The creature and the beast

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The Creature

In the interest of full disclosure my notepad is slightly smaller than the one pictured.

Firstly, sorry for taking so long in updating my blog - there's this thing called life that happens to be colliding with me as I work towards getting my honours which leaves little time left for my fun projects like this. Now, to the action. As per my last post I'm involved in the collaborative project 'Ask, New Mexico'. In fact, you can read my first chapter and Talitha Kalago's wonderful second chapter now (the third chapter should be up on Sunday night Australian Eastern Standard Time). We often talk about the writing process and how we go about things. I find that keeping all of my drafts means that I can go back through them and see how my story developed. So, I thought that today I would share a little of my process, the stitches that make the creature (I'm reading Frankenstein at the moment). Here, for my embarrassment and hopefully for your interest, is my first go at the first chapter of 'Ask, New Mexico'. After reading this please go through to the Ask, New Mexico page linked above to see the finished product.

Two starts:

1) "Been awhile since the wise owl flew by. Been awhile since I seen any bird."

2) "D'you think they knew?"

"Who?"

"The birds."

"You getting soft in the head?"

Expansion of number one (I already preferred this start and, as you can see on my final copy, it's the one I stuck with.)

"Been awhile since the wise owl flew by. Been awhile since I seen any bird." Jeremiah mused to himself.

"D'you think they knew?" Agnes asked him as she pushed back an ancient flywire screen with a tray of iced tea.

"What?"

"D'you think the birds knew about Old Flo?"

"What? You think just cause she feeds the birds they shot through cause she was dyin'?"

"Well, they have smart eyes, some of those birds."

"You lucky you're good looking!"

It was part of their code to throw compliments after insults. It had saved their marriage more than once.

"Where's Lachlan?" Jeremiah continued after a sip.

"He's up at Jackson's Hill playing with the Davison boy."

"No I'm not."

Lachlan angered the rusty door's hinges as he careless threw the door aside.

"What've you been doing?"

"Marty and I were putting together a radio using his dad's old harvester as an antenna."

It's hard to know what stuck out most about Lachlan — his auburn hair and freckles made him easy to find, his correct grammar and Edinburgh accent made him, as Old Haskell would say, stick out like dog's balls on a budgie and his ingenuity had accelerated his learning to the point where, at age 12, he was in his final year of middle school. He was also the only orphan in the area, his grandparents his only remaining family.

"What ya making a radio for?" Jeremiah asked.

"Wanted to see if we could."

Jeremiah leaned back to turn on his radio. A race caller was reporting the latest odds and scratchings for the 4:20 at (?). Lachlan skulled his drink and ran towards his bike.

"Be back for dinner!" Agnes yelled to his back.

Note to self:

What's missing:

Establish a farming community - also, they're on hard times - it's a dustbowl of rotting machinery where once there were fields of crops and animals.

This note is a verbatim transcript of what I came up with in an hour and a half between classes at uni. You'll notice that despite being an editor my first draft contains some inaccuracies ('skulled', for example) and there is a question mark instead of a place name at the end because I hadn't come up with a name yet. I think the biggest developments, however, are in the character of Lachlan and the overall story arc. Lachlan is described in much greater detail here than he is in the finished work. I consciously did this because I wanted to make the final piece as mysterious as possible so I used very little description. You'll also note that I didn't like the fact that I hadn't described the town at all. I chose a failing farm town partially because of the name of the project but also because I felt that withered machinery rusting in barren fields is creepy. The arc is wonky here; I've mushed in the birds and the radio because my brief included the radio and I think birds are a great way to show strangeness. Both made it in my final but I hadn't yet linked the birds and the radio at this stage of the writing; that actually occurred when I was writing the scene where the radio comes to life and I realised that radio sounds are quite similar to bird sounds as far as adjectives go (squawk, tweet etc.). So here we have the bare-bones of the work which would become the first chapter of 'Ask, New Mexico'.

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The Beast

I've lost so much time to this website!

This entry also concerns my notes above. Perhaps one of you eagle-eyed readers will have noticed a difference in spelling between the notes and the finished copy. When I describe the woman who fed the birds before she died her name is 'Old Flo' in my notes and 'Old Flow' in the final. It's a small thing but I've got to admit it's really bugging me. It's the first time that I've been auto-corrected in my work and I really resent the fact that my reference to 'Flo', being a hint towards birds with 'Florence Nightingale' was changed to be associated with water, something that I didn't put anywhere else (it is, in fact, absent in the dustbowl of Ask). I'm also annoyed that I missed it on the edit. I've since turned my auto-correct off which is equally annoying as it does come in handy when you are repeatedly writing long words but I feel that I do not want to dance with that beast again (not even for a talking tea-pot, although given that I drink a lot of tea the teapot would most likely say 'Ow! This water's hot!' more than anything else).

Forward March! and Back To Basics

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Forward March!

I literally realised five minutes before typing this sentence that there was no picture of me on my blog! So, that's me above. At the time I was setting out on a journey I'd covered twice before — National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). That's my old computer who got me through last November and then tragically died, taking with it four years of uni work, three novels and countless short stories. I didn't expect that my computer would die, as evidenced by the fact that I never backed up my work. I also never expected that last November would be the start of the flurry that I had been waiting for: after writing my novel in November I thought I would have a break and then edit it for a few months. Obviously, having lost the entire novel I could no longer do that but I found something more. I started getting involved in a local writers group and submitting short stories to publications. I was published simultaneously as a writer and editor, getting all of the firsts away in one fell swoop. Then I submitted more. I faced the fear of rejection (I was rejected, too, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected), the dizzying thrill of the wait for a reply and the utter joy of acceptance. It's been a crazy ride guys and if you're putting it off I can only tell you what you already know: it's going to be scary, fun, crazy, exciting and in the end you just might get published so get going!
To see my published journal contact the Geelong Writers.
To see the awesome collaboration novel I'm in (you can read it for free online) go here.

