A Christmas 75-worder #3

Christmas isn't always a happy time and, indeed, sometimes the pressure of the event, the expectation that it will be a happy one, can push some to breaking point. This story is an amalgamation of several true stories with a little bit of artistic license thrown in for good measure.

On Christmas morning Patricia watched her husband with something close to astonishment. He was being attentive to her and the children, he seemed happier, almost human, not the vile monster he had become over the last few years. “I know you said not to spend much, but I decided to go really big this year,” he said, handing her a gold envelope. She tore it open eagerly. Inside were divorce papers. “Merry Christmas,” he said quietly.

Of course, I hope you're all going to have an amazing Christmas!

Criticism

Criticism:  how to take it and what to do with it.

At last the book is finished.  There were times when you thought it never would be, but you’ve got there with all the strands drawn to a satisfactory conclusion.  You’ve read it through, corrected typos and inconsistencies.  You’re elated.  It isn’t at all bad.  However you’ve read the reviews on Amazon and know that even best-selling authors have the occasional damning one star.  What will other people think about your baby?

 The easiest way to find out is to ask your fellow authors, your supportive writing circle, whether round table or on-line.  It may be that some of them have already read bits of the story.  It’s time to put the whole thing up there for review.

 You are not prepared for the sheer volume of criticism and advice, a lot of it conflicting.  Is there too much action, or not enough?  Are the descriptive passages you liked so much really too long-winded and rambling?  Several people have commented on the dialogue.  They didn’t seem to find the Scottish dialect convincing.

 When the dust settles, you recover and read your story again.  Some of the criticism you can dismiss; your peers are telling you how they would have written it, but this is your story.  There are other points that are clearly valid.  It was worthwhile getting your fellow authors’ opinions, even if you are a bit confused.  You move your Scottish character down to the Midlands where he feels much more at home.  You change his name from Alistair to Joe and get rid of all that unconvincing Scottish dialect that was so difficult to write.

 Your story is much better, but you are still confused by the differing opinions you have received.  You’ve had a recent bonus, so decide to spend it on getting a professional critique.  The agency will make sure that the reader is attuned to your genre.  You wait several weeks until one the day, as you are about to leave for work, a large brown envelope pops through the letter box with the name and address written in your own handwriting.  You pick it up and put on the table and go to work, where you are unable to concentrate.  The image of that package looms too large.

 Later, after your evening meal and fortified by a second glass of wine, you slit open the envelope.  Well!  Who would have thought anyone could be so picky?  There’s pages and pages of stuff and all those notes in the margin.  It looks like they are suggesting a major re-write.  You read it through in anguish.  Could they find nothing good to say?  After a few days of depression, you read it again.  It’s not quite as bad as you thought at first.  In fact, it’s quite encouraging really.  Of course, there’s a lot to do, but it’s not impossible.

 The re-write takes ages and you suddenly realise you’ve spent longer editing than you did writing the original version.  That moment of elation when you thought you’d finished seems a very long time ago.  The story is quite different now, but better, definitely improved.  But is it good enough?  Your confidence has been shaken.

 The next step could be friends and work colleagues, people who may not know you write, but who share your taste in books.  People seem quite eager to read what you have written, perhaps they are a little curious and you wonder how much of yourself has been exposed in your writing.  This is much more stressful than sharing it with your writing circle.  These are real people, your potential readers should you ever get published.  Of course, they will say they like it.  They probably value your friendship or know they need to continue to work with you.  The feedback from these people will be different.  They won’t be criticising your writing style, your dialogue, character development, viewpoint, structure, all the stuff you got from your fellow writers and professional editors.  However, this exercise can tell you a lot.

 Once started, did they read it quickly, sitting up until midnight to finish it, or did they return it after some time explaining how the housework meant they simply hadn’t had time to finish reading it before?  Were they keen to discuss it with you and enthusiastic about the story, or were they a bit vague and didn’t seem to get your main character’s motivation?  This feedback may make you decide that you should put this one away and go on to the next thing, having learnt valuable lessons from the experience.  Positive feedback from these genuine readers could give you the confidence you need to send it out to agents and publishers or even to publish it yourself.

