The War On Wonder

Damn, writing a book is hard work.

I knew that my first draft productivity was great, and that I’d need a heavy-duty highlighter in subsequent drafts to raise the quality of my writing. That was fine. What I hadn’t counted on was the sheer volume of inconsistencies, verbal ticks and bad habits I’d accumulated over the years.

No first draft will ever be perfect; I accept that without reservation. But I’d not realised that even with a keen eye and oodles of time, the problems survived from draft to draft, ducking under my radar.

Take, for example, wonder. Do you wonder what you’re having for dinner tonight? Do you wonder if there’s going to be heavy traffic on the road visiting the folks back home this weekend? Yes. But do you actually think the words: I wonder if I’ll make it through this day today? Or are you more likely to think: damn, it’s gonna be a long day.

My main character does a lot of wondering. In first draft, he wonders about things in 23 out of 39 chapters. That’s a lot of wonder. Even in second draft (up to chapter 22 out of 39 so far) he wonders too much.

Luckily, I’ve noticed this little writing tick of mine before I get close to sending the book out. Otherwise…ouch.

So what’s the best course of action? My first instinct is to raze every single mention of the word from the book. This is relatively easy to do. It also makes the narrative flow more smoothly as a result. I feel good. My spirits soar. I may leave one wonder intact, a sole survivor. He can tell the others in subsequent books to watch out – they really shouldn’t hang around here.

But still a nagging thought surfaces: just how many other repetitions and awkward turns of phrase have I missed? How many more lurk within the text, waiting to trip me up? It’s a scary thought.

Thankfully, there’s still time to catch them and pull them out of the narrative. I am scouring my stash of accumulated bookmarks, searching for advice and pet hates. A good example is Miss Snark. No longer updated, she’s thankfully left her full archive of correspondence online for me to trawl through. I recommend a look if you’re into that sort of thing. She’s certainly given me a lot to think about.

Right, back to the war against wonder.

Matt

Wow. That's just... no.

Neil Armstrong on The Sky at Night

No time to write recently, hence the lack of updates. However, I thought this was worth sharing:

Another video

This one's great.

NASA pic of the day

Stunning image today... Click for a bigger version.

Guillermo del Toro

Genius:

"If you get bored with nothing to do, you are not a writer."

Loads of great quotes in the above article. Check it out.

In the absence of anything resembling news...

...Have a photo.

The Enemy

Those of you that know me (and it’s probably about 99% of the visitors I’m getting at the moment – hello there!) will have heard of my enemy. I’ve talked about them before numerous times – my war with them, their invasion of my space, my killing a few, capturing others…

Yes, I’m talking about squirrels.

My wife and I moved into our sunny maisonette in south-east London a few years ago, and a few months later, grey squirrels moved in as well. They climbed up the ivy on the side of the house, slipped in through the air vents under the guttering, and camped out in the gap between the floorboards above our bedroom, beneath the second bedroom in the attic.

They tended to get in after a hard day’s foraging at around ten or eleven at night, and get up (and so get us up) at about five the next morning. They scampered, they galumphed, and they chewed through the spotlight wiring so that half of the lights in our bedroom stopped working.

It drove us to distraction. Grey squirrels are different from other vermin (and yes, they’re officially vermin – more on that later) in that they cause a lot of wanton destruction. You can live with mice – just – and rats are unpleasant but at least you know they’re not going to gnaw out the joists in your attic and have the roof come down on top of you.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t get at the place that was affording them entry. We’ve got the first floor of the building and our house butts straight up against the neighbours garden, leaving no access . I tried going around there once to ask nicely if I could get into their garden to hack away at the ivy in the (probably deluded) thought that it would die and thus the squirrels would cease to trouble us, but after a mumbled conversation with a person with a strong accent through a letterbox I came away disappointed.

So I took the battle elsewhere. For a while I was humane. Then I was ruthless. My good friend Colin had several suggestions with what to do with them once I’d captured them including drowning, freezing, gassing them with exhaust fumes, and freezing them with liquid nitrogen. I took him up on none of these.

Instead, the ones I captured I chose to release several miles away. Officially this is a no-no. It’s illegal to release vermin once you’ve captured them. If you’re seen by police, you can get arrested.

I took the chance.

To be honest, after killing one and disposing of the body, I was so wracked with guilt I decided I couldn’t do it again. If I got caught, so be it.

So why am I writing about squirrels on this blog?

I came home today and heard a funny noise in the kitchen. The boiler’s been on its last legs for a while now, so I initially thought it was that.

Then I looked down.

A small furry face peered back at me from underneath the dishwasher.

It’s a little bit of an understatement to say that I flipped out. The squirrel vanished beneath the cupboards. I cast around me, trying to work out what the hell I was going to do: the chances of me catching the little bugger were slim to none, plus it’d hidden at the far back corner under the cupboards, far out of reach. To top it all off, my wife has been preparing a wedding cake for a good friend, and it was IN THE KITCHEN.

…sorry. My caps lock went on.

I blocked the exits, all apart from the back door that opened onto the rear stairs down into the garden. I got the trap but that was pointless: it was an inch too big to get under the cupboards. The only thing I could do was to remove the last kick board where it cowered and scare it into heading for the back door.

I spent a fruitless twenty minutes trying to remove the kick board. When I finally lost my temper and got the board loose, the creature shot out the other side.

There was a snap. I looked over.

One small, very scared squirrel, right in the middle of the trap.

It turns out there's an air vent in the chimney. It must've crawled down the chimney and into the kitchen that way, probably not long before I got home. I've since covered the vent to prevent any further unwanted guests, and will get a proper grille over it in due course.

More on writing next time. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my victory, small as it may be.

The Quantum Of Solace

I’ve just watched “The Quantum Of Solace”.

…What was all that about, eh?

I enjoyed Casino Royale immensely, but this sequel seems to be a mis-fire on many levels. There were little touches I enjoyed – the sequence during the opera where Bond listened in to the secret meeting; the montage detailing his subsequent escape; the quiet “thank you” from the Canadian operative near the end – but these were brief flashes of brilliance in a muddled mess.

I think there’s a rule developing: if your character swings on a rope or a chain during a fight sequence, chances are the film’s not going to be great. It’s true here, it’s true of the climax of Stardust (which has more than a few moments of brilliance itself) and it was true of the god-awful Van Helsing, where pretty much everyone swung on chains at some point. I think it was part of the casting call.

Special effects have developed to the point where you can almost believe it’s all happening in front of you, but there’s always a slight disconnect, a slight feeling of “pop”, usually a sign that the character is standing in front of a green screen. I can usually tell, sadly.

Anyway, all of this is an excuse to post this: