interlude

    Eleven minutes.

    Ten minutes.

    I found her standing in my living room looking at my books.

    Nine minutes.  This was going too quickly.  I was fast running out of time.

    “You’re here.” Ray said.  “Finally.”

    “I’ve been here all along.” I said.

    Eight minutes.  Too fast, too fast.

    “Maybe for you.” Ray said “But not for me.”  She looked away from me and studied the books on my shelves.  Mostly modern crime thrillers.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

    Six minutes.

    “That’s not fair.” I said.  “I’ve been…. Busy.”

    “Doing Other Things.” Ray nodded.  “Meanwhile I’ve been stuck in the land of Perpetual Night.”  He pulled one out.  Not a crime thriller, I saw.  Science Fiction.  Very recent.  “Is this one any good?”

    “I don’t know.” I said “I’m looking for time to read it.”

    “What you need,” Ray said wisely “is to prioritise.”

    “Oh is that all?  Oh thank you very much.”

    “No need to be snippy.”

    “No?”  There were a thousand responses that I wanted to give, but excuses just sounded like, excuses.  “Cut me some slack, will you?”

   

    Silence.  The deadline had come and gone.  Time had restarted.

    The clock read 21.35

    “I see that you’ve decided on my gender.”

    “The best characters are women.” I said “Ask Iain Banks and Joss Whedon.”

    “That’s going to upset all the people who thought that I was male.”

    I shrugged “I tried not to make that distinction.  I was trying to keep it ambiguous.  If I have slipped up, well, what can I say?” I smiled, “I’m human.  We make mistakes.”

    Ray studied me impassively.

    “Well, let’s get on with it shall we?”

Interlude. Or Reflections On When Things Don’t Run Smoothly.

You may have noticed that I haven’t been here for a few weeks.  Well, that’s not true: I have been here, just not here.  Writing.  Regularly.

It was my aim, and well, I blew it.

Sorry.

And now its not a Sunday and I’m blogging, or reflecting.  Because this is the writing process.  The whole of it.  Harlan Coben wrote that a writer is somebody who just writes and has to write and can’t live without writing.

Well, that’s nice but… my job kinda gets in the way.  I have a Life and that gets in the way, too.  In a fun, lovely, special, annoying kind of way.

And I really like my job too.  I know its crazy… but its true.  When you get caught between the moon and new –

Sorry.  Got sidetracked there.

As I did with Life. 

That’s going to happen sometimes and I’m not really going to be able to get away with it.  As lovely as the Alpasmart NEO is, its not my old Amstrad NC200, so just picking up and writing isn’t the same anymore.

This is Progress.  Or so I’m told.

But the point is, the point is, that I’m going to get back on track very soon.  Watch this space.

Take care

Joe

.....got to get this story started!

     "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves." - Proverb

     "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu

Every story starts somewhere. Quite where is always a matter for debate.

Take the story of my life, for example, (which a great story, to be sure - lots of sex and violence, humour, tears, passion, drama and regret - and that was just last night). Did it begin at my birth? Do you start the story when my parents met up? (Ewwwww)

Do we start the story when things begin to get interesting? Because the few years before that were quite boring really. Because then the story would go something like this:

- I've got something to confess.

- What are you confessing? Is is a crime?

- Does it have do be all drama with you people?

- Sorry. So, then, its not a crime?

- No.

- Then why confess? Why are you making such a big deal out of it?

- Well, its a big deal to me.

- Okay then, lets hear it.

- Are you sitting comfortably?

- Erm, hang on, wait a minute, hmmm, yes, now I am.

- My parents aren't my parents.

- Okay, who are they then?

- They're my CareTakers.

- Oh?

- Yes, I was dropped off as an alien baby. My mission is sent to observe and report on your tiny little planet. Every birthday I wait for my real parents to come and take me back.

A declaration like the above would surely make the reader see any backstory in a new light.  And surely, you might think that what happens next would be exciting, dramatic, fun, and the sex, yes, would be....

out of this world!  Sorry, couldn't help that one.

Accounting for the fact that this might be true (because I'm not saying one way or another - apart from the fact that I have incontrovertible proof) that would be the start of the story.

Stories are great things to begin, difficult in the middle and bloody hard at the end. Unless your narrrative position starts at the end, goes back to the beginning and the reader already knows most of what's going to happen.

When my stories start, I rarely know how they've going to end. I could take the one that began some near 40 years ago and 50,000 light years away on a planet far, far, away. Oh crap did I really write that?

One of my favourite authors, Matthew Reilly (people either love him or hate him - I'm in the former camp) says that he starts the story knowing how its going to end, and works his way backwards, ie why did that happen?

I would like to think that all writers do, But I can only do that to establish the backstory, which is really important, otherwise the story just hangs, or falls. (When I figure out how - I'll put a few examples up - but I would rather keep them separate to the blogs).

In all the stories that I've written, I've never seen the end coming. Well, that's not true. I've written two crime stories with murders in them and I've known who did it, but how the reader finds out whodidit? Well, that was up to the narrator.  Which was not me.  I was just the guy doing the typing thingy.

I've never been one for the bigger picture. I see writing as an organic process. (I said organic!) The writer is as much on the journey with the reader and the story moves pretty much like a flowing river. Until we hit a boulder, and then we might need to think about how we get past it.

At this stage of my writing career I feel like an alien young adult, (him leaving his home, making his way into the big wide world), writing the story in the way that works best for me, in the organic process (free from artificial additives).  I'm not entirely sure whether this is a failing or not. I have learnt from the danger of orally telling somebody the story that I'm writing, because then the energy and the passion for wrtiting it leaves my body. If I've already told a person what's going to happen, why bother writing it?

Its fatal and I never do it anymore.

I think that I've made parallels with writing and life before. I could tell you that I've been trying to get my day job career started, but I realised that it started about 20 years ago, and has been on a journey of its own. Whilst where I am isn't quite where I thought that I should be, it is where I am. And I'm OK with this.

Knowing where I am gives me the opportunity to look forward and make plans as to where I want to go. In writing as in life, I can't really tell you what the Bigger Picture is. I can aspire to where I want to be, but sometimes I, like my stories, don't have as much control as either me-as-a- writer, or me-as-a-person, would wish.

Like all journies, I do try to make them amusing and exciting and interesting. As much for myself as for others.

As Michael Marshall Smith wrote: Life is what you make it.

Have a great week everybody.   And please take care.

Joe.