Tick tick tick tick ...

        Quick one.

        This is for those of you who want to write successfully (commercially) and are under 40.

        I was 40 for a while, seems like no time ago at all. The other week I turned 86. Geez, eighty-bloody-six! 86 and I'm still trying to get a way too large heap of worthwhile (well, I reckon) writing finished off. The time flew by my window like Geoff Duke and his Norton on the main straight of the Isle of Man TT. Okay, if you're under 70 you probably don't have a single clue who that is but your life is the poorer for it. Google it up.

        What I'm getting to is - don't treat Time as an endlessly renewable resource. It ain't. Trust me. Give your writing a high priority and get stuck in or you'll miss the bus. Because good writing takes time, gobs of it, quiet reclusive time on your own, which is hard to come by and easy to give a low priority in the hubble-bubble of the domestic everyday. Which will leave you old and running out of the precious stuff with a head still full of words barking to be put together.

        And there's one other thing. You lose puff !!

        I never "felt" old, or even elderly, until this time last year when I turned 85. But then, for the first time ever, I found I got tired in the afternoons. Still up at five and jog steadily through the morning's activities, but start to fade about noon, have to pace myself in the afternoon. I waited for my mojo to bounce back, told myself it was only Long Covid, but it didn't. Now I know it's permanent. While I have managed to find a few 4 a.m. starts again (after a 20 year layoff) to get some drafting done, I just can not get creative in the p.m. any more.

        So, review your priorities my 20-40 year old friend, creative writing is way too important to be shelved "until you have more time". There is no more time. There's only opportunities. And godknows the world always needs more great literature.

        Cheers....

                Methuselah

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Some days you just hafta...

        I love a good movie. But.....

         Every so often you just have to have a damn good gripe. About TV. To keep from whacking your walking stick straight through the bloody screen. Nothing whatsoever about literature, but it is about - "entertainment". What a criminal misnomer that is when attached to television.    

        First up, what about (talking South Aus here but I just know you have your equivalent) our freebie-with-the-Sunday-paper TV Week Thing they call "BINGE", as though they're promising some kind of viewing feast, but it's just wall-to-wall crap.

        We refuse to watch anything that isn't recorded, to avoid the mindless endless inanity of TV commercials - I mean, how much do you just absolutely HATE and DETEST that pinnacle of gobshite ads, the Global Shop Direct Wait There's Fucken More Buy One Get One Free that goes on and on and on and on (but wait there's even more) and saying everything twice and being the longest of all ads by a factor of three? - I've worn out several zapper Mute buttons in my mindless mania to NOT even hear it.

        So I did some research.

        We have 25 free-to-air channels, times 24 hours times 7 days, that's 4,200 hours of TV viewing per week. We record on average 5 hours of that. That's 0.12% of what's available.

        Then there's the Fox Box. We have a pretty normal package, which gives us access to 140 channels times 24 hours times 7 days, that's 18,480 hours available each week. We record an average 12 hours a week (excluding news services and the Test cricket). That's a whole 0.065%. Yes we could cancel, but it's the only way one of us can get Coronation Street, AND they supply a pretty nifty recording system. And once every blue moon there's a movie that's great-to-brilliant.

        Okay, I'm sure there's people out there that like to watch the umpteenth re-run of the re-make of Ferris Bueller's Big Stupid Weekend Off, and I'm sure there's millions that would hate what we like, but geez, some of those programs must surely have NO viewers. And why would anyone spend their advertising money in those slots?? I know there's a reason for them, but it truly eludes me.

        Right, I feel a bit better. You just need a bit of a bitch every so often! (Sorry guys. Something a bit more interesting soon).

            Cheers....

                    T.R.E.

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Just finished being surprised by...

        [ Hope you all had a great break, feel refreshed and ready to attack another year of reading and writing and exploring, find what makes us tick. ]

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"GIFT FROM THE SEA" - Anne Morrow Lindbergh (US 1955)

        Found this small surprise in a roadside library, sucked me right in.

         Most of us have fallen over movies and docos of Charles Lindbergh and his flying achievements, the tragedy of his first child being kidnapped and murdered, maybe his radical politics of the 1930s, but I've never bumped into "Mrs" Charles Lindbergh until now.