Pam

Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels

Christmas 75-worder #2

I used to have several musical ties and, while they did not suffer the same fate as the tie in the story, their music generating electronics did mysteriously disappear...

When Bob returned from his work Christmas party, Margaret was rolling out the icing for their Christmas cake. His novelty tie played “Silent Night” as he crossed the kitchen and tried to steal a piece. It played “Jingle Bells” as Margaret turned, kissing her husband and, with a glint in her eye, undid his tie laid it on the work surface. As “The Snowman” started Margaret turned and battered it into silence with the rolling pin.

In other news, I wrote my 500th 75-worder this morning, a bit of a milestone. It was also my 75th Christmas/Winter themed story - so the plan for 75-Squared at Christmas is now at least plausible. However, I'd like to get up to 100 to give myself a little bit of slack as some of my earliest stories will need a good polish before they take on a suitably sparkly lustre.

In the run up to Christmas

You can usually tell how busy the group is, with writing, life and sometimes both, by how many blogs the ten of us manage to write for the website...Hmm...We haven't blogged since October...OK, well, I've been meaning to do this for the last few years and have always forgotten. Even this year I'm five days behind, but here we go - my plan is to publish one Christmas themed 75-worder every day. Some will have been seen on the Paragraph Planet website before, most will not. Many will eventually appear in my (very) short story collection 75-Squared at Christmas if I ever managed to pull my finger out and collate them all. Some I probably haven't even written yet (I tend to get quite inspired this time of year). Some will even feature illustrations by the talented artist Helen Withington.As I'm five days behind, rather than this being an advent event as I'd intended, I'm going to go right through until December 31st instead.So here we are - the first of my Christmas themed 75-worders:

Father Christmas Inc (FCI), a Division of Santa Claus Enterprises would like to make the following announcement: After the 15th consecutive year-on-year drop in the number of children classified as “Nice”, FCI hereby declare that the following behaviours will no longer be classed as “Naughty”: Not tidying your room, not doing your homework, breaking something (under $50 in value) and not owning up. However, after some boardroom discussion, outright lying will still be classed as “Naughty”.

As ever, thank-you for your time and, if it's not too early, Merry Christmas!

Thinking about Martians

Today I went to see The Martian at the cinema with my eldest daughter, Milly. I have to say that I was impressed. There was always a chance that the film would be swamped by the vast Martian Landscape but it never happened. The focus was almost entirely on Matt Damon's character, stranded, but resourceful Astronaut, Mark Watney. When we weren't with Matt Damon's pieces to camera then we moved carefully between the different characters back on Earth in NASA and the JPL, who are working hard to get their man home. Often the scenes reminded me of Apollo 13, focused, determined panic...I'm telling you this not because I'm reviewing the film, because I'm not, but because I was impressed that the characters were the focus and the drivers behind the story. I was pleased to note that Andrew Weir, the author of the book on which this film is based is co-writer for the film. I think it shows. What of course is particularly interesting is that Weir originally self-published this novel (in 2011), it wasn't picked up by Crown Publishing until 2014 (when, I guess, the film option was in the offing). Weir has a background in physics and computer science (just like me!) so there's hope for me yet.I've not read, The Martian, but I will, it's on my wish list now.On the way home from the cinema I remembered that a few years ago I wrote a piece of Flash Fiction based on the idea of colonisation of Mars (I've written several, but the one shared below is the one I remembered writing that carried, for me, a small sliver of the feeling that I got from watching the film.)Thoughts and comments on the story are welcome and much appreciated.

The shutter winds noisily upwards, filling the room with a pale, red light. The Martian sun is already quite high in the sky, but it’s still early morning for the base as we grow accustomed to the length of a Martian Day. It used to be strange, thinking that I would die here, but I look to my side, where Rachel still sleeps, and I realise I will live here, and eventually, I will die.

