124; letter-spacing: .1pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-16120795180555359142024-02-21T15:10:00.004+13:002024-02-21T16:16:46.911+13:00More benefits of writing slowly<p> <i>Originally written back in 2017 for a site that no longer exists, which promoted authors and their works.</i></p><div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 38.95pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">In 2014, I published three
e-books. That sounds impressive until you realise that the first of those
books, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/kecs3dz">Grimhilda!,</a> had started out life as a musical produced in the theatre,
back in 2012. In spite of having a script to work from, it took another two
years for the book version to get off the ground. Procrastination took its
toll, along with many rewrites. Turning a playscript into <span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">a</span> novel wasn’t as straightforward as I’d
anticipated.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 47.35pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">I finally published it in
January 2014, by which time I was viewing it as the first of a series of
children’s fantasies.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 49.5pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">However, the second book, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/mz4hvnf">Diary of a Prostate Wimp</a>, was non-fiction. I’d had this book in mind for some
time, planning to use <span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">a</span> set of blog
posts from 2009 as its basis. It wasn’t just a matter of publishing the<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>posts: they had to be edited, an
introduction had to be<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>written, and
more material added from other sources to complement and give additional
breadth to my own experiences.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 65.6pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Nevertheless, all that was
done in a short time, and that book was finished and published in April 2014.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p></div><div class="WordSection2">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 34.9pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">The draft of the third book, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ljh9buf">The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret</a>, took a little longer, but was still written at a fair pace. It
became the second in the fantasy series under the collective title of
Grimhilderness. The Blood Secret still had to go through<span style="letter-spacing: 1.3pt;"> </span>a rigorous process with my editor-cum-beta reader, a person
who’s like a dog with a bone; she won’t let anything go that she’s not
satisfied with, or that reeks of inconsistency.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 35.7pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Still, that book was produced far more speedily than
Grimhilda! – it was published in early November, 2014.<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>I was beginning to think I was a bit of a whiz<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>at producing books.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 38.8pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwaOL6PBObUY0cSLd8rHMnXvw1U0LYlVodKg9W_K71BqknaN1LnsTG8U8gaPav8BS7aW5aOmTkWXSwAUHRT-grOUEw5Xs9QEn1Sz2_BUGbbYsQitQco8p8dyEaP1sewtldrv5EaSoXNeqn7ZikgwClkxTDMcL6RdU_ils5jFJ-ggP8ZSXYdT9sgg/s1754/Disenchanted%20Wizard%20Final%20Book%20Cover%20Full%20Res.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1754" data-original-width="1240" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwaOL6PBObUY0cSLd8rHMnXvw1U0LYlVodKg9W_K71BqknaN1LnsTG8U8gaPav8BS7aW5aOmTkWXSwAUHRT-grOUEw5Xs9QEn1Sz2_BUGbbYsQitQco8p8dyEaP1sewtldrv5EaSoXNeqn7ZikgwClkxTDMcL6RdU_ils5jFJ-ggP8ZSXYdT9sgg/w141-h200/Disenchanted%20Wizard%20Final%20Book%20Cover%20Full%20Res.jpg" width="141" /></a></span></div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">The third in the Grimhilderness series, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/jnrt9cx">The Disenchanted Wizard,</a> turned my idea of being able to churn out books at a rate
of knots on its head. I started it in late 2014, as soon as The Blood Secret
was finished, writing the first (very disorganised) draft as part of the
NaNoWriMo challenge. I had a<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>good
idea in mind, some thoughts about how it would end, and some well-defined
characters.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 35.6pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Yet another two and a quarter years passed before it
was ready for publication. Did I do something wrong?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Not really. Though procrastination and music work got
in the way (I</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">play the piano, mostly
accompanying singers), the book’s original plan was sidetracked again and
again. My co-author/editor/plot-consistency-overseer/script consultant and I
discussed the intricacies of the plot endlessly, and again and again discovered
loopholes that readers</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">would see
right through, or brick walls in the</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">story
that were apparently unassailable. Sometimes we’d sit in my house staring into
space, wondering if all the effort was worth it, or if we’d ever find a way out
of the maze.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 34.85pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">The first half of the book took long enough to get
worked out, but once the writing process was begun in earnest the structure
didn’t really change. The<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>second half
was a nightmare: much of it was rewritten several<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>times over after going<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>off
in wrong directions. Whole scenes were abandoned, characters annihilated. I even wrote a <a href="https://mcrowl.blogspot.com/2017/10/six-characters-in-search-of.html" target="_blank">piece of flash fiction</a> at one point in which the lost characters railed against their fate. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 38.15pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">The grand climax I’d<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">
</span>envisaged got chucked, leaving a great gap, and then later was brought
back in. It too<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>was rewritten over
and over as various improbable things were removed. The biggest difficulty was
that the main character, a girl with no </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">defensive magical</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">powers
of her own, had to confront the villain – a wizard – and somehow lay him low.</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">She’d already failed to</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">do this earlier in the book, so it was a
challenge to figure out she could deal with him in the climax.</span></p></div><div class="WordSection3">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 48.5pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">Sometimes solutions<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">
</span>turn out to be so simple that you think they’ll be seen as too easy by
the readers. In<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>fact, readers accept
them. We spent ages figuring out<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>how
the girl’s father would be found after he’d been whisked away by the villain.
I’ll let you read the book and see for yourself whether you think the solution
worked.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 34.35pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">There were things I wanted to keep in, and<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>fought tooth and nail over. In the end I
had to let them go because they complicated the plot unnecessarily. Being
willing to give up seemingly great ideas for the betterment of the whole book<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>isn’t easy. It was another reason things
took longer than anticipated.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 37.5pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">So, two and a quarter years of slog. <span style="letter-spacing: -0.05pt;">W</span>ere there downsides to this slow process?
<span style="letter-spacing: -0.65pt;">Y</span>es, of course. The frustration of
feeling that it would never get finished,<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>for
one. The sense that I wasn’t really a very good writer because I couldn’t
produce another<span style="letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"> </span>book at speed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 50.3pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">But the upsides were<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">
</span>that the book was immensely better for its long gestation. <span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">W</span>eak and unnecessary characters were left
by the wayside, as were weak scenes. Scenes that did survive were continually
strengthened, and, because I had time to think about details, the book was
improved in a myriad of small ways.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 44.45pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">A number of authors promote the idea that writing at
speed and producing two or three or more books a<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>year is the ideal. <span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;">Y</span>es,
there are authors who can work at this kind of pace and produce quality. I
think they’re few and far between. I’ve read books by some of these prolific
authors, and <span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">I</span> wish they’d given more
time to their work instead of to trying to add more titles to their
bibliography.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 37.05pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">I’ve mentioned the word procrastination a few times
here. There are an endless number of authors online who want to advise you on
how to deal with procrastination. I’ve read endless advice on the subject. In
spite of that, I’m currently procrastinating on a fourth children’s fantasy.<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>Some of my reasons are valid, and more
important than the completion of a book. Some of the reasons are pathetic and
need to be dealt with severely. Either way, real life does get in the way of<span style="letter-spacing: 0.4pt;"> </span>writing, and often takes priority, as a
local author, <a href="https://deberelene.com/">a Mum with two children</a>, has frequently noted on <a href="https://twitter.com/deberelene"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;">T</span>witter</a>.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p></div><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 112%; margin-right: 38.05pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 112%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Segoe UI";">But if we want to write, we
need to try and find a balance between<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>procrastination
for good reasons and procrastination for bad<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">
</span>reasons. <span style="letter-spacing: -0.8pt;">T</span>ake every day as it
comes. <span style="letter-spacing: -1.3pt;">T</span>ake time to write (rather
than make time to write), even if the<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>creative
brain feels at its lowest ebb. A piece<span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span>of
draft writing may seem like rubbish, but I find that it usually gets creativity
moving again. That’s always a plus, and it moves us one more step on the road
to publication day.</span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-10797187712730372532024-02-19T11:47:00.005+13:002024-02-19T11:47:36.481+13:00Taking hold of whatever the brain offers you<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;"><span style="color: black;">Had a
great day yesterday rewriting and revising some of the chapters I've written so
far for the latest book in the </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/24f9svyo" target="_blank">Grimhilderness </a></i>series<i>. </i><i><o:p> </o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;"><span style="color: black;">At
present I have around seven and a half chapters in draft form, and still no
idea about some of the things the characters have mentioned, or how the whole
story will work out. I have an inkling of what the end will be, but nothing
more.</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;"><span style="color: black;">This
isn’t unusual. With <a href="http://tinyurl.com/jnrt9cx" target="_blank"><i>The Disenchanted Wizard</i> </a>I only knew, from early on,
that the wizard who’d escaped the map would be put back in it. Hardly a rousing
climax, you might say. But by the time the book was finished, the climax took
place in the middle of a football match in a stadium. The wizard had by this
time caused chaos in the large crowd, and this wasn’t to change until he was
dealt with.</span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH2MgB-7VtU3CRRZ23x7UNjfcU4YDyUt1arlGB3ioUSQeejt9MVEF8-R0JCydcmGmPgYuUIO30xoTnH7kpO5gbuh_gdmzGDGPGCwvJ49nU8j65HEXaG37OYIwJINlbgnD739ASvs8JNxIuwz8lw31FvsskHkV_5z661xi3rP7RHbe-yCW8tUxfmA/s4627/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4627" data-original-width="3085" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH2MgB-7VtU3CRRZ23x7UNjfcU4YDyUt1arlGB3ioUSQeejt9MVEF8-R0JCydcmGmPgYuUIO30xoTnH7kpO5gbuh_gdmzGDGPGCwvJ49nU8j65HEXaG37OYIwJINlbgnD739ASvs8JNxIuwz8lw31FvsskHkV_5z661xi3rP7RHbe-yCW8tUxfmA/w133-h200/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>Equally, with <i><a href="https://tinyurl.com/yt27k3ff " target="_blank">The Counterfeit Queen</a></i>,
I always had a thought in mind that there’d be a Dragon involved in the final
battle. The only problem was there was <i>no</i> Dragon in the book at all until
year four of the writing! <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">It pays to note down these wisps
of ideas, even if you can’t work out in advance how that wisp is going to come
to fruition.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">I know most writing books say you
can’t set out until you know how the book is going to end. If that was the case
I’d have written nothing. All I knew about the current book was that there were
three lead boxes involved somewhere. At first I thought they contained three
corpses, including the supposed corpse of one of the main characters. That
changed in a moment when the boxes turned out to be much smaller than I’d
originally envisaged, and when opened, had something altogether different
inside.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">I don’t regard myself as a ‘pantser’
in the complete sense. Pantsers, to me, sit down and write the first draft
without much thought as to how it will all pan out. Then they basically start all
over.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">In my case, however, I find that
by writing a few chapters, then going back and making notes on them, picking up
clues as to what might move the story forward, placing characters in situations
that only occur to me as I write, discovering the significance of those places and
more is what gives me – very slowly – a story. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">After a few chapters I can see one
or two things clicking into place. Rewriting the chapters in the light of that
helps me get a better picture of where we’re going. But dropping ideas into the
draft that I haven’t given any thought to <i>also</i> propels the story
forward. I have to take a step back and ask what these things mean, whether
they’re truly of use, whether some other version of them will be more accurate
and so on.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;">So, for me, writing a chapter or three
gives me an impetus to keep going. Chewing over the things in those chapters
gives me further ideas and connections. Carrying forward into the unknown again
opens up new possibilities. Avoiding doing things I’ve done before also helps. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 123.75pt;"><i>What’s your approach to getting
up and running? </i><o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-19580305585556096342024-02-16T16:50:00.001+13:002024-02-16T16:51:05.166+13:00Having a forward-moving rhythm<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidi_5M-gCnRiEZ97b2cCkwJtEx7kgGQFLMBStGdCeCMvw3luh_88mmw2uGygZj0b9801ZeEY1VeNxHeR_26NgojJoCOlcCjvfLPsVYJb0qiG-xvKmZdyD3BpUZdiesS0ifyS-C4XEfh995V0BILxnRsAXY32XXszj9C80DgZw751WjGKGgl73Ymw/s466/Around%20the%20Writer's%20Block%20-%20Rosanne%20Bane.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="310" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidi_5M-gCnRiEZ97b2cCkwJtEx7kgGQFLMBStGdCeCMvw3luh_88mmw2uGygZj0b9801ZeEY1VeNxHeR_26NgojJoCOlcCjvfLPsVYJb0qiG-xvKmZdyD3BpUZdiesS0ifyS-C4XEfh995V0BILxnRsAXY32XXszj9C80DgZw751WjGKGgl73Ymw/w133-h200/Around%20the%20Writer's%20Block%20-%20Rosanne%20Bane.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><br />One of the things that helped me overcome the so-called problem
of Writer’s Block was an idea I found in a book wittily entitled <i><a href="http://tinyurl.com/237w8n7w">Around the Writer’sBlock</a></i>. The author is Rosanne Bane.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>As with so many books on writing, one particular thing
sticks with you. Bane sees Writer’s Block as a procrastination problem. It’s
dealing with procrastination that’s important.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">She talks about <i>Process</i> Time and <i>Product</i> Time. Process Time is
basically about play, doing something creative you wouldn’t normally do. She
suggested juggling as one possibility. Since I’d tried to learn to juggle some
years ago I had another go at it. This Process Time is intended to get your
brain up and running <i>before</i> you start working. (I’m no doubt simplifying
here, but it is three and a half years since I read the book.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Once you’ve done your allotted amount of playing,
stimulating the brain into working on something that is <i>fun</i>, you move to
Product Time. As you might expect, this is when you do the creative work on
your particular project. In my case it was aiming to complete the full draft of <i>The Counterfeit Queen, </i>as well as making lots of notes as I went
along.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>The Process should overcome your procrastination by giving
your brain something fun to do. Once the brain is into that ‘play’ mood, it will
be ready to do the more complex creative process of working on your product.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>It probably takes a few weeks to really settle into a routine,
but I found it did work for me. Check out my original Excel file below. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><o:p>Using an</o:p> Excel sheet, I write the date on each successive line. As I work on the book each day, I make a brief note about what I've done, as well as any other relevant comments. Somehow this instils in the brain
the idea that it’s good to keep moving forward each day. The <i>amount </i>of work isn’t
necessarily important.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">I used Bane's layout for some weeks before simplifying it for my own purposes</span>. It still works well. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>There <i>are</i> days when nothing gets done: I might be
away from my computer and notes, as has happened over the last couple of days.
