Potography Hiatus, Writing Bonanza

Well this one was too hard for people.
I guessed when I posted this that people would think "railroad sign".
Like a railroad sign it is a warning sign, but in a very different place.

This is a channel marker in Port Phillip Bay. I took this at the Bellarine Peninsula on the far south-west side of the bay. The Bellarine is near the mouth of the bay close to the city of Geelong.
Melbourne is about 100 km (62 miles) to the north where the Yarra River flows into the bay.
The mountain in the distance is on the far side near Dromana and has the lovely name (I think) Arthur's Seat.

I have taken very few photographs over the past few weeks (the ones of Lilli being the few exceptions)
I have kept my eye out for waterfalls and took this at the Murrindindi river in the central highlands.The semi-hiatus in photography is probably due largely to my putting a lot of creative effort into my writing.

I have finished the next draft of Veiled in Storms. I mentioned a while ago I had read the previous draft to Deb (she liked it).

This week I have been jumping forwards and plotting out books 3 and 4 in the series. Till now they have been very rough ideas, now 3 (working title Veil of Iron) is starting to look like a proper outline.

Well I have given a copy of the current draft Of Veiled in Storms to a friend to read (Cheryl did some copy edits on the first book Veiled in Shadows).

Once I get feedback from her I will put a bit of effort into tidying errors up and then in a month or two probably look for a couple more readers for opinions.

Anyone interested?

Al goes nuts about POV

My post of the other day has got me thinking.

I talked about writing in a non-linear fashion. That is something that most people who commented did not generally do. It seems that people will generally swap POV as they go rather than jump around like I am at the moment.

That got me thinking about POV and how many I have in my current WIP. It’s quite a few. In fact my WIP Veiled in Storms has no less than five narrators.

But then I sat down and counted how many voices contribute to my first novel Veiled in Shadows. It is, wait for it… eleven.

That’s right no less than eleven characters contributing in some way to the narrative flow.

Now to be sure there are (only) six main narrators. Then there are…

Wait a minute it’s actually twelve voices. I went to count less important narrators and realised I’d missed one!

Six major narrators, all of whom narrate as if speaking. But then it gets a little more complex, two of the minor narrators also speak, but the third ‘talks’ through the medium of a record of interrogation. He is one of a few real historical persons in my book and his ‘voice’ is based in part on his actual interrogation as a prisoner in 1945.

One of the three extra voices speaks as a narrator, another takes the form a of a one page letter and the third is presented as a two page police report.

By now you must think I have a serious case of multiple personality disorder.
So what do you think, does it sound too complicated?

From my perspective it was a challenge to write, but an enjoyable challenge. Interestingly none of the people who have read or reviewed the book have said (at least to me) that it felt fractured or disjointed.

Two piccies from my archive. And given I am talking about writing I am going to feature libraries today. The first is a small rural library in the gold-rush era town of Clunes.The second is a suburban Melbourne library. The Fitzroy Library is in the suburb of Fitzroy. It is a grand structure built with gold-rush money in the nineteenth century.

Al looks to the heavens

I said I’d try to do a quick post tonight. So here I go!

We have to be off to the airport at 6:30 in the morning. That’s the time I usually leave for work, but it’s a bit early for Deb!

And even earlier for our eldest daughter E who is going to drop us off!

I had a good morning on the way in on the train in terms of writing, but this evening I was tired and only managed just over 100 words. Still I think I developed an idea that will help me jump forward next time I write.

I’m taking my netbook with me so I might get some writing done while I am on holiday. If I get a chance I will put up a post or two as well.

Now a few piccies. You may remember back in March I posted this piccie of the ‘super moon’ that I took with my old camera.Well last night I walked out to meet my youngest Lu at the bus stop. I noticed the moon is close to full so I decided to have a play with my new camera.

This is one of many shots I took. The difference between an 18 megapixel and an 8 megapixel like my old camera is amazing!

And if I crop it down further the level of detail is amazing, even if it is starting to get a little pixelated.Al is in camera heaven!

Target

I should never set myself targets in my writing. I posted a month ago about finishing my first draft of Veiled in Shadows in ‘a month or two’. A month further on and I had expected to have knocked over another 20,000 words or so.

Well I got more than half way toward that target. To be precise I have written 13,515 since that post. Now before you assume I have been beating myself up about a failure - I haven’t.

I write for the enjoyment of it.

The enjoyment of it.

Aren’t those four lovely words?

And I have been enjoying my writing. To be sure my inner sadist has been making some of my characters go through hell (don’t worry Valentina is still in happy mode) but I have been writing some bittersweet scenes over the past few days.

And it is fun!

You may know my first novel Veiled in Shadows was written from multiple perspectives. Shadows is a complete story on its own, but it is also part of a series. Veiled in Storms (my WIP) is also a complete story and while it is not exactly a sequel it is related to the first novel. Some of the minor characters in Shadows are major characters in Storms and vice versa. So Ronnie (that is Valentina’s Ronnie) for example is only mentioned by name in the first novel and is a significant player in the second. While his sister Penelope is a major character in the first and a bit player in the second.

