What I did instead of writing.

Wrote a few words for the novel this weekend but nothing of significance. ,

I’m a little burnt out after my mammoth push of the past few weeks so took the weekend to relax, drink and outline another children’s book (my first children’s book is currently being illustrated by a very talented friend of mine and hopefully we’ll get it published and makes squillions of pounds writing and drawing funny stories about witches and pirates and cowboys).

This new children’s book is about the pirate olympics so I had the joy of walking through one of Istanbul’s many gorgeous parks trying to think up silly pirate games. So far my favourites are Skull and Lacrosse Bones and ARRRRRR-chery. Fiona continues to have the rare joy of watching me try to be clever which usually involves pacing back and forth making lots and lots of puns and rhymes and alliterations until I settle on one. I have filled my first kid’s book with all manner of wordplay and on the page it hopefully comes across as fun and delightfulness but the writing of it is a constant waking nightmare of words that don’t rhyme and puns that refuse to be made.

I also took some time to make some notes concerning the book I will be writing upon the completion of my current project, which was a comedy on Friday and a taut drama about brothers on the opposite sides of a revolution by Sunday night. In a week it’ll be a musical.

I also managed to finish two short books which I can’t recommend highly enough.

1. A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck.

A short book (109 pages) that took me a long time to read simply because of the scale of the concepts within. I won’t give too much away but in the story a man is sent to Hell and his Hell, which he shares with a group of other people, is a vast library containing every book that could conceivably be written. His task is to find the book of his life story. A book that contains no spelling or grammar errors. The thing that made this book for me was the scope of it. The vastness of the library  and the amount of time he must spend there to find his book is incalculable. At stage a character says, ‘To find our book could take ten years, maybe twenty.’

During the prologue the narrator explains that he is entering his 16 billionth year of searching.

I urge you to read this book and just ignore when the vastness and the scope give you nosebleeds.

2. Do The Work by Steven Pressfield.

A book to help you defeat the resistance that plagues you when you set out on a mission to create something new or improve yourself. The book is written through the lens of writing a book but, according to the author, can be applied to any endeavor whether you are starting a book, creating a business, trying to lose weight or nursing a broken heart.

A super quick read that will help you slay that great dragon called Resistance.

 

Word Count (13.03.13)

Words Written Today: 

549

Overall Word Count: 

74,826

Favourite Lines I Wrote Today:

Wayne chuckled and said, ‘Now, Dean, I’m not here to do any singing, heck, if I did you’d lose half your audience in one night.’

Lines I Wish I Had Written: 

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you, and you’ll never learn.

From Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 

 

Word Count (12.03.13)

Words Written Today: 

260 (Wedding planning is kicking my ass this week)

Overall Word Count: 

74,327

Favourite Lines I Wrote Today:

‘I slept like a baby last night, I woke up this morning with a bottle in my mouth,’

Actually stolen from Dean Martin (and spoken by Deano in the book), but I’m putting it here anyway.

Lines I Wish I Had Written: 

Mr. Praline: It’s not pining, it’s passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late parrot! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now history! He’s off the twig! He’s kicked the bucket, he’s shuffled off the mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot!

From Monty Python’s Flying Circus by Monty Python

 

Word Count (11.03.13)

Words Written Today: 

447

Overall Word Count: 

74,016

Favourite Lines I Wrote Today:

‘Yep. One of the typing pool girls was in a state cos of King so I said to her “sweetheart, don’t worry about it, big ol’ Don-don’s here to protect you”’

‘Don-don? Really?’ Said Hal.

‘Really. What can I say? Broads like it.’

Lines I Wish I Had Written: 

Sir Walter Raleigh: You’d never dare. Why, ’round the Cape, the rain beats down so hard it makes your head bleed!
Edmund Blackadder: So, some sort of hat is probably in order.

From Blackadder by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton

 

Word Count (09.03.13) & (10.03.13)

So this weekend I wrote nothing. Not a single word.

For two reasons.

1. On Saturday I was really busy. I woke up, went to the gym, did my Turkish homework, went to my Turkish lesson, went out for dinner with some friends, went to an improv night, went to the improv night after party and then went home and fell asleep. So Saturday was a bust.

