Thursday 25 April 2013

Book Writing Update

A quick update to that that I'm kind of on chapter 16 at this stage, "kind of" because I've realised I don't write in chronological order. With my first book I had written two chapters out in pencil in a notebook years before I actually wrote the book. They were the first chapter and the climax chapter, roughly chapter 20.

I thought I'd start at the beginning and work till the end his time, but once again I seem to work better if I get the main sections sorted first and then fill in the rest. It's a bit like flower arranging, I think. I put in all the large important features and then fill in with the minor stuff.



As you might guess by that vague description... I rarely arrange flowers! I far prefer to tweak and arrange words.


At the moment I'm managing to write between 1,800 and 2,800 words a day, which is good.  I stick on some music and I'm away. I write a lot better (and faster) if I have the right music to inspire me, it sets my fingers on fire. I have entire YouTube folders for
themes like; sad, tense, dramatic and romantic.

 

The only problem is that when I write that much in a day any energy for writing anything else - emails, blogs, etc, is used up and dried up. My "must reply" email list is alarming and growing. Household chores are suffering as well. I have not dusted in... a long time, but I simply can't do it all and at this stage the book has taken over my brain to such an extent that I'm not much use for anything anyway. Yesterday I left rice in water on the stove for 20 minutes and never turned it on.... ah well, at least I didn't put rice on a hot plate without water - that would have been worse!


At least my brain's on fire... not the house.



I'll leave you with the music I'll be writing to today. It's Citadels, by Galt Aureus. I'm also using another lovely song by them, for ...well, you'll have to wait for me to finish the book to find out about that one.  ;-)



Thursday 4 April 2013

Moments Like These...


I was reading Guyana Girl's blog yesterday. I sympathised, and laughed, at her latest post about power cuts - Sweet Cuts - Sour Cuts. It brought back lots of memories of those boring, frustrating, or just plain AWFUL moments when the power goes out. I still don't know how the movie, South Pacific, ends, thanks to a storm cutting the power.

But my most annoying, most frustrating, most funny cut off moment actually wasn't a power cut. It was... well, let me tell you the story!It all started in a movie theatre, on a planet, in a galaxy far far away...
 
The year was somewhere in my teenagedom and the movie was the long-awaited sequel to the first original Star Wars.


I'd been waiting an eternity to find out what happened next. Now, finally, there I was sitting, squashed in with all the other excited new Star Wars fans, to watch the sequel. The movie started, the magic began. Luke Skywalker came bounding back into our reality, riding a wonderfully weird alien critter on a planet of snow. I was hooked, once again.

The action began, Luke, seemingly lost in the snow, sees a vision beginning to form before him. The ghostly figure of Obi-Wan Kenobi appears! Luke stares... shocked. The entire audience held their breath as Obi-Wan lifted a hand and, with a deeply serious look on his face, he pointed at Luke and said... (in a very loud strange man's voice????)

"Will Johnny Smith please call at the front desk.
 Your mother wants to talk to you."



Noooooooo


What kind of insensitive idiot breaks in with a message at the critical moment of a movie?

Now, you have to remember I was a teen and my finances did not run to seeing a movie a second time purely to hear one or two sentences. And this was long LONG before DVDs or even video tapes. I had to wait about ten years to finally rent the movie out from a video shop and find out what Obi-Wan said.

And you know what's really funny? I can't remember what he actually said! I'll forever remember him humiliating Johnny Smith, and probably bringing about the break up of his relationship with his mother, in front of an entire jam-packed Saturday audience.