It's not me, it's hymn - Friday Prediction runner up!

I’m not immortal, only feel like I’m invisible and, God knows, not at all wise, none of which would normally make a blind bit of difference, but that article in the paper, the one about divorces amongst the over-sixties being on the rise really made me think.

It’s galling to have been married for forty-plus years and realise that we never talk, never touch, never communicate in any meaningful way whatsoever.   What happened to the dreams we had, the expectation that the fun, the laughter and the love would last as long as we did?

They died?    Or did he?

Thank you to Phil Ambler for providing the prompt words gall, invisible and  touch, and a great deal of enjoyment, both in the writing of pieces and the reading of the very high standard offerings of others.
I also feel obliged to stress that this is wholly fictitious.

Why I write

Earlier today I read Kerry's account 'Why do I write?'  much of which resonated with me (I never failed to enjoy her descriptions of life on a crab boat).

An hour or so later two to-be-proofed copies of 'Making good' arrived - extremely fast and efficient service - thank you Lulu!.   Thus far I have merely hugged them, skimmed the pages and tweaked the slightly mis-aligned cover.

I shall re-read, with pencil and paper to hand, in a few weeks when it's had time to fade from my memory so it comes fresh again.

So I've put them on the shelf where I can sit and glow gently about them ...


In the meantime, I am struggling - and I do mean struggling - to find ways and means of editing, re-writing, shuffling and making a good deal sharper, last year's NaNoWriMo novel.

NOT what I wanted, damn it ...

Gym ideas again - this time the opening sentence of the novel to follow 'Making good', a novel which I had no intention of writing , believing that to be the last ...

Phew!

Spurred by Lulu's 30% off offer, which lasts until Tuesday, I've upoaded a proof (and therefore not yet publicly available) copy of Making good.

However,  all  of my currently available novels can be bought at this discount -   just type REDEMPTIO in the code box ... 

Things I wake up with ...

"Emerging naked from the bathroom, he slipped the plastic soap box into the fluffy blue pencil case and dropped it into the bottom of his briefcase, rummaging other contents about until it fell, concealed, to the bottom.   It never failed to bring a smile to her face, although his original explanation had not been anything to laugh about."

This is the first sentence of an additional four hundred word snippet introduced into 'Making good' to make a later episode more comprehendable.   It arrived, fully formed, before five thirty this morning.

Also today, and less satisfyingly, I made myself critique a most unsatisfactory book I began reading yesterday.  I was on the point of giving up after only ten pages, but then gave myself a stern talking to:  "Why is it so bad?" I asked, "how can you be so sure you're any better?"  and so I read another 200 pages, making notes.

This is my review:

First there isn't enough dialogue, so it feels heavy, but what there is is unreal. Use of words is either lazy or ignorant - someone 'swigs' from a bottle, several times, and female prisoners are referred to as 'ladies' when women would be more appropriate. The same phrase is repeated twice within a single paragraph, and the repetition of facts strongly implies that the writer believes each and every one of her readers to be thick as the proverbial. And there is a ludicrous amount of clothes description.

Back story, and keeping track

Oh the difficulties of maintaining back story!

And yes I know it's something many writers abhor, and that an anxiety to do so is seen as amateurish,  so although I have put in several thousand words of it, I am now trying to stamp it out.   Drip feed the minimum, as and where necessary and/or applicable.

I had originally dealt with it by writing a dramatic first chapter and followed it with a catch-up second, but no matter how imaginatively I tweaked it, there were dangerous heavy undertones which threatened to drag the as-yet-uncommitted reader into the morass.

And so I am trying to combine (aka 'divide and rule) the two chapters while cutting ruthlessly.   Which has brought me to use Tracking seriously for the first time ever.   Another learning curve.

I'll just finish this chapter then ... oh whoops!

So often, having promised this, I have to keep my fingers crossed that the next chapter is over the page so I don't get so much as a glance at it, and even then I cheat half the time, so I do know about the importance and effectiveness of a good ending for each and every chapter.

And the final sentence of the first chapter of 'Making good' was in my head long before anything else.   It's still there and it's still bloody good.