        Anne Morrow was born in 1906, to a well-positioned dad, mum was a teacher and poet and big on women's education, and Anne had the best of schoolings, ran into Charles - already a big name in aviation - in Mexico where her dad was the US Ambassador at the time, got married in 1929.

        You should read the whole Wiki thing for all of her back story (tag below) as their political leanings (and relationships!) are something of a surprise, but that's not what this deeply personal book is all about.

        Only about 25k words long, this is a 1950s woman grappling with her inner life while on a secluded island "holiday" - sounds more like an escape - as she tries to make sense of her "place" and her role in her family, her marriage, and in society. And apparently she hit a chord with her female contemporaries as the book was a runaway success at the time, and for many reprints later. And I can see why - it's insightful, wise, deep, and sensitive. And well written.

        This is a woman in her "middle" years - she would've been late 40s at the time - trying to "find" herself, to be her own, not just own female person, but her own whole person. The Feminist Movement was gaining momentum in those years after the war, especially in America, but this could just as easily have been written by a young mum in the 1970s, it has that ring about it, the desperate need to express herself completely.

        And hey does she grapple with her inner conflicts, using a few shells that she picks up on her solitary and secluded walks each day to weave her thoughts around. But this is not some saintly person agonising over a life of domestic servitude as, best I can work out, when she wrote this she had just come out of a three year affair with her doctor (not that Charles Lindbergh was all sweetness and light!), so fair enough that she had some re-assessing to do.

        Anyway, if you can find a copy, it's well worth reading.

            Cheers....

                    T.R.E.

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

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Never sure...

         The thing - one of the best things! - about writing fiction, is that you never quite know where it's going or what will come to the surface as you prowl through the far corners of your head, turning over old stuff, stored stuff, good stuff, bad stuff, stuff you don't even know is there.

        I've found this with my current - my main current (somehow I've managed to have three on the boil at the moment) - fiction project, as it started off with a simple idea that would take about 2k words, and now it's 7k words, and still growing, starting to look like a novella! I must learn some self-control.

        But that's the point, isn't it - the point of writing fiction. It's about self-discovery - well, mostly about self-discovery - that and just having fun, having fun finding bits - good bits, funny bits, nostalgic bits, poignant bits, sad bits, human bits. Ahhh, there's always so much left to be said.

        Just thought I'd share that. For what it's worth.

            Cheers...

                    Trev

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Just fell asleep finishing....

 "THE SENSE OF AN ENDING" - Julian Barnes (UK 2011) 

        This has got to be one of the dullest books I've ever read. But out of respect for - no, that's crap, it was sheer pigheadedness - I battled on to the end. I have had my Booker Prize prejudices confirmed yet again. Eight or nine times out of ten the judging panel seems to not be able to tell award-winning fiction from a bag of frogs.

        Geez it was ordinary, maudled on and on and on for about 45k words (about novella size), exploring something terribly fascinating to the author I'm sure, concerning (I think) love and relationships, but gave me zilch. Less than zilch. I would've found out more about the human condition IN a bag of frogs.

        All I can say in conclusion, if this was "The best work of long form fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland in 2011", then godknows what the losers were like. (Sorry Julian).

        Cheers....

                T.R.E.

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For what it's worth....

         Just in case it can help someone who's struggling, I've had some more thoughts on putting fiction on the page - well, how I go about it anyway - making notes on it while I've been doing my current short story. And I think just about everything below would be how I go about a novel as well. Except that it's 2 years rather than 2 weeks!

        1) I get the idea, mull it around in my head for a day or two.

        2) I open a blank Word file and put a title at the top - anything relevant will do for the start as it may change later - then save the file as that title to my /Writing Shorts WIP folder.

        3) I set the file's font to Courier New, 11 point, with 1.5 line spacing. This is best for roughing out and with multiple print-offs later it saves on printer ink.

        4) I type a heap of ideas, roughly in the sequence of the story, doesn't matter how it sounds, get the feeling down as fast as I can, and leave big spaces between the bits for later scribblings.