Something more important than writing may come up, such as a crisis in the
family. Or it may be a Sunday, when I don’t tend to work at writing. I still aim
to keep the dates consistent, rather than only noting the days when work is
done.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>It's surprising that a simple line reminding me of each step
forward makes an ongoing difference to my sense of progress.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWLBOaN-MA13sojiyHlxRCvRRUnsELZH0U8nAvsgNGOqqs137rJCZE4BxZipFc-KQz3urWpAR_rWb0FzxBvO1uPvXCZZAm7UhxGJrJKBsYd2YJgfBuciIiYs1lmKQNnKN8dsTuYUf548lzn6j_Lm85xCT2WYSmfzu4bhuhQyOKQDNVP3MwK6nfIw/s1920/Screenshot%20of%20Around%20the%20Writer's%20Block%20at%20work.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWLBOaN-MA13sojiyHlxRCvRRUnsELZH0U8nAvsgNGOqqs137rJCZE4BxZipFc-KQz3urWpAR_rWb0FzxBvO1uPvXCZZAm7UhxGJrJKBsYd2YJgfBuciIiYs1lmKQNnKN8dsTuYUf548lzn6j_Lm85xCT2WYSmfzu4bhuhQyOKQDNVP3MwK6nfIw/w400-h225/Screenshot%20of%20Around%20the%20Writer's%20Block%20at%20work.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-47053161476211167762024-02-13T17:25:00.000+13:002024-02-13T17:25:23.274+13:00Writing at your own particular pace<p>At the moment my 'work in progress' opens with the collapse of a house, something that came to me while I was out walking the dog one day. The house, which <i>hasn't </i>collapsed, by the way, is a specific house in a specific street in my hometown. Why the house in my story collapsed remains to be discovered. I certainly don’t know at this point. </p><p>I think it takes time for any writer to find their own
approach to putting a story on paper. That doesn’t mean they don’t get books
written, but gradually they discover that other people’s methods may not suit
their personality. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KRLfup6dm3m6nYF40v4MFTv8nuraTKwz_7o94tO69arAsTevhRICpRugrqe73sVzDD9JrA53JLI8xIWfyAYNa68SvzuddVbV80sDuXg6Gk6cqHO64FW0kOWc4S-0T-fjK7cn8wlJDb_SOHn6rukYysjle9GRHWdVeiE8YPo78NoLCISHgCVspQ/s499/bird%20by%20bird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="326" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KRLfup6dm3m6nYF40v4MFTv8nuraTKwz_7o94tO69arAsTevhRICpRugrqe73sVzDD9JrA53JLI8xIWfyAYNa68SvzuddVbV80sDuXg6Gk6cqHO64FW0kOWc4S-0T-fjK7cn8wlJDb_SOHn6rukYysjle9GRHWdVeiE8YPo78NoLCISHgCVspQ/w131-h200/bird%20by%20bird.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>I remember reading years ago that the Irish writer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Cary">Joyce Cary</a>, (a man in spite of his feminine-sounding name) would write scenes as they
occurred to him. Not necessarily in any coherent order; that came later. From
memory, <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Bird-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp/0385480016" target="_blank">Anne Lamot</a>t used a similar approach with her novels. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other writers, often known as ‘pantsers’ because they write ‘by
the seat of their pants,’ just sit down and write from the beginning to the end
without having any idea where the story will go. In the book, <i>Reacher Said Nothing,</i> <a href="http://tinyurl.com/29skr8os" target="_blank">Lee Child </a>claims that’s the
way his books get written. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Young writers are often told that the way to write something
as large as a novel is to structure it all out before you start, to make lots
of notes about your characters so that you know all sorts of details about them
– how they dress, the colour of their eyes, what they keep in their pockets and
much more. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is rather how the film director Alfred Hitchcock worked: he wasn’t ready to film until every scene, even every shot, was set
down in its place. It’s not surprising then that he sometimes said that the
process of making the film itself bored him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can’t structure anything until I have some idea where I’m
going. I understand - now - that this is my way of working, and I’m happy with it, even
if it’s slow. It’s an enjoyable process of discovery. However, I don’t write
the whole book before thinking about what’s already happened in the early
chapters, or who the people are and how it will all end. So my first draft is already littered with comments, and there's another file altogether in which I discuss with myself what's happening. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNheBjJCAJBIZKAEXLiglQ82z2FZOt3oCvFmjgfOfGvyPdf_BsbwlDbevNeXoKO__t3QTL5qnZ5EhcyH3RV2AKtXgp4ISWWM0ZeVUq0x95BKIHzHo6mK1_TTm8w2VhAHnICfRTX6rWUXggZboE713hgPu85SLOChqmDv1DybkYfy7gN9UwR4K1Q/s1754/Disenchanted%20Wizard%20Final%20Book%20Cover%20Full%20Res.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1754" data-original-width="1240" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcNheBjJCAJBIZKAEXLiglQ82z2FZOt3oCvFmjgfOfGvyPdf_BsbwlDbevNeXoKO__t3QTL5qnZ5EhcyH3RV2AKtXgp4ISWWM0ZeVUq0x95BKIHzHo6mK1_TTm8w2VhAHnICfRTX6rWUXggZboE713hgPu85SLOChqmDv1DybkYfy7gN9UwR4K1Q/s320/Disenchanted%20Wizard%20Final%20Book%20Cover%20Full%20Res.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><br />I can’t write about characters until I see them in
action, even if the scenes that get written eventually vanish from the book. <i>Check
out these <a href="https://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/p/the-disenchanted-wizard-abandoned.html" target="_blank">two chapters</a> from <a href="http://tinyurl.com/jnrt9cx" target="_blank">The Disenchanted Wizard,</a> which were deleted very
early on. But they were written as though they </i>could <i>be used if
necessary.</i><i><o:p> </o:p></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can’t imagine a whole plot in advance and then write the
words that fit it. I prefer to discover things that turn up while I’m writing
and then work out how everything clicks together. This is a slow process, for
me, because when it comes to plotting, I’m a bear of very little brain. Nevertheless I enjoy putting my characters in difficult, even impossible, spots, and figuring out a way to get them out again. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, with my current work-in-progress, I’ve now written six
or seven chapters. I know something about who the characters are. I know
something about the places they go to, and what happens in those places. So
far. I have all sorts of unexpected possible plot points turning up, unbidden,
and I have the ongoing ‘fun’ of figuring out what they mean and how they’ll fit
to other events. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Hopefully it won't take another five years...</p>
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-56335497983819026082024-02-12T15:52:00.001+13:002024-02-12T15:58:55.102+13:00Why it took me five years to write The Counterfeit Queen<p> Why it took me five years to write my most recent book, <i><a href="http://tinyurl.com/22z428ht" target="_blank">The Counterfeit Queen</a>. </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><i>Reason 1: </i>Procrastination.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><i>Reason 2:</i> Thinking it wasn’t going to be good enough.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><i>Reason 3:</i> Having to work at it completely on my own
instead of with the person who’d been my idea-helper and idea-processor, plot-hole-checker,
proof-reader, dismisser of unworkable or silly ideas, as well as being someone
against whom I’d sometimes had to battle in order to bring storylines <i>I</i> wanted
to include. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>In spite of these reasons for an overlong gestation, the
book got written and is now published.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>In spite of not having someone to bounce ideas against, I was
still able to use that same approach when it came to working on my own. Countless
words got written as notes and thoughts and possibilities, so that I acted as my