So what have I been writing over the past day or two? I won’t say too much, but for those (few) of you who have read Shadows there is a reunion in the final scenes. So I am revisiting that reunion from another character’s point of view. Only for that character it does not come at the end of the story. It is both a sad and happy moment.

And fun to write.

Now a little news. I am hoping to post again on Friday, but from Saturday I will be away on leave for a week. So it is possible there will be no posts until I get back.

A photo from my archive

Rainbow Lorikeets

A Miscellany

I was looking out the window of the train a fair bit this morning. I usually have my eyes pretty much glued to the screen of my computer to work on my WIP Veiled in Storms. But this morning was cold, close to as cold as it gets in Melbourne. We had our first frost of the season, I had to clean ice off my windscreen so I could drive to the station.

My journey to work starts with a ten minute drive to our nearest station at Hurstbridge. My next hour or so is spent on the train into the heart of Melbourne. On the way in I always get a seat because Hurstbridge is the first station (or last depending which way you are going) on the line.

Normally I write the whole way, with the occasional glance at the other passengers or at the passing scenery. For roughly the first half of the trip the line meanders along one of green areas we are privileged to have in Melbourne. In this case the Diamond Creek Valley (isn’t that an amazing name?). Normally, although the scenery is worth watching I don’t look because writing is more important to me than trees and fields I have seen hundreds of times.

This morning was different the valley was covered with thick white frost and enveloped in mist. So the routine had become almost a different place. Very beautiful and very distracting.

But of course the writerly side of me took over and I began imagining the frost was snow and the mist was a Russian Blizzard. I was half expecting Zhukov’s Siberian troops to come bursting out of the mist riding their tanks as they fought to save Moscow in December 1941. (Anyone want to guess what I am writing about at the moment)

That of course made me think about place. Place is very important in fiction. I’ve never been to Russia or experienced a blizzard so how do I write with authenticity about places and times I have never been to?

I guess there are a number of solutions. One is to take advantage of places you have been. So in my novel Veiled in Shadows I chose to set a scene at a university in Oxford in the UK rather than in Cambridge. I’ve walked the streets in Oxford, I never quite made it to Cambridge. Similarly I’ve seen country around the Black Forest in Germany where another section of the novel is set.

But I’ve never been to Russia, and most of Veiled in Storms takes place there. So in my case it comes down to research. I watch every piece of video of the time and place I can get my hands on. I look at maps (period if possible) and Google Earth and I read. Usually biography from the place and time is great. In translation I most definitely do not read Russian, I can pretend with German or French (OK I’m lying but at least the alphabet is the same). Fiction written in the place and time is also really useful even if it isn’t what you’d normally read. But be careful, translators can lead you astray, I am fairly sure that Russians in the 1940s did not use the term “motherfuckers”. Yes, something equally derogatory but probably not that term.

So if you are a writer what do you do? Do you stick to what you ‘know’ or do you venture further afield?
And how important is it to be authentic?

Now finally, and in a completely different vein. I got my new camera on Friday night (Yay!) It is proving more difficult to learn then I thought. It is so different to my rather basic previous model. However I am getting some good piccies from it already .

A random sample of what I have taken since Saturday (most of these are worth clicking to enlarge).
The Yarra River.A long exposure taken without a tripod, image stabilizers are brilliant!

Some tiny flowers (I have no idea what they are, but a succulent and so not native)

Some tiny baby ‘spitfire caterpillars’ Actually they are not caterpillars at all. They are sawfly larvae. If you think they are ugly now imagine them two inches long, covered in bristles and vomiting a sticky mess of eucalyptus oil at you. But they are native so I love them and they are very sociable (to each other).

Autumn leaves.Great colour saturation with this camera!

And finally as appropriate for the end of a post. The sunset last night.

Secondary Characters?

I think I am in a crazy mood tonight so you will just have to forgive me.

I have been puzzling about characters. Where do they come from?

How do we as authors (or daydreamers, or whatever) create them?

As I write my characters grow. In some ways that should be obvious, a novel would be fairly tedious if characters did not change with the progression of the plot.

But for me it almost feels like my characters shape the plots as I write.

I talked a while ago about Valentina, one of my characters in my WIP, forcing her way from a secondary character into prominence.

I have to say this is not the first time I have had this experience. In my first novel Veiled in Shadows two of my minor characters met and fell in love. It was a necessary plot device because those two characters being together meant two of my main characters could meet, but then sparks flew.

So how is it that the secondary characters shifted into prominence? Well in my first draft both characters Penny and Danny were present. Both had roles that were important to the plot but they never even met.

Yet by the time my final draft had been completed they had not only met. In fact it went much further, they had fallen in love and been married.

On the surface it made sense, the plot needed my main characters to be drawn together through a chance meeting. Logically it made more sense to me to have some of the characters already in the story bring them together, rather than creating new characters to use in one or two scenes.

So Danny Parnell and Penny Chesterfield were introduced. On the surface they did not seem at all matched. She was beautiful, elegant, educated and sophisticated. He awkward, not particularly good at anything and shy. Yet they fell madly in love with each other. (I will forgive myself that contrast. I have known many, many loving couples who seemed to have nothing in common).