        5) Print it off, back it up, make a desk-top short-cut, put that in my Current folder on the side of the screen. (Backing up - I NEVER use the Cloud, but keep a good-sized USB stick always plugged in, which I swap every few weeks. Better than having it in some basement in Romania. Pedantic I know, but I leave nothing to chance).

        6) I put the draft and a biro in one of those clear plastic A4 folders with the press stud flap, do a name tag in texta on a scrap and slip that in too.

        7) At any time of the day, when the thoughts or lines or paragraphs comes to me, I scribble that down and shove it in the folder, or do it straight onto the draft somewhere.

        8) When it's my solitary writing time, I sit in my recliner with the draft on a stiff back-board and a sandwich and a Johnnie Walker-laced coffee at hand, get in the zone and write write write, whang in notes all over the place, anywhere they'll fit, lots of loops and lines and arrows, scribble scribble scribble.

        9) First chance I get, I type it all up, fill it out and make more notes as I go, then do 5) above.

        10) Bit by bit it gets cleaner and better, less and less changes, then one day when I think it's finished, I print it off and put it away for a fortnight, then drag it out and do another edit.

            Okay, that's about it. Give it a try if you reckon you have a short story in you. And everybody does. Well, you and I do, the others just don't know the fun of putting it on the page. Sad souls!

            Cheers....

                    Trev

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Just finished travelling through...

"A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME" - Stephen Hawking (UK 1988)

        Found in an Op Shop, this has been on my Look For list for yonks, as it's said to be one of the best, on the subject of the very huge and the very tiny anyway. And I'm sure it is, but as much as I read every paragraph (some three times!) about 70% of it still went over the top.

        Hawking tries his heart out to convey what he "sees", but there's just no language, or examples, that can transfer his knowledge into my head. I can get around the basics of Relativity and the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies, even black holes and event horizons, but Quantum Mechanics and String Theory and Antiparticles? - whoosh - straight over. And what about "imaginary numbers" and "imaginary time"!?

        And why oh why do these guys use the term "infinite" so much? There is no way in God's great universe that any - ANY - human brain can visualise something of infinite volume. Or infinite mass. Or infinite time. Or - my personal favourite - something infinitely small. Isn't something infinitely small nothing!? And aren't they all oxymorons?

        But that's the challenge for these people, communicating what they know. Or believe they know, so far this week. Here's an extract that shows how they struggle finding terminology....

    "There are a number of different varieties of quarks, that are six flavours, which we call Up, Down, Strange, Charmed, Bottom, and Top. The first three flavours had been known since the 1960s but the Charmed quark was discovered only in 1974, the Bottom in 1977, and the Top in 1995.
     Each comes in three colours, red, green and blue. It should be emphasised that these terms are just labels. Quarks are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light and so do not have any colour in the normal sense. It is just the modern physicists seem to have more imaginative ways of naming new particles and phenomena. They no longer restrict themselves to Greek."

....all written with a straight face! I kid you not. Still, how do you go about describing a Universe that they can't find the boundaries of, or subatomic particles that just keep getting smaller, and doing weird things?

        But, I'm pleased that I made the effort, even if it did leave me feeling a touch short on intelligence, but you really need a Degree in Cosmology and another Degree in Subatomic Particles to have an even chance of grasping more than half. I mean, really truly honestly grasping it.

        I'll close with this bit that caught my eye and stuck....

    "Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as connected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanities deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. and our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in."

        Amen to that, Stephen old son!

            Cheers...

                    T.R.E.

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I want more

        I read a short piece of fiction the other day, by a writer who does a heap of great poetry but doesn't do fiction in the short story format. It was an inspiring read, and left me thinking - why don't they do more? They're good at it, and godknows the world needs it. I know need it. And it doesn't matter how big the readership is, an audience of one is all it takes to justify it.

        All of which got me thinking - why do we do it at all?

        First up, people who write, can't NOT do it. As I've said before, we have this this overwhelming need - compulsion even - to write down "stories". That compulsion is what I see as "The Ghost", that restless force living in our fingertips, forever trying to make sense of Life, because, for me, it's only in seeing my thoughts go down on the page that I have half a chance at grasping what I'm really seeing/hearing/feeling. And I like passing those discoveries on, just in case I hit a tender point in one of my fellow travellers.