As ever, I thank-you for your time.John 

Another picture inspired story

Good Night

Regular readers of my blog will be aware that I write a lot of short stories - specifically in the '75-word' Flash Fiction format (as found on the Paragraph Planet website). I often visit the website Deviant Art trawling it for inspiration when my own brain has failed to internally produce something worthy of conversion into prose.At the end of August I came across a wonderful picture entitled 'Good Night' by the artist Leffsha and twenty minutes later I'd written a story based upon it.What I particularly liked was the role reversal between the 'monster' (under the bed) and the little girl. The expressions on both the creature and the girl had so much emotional content, so vividly displayed, that it was easy to find the words to turn the image into a story.I asked Leffsha if I could use the image here, in this blog, after she'd read the story and she agreed.So here is the image and the short story it inspired.

It woke with a start, the presence of the creature above pressing down on the little space it occupied in the world. It crept further into the darkness, pushed back into the shadows as light poured in. It let out an involuntary squeak, its eyes flickering in fear as the weight shifted above it and then two shining, inquisitive brown orbs, framed by fearful and fiery red hair appeared. Then it saw the terrible smile...

You can find the original image here: Good NightAs ever, thank-you for your time.John

The Wonderful Thing About Writers

I have recently decided that writers, much like Tiggers (and three day weekends), are wonderful things. And while their tops might not be made of rubber, nor their bottoms of springs, they are generally a fun, fun, fun bunch.

Not only that, they are also enormously generous. And before you think, hang on a sec’, that’s rich coming from a writer, in my defence, the point I’m making is about writers as a collective, rather than specific individuals.

You see, I’ve just come back from the annual Festival of Writing at York University, and I couldn’t help but notice a couple of things.

Run by the Writers' Workshop, the Festival of Writing is in its 10th year, and is basically a lot of writers, agents, editors and book doctors getting together for a few days to talk about the art and business of writing. It’s a great event and has been hugely useful to me in my own writing journey.

This was my 5th time, and a very different trip it proved to be.

In the past, I’ve had specific goals; to meet with particular agents or editors, receive constructive comments about my writing, and ultimately hope for some spark of commercial interest. But this year wasn’t like that. I now have an agent, who I first met at a previous Festival of Writing, and my book is out on submission with editors, so I had no obvious goal other than to soak up the collective wisdom and spirit of the event, and generally have some fun.

As a result, I spent a lot of time thinking, and the more I thought, the more I realised what an unusual thing this writing lark is.

We are constantly being told, for example in our rejections from agents and editors, just how competitive the market is, and that, even if you’ve created the most wonderful prose, there’s every chance you won’t be picked up; the publishing industry is on the hunt for the next big thing, and will settle for nothing less.

We accept this, as a group, and press on, polishing our writing and learning our art. We hang out at writing events, learning what we can, schmoozing our socks off, and, along the way, we celebrate the victories of our newly found (and, as yet, unpublished) friends. I had lots of conversations like that this year, giving and receiving such warm praise and support, that I came away filled to the brim with the sense that writers, per the title, are truly wonderful.

Because if you think about it, reconciling these two things shouldn’t come naturally; namely, writing is hugely competitive, and these people you’re congratulating are part of the reason! Even if your writing is ‘good enough’, chances are you still won't get published. Because maybe the agent you'd hoped for has a full list. Or the editor your agent submits it to already has something similar on her list. Or perhaps you're not quite as amazing as a book they've seen recently and been hoping for something similar to come along.

Whatever the reason, someone has pipped you to the post, moved the goalpost, raised the bar...

You get the idea.

But the chances of it being the very same person you’ve just celebrated with are pretty slim. And I think that’s what sets us apart. We are participating in a brutally competitive industry, and yet we can be as genuinely supportive as we are simply because there are so many of us, and the likelihood of you being my nemesis is tiny, almost to the point of non-existence. And hence, we see ourselves as competing against, well, ourselves (and, of course, this amorphous thing we call the market).

And, at events like the Festival of Writing, or even just in the comfort of my regular writing group, it’s all quite wonderfully refreshing.

Will the continued rise of self-publishing change this, as we accept full responsibility for marketing our ‘products’, and become still more painfully aware of the noise of self-promotion filling up Twitter, for example? Who knows? But for now, I’m going to savour the warmth of my writing peers, basking in the joy of that weekend in York, and feel grateful that I am part of a wonderful community.