As an author I have to take the blame. These characters sprang from my mind (at least I think they did). Yet it really seems like they were in charge. I’ll add a couple of points to show why -

I mean Penny and Danny? Would any self respecting author have a couple with such names. Daniel fine, Penelope fine but together?

And Penny Chesterfield becoming Penny Parnell, it is so alliterative as to be almost painful. Yet neither character would let me change their name once they were on the page.

I swear it was their choice not mine!

Have you ever created characters that took charge of your WIP?

Sunset and trees damaged in the 2009 Bushfires taken this evening with my new camera

On Thirtyish Women, Childbearing and Trying to be Someone You Aren’t.

First of all, I had my job interview today and I think it went really well. So it is a case of wait and see.
Also a bit surprisingly I have already heard about the Public Service job I applied for and they want to interview me next week! And I thought the wheels of government turned slowly.

Now on to the business of my post’s title.

In a comment on my extract of the other night Jennifer (AKA Old Kitty) asked:

“Why can't Penelope and Valentina have children of their own as they approach 30? Awww! Just curious!!!”

I can’t let a question like that pass without a decent answer.

First the simplest answer to Jennifer’s question is “Nothing.”
Of course biologically there is absolutely no reason most 28-30 year old women can’t have children.

But as an author it all comes down to trying to place a character in his or her time and mindset.

As a writer I attempt to at least be a little faithful to the cultural framework of my characters. I try to write something like they might have thought. Yes they might have to be rebels to make them interesting but everyone has baggage.

I am writing in the early twenty-first century and like most of my readers a product of the second half of the 20th century (or so).

Valentina is a product of the 1920s. Things had begun to improve for women by Valentina’s time. For example she had an education that her mother could only ever have dreamt about.

Many, many battles have been fought since then to improve things for women (and other marginalised people).
But of course that is still in the future for Valentina and she sees the world from her own reference point.

Many women of that period considered themselves ‘left on the shelf’ if they weren’t married before they were twenty-five. Before the war she would probably have disagreed with such a notion, but a lot has changed for her since then.

There are a number of factors that add to her belief that she will never have her own children.

Valentina grew up in a world where there were millions of middle aged women who had never found partners because of the casualties in WWI. She has just spent years in a war that killed around 11,000,000 young Russian Soldiers and maimed millions more. She is painfully aware there is a significant gender imbalance in her country.

Also, Valentina thinks she is ugly. In the fighting that killed her friend Raisa she was wounded in the jaw (never posted, you’ll have to read the book when it eventually comes out). There was a hint of her injury in an earlier extract. When she ran into Ronnie at the airport she said, “His hand brushed a wisp of hair from my cheek, and he gently, ever so gently cupped my scarred cheek in his hand.”

To add to her problem she cannot have the man she loves because (as she now knows) in Stalin’s Russia forming a liaison with a foreign national is next to suicidal. So on balance she assumes there is no one for her.

Finally, although she doesn’t know it Valentina is suffering from what we would call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has experienced two of the fairly common symptoms: Depression and Suicidal ideas. So when she says Natasha saved her she is literarily telling the truth.

It is this mindset that makes her assume there is not much of a future in love for her. She just makes the assumption that Penelope being around her age would have a similar experience. Of course in reality, attracting men has never been Penelope’s problem.

So there you go my rationale for how Valentina tells me she thinks.
Because in the end I am never going to take all the responsibility for what my characters say :-)

200 and Counting! And Merry Christmas.

Well it is Christmas Eve and I have had the pleasure of coming home early so. Here we go…

This is my 200th post!

Now for some prolific bloggers that number is nothing flash, given they post daily. But I don’t. About three times a week seems to be my average which means my blog has been running along for just under 18 months.

So as a celebration of this milestone I thought I’d give my readers a chance to quiz me.

Without further ado:

Samantha asked
“If you could spend New Year's Eve with one person unknown to you, alive or dead, who would it be? (By unknown, I mean not your family, friends)”
Well Samantha, I always find this kind of question surprisingly difficult to answer. There are just so many possibilities given we are including those who have gone to God.
Now a few people have asked a question a little along these lines so I get the fun of picking more than once. In this case I am going to say Winston Churchill.
Why Churchill? As well as being the leader of the British in their finest hour he was also an historian, a writer and a brilliant orator. I suspect you could have a good chin wag with him and I would love to know how close he came to throwing in the towel and surrendering to the Nazis in 1940.

Kat wanted to know: “ I'd like to know if you're an animal lover and which do you prefer, cats, dogs, or both?”
A cat person. No a dog person! No both :-)
Let me explain, when I was really young I had a little terrier for maybe a year. After that Mum would only let us have cats so I loved cats and we had some fantastic cats when I was a kid.
My other half is a dog person (although she like Siamese cats too) so when she came into my life dogs did too. I have really liked all our dogs over the years, but our last dog was Molly a golden Labrador. Molly was an absolute sweetheart of an animal, and although we got her because Deb wanted another dog she really became attached to me and me to her. So I am very much a convert I would have another Labrador tomorrow if I could.