own thought-bouncer, plot-hole-checker, dismisser of silly ideas, etc. In fact
I was confidently able to put two drafts aside completely, each consisting of
several chapters, before finding the right approach to the story.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>And the book is twice as long as my previous three children’s
fantasies, to my surprise.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Were those five years wasted? No…</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>I learned that I could manage to write a book on my own, by determining
to do it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>I found that the book <i>was</i> good enough.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>I found that procrastination can be overcome.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>More about procrastination, and my approach to writing in general - kind of pantser, but different - in future posts. </i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzN3FER6Ehai80MjVbHy_x7mNeLF1sNPqyBe42w1wCoB-AeLd7xAspPSGjj0uPYk4GW-Ih-hX_a3dbbpRf4JhKlW2EX0R9BSEDrUtvWXDUZUIc1BcI6UrZ2nPAFkg01W638_Aj2DB-klC8pCBiyf4PiPp9NUgOV_VRZRTUPX5fKH0wn8BfDtqDeQ/s721/Painting%20of%20Russian%20writer%20Evgeny%20Chirikov%20by%20Ivan%20Kulikov.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="721" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzN3FER6Ehai80MjVbHy_x7mNeLF1sNPqyBe42w1wCoB-AeLd7xAspPSGjj0uPYk4GW-Ih-hX_a3dbbpRf4JhKlW2EX0R9BSEDrUtvWXDUZUIc1BcI6UrZ2nPAFkg01W638_Aj2DB-klC8pCBiyf4PiPp9NUgOV_VRZRTUPX5fKH0wn8BfDtqDeQ/s320/Painting%20of%20Russian%20writer%20Evgeny%20Chirikov%20by%20Ivan%20Kulikov.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f8f9fa; color: #202122; font-size: 13.3px; text-align: start;">Painting of Russian writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Chirikov" target="_blank">Evgeny Chirikov </a>- by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kulikov" target="_blank">Ivan Kulikov </a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Kulikov" target="_blank"></a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-38778585904935989742023-09-15T16:30:00.002+12:002023-09-15T16:30:32.868+12:00The Counterfeit Queen is now on sale<p> I've had a busy few months since I <a href="http://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/2023/03/out-into-world-counterfeit-queen-goes.html" target="_blank">posted </a>that <i>The Counterfeit Queen</i> was finished. It's now available <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Counterfeit-Queen-Grimhilderness-Book-ebook/dp/B0CBRBTL1K?ref_=ast_author_dp">online</a> at Amazon, in ebook and paperback versions. Here's the blurb:</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Humdrum? That barely describes Polly’s life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">She doesn’t come on stage till the last
twenty minutes of the school play, she doesn’t feel at home with her adopted
parents, and she knows deep down that her life needs to be more interesting. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then a good-looking boy on a skateboard turns up. And explains who she really
is. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or rather, <i>who she should be. </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Whisked off to a place she’s never
heard of, she must compete with the devious Queen Consort for something that is
rightfully hers – the Throne of The Ends of the Earth. Her subjects are
dwarves, halflings and humans – and a Dragon that perversely never does what
it’s told. She’s confronted with fraud, deceit and danger. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sure, her life has
suddenly become more interesting, but is she going to survive long enough to
enjoy it? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This fourth book in the Grimhilderness series reintroduces us to the
heroes of <i>Grimhilda!</i> They’re a few years older, and hopefully wiser. And
hopefully able to stand strong in the face of death.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvX3_gvFZ8IUh74KoqBRuBrXvUgO8tzyGFTEXV1lK5H1nfEVJP3YBKD0IEJkSCX5WN-nq9mmXMhn2VY6Id7Znj8AJ8A1Pm7JEwUWTNwil80w5Iz_ZQeJsKCYsG9CVYYfrm0I3LQzsnTu02csi3QFsxGSU-8uZApC82QeqPay3qr4-DuLyvumX-YQ/s4627/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4627" data-original-width="3085" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvX3_gvFZ8IUh74KoqBRuBrXvUgO8tzyGFTEXV1lK5H1nfEVJP3YBKD0IEJkSCX5WN-nq9mmXMhn2VY6Id7Znj8AJ8A1Pm7JEwUWTNwil80w5Iz_ZQeJsKCYsG9CVYYfrm0I3LQzsnTu02csi3QFsxGSU-8uZApC82QeqPay3qr4-DuLyvumX-YQ/w266-h400/The%20Counterfeit%20Queen%20Cover%20Final.jpg" width="266" /></a></div></div><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-3549032553466233092023-04-26T15:24:00.001+12:002023-04-27T09:54:22.274+12:00Wamps and crowls<p>Yesterday my wife, who's from Norfolk in the UK, was talking about words she still uses that are common to people in Norfolk, but not elsewhere. One of these was <i>wamps, </i>another word for feet. (It's pronounced in the same way as <i>lamps.</i>) One might say, <i>Get your great wamps off the table</i>, or <i>You're dirtying my clean floor with your muddy wamps. </i>We tried to find the word on Google, but there was no sign of it. </p><p>That led to me write to David Crystal, who's produced a number of books on the English language, including at least one on dialect words from around the UK called <i>The Disappearing Dictionary. </i>It has that name because many of the words in the 'dictionary' are beginning to fade out of usage. </p><p>David didn't know the word and said he'd looked it up in Joseph Wright's <i>English Dialect Dictionary, </i>which runs to six volumes. A digital version can be<a href="https://eddonline-proj.uibk.ac.at/edd/termsOfUse.jsp" target="_blank"> found here.</a> Unfortunately Mr Wright didn't include it in his book either, and now it appears the only ones who know the word are a scattering of Norfolk-born people. </p><p>Never having come across Wright's dictionary, I clicked on the link, and, as you do, put in my name, since it's English in origin. There are two tiny towns in the UK called by that name - though their spelling is Crowle in each case. [Check out this <a href="https://mikecrowlstraveldiary.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">travel blog</a> which I wrote in 2007, and enter Crowle in the search box to find the references to it.]</p><p>We as a family had always believed that the meaning of Crowl is <i>a curl in a river</i> - in other words, a bend in a river. Where we picked that up from I no longer remember, but it's been the general view for many years. </p><p>However, Mr Wright has other ideas. He claims its prime meaning is <i>a dwarf; a stunted, deformed person or child. </i>The word has a number of variations in the spelling, of course. </p><p>He also claims it means <i>to crawl, or creep. </i>In the US it seems that a number of people mix the sound of <i>crawl </i>and <i>crowl</i>, and if you put <i>crowl</i> into Google, you'll get all sorts of people using the word <i>crowl</i> when they mean <i>crawl</i>, or <i>crowling </i>when they mean <i>crawling</i>. Check out <a href="https://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com/2018/12/crowl-or-crawl.html" target="_blank">this blog post</a> on the subject. </p><p>In a third meaning, Wright says that the plural of <i>crowl, </i>that is <i>crowls, </i>means <i>dirt in the wrinkles of your hand. </i>Whoever would have thought there was a word for this? </p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wright goes on to give meanings for words connected to <i>crowl</i> which I won't trouble you with here. You'll find them if you start with <i>crowl</i> in the online dictionary. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway, n</span>one of this side path stuff gives us any help with our original word, <i>wamps</i>. My wife is going to post on the Facebook North Norfolk site, and see if anyone else knows the word. Certainly it's well-known in her own family. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJnC54YKULncXXZYqgNzHorPWIowZnlBpd3BQFgmB_wBjjoYBLsYj3vD8PjLjII-ltcot62ENBa5zCBXbYu__j_mu1o5yQDgAuTF_WNPA8HlMX0T5TkovpHD6HRUceaNz5ewhGVn7SGdRtD7v43kIWsjlGg5K8heYZTRZcHei127vgzqA4KqQ/s600/dwarf%20drawing.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="380" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJnC54YKULncXXZYqgNzHorPWIowZnlBpd3BQFgmB_wBjjoYBLsYj3vD8PjLjII-ltcot62ENBa5zCBXbYu__j_mu1o5yQDgAuTF_WNPA8HlMX0T5TkovpHD6HRUceaNz5ewhGVn7SGdRtD7v43kIWsjlGg5K8heYZTRZcHei127vgzqA4KqQ/s320/dwarf%20drawing.jpg" width="203" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dwarf - or Crowl - by <a href="https://www.deviantart.com/brokenmachine86" target="_blank">BrokenMachine86</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Update 27.4.23. </i>David Crystal came back to me this morning in an email saying: <span style="background-color: white;"><i>According to the Dictionary of British Surnames, there are two contenders for your surname's origin. One is from the Anglo-Norman surname de Crul; the other is a </i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><i>metathesised </i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><i>form of curl, 'curly-haired'. It might refer to a topographical feature, such as a river bend. (</i></span></span><span style="background: white; text-align: justify;">(<i>Metathesis</i>
is the transposition of sounds or syllables in a word or of words in a sentence.</span><span style="text-align: justify;">)</span><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-48297891209549369472023-03-12T13:29:00.005+13:002023-03-12T13:29:46.870+13:00Out into the world The Counterfeit Queen goes<p> In my last post on this (not-used-as-much-as-it-once-was) blog, I wrote about the long journey of writing <i>The Counterfeit Queen. </i></p><p>Two or three weeks ago I <i>finished</i> it, in the sense that I'd gone through the entire draft and rewritten and edited and cut and pasted and did all the other things you do to a new-born novel before you send it out into the world. Well, when I say I finished it, I now had before me a draft that was pretty much done. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittc9QkmcZwjUWaZVhQmAVm4vU9hQcK2rKYy0agcZK2rRQG6jie9B-9lyy94i9FxQIJ77Zd6Rsij-5ry8RCyuKbaqE3WJb1ll9xjL_ujpTf6AJXDqs9ZVj97Ax7owSex1740O7r8Myu_P1WMcPDu0iKv3IvBu5y9Z-DmZ6hq9fizG1BgvhsNY/s7031/Grimhilda%20ebook%20new%20cover%20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7031" data-original-width="4406" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittc9QkmcZwjUWaZVhQmAVm4vU9hQcK2rKYy0agcZK2rRQG6jie9B-9lyy94i9FxQIJ77Zd6Rsij-5ry8RCyuKbaqE3WJb1ll9xjL_ujpTf6AJXDqs9ZVj97Ax7owSex1740O7r8Myu_P1WMcPDu0iKv3IvBu5y9Z-DmZ6hq9fizG1BgvhsNY/s320/Grimhilda%20ebook%20new%20cover%20.jpg" width="201" /></a></div>A friend had recently read my three earlier fantasies, the first of which, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HY4DQDS" target="_blank">Grimhilda!</a></i>, gives the background to this latest book. She had enjoyed them, though she thought the third, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VT279P5" target="_blank">The Disenchanted Wizard</a></i>, was the least successful of the three. Which surprised me somewhat, since my co-author and I had regarded it as our best work up to that point. And I still think it's well worth reading, having re-read it again not long ago, just to see how it stood up. <p></p><p>Anyway, this friend did make some useful comments about that third book, which I took on board in regard to the current one. I asked if she'd be interested in reading the new book, knowing it might put me into deep despair if she didn't like it (!)</p><p>In fact, she loved it. I was a bit overwhelmed, to be honest. This book has been in the works for so long I was surprised anyone could love it. Although it has to be said that the book's idea has gone through umpteen transmogrifications and isn't quite the book that I'd written at least three incomplete drafts of. In other words she loved the book that all those other versions eventually became. </p><p>So the child - the book - has been to finishing school and is now almost ready to meet the world. </p><p>I can move forward with some confidence again. There are one or two other people who might read it and give me their feelings on it. After that, out into the world <i>The Counterfeit Queen </i>will go. </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-58645397343786683272023-01-21T14:32:00.002+13:002023-01-21T14:32:44.981+13:00Five years on: Progress<p> For something like five years I've been writing the next book in the <i>Grimhilderness</i> series. I've put it away, taken it out again, abandoned it, rescued it, and so on. I've had long stretches when I did nothing at all on it. </p><p>It hasn't helped that my usual collaborator didn't like the basic idea of the book from the start, and consequently I haven't had her ideas and editorial overview for the first time since we worked together on <i>Grimhilda! </i>(the musical version) back in 2010-12. I'm having to do it all on my own. </p><p>This has had its challenges, but has also allowed to me to change my mind about the direction and shape and point of view more than once. And find the best way of telling the story. </p><p>In spite of that I had decided to give up on the project altogether last year. Sheer discouragement with what seemed to be a blank wall, and the lack of support meant I was having to find all the motivation myself. </p><p>And then something made me drag the well and truly unfinished draft out again. It was a kind of annoyance that I'd done so much work on it and it still couldn't be brought to birth. It was a sense that I had to trust my own instincts on this one and do it anyway, even if my usual collaborator didn't like the idea. In the more distant past I'd written a good deal of at least three novels and never completed them for one reason or another, and I felt I didn't want another 'dead' one in my life.</p><p>Plus, I now have a stage musical (script and music) and four books under my belt. There was no need to regard myself as a writer who couldn't finish work. I knew I could. So, I re-read through the draft again, made more notes, did a kind of summary of each chapter and who's in it and where it takes place and much more, re-read the various outline notes I'd made to help me see where things were heading, and how I needed to bring those about. I wrote several new chapters. (This is another kids' book, so the chapters aren't long - usually around 1600-1800 words - but this is still an achievement.)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In spite of all this I had to keep on fighting to move forward, and still have to. I look at these new chapters and think how thin and unexciting they are. But they're merely the first draft in each case. I need to remember that the first time I tried to write the scene for <i>Grimhilda!</i> (the musical version) in which the toys had discussions about sending Toby off
to get his parents, it was pretty awful. But two characters appeared who hadn't turned up before, and with them, and the rest of the material, it was the starting
point for what was eventually an excellent scene in the show. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My habit is to tidy up new chapters as I go along. It's helpful to get me up and running for the next day's writing. These somewhat skeletal chapters will come right in subsequent sortings-out. I've now finished the first draft, and I know how it all comes out. It's now a matter of going back and building these skinny chapters up, not just to make them interesting, but to make them fit the whole scheme of things. It’s difficult to create much suspense when you’re not yet sure how the