2. Sunday was different. For one I was hungover and two I didn’t really do much. My fiancee went into the old city of Istanbul to buy things for our wedding with one of her bridesmaids while I headed to Taksim to buy a comic book (HEART OF ICE by Alan Moore). This meant that I could be found at five to twelve sat outside a comic shop sipping a phenomenal coffee waiting for the shop to open (let no one doubt that I am living the dream). Once it opened I found the book I wanted wasn’t out yet but found something that I had been searching for for awhile. So as I was traipsing around Taksim and up and down the awesome Yeni Çarşı I was listened to my new favourite podcast: Writing Excuses.

On this podcast the three hosts were talking about killing your darlings and one of the hosts mentioned a book he had written where he had introduced a new character three quarters of the way in and that even though the character was the best in the story his editor told him to remove it as it came too late in the book for anyone to care.

Now with my book I am overcoming The Hump and possibly speeding towards the latter part of my book. However my two major plots, the love story and the alternate history divergent point are still a ways away in the distance. To put this into perspective I’m currently writing about April 4th 1968 and my divergent point doesn’t happen until June 5th 1968 and the book’s ending is scheduled for November 1968. Lets just say pacing is not my strong suit (also for first drafts I put in every single idea I have so there’s quite a bit of filler that will get mercilessly trimmed down in the rewrite.)

So listening to the podcast I realised that leaving my twists any longer would make for a boring book that gets interesting too close to the end. So I had a good, long think as I took a good, long walk (best time for thinking I find) and decided how I could move my two twists up in the book. I met Fiona and helped her carry her shopping and then made two cups of tea and laid out my new plans for her.

And also the fact that I might have to change the book’s ending. Now, I wanted certain characters to live but it meant extending the length of the book whereas Fi, ever my voice of reason, offered counterarguments and more tea until I created an ending I was much happier with. The other result of this is that now the book ends at the beginning of June 1968 so in eight weeks (book time) which I think I can get finished in six weeks (real time).

Again, we are in exciting times as endings draw near.

So even though I wrote nothing this weekend I did manage to make huge sweeping changes to the book, so there’s that.

Word Count (08.03.13)

Words Written Today: 

76 (awful)

Overall Word Count: 

73,618

Favourite Lines I Wrote Today:

‘What does Freud say about that?’

‘He’d probably say a lot if he met my math teacher,’ said Hal

(Wasn’t many lines to work from here)

Lines I Wish I Had Written: 

Sheriff Truman: Anything we should be working on?

Albert Rosenfield: Yeah. You might practice walking without dragging your knuckles on the floor. Heh heh heh.

Sheriff Truman: Albert! Let’s talk about knuckles. The last time I knocked you down, I felt bad about it, the next time’s gonna be a real pleasure.

Albert Rosenfield: You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchet-man in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I’ll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely: revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method… is love. I love you Sheriff Truman.

Dale Cooper: Albert’s path is a strange and difficult one.

From Twin Peaks by David Lynch and Mark Frost

 

The Hump

I am approaching the tipping point. The hump as they say. The mountain top.

I am currently sitting on 66,000 words of a novel (first draft) about 1968 and the Kennedy campaign of that year. My story (which frequent readers should have an idea of by now) is about a young journalist following the Kennedy bandwagon and having adventures along the way. The book has mutated in my hands a few times but has settled into a final form that I am now writing to.

Last night I was writing a scene where my characters are arguing about a lighter and someone knocks on the office door and that’s where I stopped. I stopped because I had done my share for the day and because I needed to help with dinner  but mainly because the man on the other side of the door is about to tell the main character that Martin Luther King has just been shot.

I’m a big fan of historical fiction because it makes me feel smart. I like to read about periods of history I know about so when I see that the character has woken up in a good mood on a certain date I think, sorry son that good mood ain’t gonna last because today’s Pearl Harbor or something.

Actually one that occurred last night while me and my fiancée were watching Mad Men. At one point someone looks at a wedding invite and the camera lingered on the card for ages before cutting and Fiona said, ‘What was that about?’ so we rewound it and read the date on the card: November 23rd 1963.

‘So?’ Said Fiona.

‘That’s the day after Kennedy gets shot,’ I said with the smug smile of someone who knows the inside track on something.

And Fiona said, ‘Ohhhhhhh, that’s gonna be amazing.’

And it increased our excitement for the show because now we know that any mention of the wedding is a countdown to Dealey Plaza and everything that comes after (Like the death of the American dream? Discuss).

I want my readers to read my book and when someone says that it’s April 4th I want them to be thinking, ‘Uh oh, some bad news is on the way.’ Because sometimes knowing what will happen heightens the excitement of the event.

Anyway as usual I lost my thread and digressed away from my point.

My point is that when I was peeling the spuds last night I was talking  to Fiona and saying that once King is dead then I can start time jumping more with a lot of more of ‘the next week passed in a blur’ until the next big event/double twist and then it’s basically a sprint to the finish line and THE END.

It’s exciting stuff and once again I want to thank everyone whose following the blog and liking the word counts.

It’s good to have a cheer team.

Friday Fictioneers: Wiesenthal’s List

In 1945, within weeks of being liberated from the camp, Simon Wiesenthal  began to make a list. He lay on a hospital bed in a military hospital in Austria. He weighed 41 kg. The wound on his foot wouldn’t heal. He had asked for paper and pencils and the harried nurse had handed him a photograph and a trio of coloured crayons. He listed guards, commandants, overheard names. Anyone he could think of who had helped create this great devouring of his people. When the list was finished he lay on his bed and healed and hated.

And made plans.

Some Friday Fictioneers for you with the prompt coming from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

If you enjoy the writing here head on over to TheIstanbulletin.com – The blog I co-write about living and working in Turkey (It’s mostly about eating though)

A bit of a change of pace for my Friday story this week. My fiancee is currently teaching Anne Frank to her 8^th graders and its caused her to have to do some research into the Holocaust. In England World War 2 is a big part of our  school curriculum so when I was at school studying history whole years were devoted to different parts of the war meaning that my final year in high school meant a year of studying the Holocaust so I’ve been one of her sources of information.

The thing with studying the Holocaust is that you would assume after a few months it would stop being shocking and would become something more academic to be studied and dissected from a distance.

Nope.

Every lesson was a new batch of horrible stories. Every bit of research led down a rabbit hole of villainy and depravity and humiliation.  Every time a new historical figure got introduced it was only a matter of time before they did something reprehensible. You also think that maybe all the facts and stories will vanish like all that arithmetic I learnt and then instantly forgot but no, it lingers and as soon as me and Fi (short for Fiona, not fiancee) started talking about it the floodgates opened and I was just a machine for telling just awful stories. 

A character that fascinated me was Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter. There was something about Wiesenthal and his fellow Nazi hunters that appealed to me. It was the idea that the war ends and these people go home to what’s left of their lives after the war and decide that, no, this will not stand. Every single villain must be made to account for what they did. And then they dedicate their life to finding these people and getting them on trial so that no one gets away with what they’ve done.

Yeah, I like that.

I read recently that Wiesenthal was in a camp when a rock fell on his foot meaning that his toe needed to be amputated. A few months later the Russians were advancing so the camp was evacuated and Wiesenthal walked the march using a broom handle as a walking stick. When they arrived at their destination Wiesenthal was placed in a ‘death block’ for the mortally ill were he survived on 200 calories a day until the Americans liberated the camp.

Simon Wiesenthal retired from Nazi hunting when he was 90 years old. He said ‘I have survived them all. If there were any left, they’d be too old and weak to stand trial today. My work is done’.  

Friday Fictioneers: Praisebook

God logged onto Praisebook. After looking at His news feed He updated His status: Hey guys, just made the Earth but forgot to add colour LOL.

He frowned at the black and white Earth stuck in His bin.

His laptop pinged and He saw that Odin had commented, ‘One world? How cute! #9WorldsForTheWin.’

God considered liking the comment just to show He was a good sport even though He was furious. The laptop pinged again. Hades had commented, ‘No colour!? Laaaaaaaaaaaaaame!!!!1!!’

God sighed, He would delete His Praisebook but then how would He know what was going in the world.

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Some Friday Fictioneers for you with the prompt coming from Rochelle Wisoff-Fields