Christine asked: “If you could spend a day as someone from the past, who would it be and why?”
I guess to answer this I might jump back over 1500 years. I think Hypatia of Alexandria is one of the most amazing women in history. I would find it a privilege to spend time with a woman who stood up against all odds for knowledge and wisdom in a very dark time. A very tragic heroine, I doubt I’d have the courage of my convictions like she did.

Hilary wondered: “Where in the world is the gate and it's wrong way round granite book-ends? Looks UK like to me??!”
Bingo! You’ve guessed right this photo was taken in the UK, to be precise near Housesteads fort in Northumberland, England. More about the gate below…

Hart said: “That IS a great pic, and a very cool looking place... as to the favour... well... because you included the 'U”, (I suspect Hart might be having a little go at my use of the Queen’s English. We are only half way to becoming ex-colonial here in OZ and one of the things we have kept along with the Queen is British spelling)
Hart then went on to ask: “If your writing hit it really big, so you could live however you wanted, how would you set up your life?”
I have to laugh I was actually having a conversation very like this today. My ultimate fantasy is to retreat to a rainforest hideaway here in Oz and live a very simple life most of the time. I’d need to have enough money to provide something of an income and to travel extensively from time to time. For research of course :-)

Wendy R, wondered: “When, where and how would you live if you had the power to do so?”
There are plenty of places I would like to time travel to: Ancient Greece, Rome; Shakespeare’s England to name but a few. In reality though for all its problems I think we live in one of the best times (at least in the West). For a start women are for the most part allowed to do what they want and live life according to their own terms.
It is a terrible injustice, perhaps the worst ever that has seen women treated as ‘lesser’ beings for so much of our history (ongoing in many places even today). I like that my daughters can be their own women.

Jennifer said: “I do like the strange broken alcove around the gate!!!
Ooh question!!!!! Erm.... know any good jokes?”
Yes Jennifer I do know a number of good jokes, but they are all far too rude to be repeated here :-)

Sarah (aka Falen) asked: “LOVE that first photo! Do you think there used to be an arch above the gate?”
Yes, there once was a complete arch above the gate. More about the gate below…

Tasha asked: “What's your favorite book?”
That is one of the most difficult questions of all, there are just too many wonderful books to pick just one. I am going to go sentimental and say either: AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (I most firmly indicate I do not mean Disney’s version of Pooh); or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Deniz said: “Ooh, good idea. Hmm, well, along the lines of everyone else's questions - which fictional character would you like to have over for dinner?”
Oh dear another toughie: Jane Eyre or Gandalf (how is that for contrasting characters?)

Susan said: “I answered reader questions a while back and it was so much fun - I loved writing those posts!
My question: What is your favorite holiday, and why?”
I agree it is great fun answering these questions. I will answer this question in two ways: my favourite ever holiday was to northern England in 2005 (I took the gate photo then); but my favourite place to holiday is the South Coast of NSW, the little fishing village of Eden is very well named.

MT asked: “Is there something you'd like to photograph that you've yet to have the opportunity to do so?”
A colleague just came back from a holiday to Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Her photos of the ancient city of Petra have me drooling. I want, no need to photograph Petra!!

Denise (aka L’Aussie) presented the following: “ What lead to your love of photography?”
I have always been a very visual person, but I could never get art to look anything like I imagined. With photographs I often capture exactly what I want and some times it is even better than that. I guess the simple answer is photos are an art form I manage to express myself through.

Yvonne cheated (just a little) and asked several questions: “Is that a part of Hadrian's Wall. We saw a section but it was only a couple of feet tall, crumbling in the undergrowth with sheep all about. A question.....do you hang a Christmas stocking? Have you ever hung one with it only to end up empty?”
Yes, to the first question the collapsed arch is part of Hadrian’s Wall. The best stretches are roughly in the middle. No, I no longer hang a Christmas stocking; but I did when I was a kid. Once it was empty but Mum couldn’t fit my new bike in it :-)

Jemi also asked a string of questions (although I will let her off the hook because they are all related): “When did you get your first camera? Do you remember the first photo you took that made you realize you were really good with the camera? What's your favourite subject to photograph?”
I got my first camera when I was about eleven. It was a little Kodak 110 instamatic. It took really bad photos, but boy I had fun with it.
I’m not actually sure I am really good with a camera. I have an idea of what I want a photo to look like when I compose it, but I take a lot and pick the best.
To kind of answer your question I guess I was pretty happy with some of the piccies I took way back in the 1970s. This one was taken in about 1975 of a Bird of Paradise flower. It’s not great but I was 11 and it was a very bad camera. This was taken in about 1977 with the same camera.My single favourite subject is ancient ruins, but they are a little far between in Oz. So on a more daily basis I would say landscapes closely followed by wildlife.

For those of you who might be curious (I know I would be) the gate in my piccie is on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumbria England. It is the remains of the north gate arch in Milecastle 37. Originally the remaining wall was the base of a tower with an arched gate. At some point in antiquity the Romans blocked off most of the archway making it only wide enough for one person at a time.
The stretch near Housesteads fort is probably the best preserved if anyone is interested in having a look.
Why is the wall a ruin? Well for hundreds of years all the local farm houses, villages and field walls were built largely with stone taken from the wall. It was much easier to demolish part of the wall than to quarry it.
So that is it for tonight.
Thank you all for asking some great questions. I have really enjoyed the game.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Words on Wednesday: Progress on my WIP

Once again I have posted a chapter of Veiled in Shadows.
In this chapter Katharina argues with her father over her love affair with Ebi. Also an engagement is announced.