But when I looked at the final sentences of the other thirty-seven,  there were really only ten chapters whose final sentence would truly spur the reader on.   Some of the rest are okay because of the context, i.e. I'm hoping that the developing situation will suffice, but I don't think I should rely on that completely (said reader might not be so enthralled as I!), and some are definitely of the 'turned over and went to sleep' variety, so one of the (several) things I need to do now is go back and see if, and where, a little page-turning urgency can be inserted so as to be sure of at least keeping the reader awake..

I was alerted to this when, after a bit of blog-hopping, I ended up here - a site I shall continue to follow.

I should also  say that if I only ever follow one writing blog it would have to be Emma Darwin's 'This itch for writing' for her empowering - and towering - good sense.

Progress report - week 46

It's ages since I updated my progress on Write 1 Sub 1, but since my last Progress report was for week 18 I think it's time for an update.

'Damage limitation' (114k words/281 pages)  - the fourth in the story of Bridie Burdock and Sean Donovan, is published and available from Lulu in a 6" x 9" format, as are its predecessors, 'Theme for a summer / Reunion' (now combined in one volume 32K words/99 pages) and 'Holding steady' (67K words/159 pages).   All are also available as ebooks, see http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SandraDavies

'Making Good' - the follow up to 'Damage limitation', is 'written' but needs to sit for a bit, before I re-read.   Currently wordcount is 124K and is unlikely to decrease. 

'Not wanted on voyage' (128K words/369 pages) - Yes, well, all the things I had my doubts about were pointed out as Big Mistakes by my daughter, which means that the first thirty-one chapters need more or less re-writing and the information therein absorbing to some extent in the following twenty-five.   Plus the activities of the main characters needs to be much more strongly written.    So it is likely to finish up shorter but better.   A start has aready been made and I am optimistic that I can do it, eventually.

'The blacksmith's wife'  finished after forty-one hundred word episodes.   I am in the process of illustrating it via my 100 day endings blog - another nineteen to do, after which I shall publish it on Lulu. 

'The longest shadows' - not at all sure about this as a title, especially as it is lifted from a poem for which I  haven't permission to quote, and also because I'd forgotten I'd thought of that, so I'll continue to file it under 'Susannah Elphinstone' a story spurred into being at the beginning of February by one of Lisa Ricard Claro's Book Blurb Friday photographs, further inspired by the discovery of a photograph of a house from my own past.  Untouched since June - wordcount currently 49K.

Plus I have begun, and temporarily abandoned one  serial on Thinking Ten (Colin and Daisy's 'Just cause'), have edited the book for the third House of Writers gathering in Kansas last July, and have begun another serial on Friday Prediction, but am less certain of its staying power. (A change of focus)

Making good - finished (fingers crossed)

I think this is finished.   

Not totally, upload-it-to-Lulu finished, but all written.

More than a first draft because I always edit as I go, a LOT, as much to inform myself of what is to happen next.   Also because sometimes I need to put stuff down even when I know it's crap writing, which I go back to later to improve.  
This time there is not a great cliff-hanger which appeared at the end of 'Damage limitation' so it might well be the final time Bridie and Sean make their appearance (which feels a bit sad, to be honest.)

And the cover picture is no longer pink because my dearly beloved spouse, viewing the image on-screen, wondered aloud why I had chosen to use a photograph of a pig's ear.

Cross-trainer thinking

Reluctantly to the gym, but there's no point in trying to cut out (i.e. cut down on) chocolate etc. if I don't also exercise, and to have two writing ideas in ten minutes warm-up on the cross trainer does make it worthwhile!   Another post-it stuck on the notes for 'Not wanted on voyage', reminding me to make more use of Facebook and blogs, and a conversation I now have to write between Sean and Sally in 'Making good' which should make better sense of the ending (not that I want closure, or all ends to be tied up) is No Bad Thing.

4 a.m. not too soon

Yay!!  While 4 a.m. is too soon to get up in these November mornings (unless I really cannot contain myself - in my first NaNoWriMo year I once got up at 2) the hour waiting for the more acceptable 5 a.m. was spent pondering on 'Making good' which I have, over the past few days, been re-reading.   At 120K it needed, as I was well aware, bringing to a close, but up to now I have been unable to see a way, a point at which to do it.

Probably two-thirds through writing 'Damage limitation' I had pencilled in a natural ending - the tenth anniversary celebration.   The whole series was meant to end there, but with the final half of the final chapter already written, something unexpected (to me, at least!) happened at the  beginning of that chapter, which necessitated the writing of 'Making good.'