next stage of the book, or even the climax, will work. But once you've made your way through once, you can see the lack of tension more easily - and fix it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Many chapters written for the previous book, <i><a href="https://tinyurl.com/2lgoxc76">The Disenchanted Wizard,</a></i> got dumped completely. It’s the way I work
(and I suspect a lot of writers work in a similar way) and it means that ultimately
I get to the right way of telling the story. And to a book that has life. But it isn't speedy...!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I'd love to be able to sit down and write an outline without much previous thought, as some writers claim they do. And then I think of P G Wodehouse and how as he grew older he wrote longer and longer 'outlines' for his books - up to 400 pages in some cases. I can't start a book from nothing -Wodehouse could in his early days, but to keep the quality up he found he had to think the more complex plots through much more thoroughly. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">I have to get to know who the characters are, what sort of things they say and do, where the story takes place and what happens in it. And a lot of that is only discoverable by writing a draft. Just making notes doesn't cut it. Certainly there are an increasing number of notes as time goes on, and the amount of material written for the current book will exceed the final length of the book by thousands of words. Already there are two bunches of chapters that were dumped early on in the process, because they were right when the book was going in one direction, but no use when characters developed and changed and the person whom the story was really about became clear. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white;">Perseverance and determination. Nick Arvin, the author of <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mad-Boy-Nick-Arvin/dp/1609454588" target="_blank">Mad Boy,</a> </i>wrote in a tweet late last year:<i> </i></span><i><span style="text-align: left;">Writing a
novel is like mowing a lawn with dull scissors while blindfolded and guided by
the whispered promptings of a drunken </span><a style="text-align: left;">Keebler*</a></i><span class="MsoCommentReference" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 8.0pt;"> </span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><i>elf</i>. That's probably close enough to the truth. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">* Keebler is a biscuit (cookie) company in the US. The elves have been a
part of their TV advertising for decades. </span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-70093161800115837132022-07-04T15:10:00.006+12:002023-01-21T14:33:20.558+13:00Bringing the reader up to speed<p>One of my niggles that turns up again and again in cop shows on TV - the <i>CSI</i> type of thing - is when the detectives stand around in their office and spout exposition. I don't mean <i>one </i>of them telling the others what's happened, but four or more of them each telling <i>each other</i> what they already know. They're only doing this so the viewer knows as well. </p><p>Character A knows exactly how much to say before character B takes over. Character B then gracefully gives in to character C who somehow knows which bit of information to supply before character D finishes the thing off. Occasionally they swap this approach around: BDCA, or the like. But it's not as if they're <i>discussing </i>it. Pity the poor actors trying to make this look remotely realistic.</p><p>Of course, we're not talking about real life here, but we are talking about <i>drama. </i>And how odd it is to find TV scriptwriters reverting to this type of exposition-giving. It was dealt the death blow in the theatre after audiences got tired of too many butlers and maids coming on stage in the first scene and cheerfully telling each other - and the audience - everything they needed to know.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7gVo796D5CbWxVGXu_I_WoRmYPtv1-bRrt925fkymEu5tj5cFMbN04G_tCjmPMZr4iPk1XP5VE7RBqH78rJBJ-jtI9B7mfjsdFbMXRCFR-1bh0CcBCKe2YwqrLE-RCfBWd3-hVDDdxeRQuMhCCltjFCW_o6Kek6IlCKmeg8h2-QmsNw55_uk/s5382/detectives%20talking.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3588" data-original-width="5382" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7gVo796D5CbWxVGXu_I_WoRmYPtv1-bRrt925fkymEu5tj5cFMbN04G_tCjmPMZr4iPk1XP5VE7RBqH78rJBJ-jtI9B7mfjsdFbMXRCFR-1bh0CcBCKe2YwqrLE-RCfBWd3-hVDDdxeRQuMhCCltjFCW_o6Kek6IlCKmeg8h2-QmsNw55_uk/s320/detectives%20talking.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Why this approach has come back into fashion in these cop dramas on TV I don't know, but it seems like lazy writing to me. Blake Snyder, in <i>Save the Cat</i>, talks about how exposition can be dull in a movie if you don't mix it with some action. He talks about the 'Pope in the swimming pool' - a scene in which exposition is given while the Pope is having his daily swim. The audience listens to the expository material while wondering about the fact of the <i>Pope </i>being in a bathing suit, or their surprise at there being a swimming pool in the Vatican in the first place. The scene gives exposition while there's visual action - even if it's mainly swimming. In <i>Hellboy,</i> a good deal of exposition takes place during a World War II battle. In other words, a visual event is going on while we're picking up what the story is about. <p></p><p>It's necessary in novels too. No one wants to wade through a couple of characters bringing the reader up to date in an opening chapter. Inventiveness is needed. </p><p>In my children's fantasy, <i><a href="https://tinyurl.com/2lgoxc76" target="_blank">The Disenchanted Wizard</a>, </i>a good amount of background information was given while the characters raced up the stairs and along the corridors of a mental hospital, all the while keeping an eye out for staff who might catch them being where they shouldn't be. In my current WIP, I have a helicopter playing a noisy and increasingly dangerous part as one character tells the heroine what she needs to know. They're in increasing danger of being wiped out of the sky by this very solid and noisy machine. </p><p>Exposition can be fed to the reader in small doses over two or three chapters. If you need to bring in larger chunks of it, give the scene another element, something that keeps the reader's mind on its toes. The reader wants to know the background to the story, but will be more involved if it has to engage with other (preferably relevant) things at the same time. </p><p><br /></p><p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo courtesy of Pexels.com - one of the few sites that still offers free images that are free.</span></i></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-57301909417923779512022-03-16T08:51:00.005+13:002022-03-17T22:28:24.879+13:00Odd English Words<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> I've always loved odd words, and English is not only full of them now, but always has been. Sadly, a lot of the really fun-sounding words have gone into the mists of time. I used to get a regular email from <i>World Wide Words</i>, which the writer and etymologist, Michael Quinion, produced. Week after week, he and hundreds of his readers would add to our knowledge of the language by discussing new and old and crazy English words. Quinion no longer produces the regular emails/columns, but they're all still online <a href="https://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm">here,</a> are searchable, and fascinating to read. If you love words!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd like to keep the ball rolling a little by tweeting some of these words regularly under the hashtag #oddEnglishwords, and I'll reproduce the tweets here. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>16th March, 2022:</b></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Though not a cow I have horns;
Though not an ass I carry a pack-saddle;
And wherever I go I leave silver behind me.