        This came particularly clear the other day, with my current writing project, which I touched on a week or so back. That "Blokes & Sheds" book got me thinking about what a "shed" is, to me. At first I found it sort of "fun", to wallow in a little memory, of things - blokey things - I did in my various sheds. But the deeper I'm into it the more complex it's become, and it's turning into (The Ghost taking over!!) a minor epic of - of - Life. My life. And it's become something of a mirror, of some depth, casting back at me the realities of past events, sort of - framing a perspective. A context. The Ghost is leading me to clearer images of who I am and how I arrived at this point.

        Now, at first glance you'd think - but not all short fiction is about oneself. But the truth is - it's always about yourself. It's about how you see the world, and indirectly (sometimes not so indirectly), your place in it.

        So, my fellow compulsive writer, don't let up! Our gift - affliction? - is a good thing. It improves the world, one creative word at a time.

        Cheers....

                Trev

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Just finished being mesmerised by...

"WALL AND PIECE" - Banksy (UK 2006)

        I needed a distraction from the heavyweight book I'm currently reading (more soon), and Banksy fell into my lap courtesy of Smudge and the bookshop she works for, who have a brilliant policy of culling shelves periodically, cutting out the bar codes, and putting them aside for the staff. For free. This is one of them.

        What can you say about Banksy? - more myth than substance, a true enigma, at times quite an anarchist, anti-authority, anti-Establishment, but has made millions (so the rumours go) and given away millions. But how much is true? There's plenty on him online if you just Google "Who is Banksy".

        Anyway, it's not the guy so much that gets me, it's the mind of the guy, and his art. I personally hate the shitty no-talent scribble that's no better'n a dog pissing up against the wall just to mark its territory. Even those huge panels that "spell out" something in garish colours don't do a lot for me, although they do fix a lot of otherwise deathly ugly walls. And I'm a pretty conservative type myself, but I find Banksy's stuff just brilliant. And I particularly like his - I presume it's his - comment in this book - "All artists are prepared to suffer for their work, but why are so few prepared to learn to draw?" Geez, amen to that.

        I particularly like his attack on that abomination of a wall that the Israelis put up around Gaza - the world's biggest open air prison. How he managed to get it done - he uses a lot of pre-made stencils as I understand it - and take the photo before he's caught and it's cleaned off is hard to comprehend. A lot of middle of the night work I guess.

        If you can track down a copy of this book then do so, it's a surprise-a-page, not just the unique nature of his art, his comments as well. The guy is a force of nature.

        Cheers....

                Trev

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Just finished reading

 "THE SHEPHERD'S HUT" - Tim Winton (Aust 2018) 

        As I said the other week when I was only part way into this very readable book, other than the fact that it's a great read, this is an object lesson in how to write a novel. By the time you're about ten pages in it has hold of you, and as the action unfolds the narrator (set in current day and told in the First Person) steadily drip feeds you the back story.

        Jaxie Clackton - even Winton's truly brilliant choice of a name says a bundle, it sounds so edgy and so bloody prickly! (and godknows that's Jaxie! - a 15 year old going on 40 with excesses of angst and attitude) is from a dysfunctional home north of Perth somewhere, and he's on the run, living off the land and his wits, telling his story in retrospect.

        Out in the hard country in the north of Western Australia, Jaxie runs into a strange old coot (an exiled Irish Catholic priest with a past that doesn't get entirely explained) living on his own in a deserted hut, and the two of them create a rough sort of a relationship, which provides Winton with the opportunity to explore philosophy and ethics and survival, with a brutal ending. But the rest you need to find for yourself. This copy - from an Op Shop - is definitely a keeper, added to my Tim Winton collection.

        And what can I say, if you aspire to write both well and marketably, get hold of a copy and digest it whole. It'll do you a world of good!

        Cheers....

                T.R.E.

ps - I forgot to add this classic bit of back blurb, great lesson in that as well...

    "For the first time in me life I know what I want and I have what I want to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. But it wasn't always like this. I been through fire to get here. So be happy for me, and for fucksake, don't get in my way."

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