This, I am (fairly) sure, will be the final one.   I suspect I have already written what needs to be a final chapter but have then run on past it:  something more mildly dramatic was needed to underline it, and in my early morning hour's pondering I think I've found it.

Now I have to write it (that's the relatively easy bit;  the first sentence of the chapter is already in my head) and then re-jig the other chapters so as to take place before not after - a little tricky, but far from impossible.

To work.

If it takes ten men with teaspoons to dig a hole ...

 ... how long would it take them with tablespoons?

This is the sort of question that had me screaming "use a bloody digger!!" when faced with it in a maths lesson, which explains why I had two goes to pass my 'O' level,
But seemingly, after half a century, someone has listened to me (probably NOT true, but ...) because an article in this week's Spectator by Timothy Gowers, seems to imply that it makes a lot more sense, and is ultimately more useful, to ask relevant maths questions (such as 'Should Alice marry Bob?') which also require logic, deduction and some thought given to variables and possibilities.  
Fascinating.  
There is a website, which I haven't read,but those of a more mathematical bent might enjoy.
And no doubt there are the stick-in-the muds (like my dearly beloved spouse) who STILL say "what about the equation?"

 http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-should-mathematics-be-taught-to-non-mathematicians/

What went on in Next ... and what came next.

First a sliding glimpse of man pulling basket on a trolley:  disabled or a shelf-stacker?  For a while we unintentionally played hide and seek between the ‘sleepwear’ racks.  Then he spoke - the voice instantly alerting me to more interesting possibilities, a preference for seeking more than hiding.

I looked, I saw, a most ... desirable face: crinkled, smiling sloe-black eyes, tousled hair, stubbled chin, good-humoured smile, however (and of course!) it was to his wife he spoke.  They were happily Christmas shopping:  she a list,  he laughing and agreeing what to buy for who (‘pyjamas for the girls and we’ll stick with what we’ve got for Marianne’).

Sour and silently snarling, with nothing bought off the list that I make and I solitary buy (and source, and solitary wrap) I left the shop.  Stomped back down to Morrisons where my husband, having finished the usual weekly grocery shopping, greeted me with an ever-loving smile.

‘From battle and murder, and from sudden death’

I'm on MuDJoB this week with a story which failed to win me chocolate in Gita's Fiction challege ... 
http://mudjob.blogspot.mx/2012/11/sandra-davies.html

Goodreads

Always a bit slow to pick up on technology, I finally found how to put my Goodreads list on my blog, selecting (after a couple of false starts) the option of posting the twenty-seven or so most recently-read books.

Still mostly crime novels, and generally a preponderance of Scottish  crime, which I began reading over a year ago in preparation for 'Not wanted on voyage', my NaNoWriMo2011 novel.   I'd not had anything against crime novels, but felt that there was plenty more other stuff I'd choose to read first.   Now, I own at least a bookcase full and have my daughter, youngest son and friends to thank for the loan of many more.

Obviously the original idea was to learn about crime writing.   Invariably I got hooked on the story and forgot to be watching how it was done.   Eventually I learnt to re-read those that I thought might usefully point me in the right direction, and at the same time I realised that I preferred those books which became a series, in which there was the development of a small cast of central characters.
Some, such as Stuart McBride - an early loan - I found too far from my natural style, but I am now wanting to re-read, others I found too awful for words and they were very quickly sent to charity shops, many were so good that I almost gave up there and then, and latterly, as can be seen, I have concentrated on those I was due to see at the Orcrime festival.

I've now got back into the habit of using the library too since, much as I prefer to own books, there is a space constraint:  already this year I have read ninety plus books ...

When 'Not wanted on voyage' is fnally done I shall return to the follow up, working title 'Susannah Elphinstone' (and ~40K words so far), but that's intended to be more of a thriller ...

A change of focus [2]

Suspicion, and a single question, swelled like a tumour:   why?  
Why her?
Why now?
She’d been due to return tomorrow, to the farm she’d vividly described, red earth, big skies and far distant horizons.
But someone had prevented that;  at least, not permitted her to return alive.
He’d understood she knew nobody here.
And only mentioned one man there:  Jake.
Who, she’d said, in the lucid moments between waking, guilt-entwined in the furrow-sheeted dawn and her engulfing him again, would never forgive what she had done.
‘Need he know?’ he’d asked, matching rhythm.
‘He always knows,’ she’d told him, distant-eyed.