The answer to this old English riddle is a hodmandod, a bumpy word we've replaced with the more prosaic 'snail.'</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>17th March, 2022: </b></span></p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="5pojj" data-offset-key="ldub-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="ldub-0-0" style="direction: ltr; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-top: 2px; position: relative;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Next time a reporter tells us someone has been severely beaten in a street incident, perhaps they could use the phrase 'the victim was mammocked-up' instead. </span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="5pojj" data-offset-key="5gfu1-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="public-DraftStyleDefault-block public-DraftStyleDefault-ltr" data-offset-key="5gfu1-0-0" style="direction: ltr; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-top: 2px; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5gfu1-0-0"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Maybe the hospital emergency dept could adopt it too...</span></span></div></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-83658219708211336782022-02-06T16:21:00.003+13:002022-02-07T13:32:36.087+13:00Dictating text...to a computer<p>For some time now I've been typing up old handwritten notebooks onto the computer so that I can have a digital record of them, and clear out some more stuff from the house. These were mostly notes about my ongoing work of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, a process that not only doesn't happen as soon as you become a believer but goes on until the day you die - and maybe into eternity. Who knows?</p><p>There were also other notes amongst the spiritual stuff; sometimes these supplement material in my other journals, and sometimes they repeat the same material in a different way. <br /></p><p>Recently, as a result of reading an email from Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur, I decided to save my hands a little and try and dictate the handwritten notes into the computer. I had two options: Windows Speech Recognition, which came with my computer, or Voice Typing in Google Docs. </p><p>The Windows version produced text that was barely recognizable as what I'd dictated, and I gave up on that fairly quickly. Google does a much better job, and I'd say it gets more than 95% of the text right first time. It's the other 5% that's a bit of an issue. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlDiWCTQPp4_GDrPqcki-GeekwZvEyim_Nu65X2AWF3ZRd1LhSJkIEXYaPx8NjDoTyLVKQwe4IIFLmJKuFp7aLCZTfcMMDmFmWmN7oekPGaEFWtPeqPAJhRdCV0Z_eK0eOx30Y6HoCpIGtMXwGUUFpEd1qqB5bVBv8441cROVg8DaPxuCpmtQ=s4221" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2983" data-original-width="4221" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjlDiWCTQPp4_GDrPqcki-GeekwZvEyim_Nu65X2AWF3ZRd1LhSJkIEXYaPx8NjDoTyLVKQwe4IIFLmJKuFp7aLCZTfcMMDmFmWmN7oekPGaEFWtPeqPAJhRdCV0Z_eK0eOx30Y6HoCpIGtMXwGUUFpEd1qqB5bVBv8441cROVg8DaPxuCpmtQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>You know when you ask your phone to find something on Google, it will usually only get anything complicated right if you speak clearly, and perhaps a little slower than normal. The same applies here: go too fast, and you'll wind up with some interesting results. This means that you'll have to tidy up the text before you can copy and paste it to Word. It's still faster than typing it, but there are certain peculiarities that I can't seem to conquer. Here's are some of them. </p><p>When I say the word, <i>Psalm, </i>all sorts of words appear: song, some, sound, Somme (as in the battlefield). So far Google and I can't get an agreement on this one. </p><p>It thinks my wife Celia is actually <i>Siri</i>. Which seems strange, since this isn't an Apple computer. When I say the word, Dad, which I often do, since I address quite a few of the entries in these notebooks to my Heavenly Father, it often appears as <i>Dead</i>. </p><p>Some of the quirks might be the result of my accent, a New Zealand one. I don't have a strong NZ accent, and I've lived in England and so acquired a cleaner English sound at one point, but Google always thinks I'm saying <i>and</i> when I say <i>in, </i>and vice versa: <i>in</i> for <i>and. </i>It also has a tendency to catch the word <i>yet</i> as <i>it. </i>Plainly my improved NZ accent isn't improved enough. </p><p>Not all the errors are misinterpretations of what I'm saying. It likes to capitalize random words. I couldn't figure out why, but I wondered if it picked up certain phrases as being the names of songs, and so capitalized them as though I was mentioning the song in the middle of my sentence. While it's good at making sense of some grammatical issues, it's not so good at making sense of things it just plain doesn't understand. </p><p>It's also is a bit hazy about capitals at the beginning of sentences. These often go missing for no good reason. </p><p>Punctuation is a bit of a problem too. Full stops and commas, in general, are okay. Saying <i>new line</i> will create a new paragraph. Even <i>semi-colon</i> works more often than not. But <i>colon</i> usually appears in the text as Colin, or something similar, while the programme can have off days with <i>comma, </i>turning it into all manner of things: <i>gonna, comedy, colour!</i> I've given up trying to introduce brackets; sometimes the closing bracket will work, but not the opening one. And as far as I can tell, there's no way to tell it to put quote marks around dialogue, which means it would be a bit painful writing a novel in this way. </p><p>It likes to introduce numbers into the text. So far the word <i>too</i> has never appeared (though <i>to </i>makes it). <i>Too</i> is always rendered as 2. Sometimes <i>for </i>appears as 4. </p><p>As you can see, there's always a bit of cleaning up to do after it's typed out your dictation. Still, this is easier than typing up old notebooks of hastily-written paragraphs. </p><p>But if the errors are frustrating, they can also be inventive, and sometimes hilarious. </p><p><i>Womb</i> for <i>room</i> was a bit of a surprise, but definitely quirky were: <i>dressed tickly</i> for <i>drastically</i>, and <i>metre fur</i> for <i>metaphor. </i></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-8389067398636431812022-01-30T19:39:00.005+13:002023-04-10T09:59:31.468+12:00Re-reading A Suitable Boy<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYN6nSg4t74jA7qNzV8L_LYeMMdZUlVXCHfJ8KeI60K6BU8euw8Iww3ZfuKXtCUKMNFeOkg8ZEY1oYDrGIgZ4de092xYYzMgc3QwuHFtO5i5l-xpI6sDqIE-CTWOj2JDPav4_CdVhc0kD_juB0RIyRitsDrEzOI-Sc4BmJAvmVs469v7uo9D4=s475" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="315" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhYN6nSg4t74jA7qNzV8L_LYeMMdZUlVXCHfJ8KeI60K6BU8euw8Iww3ZfuKXtCUKMNFeOkg8ZEY1oYDrGIgZ4de092xYYzMgc3QwuHFtO5i5l-xpI6sDqIE-CTWOj2JDPav4_CdVhc0kD_juB0RIyRitsDrEzOI-Sc4BmJAvmVs469v7uo9D4=s320" width="212" /></a></div>After nearly three decades I'm re-reading <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Suitable_Boy" target="_blank">A Suitable Boy</a></i>, that vast (1500 pages almost) and detailed book of life in India not long after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India" target="_blank">Partition </a>by the British. <p></p><p>It's full of stories, all interconnected, and of people from all walks of life. In the following quote, a politician, L N Argawal, has just been questioned in Parliament about a the recent shooting of several Muslim rioters: a mob of some thousand were planning to attack the foundations of a new Hindu temple that was being built right next door to a Muslim mosque. (The mosque itself had been built on the site of a Hindu temple some centuries before.) </p><p>With typical political-speak, Argawal manages to answer very little, particularly to a Muslim female politician who is fired up about what's happened. A little later, he speaks to one of his staff:</p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><i>'...a good man will not make a good politician. Just think - if you had to do a number of outrageous things, would you want the public to forget them or remember them?'