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Back to Basics

There's been a lot of charts popping up on the net about grammar and spelling. Yes, these charts have been around for a while, and yes, they do target the same things (the obligatory apostrophe section and the ever-present section on 'their, there they're' and 'your and you're'). The oatmeal probably do the best ones in that they are correct while being entertaining (did you know that dolphins get run over by jet skis if you misspell 'weird'?). I'm actually glad that these things are around - they're a great chance for people who are unsure of their grammar and spelling to get bite-sized lessons. On the other hand, we really shouldn't need these. I did all of my primary and high school education while only encountering grammar in one class: Greek class. That's right, I did thirteen years of schooling at a sub-tertiary level and I only learned grammar when it related to another language. For all that I still had good grammar but it was no fault of the school system; I just read so much that I knew what sentences looked like. When I got to university and had to take grammar tests (they do this for students in Professional and Creative Writing) I did well on them except when it came to the 'why'. In fact, my only 'why' was 'because it looks wrong'. I've since studied editing and put myself through hell trying to learn all of the things I should have known my whole life. There can be no doubt that I would have had a much easier run if I had learned grammar from an early age. There can also be no doubt that if grammar and spelling were taught in early schooling there would be no need for the charts around the web.

******** and The Eye Is Mightier Than The Chip

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*********

It's time for another look at censorship in light of recent developments. If you don't follow Tech Dirt or Stephen Fry on twitter then you may have missed this article. In a nutshell, the article tells of Paypal's demands that Smashwords (a publisher) remove any works or pieces within works which contain "bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and under-age erotica". Smashwords was at pains to point out that they had no choice but to comply as their business is run through Paypal. They also advised that this isn't Paypal's fault but that the online payment website was under pressure from credit card companies to comply. From the outset I'd like to make it clear that it doesn't matter whether I find such themes as I listed above to be distasteful or wrong; that's never a part of the argument despite what pro-censorship advocates would have us believe. The point is that whether I wish to access this material or not it should be available. Sure, you can post warnings on things so that people who are sensitive to these things are aware that they are contained within but preventing people from accessing writings is not the answer. When credit card companies dictate what we can buy with money that they allow us to access then we are losing our freedom. There are a lot of smart people out there so I'm hoping someone comes up with an alternative so we can avoid these situations in the future.

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The Eye Is Mightier Than The Chip

 
The proliferation of editing software had me concerned for all of about two minutes. Yes, it's cool that you've programmed something to recognise a split-infinitive or a misspelled word. You know what? I can do that too. On top of that I can recognise words which are spelt correctly but used in the wrong place. I can identify clunky sentences which are grammatically correct. I can review the language used in the context of the target audience and I can identify idioms which will work with select audiences. In short, I'm more than a chip - I'm a wordie who knows what word should go where, when and why. Do that, Mr. Chip!

Read, Write, and Blue

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Read, Write

As you might have guessed from the picture above or the background of this blog I like books. Oh, and the fact that I'm a writer might also have tipped you off. The thing is that I've met people who love the idea of writing but don't read. I'm not surprised merely because I've always been a bookworm, there are a couple of more troubling things about this. Firstly, it's important to know your industry — you can't expect to pen a book and get published without knowing a bit about what's around at the time (or, as my inner nerd would say 'One does not merely walk into publishing'). Secondly, and most importantly, you're missing out on a massive part of your education by not reading. As a reading writer you'll find words that you can use and your grammar will improve because you're immersing yourself in edited work. There are other things to consider too. When you read a piece you can look at the tricks the author uses in their writing: does the author reveal plot points all at once or are they hinted until they become clear? Does the author change the tempo of their sentences to match the action of the story? Are different characters written in different ways to aid differentiation? There is so much more than just these examples that you can pick up when you read. Also, you might just enjoy the book!

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Blue

If you think I'm the kind of person who doesn't swear then you probably don't know me very well and you have definitely never been in the car with me. I sometimes write swear words too, but I try to keep it audience appropriate (''That motherf**ker's still in my bed!' cried the little bear' is not something I would put in Goldilocks unless I was doing a gritty re-boot starring Samuel L. Jackson). That's part of the work of an editor: we can't merely ensure that the language is correct or that it correctly phrased for the text (ie. to blank out letters or to let the word stand) but we need to consider whether the language is appropriate for the target audience. It's not something limited to swear words, either, but across all language. Is the author using uncommon or unusual words? We have to consider whether the audience will understand this. If it's an academic work and the words are used correctly you may wish to let this stand. Literature can also get away with exercising the vocabulary but if you're editing a novel which is making an attempt at reaching a broad audience then you have to consider whether the large words could still be expressed using more basic language. I'm no slouch when it comes to vocab but I've been alienated by authors who use words frequently which are uncommon. I just can't be bothered using a dictionary every time something comes up so I don't bother reading them. There are more than enough books which are entertaining and accessible so unless you're targeting an audience which will understand or appreciate the use of uncommon words re-phrase it: you're not dumbing it down if you're saying the same thing and more people will be able to read it.