My Holiday of Calm Reflection

Oliver_Blog_Picture

My Holiday of Calm ReflectionI was on holiday with three families with children, all variously related to me in some way through either birth or marriage and so was tempted to write about my holiday in the lakes area of the French Massif Central.Its dramatic peaks and crags and swooping drops to great volumes of probably even deeper lakes below induce a kind of existential calm. The internet only worked after a lot of jiggery-pokery and phones not at all, effectively severing whatever umbilical connection we had to stressful Britain. I have little doubt that the countryside in deepest mid-France worked its magic on all of us.But freeing the brain to wander in this way can lead to dangerous territory. For instance, what was it about everyday life that breaks that vital connection with the natural world, the real world? Why do we allow our own personal striving and everyday concerns get in the way of really caring for one another? Because that is what we seem to be doing in order to get on in life. I have little doubt that there are very useful Darwinian survival principles underlying the imperative to narrow down the focus of care and concern to those in our immediate family. In times of stress and danger, we need to protect those closest to us. Ultimately, when the wolf comes to the door, we have to save ourselves.But that was then, and this is now. If we just follow our natural inclinations without allowing our intelligence to intervene, we eat high calorie foods and bloat out to unhealthy proportions. When we follow the news media, we select the tastiest themes and narratives that support our preconceptions about the world and this serves to deepen our prejudices, instead of challenging and perhaps overturning them. Why should we care more about others if it is going to cost us more money? Why should we buy into the notion of anthropogenic global warming if it’s going to cost us money and damage my lifestyle? Last night I spent some time with a group of friends with similar interests. We established that we all had come from different parts of the British Isles. We have a diversity of outlooks, and probably represent every colour on the political rainbow. We all had writing in common and this factor was the conduit for sympathy, for personal tragedy, and hilarious recollections concerning the disastrous character of many foreign toilets. And in between these things, we found time to deliver mutual support and advice on personal writing issues. The big difference was that we all knew one another, understood each other’s problems and wanted to help. But this is not where we as a society are going, so it seems. These little caches of human concern and compassion are counter-cultural and develop in the face of exhortations from larger society for more production and less waste. More exploitation and damn the cost. More selfish accrual of wealth and devil take the hindmost.This is not the kind of society I want to live in, but I very much do want to be a part of the kind of society that cares for its members in the way that WordWatchers looks after the constituent members of the group.There is no reason why we as a society shouldn’t face up to the simple fact that too much greed and selfishness serves us all badly. It’s just that we’re all too busy, or too lazy, or too greedy to make these choices, and we expect politicians to do it for us. Oliver. 

Things are getting tense...

Dorset Ugly - by Emma Mauger

A few weeks ago I visited my friends Eddie and Emma down on their farm in Dorset. We've been friends for close to twenty years, but, due to circumstances we've not managed to actually meet up for several years!In the time since I lasted visited with my family, both Eddie and Emma have become self-employed, with Emma now responsible for the creation of Dorset Uglies.One such ugly caught my eye:This particular image conjured up the idea for a 75-word story, which I'm pleased to say I drafted in just a few short minutes and, while I was quite pleased with it, I felt there was something not quite right and shared it with the rest of WordWatchers via email. There's usually somebody else from the group online and this time was no exception.The original story runs thus:

It lurked in the darkness of the lake, eating only what the others found unpalatable. Occasionally it had slipped from the weeds, taken a bite of a tasty morsel and found itself hauled, gasping into the thin stuff where it could not breathe. It saw the look on the faces of the pink things. Sensed their horror as they quickly removed their hook from its mouth and allowed it to slither back into the abyss. 

WordWatchers quickly confirmed my suspicions - that the word 'occasionally' didn't really work and it was suggested that I try the story in the present tense. Now, I do sometimes change tense in my 75-word stories simply to free up a few words to squeeze a story into the 75-word limit, but to change the tense of a story that was already exactly words...? Well, that was crazy talk.However, I gave it a go and to my delight, a much better story (in my opinion) emerged, not least down to the tense change, although, changing the sentence that started with 'occasionally' did the story no harm at all.