</i></div><div><i>Clearly the answer was intended to be 'Forget them,' and this was the MLA's response. </i></div><div><i>'As quickly as possible?' asked L. N. Argawal.</i></div><div><i>'As quickly as possible, Minister Sahib.'</i></div><div><i>'Then the answer,' said L N Argawal, 'if you have a number of outrageous things to do is to do them simultaneously. People will scatter their complaints, not concentrate them.' When the dust settles, at least two or three out of five battles will by yours. And the public has a short memory. As for the firing in Chowk, and those dead rioters, it will all be stale news in a week.'</i></div><div><i>The MLA looked doubtful, but nodded in agreement.</i> (page 278) </div><div><br /></div><div>This may seem an obvious enough piece of politicking, but it's very relevant to the state of New Zealand politics at the moment: behind all the ongoing stuff about Covid that our Prime Minister spouts each day and which <i>seems </i>to have all her attention, have been a number of other Bills and changes to the life of New Zealanders, some of them snuck in under the radar almost. The idea of doing enough outrageous things to dissipate the attention of the voters seems to be enacted on an almost daily basis in this country. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>I finished this back in February 2023. Some further thoughts on it:</i></div><div><div>I'm amazed at how little I remembered of it, even given that it's nearly thirty years since I last read it. One or two things were familiar, but overall, the book was completely new. Which was a delight. </div><div>It's extraordinary in the way it encompasses practically everything in life - the rich and the poor, politics, academics, religions, weddings, births, deaths - and does it with consummate ease. Seth is able to wander down by-ways and tell stories of people who are barely part of the main plot, he is able to offer us a large range of main characters and help us keep track of them all (in fact, characters who appear chapters before and suddenly turn up again are somehow brought to mind again with ease). There are huge disasters, horrifically selfish people, wonderful, generous people, foolish people, conniving people, arrogant people, deceitful people and all the rest. There are poems and songs and religious texts; there are sub-plots that play strongly into the main storyline in due course; there is a seemingly intimate knowledge of how so many things work, from shoe-making to medical operations, just to mention two. And so many characters are so vividly drawn. </div><div>And the whole purpose of the book is never lost: the need to find a suitable boy for the main character, Lata. Or at least that's what her mother thinks. From the first page to the last, this is a constant theme. </div><div>What a wonderful book!</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-75683566625464246632021-12-11T11:49:00.004+13:002021-12-11T11:49:59.934+13:00Applying the Word<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiD-TSfNiSlhpx9pyY5LkJDEX6279AL_wbiW-R-JhDOepjUQHD7CSJkEW3eElA2gzvOG68wlXKZGRNCu9TVkSvI-Go9ext0la2y6wm13SbJSwhYV2QVSZ2z-nb0GopDLABNUr_qgACdncj6VrRBX1DBxwU-cmjrYj1R3wEICCrIEsp3nxkdgwc=s144" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="144" data-original-width="108" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiD-TSfNiSlhpx9pyY5LkJDEX6279AL_wbiW-R-JhDOepjUQHD7CSJkEW3eElA2gzvOG68wlXKZGRNCu9TVkSvI-Go9ext0la2y6wm13SbJSwhYV2QVSZ2z-nb0GopDLABNUr_qgACdncj6VrRBX1DBxwU-cmjrYj1R3wEICCrIEsp3nxkdgwc" width="108" /></a></div>Dale Ralph Davis is one of my most read commentators, whether it's in his series stretching from Judges to Kings, or in his writings on the Psalms, or his books on other matters. I've probably read each of his books that I own two or three times. <p></p><p>I was going back through an old diary this morning, and found this quotation from his commentary on 2 Kings, <i>The Power and the Fury,</i> page 205. As always, Davis is able to find ways to apply God's Word to our contemporary situation:</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-AU"><i>We might call ourselves
evangelicals and yet there is little zeal after personal piety, little effort
to teach and indoctrinate our families, not much passion to bear personal or
public witness - or to raise our voice against unbelief in our church
denomination. We don’t see why righteousness must be rigorous or godliness
aggressive.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This is so true of my own personal Christian behaviour, and no doubt of many others who claim to follow Jesus Christ, at least in the Western world. We live in a world full of <i>stuff, </i>full of distraction and full of things that call us away from our centre. Yet God has placed us in this part of the world. He doesn't expect us to succumb to its lifestyle, but to make our lifestyle distinctive in the midst of it. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Father God, help us to change, to be 'holy as You are holy.' <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-AU"><i><br /></i></span></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15184606.post-48207293555827591072021-12-11T09:37:00.000+13:002021-12-11T09:37:00.966+13:00Follow the science?<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Next time we hear 'follow the science' or its like, it might be worth thinking about this statement:</i></span></span></p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Science is a passionate search for always newer ways to conceive the world. Its strength lies not in the certainties it reaches but in radical awareness of the vastness of our ignorance. This awareness allows us to keep questioning our knowledge and thus to continue learning. Therefore the scientific quest for knowledge is not nourished by certainty, it is nourished by a lack of certainty."</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Carlo Rovelli, in the Introduction to Anaximander.</span></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in France. He works mainly in the field of quantum gravity and is a founder of loop quantum gravity theory. He has also worked in the history and philosophy of science.)</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYZSMPBgmtJjQsYq8GAEeCdg7fRD03MEzcK3_eeRpk8KY7DJNL4BJuH9TFUqrESX-PGCjWpUIJ3hKGpGttZFk6l0rOiy3HtvgYs483zhPygnSbf9yr2oBdFfH2jv7kVtwuOzgEmrpn-O4u2BaAbi5im8xl1vfC2fE1QCQRo1frySvuTZM8HY8=s635" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="635" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiYZSMPBgmtJjQsYq8GAEeCdg7fRD03MEzcK3_eeRpk8KY7DJNL4BJuH9TFUqrESX-PGCjWpUIJ3hKGpGttZFk6l0rOiy3HtvgYs483zhPygnSbf9yr2oBdFfH2jv7kVtwuOzgEmrpn-O4u2BaAbi5im8xl1vfC2fE1QCQRo1frySvuTZM8HY8=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #050505; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Photo: Jamie Stoker</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>Mike Crowlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02823415769823932104noreply@blogger.com0