Took some time but this is a response (one of three - the others are already posted)  to Phil Ambler's Prediction prompts:  farm, tumour and lucid]

A change of focus

The scarlet handset appeared to have spewed a map of South Africa, matching stain spreading and disappearing beneath the sprawled body of the dark-haired woman.

‘What’s that godawful noise?’  

DS John Pettinger, concentrating on fixing first impressions in his mind, didn’t hesitate.   ‘Bad Company.’

‘Well obviously that’s  what she’s been keeping... oh, you mean the music.   Looks like some film I saw once, where the telephone  sucks the blood from its victims ...’

‘I doubt that’s happened here.’

Pettinger’s exasperation at the DC was muted as he failed to divert the sick feeling permeating his gut.   

‘I know this woman.’

[This has been posted in Phil Ambler's Prediction in response to the prompts telephone, sucks and company and is possibly, possibly the start of a new serial.   Certainly it continues from a tale written in response to this year's House of Writers, and a follow-up episode which was posted on MuDSpots #48, under the title 'Interrogation'.]

Orcrime festival 2012

Just returned from our second visit to Orkney this year, this time staying in Kirkwall to go to the first  Orcrime festival.   I didn't get to 'Bloody Scotland' (we were on our way to Orkney for an earlier holiday) so finding out about this was an unexpected treat.

And treat it was - Ann Cleeves, whose Shetland novels I'd read three of, before moving on to the Vera Stanhope novels - The Glass Room being especially interesting and useful to me dealing as it does with a writer's conference -  Lin Anderson, who I'd only discovered after booking tickets but had found the fast pace of her Rhona MacLeod, forensic scientist, novels unputdownable, and Denise Mina whose 'Garnethill' I bought in February and was so astonished and admiring of I subsequently went and bought the rest in the Maureen O'Donnell series and the first of the Paddy Meehan and Alex Morrow books too.

All were vivid and entertaining speakers, all gave insights into their writing processes and all said that they did not plot ther novels so much as let their characters dictate direction.
My husband admitted that I am not the only one to 'do it wrong.'

The blacksmith's wife [part 41] (prompts: hip, owl, burst)

Now-completed story can be accessed from the tab at the top of this blog

Writing - small pleasure

I'm currently re-reading all chapters so far completed for 'Making good', the follow-up to 'Damage limitation' and effectively the fourth in the series.   Chapter 30 I'd recently struggled with, needing to add a section dealing with an argument between two relatively minor characters.   I did this last Sunday and returned to it today, beginning to read with some trepidation, not sure how effective it had been.

So it was with real pleasure that I read a couple of paragraphs I'd forgotten writing but which fitted in perfectly, with links to other characters and events!   It's reached almost 110K - I don't know how it will end but know I need at least another five thousand words to make it a decent-size read.

Heading from Kirkwall (St. Magnus cathedral just visible) to Westray - just before the hail-storm which (luckly) was the only weather which fell on us during the trip - but it was bloody cold!

While there I made some note which were turned into a Six Sentences post:
Westray wildlife reactions to a backfiring B33

On the Earl Sigurd it apparently requires half a dozen orange boiler-suited crewmen to make the bike secure - two straps and two chocks - for the ninety minute inter-island crossing from Kirkwall to Rapness;  not rough but had we stayed outside the hail would have been painful.

Westray – population six hundred – typical Orcadian landscape; gently undulating skyline, rough-squared in yellow and green, smudged clouds around the edges of a gigantic sky from which showers fell all around but not once on us, all day.

Several long straights from ten-mile end to end, more dog-legs heading sideways to the farmsteads on the edges – it’s easy to assume the view must compensate for the hard work, but is that really so?

Morse code dotted woollen messages were strung along the wire at the edges of the fields and I wondered what they might say about our at times very noisy progress.   Wondered whether the lurching panic of the lapwings would have made the headlines, or did the fat kisses of the sixty or so sky-sweeping starlings make the louder claim?   Would the cattle, fudge-coloured and agitated, lumbering wild-eyed to their feet, have the wit to pass the word along, and was it really the black-stockinged sheep with dirty bums who had the final, censoring word?

Monday sunrise in Stromness

Prediction prompt : 'post', 'shield' and 'immoral'

A forge-like image created for 100 Orkney Days of Summer and this week's post on Phil Ambler's 'Friday Prediction'

The blacksmith's wife [part 34]

Gabriel’s ever-fluctuating sense of filiality returned him to accusative.

‘Your callous immorality shocks me,’ he complained, days after he’d willingly posted his limp and green-shit-leaking brother through the side-slats of the dead-dog cart while I shielded him by offering soup to its malodorous driver.

My own concerns were several:   I was with child to a man I’d wed most willingly but now wondered if I should have second thoughts; the Earl was like to demand both letters and retribution for my alleged releasing of Mathias, and now approaching with a needing-shod stallion was the speedwell-eyed youth I’d once lain with.

The blacksmith's wife [part 33]

Post his immoral interlude with the tavern-doxy, how would Gabriel now view my past philanderings?   Given that he’d also seen me taken by his brother, he surely couldn’t now complain?

The boy was beautiful, which was why I’d wanted him.  Finger to my lips I directed him to the meadow behind the forge, trusting that the meadowsweet would shield us.  

Led the horse to Gabriel, smiled sweet and said ‘No hurry.’

But I was mistook to think that all was fair, that because there was no danger of foisting onto Gabriel a bastard brat, he would not mind.

He did.

Season of more than mists!

Yes the windows are fogged with condensation, and now the heating - set at a lowly 65ºC - has come on.   And it's still August.

101 Fiction: Forge

A more polished first episode of 'The blacksmith's wife' has been accepted by John Xero for his 101 Fiction.   Little did I know when I began that I'd  be about to wrestle with 'ration', flatter' and 'squid' from which to wrench episode 32 this week ...

101 Fiction: Forge: by Sandra Davies Caged by guilt and shadowed bars of branding irons, breasts and belly besmirched by centuries of soot from the roof-supp...

Halfway through, already

It was a surprise to learn that already fifty of the 100 days of summer have passed (although around fifteen were a bit of a cheat for me, using only pre-done inages).
Today I have a short account of my favourite so far (re-posted here), what I was hoping for from the exercise and how I think it's gone.

Hypochondria

The words for Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction this week are vaccine, ground and address and since vaccine wasn't invented until a century after the time of the blacksmith's wife, I had to abandon them this week.
Herewith my alternative:

Hypochondria

‘Vaccine?  Don’t be ridiculous!’

Contempt in every angle of her sprawled limbs, the flare of her nostrils and her lightly-raised eyebrows, the depth of her slutty depravity further exaggerated by the slatted shadows which striped both her and the screwed-up sheets.   Another half-hour and there’d be sufficient light to turn this chiaroscuro soft-ground etching to something more common-place.   For the moment he was both mesmerised and horrified as was apparent from the higher-than-usual pitch of his voice, addressing her from where he stood naked by the sink.

‘I’ve run cold water on it’ he said plaintively, ‘and it still stings.’

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29] - runner up for last week!

Written (I think) in Pueblo, or maybe Fort Collins, Colarado, this was declared a runner up by Phil Ambler over at his Prediction page today - thank you for that,  Phil! - but less so for next week's words which are vaccine, ground and address 

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29]

Fearing malevolence, and assuming I could thwart it, the earl insisted on my presence at the birth.

His lady gave no flicker of acknowledgement, too sharp-speared with labour pain, the like of which, before winter, would be mine to suffer too, but I trusted my son would not appear so goblin-like as this wizened little red-haired gnome, the image of its father.  

Having been three days away I hastened home, to find Gabriel speared between the goblin-gnarled, lard-flickered thighs of the tavern-keeper’s wife, but could not judge who screamed loudest from the bucketful of still-hot cinders I emptied over them.

>Language>Place blog carnival #17

Now live - and put together in Alaska - check it out for some wonderfully inspiring posts

101 Fiction: Traditional

101 Fiction: Traditional: by Sandra Davies Rise before May dawn, middle of meadow, wash face in dew. Surrender all common sense:  next man met so stunned by my b...