Now to what I am going to talk about tonight…

I said last Wednesday that Deb surprised me with a new Netbook.

My time on the train has suddenly become amazingly productive. On my way into the city my station is the first on the line so I always get a seat. I put on my headphones to block out the World and I write (or think) for a solid hour before I have to get off at my stop.

On the way home mine is the fourth city stop so the train is usually full when I get on. Standing room only! But somewhere between a third and a half of the way home enough people get of to allow me a seat. So there is another precious 30 or 40 minutes to work.

This is simply bliss. My WIP (Veiled in Storms) has been languishing while I have been getting Veiled ready for publication. Now suddenly it is full steam ahead again.
You’ll have to forgive my nautical metaphor, but I’m writing about Ronnie my Royal Navy character at the moment.

Now a sample of what I wrote today. Please bear in mind that this is very much a first draft. I’ve done nothing to it (not even a rough edit this is literally just pasted out of my “scribble” file) and the way I write this scene may never make it into the book. It could easily end up just as ‘back story’.

With out further ado I give you Ronnie somewhere in the North Atlantic:

The light on the destroyer's bridge flashed and stuttered so fast that I couldn't keep up. I turned to Rogers, my signalman, 'He makes '"Goodbye and good luck", sir.'
'Respond, "At least we shan't have to put up with any more haggis" '.
Rogers grinned, and began frantically clattering on the shutter of our signal lamp. I stared at the wake of the departing destroyer. She was escorting the battered convoy of merchant ships that we had helped shepherd on our way north, back to Loch Ewe in Scotland.
They were going south, but I was returning to Russian waters in my tiny ship. I had ninety men on my little vessel, but suddenly I felt more lonely than ever before.

Words on Wednesday (and a Challenge)

Well I have started catching the train to work now. I used to drive, but I have changed my working hours from a very early start to normal business hours. So now it is quicker to commute by train.

It takes me an hour each way into the city and back. At the moment I am reading each way, but I hope to soon get a new laptop (I had one but the screen died) so I can work on my WIP. I don’t use laptops much so it hasn’t been a high priority till now.
The idea of gaining two hours each day to work on the book that follows Veiled in Shadows (working title Veiled in Storms) seems positively enticing.

Now for a piccie of one of the significant landmarks the train passes on the way into the city.
At 80 metres (262 feet) it towers over the houses in the surrounding suburb.
I wonder would anybody be game to give me an opinion? What is this towering structure?

Now to the title of my blog tonight I have had the urge to post another section of Veiled in Shadows, so if you’d like to read Chapter One (I posted the Prologue last week) click on the “Chapter One” tab above.

Hope you enjoy it!

How to Draw-Out Writing a Novel and some Interesting Software.

There are novelists who write a detailed plot and stick to it come “hell or high water”.
Then there are those who discover the plot as they write.

Then there are those who fence sit.
I have to admit I am a fence sitter when it comes to outlining. I have done a version of the free form effort. I have also written reasonably detailed outlines.

For my soon to be published novel Veiled in Shadows, I started with no outline. In fact for the first few months I was “working” on it I wrote nothing down. That is right nothing, not a word on paper, or on a computer screen. I ran through the whole story in my head.

So how did I go about it? Well I relied on the fact that I (usually) have a good memory. In those months the novel was entirely a mental construct. I began with a central character (Katharina), of mixed German and British ancestry. My initial ideas focussed on Katharina being torn between loyalty to her British father and her German romantic interest (Ebi). I quickly decided how I wanted the story to end and built the plot from there.

Then I wrote a first draft from my memory of the story, then I shelved it because I got really busy in my day job.
Some time later (in fact years later) when I read that draft through I was disgusted at how badly written it was. Yet, I still really liked the characters and the themes of the book.

So that first draft effectively became my outline for an expanded (and hopefully better written) story. In the end I redrafted Shadows another three times before I was happy to share it with Beta-readers.

Fast forward to my WIP, Veiled in Storms. The germination of Storms began as I wrote what was to be a postscript for one of the secondary characters in Shadows. I quickly realised as I thought about it, that that postscript would form the kernel of another whole novel. Surprise, surprise, the postscript got cut from Shadows.

Unlike Veiled, I outlined Storms from the beginning in quite a detailed way. Perhaps because of this things proceeded much more quickly and I soon had half my first draft completed. Then of course the day job and life in general got in the way and I had a temporary hiatus on Storms.

Back in June I talked about going back to the WIP and reassessing it. In the end I decided that what I had written would become largely back story to the main action.
Realities of work, life and trying to finalise Shadows, have meant I have had almost zero time to spend on Storms. I have finally started reoutlining the plot. The story remains essentially the same but the focus has shifted from events to characters.