It lurks in the darkness of the lake, eating only what the others find unpalatable. Driven by hunger it slips from the weeds, takes a bite of a tasty morsel and finds itself hauled, gasping, into the thin stuff where it cannot breathe. It sees the look on the faces of the pink things, senses their horror as they quickly remove their hook from its mouth and allow it to slither back into the abyss. 

So, much more immediacy in the present tense I think.I am however curious to have your opinion too. Please feel free to comment below.As ever, thanks for your time.

Day 259

I joined the DeviantArt website eighteen-months ago, mainly lurking, looking for images that would fire my imagination and set me up to write another 75-word short story.To that end it had worked remarkably well, but sometimes a story spills over, refuses to stop, a bit like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice in the Disney classic Fantasia, and definitely doesn't fit inside 75-words.On those occasions I usually contact the creator of the inspiration, and ask them if I can write a story based on their work. I offer them the story in return for permission to use the image in my blog. They usually say yes, not always, but usually. It's a good community on DeviantArt.So, one such Deviant is TAGFoto who gave me permission to use a photograph he called "The Lottery" which I used to create a story called 'Day 259'.So I present to you the story, and the image which inspired it:

Day 259

Each day she slowly climbed the stairs. She knew every creak and squeak now. The weight of the guilt she carried pushed down through her tired legs and made each wooden step squeal in protest as it was forced to share her burden for a moment.She paused, eyes shut, breath held, just before she climbed the last flight to the upper landing, to the single door that waited for her. She trembled with fear, but she must press on, lest they come from her.In days past the door had been black, the digits scratched into the surface by broken and bloodied fingernails. On another day it had been an old fashioned farm door, the digits, slimy and stinking, the entrails of a pig, nailed crudely into shape, oozing faeces, staining the surface.She pushed on, eyes opening only when she knew there were no more steps. An office door. Half wood, half glass. It reminded her of those corny detective shows she had seen on TV as a child. She tried to smile, hold on to that happy thought, but the smile was gone in an instant as the memory of why this door was really here crashed in. She shuddered.The number 259 had been painted onto the whitened glass. It could have been just been normal paint but she knew it wasn’t. No paint has ever truly captured the tone of dried human blood, nor its smell. She placed her hand on the handle and began to turn. It gave a click and the door swung easily inwards. She stepped into the blackness and with a whimper waited for day 259 of her eternity in Hell to begin.

As ever, thank you for your time.John

A world off my mind

I sit in a hotel room smiling. I'm smiling because the first draft of my novel, Memories of Arma, is complete. I first embarked on this journey 2 years ago as a method of coping with long periods of time away from home due to work.I look back on the past 2 years of writing and remember fondly the early months, where I typed away without a care in the world. Discovering that my story has a style, establishing the world inside the story and developing characters are things I remember happily. Crying while I scripted the death of characters was a strange experience and trying to fight myself out of writers block was challenging to say the least. I'm relieved to be past the difficult second half of the novel, where I had to force myself to push on with many revisions made and hours lost plotting out the finale.I remember planning to wrap up the first draft in December 2013. This never happened, but it does make me wonder what the ending would have been like if I had. The finale was coloured so much by recent travels and thoughts that it would have been a very different story.But what about the future? What will the final draft be like? How many sub-plots will be removed and what additions will be made? I know my story needs more attention, but it is interesting to wonder how people will react when they read it. Does it make any sense? Will people like the ending?I can almost see my story like some kind of topographic chart or heart monitor diagram. I can finally see all the key scenes and places. All the highs and all the lows. It is pleasing to have this resolution and finally have an empty mind.I desperately want to leap back into the story and shift chapters around and give it a punchy kick-off, but I think it is best that I get some distance from it for a while. Hopefully then I will have a better perspective over it.Right now I'm looking forward to working on the second draft. The idea of making all these images and crazy thoughts more robust and structured sounds really exciting, but I am certain it will be a difficult process. If it will allow me to do my characters a better service (and if people actually enjoying reading it) then it will all be worth it.Tom

Editing my novel

Way back in 1994 I graduated from Sunderland University with a Joint Honours Degree in Computer Science and Physics.

1994...

A world before Google, before the iPhone, before the 'XBox Generation'.

In those days, I played a lot of Roleplaying Games (RPGs) on my C64 and Amiga A500 but the idea of Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) was a long way off, so I played 'Me v The Computer' and dreamed of an Internet where I could play in a world were the other characters' behaviours weren't just created by clever algorithms from a programmer but were other human players. (I'd have to wait 10 years for Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to become the MMOG 'World of Warcraft')

In those Halcyon days post-uni, single with plenty of time outside of my new job with the MOD, going to Science Fiction and Gaming conventions with my friends I had an idea for a game. An online, massively multiplayer online game. I started to make notes, sketch out my concepts, plan the structure...

It turned out that I wasn't a good enough programmer to do what I wanted to do, and, as my work with the MOD picked up I had less opportunity to try and become one. So I put my ideas away, knowing (hoping?) that one day I'd get chance to revisit them.

Many years later I found a couple of old disks, they were PC disks but they contained files I'd rescued from my old Amiga. Quite a few of the files were unreadable, their formats long since unsupported, but many of the documents I had saved were in Rich Text Format and here I found many snippets for the idea of that game I had many years earlier.

So, in 2008, knowing my programming days were long behind me (like any language, if you don't practice, you forget, and I was out of practice) I decided to turn my game idea into the backbone of a novel and save it from obscurity.

So, while at a Conference in Edinburgh in 2008 I started Endless Possibilities. The apartment I was staying at had no TV, so over five nights, I wrote 15,000 words. I had a lot of ideas and I'd have written more if I didn't need to get some sleep while I was away.

I quietly slipped those first 15,000 words to my fellow WordWatchers member, Katherine Webb (who was soon destined for incredible success) whose opinion I greatly respected (and still do). She liked what I had written, but at the same time threw my a curve ball. "I hope we're going to see more of Steely," she said.

At the time, Steely was a throwaway character, a plot mover and so I was puzzled by Katherine's query. So I re-read the start of Endless Possibilities and I'm glad that I could see what Katherine could see, that Steely was no throwaway character.

I wrote intermittently over the next few years reaching 95,000 words in 2011 when I ground to a halt. I knew how the novel ended but I didn't know how to get from where I was, to where I needed to be.

In March 2012, I bought a little Asus netbook as a belated 40th birthday present having decided I would write the end of the novel and then work out how to join the two bits together. I started getting up regularly at 5am, writing until 6am, which is when my alarm would have normally gone off and I'd begin my day properly. During a 2 month purple patch I'd written 45,000 words and unexpectedly finished the novel (or more precisely, I'd reached a natural conclusion to the overall story).

It has taken me a long time (almost three years) to get to the stage I'm at now. At WordWatchers recent visit to Symondsbury, I barely slept, editing Endless Possibilities at a somewhat manic rate, cutting the 140,000 words of the two separate sections down to 129,000. Since I got back, I have written the section that joined the two parts together, this turned out to be 8,000 words in length, bringing the novel back up to 137,000 words.

Now I'm going back through the novel again, beginning to end, fixing the mistakes (today I discovered I had introduced an eight day week for example), creating a consistent style (I've changed a lot as a writer since 2008) and putting my skill as a 75-word story creator to good use to tighten the whole thing up.

As of this morning, Endless Possibilities stands at 129,400 words and I'm very close to the end of this edit. Soon, Endless Possibilities will actually be finished and by finished I actually mean 'Ready enough for WordWatchers to read' - which of course means it's not actually finished at all!

For the first time in a long time I think there's a chance that you might actually get to read this!

Thank you for your time.

John

PS - Other blogs that capture facets of this semi-tragedy can be found (in chronological order) here: http://www.wordwatchers.net/tag-youre-an-author-and-youre-it/http://www.wordwatchers.net/a-long-time-ago/http://www.wordwatchers.net/a-procrastination-of-writers-part-2/

PPS Thank-you to those on Twitter (you know who you are), who have been Favouriting, Retweeting and commenting on my recent run of #amwriting tweets as I try to bring this crazy ride to a halt - you're the reason that I have written this blog.