I hate outlining on paper as a general rule. I find it frustrating hand writing something, only to have to scratch it out and start again. Because of this I have usually developed outlines in rough on an Excel spreadsheet, with more detail in Word documents. A bit cumbersome, and hard to see the whole thing at once but it has worked for me.

For those who are interested I thought I would share a piece of software I have been trying out for my outlining. It is a program called yWriter. YWriter is designed by an Aussie novelist called Simon Haynes (he also happens to be a programmer). It is absolutely free from his website.

What I like about this software is it allows me to plan out the story as a series of scenes that I can shift around from chapter to chapter, or section to section, as I see fit.
It has database functions so you can search scenes or chapters by fields such as character, location, etc. I am so far finding it a useful tool for keeping track of characters and events as I shuffle them around to develop the new outline.

If I choose to I can then use the software as a word processer to basically write the story into the outline.
I imagine in the end I won’t use that feature, but that I will use it to finish forming my outline and then write the next draft in Word.

Now a couple of random photos:

An Australian Magpie.
These guys were named for their similar colouration to English Magpies. They have a beautiful warbling song. They also become terrors in spring, swooping down to drive people away from where they are nesting. I have shed blood more than once after a surprise magpie “bombing”. They were bombing me, I wasn’t illicitly blowing them up (as irritating as they can be).


Roadside hay and silo, Flowerdale Victoria.

The Writing Game (A Treat)

I have previously mentioned “A Life Twice Tasted” the blog of British Author Wendy Robertson. Wendy’s blog is one of my favourites, she posts thoughtful pieces about her writing, her life and dare I say, the occasional ramble.

Anyway, back in April Wendy ventured into a new field – radio broadcasting. Wendy is hosting a monthly program on Bishop FM, a community radio station not all that far from where she lives in County Durham in the UK.

The topic of Wendy’s program? As you might guess – books and writing.

Now, I live half way around the world from County Durham, so listening to the broadcast was of course impossible. That is where modern technology comes in, a podcast of the first program was posted within a few days of the episode going to air.

I listened to the first episode, ‘Starting Points in Writing’. It was lovely to hear Wendy’s voice and the material was very interesting. A month later and I waited impatiently for the second episode. Alas, Bishop FM is a small operation mainly staffed by volunteers and they ran into some technical problems – no podcast was forthcoming :-(

Now though, everything is rosy; three more episodes have recently been posted:

Episode 2 – Crime writing,
Episode 3 – Writing for Children, and
Episode 4 – Storytellers and writing groups

As you can see the topics are varied enough to interest writers (and readers) of many genres.
I have immensely enjoyed the episodes I have heard. I am particularly looking forward to an upcoming episode where Wendy will talk to another blogger friend of mine Kathleen Jones.

For those of you who are interested the site for the podcasts is: http://blogs.bishopfm.com/thewritinggame/

Check it out, I think you will enjoy it!


Now because I find it almost impossible to post without including a piccie or two:

Abandoned railway trestle bridge, Stony Creek Victoria.
A Kookaburra.
This guy has very ruffled feathers because it was really windy as I took this shot.
He/she may look quite familiar to non Aussies. Kookaburras are in fact the largest Kingfisher species in the world.
Rather than diving for fish, they perch on trees in the bush and swoop down on lizards and snakes. Some would argue that they do us a favour, but I have a soft spot for reptiles.

Why Superb “Blue” Wrens?

I have had a terrible time working out what to post about tonight.

First I thought I’d talk about my holiday. Which was fantastic and from which I returned with far too many piccies to post here.

Then I thought I’d talk about work and the trials and tribulations of working in an inner city homeless program. As well as the usual dramas that occur when working with extremely marginalised people, I am currently plagued by the end of quarter reporting that we have to complete.
But I don’t want people to think I’m just a whining Aussie so I probably won’t come back to this.

Then I thought I’d talk about my WIP and some problems I am having with working out how much to include about the rape of one of my female characters.
This problem was something I have run into before, but my solution has been to ignore it and write another section of the book. However, I can’t avoid it forever and a couple of recent posts on Michele Emrath’s blog Southern City Mysteries has brought the issue back to mind.
But while I do want to post about this problematic theme at some point, I don’t think tonight is the night.

Instead of sorting out what to post about, I did my usual weekend trick of going for a drive. So the afternoon has well and truly vanished and I am once again posting later than is comfortable (at least for someone who is as much of a morning person as I am).
And to add to my posting problems I have come home with another 100 piccies to sort through…

So rather than talking about any of the above I have elected to post some piccies of a cute little bird.

The other day I posted a pic of a pair of Superb Blue Fairy Wrens.
Except they weren’t very blue.

As I said, that piccie was taken about four weeks ago. Well this is what the males look like now (I snapped these while I was on holiday).
What do you think Superb?
And blue?The difference is he is now in his breeding plumage which he will wear until next summer.


So to end this rather odd post I am going to include two piccies I took on my holiday.

First the Uniting Church at Terang. This church was bathed in such stunning light when we drove past it on the way to Warrnambool I just had to stop and capture it.

Also a guessing game. I am afraid I don’t have any prize to offer other than the glory of guessing right.
Can any of you guess what this odd looking object is?
Two clues: my hand which is holding it gives the scale; and it is something we took away on holiday with us.

Please forgive the poor quality of the pic, its about what you get when you hold a camera in one hand and take a photo of something in the other hand (without looking through the viewfinder).

Writing Lost.: A Guest Post

Now while it is still Remembrance Day, and as a slight change from my usual fare, a Guest Post!

I am privileged to host the following guest post by Canadian blogger Rebecca Emrich of Living a Life Of Writing.
Rebecca Blogs profusely about blogging and writing in general.
Rebecca has also chosen to write with a theme of Remembrance for this post. By the way the piccies are my selection Rebecca deserves no blame for them. They are from Wikimedia Commons. Without further ado take it away Rebecca...

Writing Lost

The War to End All Wars? Not really the First World War ended the golden age of literature in my line of thinking. The result in the States was the 'Lost' generation of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. A similar thing happened in other countries, but I'm not going to write about them but of the writing lost.

Writing Lost You Say?

In one particular battle, budding writers took bullets in the head, were blinded, maimed and countless others lost, not physically but mentally. It is impossible to even begin to count that loss. A Poet, unable to write anymore, his body broken, or dead in the mud of countless fields in France, in Russia, in Germany. It is impossible to imagine the loss of a single writer in their youth, perhaps with countless stories that they would write.

I think of The Russian Army and a young prince, Oleg Romanov, who if not for blood poisoning and death would have become a more powerful writer than his father the great Russian writer Konstantin Romanov.

Oleg Romanov

Of Two young German Princes who knew what war was about before they saw it, and still died. Hundreds of others dead or dying.

A Generation Lost, a Generation of Writers Lost.

Do we forget them or do we praise them, by continuing our writing, and recall their sacrifice to the old cry of King and Country?

To all these writers lost: We Shall Not Forget.

The Canadian War Cemetery at Dieppe.

A Splashing Good Time

A quick post for now.

Rebecca at Living a Life of Writing has given me a “Splash Award”.
Thanks Rebecca it’s grouse!


The Splash Award is given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring blogs. When you receive this award, you must:
- Put the logo on your blog/post.
- Nominate & link up to 9 blogs which allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you.
- Let them know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog.
- Remember to link to the person from whom you received your Splash Award.

Up to nine blogs? This meme must be spreading at a rapid rate, although I suppose not everyone will nominate the full nine (Rebecca for example nominated two).
Anyway that’s by the by. Now for my nominations:

Heather’s at Gofita’s Pages. Heather writes a fun blog and has been supporting “Pirate Week” lately.

Jemima at The Reading Journey. Jemima has varied, thoughtful blog. Among other things she posts on places that were important in New England writers’ lives.

Tasha at Heidenkind's Hideaway . Tasha makes frequent, energetic posts on a wide range of topics.

Lisa at Lit and Life. Lisa is a frequent poster who mainly focuses on book reviews. Anyone who lives in the US and knows what the Geelong Cats are deserves a nomination.

Amanda at Life and Times of a New New Yorker. Amanda rambles about books and other adventures such as teaching herself to knit.

Kathleen Jones whose two blogs I love, A writer’s Life and What I am Reading. Kathleen is a poet, biographer and novelist and has the most beautiful turn of phrase.

Christy at The Self-Publishing Maven. Christy posts on three blogs; two of which are about writing and self publishing. (We won’t hold it against her that her third blog is about US tax accounting)

Wendy at A Life Twice Tasted. Wendy is a prolific author of novels. I find her blog endlessly fascinating; it is definitely one of my favourite places on the web.

Carrie at Cogito Ergo Scribit. Carrie is a prolific writer with innumerable blogs and other projects. Ask her about her creative use of Latin.

Oops! I seem to have cheated a bit, although I’ve nominated nine people I’ve talked about a few more blogs.
So much for a quick post!

Next: The light at the end of a tunnel.

A Formal Outing

A quick post again this afternoon.
I have just come home from work and I have to go out this evening. My other half has a formal opening of a new building at her workplace. As one of the executive team she has to be present at such events and it is expected she brings a partner.

That would be me.

It is a suit and tie affair which is ok, except I might wear a tie, let alone a suit a couple of times a year. My workplace has a neat casual dress-code, which usually means jeans and t-shirt level for most people. Even head office doesn’t usually go past a tie. Ah well, the things we do for those we love. I should look on it as practice for looking civilised.
Seriously though, I expect it will be a fun evening I have met many of Deb’s colleagues and they seem like a nice bunch.

It was my birthday on Friday and as partial consolation for edging closer to 50 I got a couple of gift vouchers for Borders and JB Hi-Fi.
With the Borders one I got a couple of books; no fiction, I was in a history mood apparently.
The first:

I have had my eye on Beevor’s D-Day since it came out. I loved his Stalingrad and Berlin. But D-Day has had mixed reviews so I have held off, at least until it wasn’t me paying for it. Maybe I’ll review it once I have a chance to get through it.

The second:
Troop leader by Bill Bellamy is of course looking at the same period. I haven’t read any reviews of it, but it grabbed my eye. Also as I said in a post a little while ago, I am researching bits and pieces for my second novel. This account isn’t directly related to that, but I find personal accounts like this can help me get into the mind space I need to write my characters.

I bought an odd mix of DVDs.



A graphic novel brought to the screen, a study of a famous interview and a twist on a classic romance.
Coupled with the books I bought, I guess it seems I must either be well rounded or suffer hopelessly eccentric tastes.

Until Next time (at least if I don't manage to accidentally hang myself with my tie.)

The Good, the Bad and the Very, Very, Hard

As you can see from the title of this post, I am going to talk about a few things, good and not so good.

I think I will talk about these items in reverse order to my title so I finish on an up-note. (Much better for my long term sanity I am sure).

In my work I deal with many people facing very many problems. Some significant, some not so bad, and some potentially life threatening. I am always amazed by the capacity many people have to cope with the most impossible situations, but the reality is that some people reach a point where they no longer have the strength to go on. At this point some contemplate death, and some take the ultimate step and commit suicide.

Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours with a young man who was very distressed by his circumstances; in fact he was so distressed he was talking about suicide. In my current role, and previously when working for charities that specialised in supporting people with mental illnesses, I have unfortunately faced similar circumstances all too often.

Now I need to stress here that if anyone reading this needs more information about suicide prevention a good start is doing a Google on “suicide prevention”. If you are really concerned about someone seek medical help for them, if you feel it is urgent dial your emergency services number (000 in Oz, 911 in The US and Canada, or 999 in the UK, other countries look here). All threats or talk of suicide MUST be taken seriously.

Having said the above, as a professional it is not so simple. Don’t get me wrong Australia has a quite good health system and unlike in the US it is largely free, especially for the poor. But there are never enough services to go around and hence charities like the one I work for often end up carrying a load they are poorly resourced for. So in a situation like the one I was faced with yesterday you have to make decisions on the run about how best to proceed.

In theory the best approach in Victoria is to phone a CAT Team (Crisis assessment and treatment teams). However in my experience CAT teams can take a long time to respond and often seem to want to push responsibility back onto the person who has called due to their own limited resources. Better results are usually achieved by calling an ambulance, but often you hear of people being turned away from ERs because they are either not taken seriously or they minimise their issues once they get there. Unfortunately, there is such a huge stigma to being seen as crazy that many people try to back out of receiving help at the last minute. Overstretched services sometimes fail to support people when this happens, occasionally with tragic results. The best results seem to happen if someone can go with people to support them while they are waiting to be assessed and even repeat what was disclosed.

Back to the young man in question, I was with him for a couple of hours as I and a volunteer phoned around trying to get him the support he needed. In the end we were able to get him linked up with the supports he needed at the time. Then as a manager my responsibility shifts to debriefing staff (in this case volunteer staff) and trying to assess the level of impact such stressful events have had on them. A key to avoiding burnout is to make sure staff get adequate support and just as importantly understand support is available if they need it.

Sometimes you can’t help, no matter how hard you try, sometimes there are tragedies. Usually though you manage to help someone along the road to the help they need. Oddly, this type of event is not only incredibly stressful, but on other levels very rewarding. I have found incredible satisfaction in simply knowing I have done my best to help another human being.
So that is the very, very hard bit dealt with.

My post has already gone on far too long, so I’ll just hint at the Bad and the good and leave them for next time.

The Bad – in my previous post I mentioned an editor reading my manuscript; she has jetted back to England before I could catch up with her.

The Good – she has forwarded some brilliant comments that I couldn’t be happier with.

Until next time.

Just for fun a photo of Green Cape Lighthouse

Of Humble Pie

We have developed a strange obsession with going out into the wide blue yonder what ever the weather. Today for example it is another cold damp day and blowing a gale. What do the household do? Curl up in front of the fire with a good book? Sit and watch the latest DVD? Do anything warm and cosy?
No, not a bit of it. Instead we head off for a picnic.

But the plot thickens and humble pie is called for.
At the insistence of our eldest, we again headed for Mount Donna Buang, in a quest for snow.
Now anyone who has been following my blog during its brief existence, will remember that just under two weeks ago, I wrote very disparagingly about the snow cover up on old Donna.

If a picture is worth a thousand words

As you can see same place but now definitely not the same story.
Admittedly only about six inches cover at the moment, but definitely snow.

My eldest is still girding her loins in preparation for her “wet-pracs”. She says she is feeling a bit more able to face the idea. But the poor thing is still very apprehensive about being physically ill come the day. What is keeping her going is the long term goal.

Given the title of this blog I had better say a little about my literary endeavours.
Basically they can be summed up as: word count - 0.
Too many early starts and late finishes just lately.
Writing and the day job don’t necessarily go together.
Truth be told I am probably spending too much time looking at other peoples blogs as well. But a boy has to have some fun from time to time.

Then again writing or researching are fun, but I find I need much more energy, more focus to work on the book. If I write tired, more often than not I just junk that material when I reread.
So speaking of tired, I ran breakfast at work this morning (we try to provide a service 365 days a year) which means a 5:30 am start. So without further ado goodnight and talk to you next time.