The Circle Sea fills with tears of sorrow

Sir Terry Pratchett is with us no more. I'm not sure how to convey how utterly wretched this makes me feel. It seems so unbelievable cruel and unjust that such a witty, thoughtful, insightful and incredibly amazing human soul is no longer with us.I wrote in a tweet earlier, shortly after I heard the news: "When I started writing I wanted to be the next Pratchett then I realised that to be half as good as TP I'd have to be 100x better than I was" - and this is absolutely true. When I read Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic they were like no books I'd ever read before. They were incredibly funny, embarrassingly funny sometimes - it turns out that you cannot sneakily read a Terry Pratchett book when you're supposed to be taking notes in a lecture...But, as brilliant as those two books are they do Sir Terry a disservice, for they have none of the subtle, character-study, complex plotting and wickedly observed story telling that developed rapidly in his later books. Reaper Man remains one of my all time favourite books, it is such a stunningly beautiful book, Death in all His glory. I hope he treated Sir Terry well when he visited today.I was lucky enough to meet Sir Terry, twice, at book signings. Most people who meet Terry Pratchett met him at book signings. The first time myself and friends offered to buy him a Banana Daiquiri  - he agreed to join us if we could find a pub that would sell it - we failed, although we did try. I really wish I could lay claim to have bought Terry Pratchett a Banana Daiquiri, but I can't.I thought he faced his Embuggerance with amazing style and I hope the legacy he started with increased research into Alzheimer's Research eventually bares fruit and his determination to bring the elephant (four of them stood on the back of a giant turtle indeed) in the room of Assisted Suicide to a sensible debate rather than an embarrassed cough followed by shuffled feet and looking at the floor, should not be ignored. His documentary about the subject is one of the most upsetting things I have ever made myself watch, but I'm glad I did.So, finally, I offer you this - It's a 12K word Discworld Novelette I wrote back in 1998, it's set just after Guards! Guards! A few people (all Terry Pratchett fans of course) have read it over the years - they've all told me they enjoyed it. I hope you do too. Discworld_They_came_from_somewhere_else

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...”― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man Until next time,

John (Picture by Sandara http://sandara.deviantart.com/art/Shaking-hands-with-Death-519841642)

Farewell Leonard Nimoy

In the 1970s our family, wood effect colour TV only had 3 channels (although it had 6 buttons... (just in case?)) to watch. In those days, children were the remote control."Turn over to ITV son, nearly time for Corrie" my mum would say.<Clunk>In the 1970s I don't remember watching (and enjoying) many TV programmes with my parents, but there was one - Star Trek. I used to lie next to my dad on the living room floor (my dad had a thing about lying on the floor to watch TV) once a week and I was captivated.Space ships, fights, aliens, strange new worlds... Kirk got the girl, McCoy told us he wasn't a plumber, Scotty would somehow get the Enterprise through her latest disaster even though she cannae tak any more and Spock would find find things 'Fascinating'.In those days I didn't know what physics was, but I knew I wanted to be like Spock, to study stuff and work out how it worked. That seemed like the best of things to do, to be.Turned out that I wasn't the cleverest kid, pretty bright, but no genius. However, I loved to learn, loved to know how stuff worked (many a toy suffered a carefully studied dismantling).In 1983 my parents bought me a computer, a Commodore 64. I began to teach myself how to program, I found amazing worlds in games such as Elite (which introduced me to the Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction author Robert Holdstock as a bonus). In Elite I got to boldly go where no-one had gone before (at least, in my own mind). I had friends, but not many, I never really tried to fit in. My parents will testify that I spent much of my time alone in my bedroom on my computer, or around the house of those close friends' on their computers.At school I discovered Physics and Computer Studies and, having got my GCSEs went on to study Physics at A-level. I didn't do particularly well, but I scraped enough grades together to get me to University and I continued with my studies, Physics and Computer Science. Once again, I did enough, loved the learning but struggled to reproduce it in my exams.Star Trek: The Next Generation was on the TV, it was good, but that concentrated, logical science role was watered down, distributed amongst the cast. There wasn't anybody quite like Spock, except for Spock of course, who made a guest appearance in a few episodes.After graduation I began working for the MOD, who put my multi-discipline degree to good use. I was finally a proper scientist and remained so for 13 years. I continued to study, doing a Masters part-time and while I'm no longer a scientist (except in my heart and outlook on the world), having moved into academia, I continue to find things 'fascinating'.On Tuesday this week my youngest daughter was ill and off school and she cuddled up next to me on the sofa. When she turned the TV on, it happened to be on CBS action and they were showing digitally remastered episodes of Star Trek, The Original Series. This particular episode was This Side of Paradise. An episode (made in 1969) where the crew, including Spock, are infected with spores that make them happy, content, chilled out and emotional. It was an episode I remember watching with my dad back in the 1970s and here I was, with my daughter, at the same age, watching the same episode thirty-five years later. The generational baton had been passed. I was incredibly happy. So, when I heard that Leonard Nimoy had died yesterday the news stopped me in my tracks, because, having watched that classic Trek episode with my 7yo had reset my time clock. Spock and therefore Leonard Nimoy was in his 30s again. I had forgotten he was 83 and in recent poor health. The last time I had seen him he was hanging upside from a tree branch, laughing and smiling...On social media I have met like-minded people and so my News and Twitter feeds are full of unbelievably touching tributes to Leonard Nimoy. He wasn't just my inspiration, he was the inspiration to hundreds, if not thousands of scientists and engineers and we are united in a strange sense of loss.Gamers playing Star Trek Online met on Vulcan, their avatars stood in spontaneous and silent tribute.Above us in the International Space Station, Astronaut Terry Virts paid the most simple and beautiful of tributes.No doubt many more of my childhood inspirations will slip away in the years to come, they (and I) are of that kind of age, but there is still something very sad about losing 'my' Spock.He lived long and he prospered.Thank-you.John

A Procrastination of writers, Part 2

In January 2014 WordWatchers spent an amazing weekend at Symondsbury Manor.I captured my thoughts on that wonderful event in this blog: A Procrastination of WritersWe had such an amazing time that we talked about doing it again on several occasions and then it finally happened and we returned for the final weekend of January 2015.The line-up was slightly different this time round: alumna Katherine Webb tweeted her frustration at not being able to attend this time, Chris McCormack and Danielle Auld had left earlier in the year but our newest members Oliver Randle and Tom Haynes came this time, thrown in at the deep-end in many ways.The biggest void in our group was that poor Mel, our organiser, was missing, hurt in a car accident earlier in the week and in too much pain to attend. She was very much missed.*It was strange to be back and wonderful at the same time. The building's quirkiness quickly enveloped us in its familiar and comfortable magic. Very quickly, any fears that Symondsbury wouldn't be as special as it was the first time, that we were looking back through rose-tinted spectacles, were dismissed. Symondsbury Manor is a magical place for a procrastination of writers.Julian took up his place in the same chair that he had occupied the year before and, other than a few games of table tennis and to play the (still out of tune) piano he barely moved for the entire weekend...I took my place at one end of the main table in the communal area and, basically, didn't moved. Having promised WordWatchers that 2015 was the year I would bite the bullet and return to my novel, Endless Possibilities.The weekend at Symondsbury seemed like a perfect opportunity to start to keep that promise.It turns out editing is rather addictive once you get into it and I rarely went to bed before 1am.Since we got back from Symondsbury I have continued to edit my novel. I've been getting up at 5am and editing until 6am. It was this schedule and methodology by which I wrote the last 45,000 of this same novel in just two months (compared to taking 2+ years to write the first 95,000).So, when I arrived at Symondsbury my novel had 140,000 words, when I left after the weekend it was down to 130,000 words and now, after four mornings of getting up at 5am it's down to just under 127,000. It's getting harder, the initial hack and slash of the weekend is down to some pruning, but it's taking shape. Years of practising the art of the 75-worder is paying dividends.I already know that when I get to the end of this, I will do it again. I have already identified areas that I suspect will need pruning once I have the novel shaped the way I want it. This time though, I'm looking forward to it...Until next time.