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Personal Blog - A Writer's Life - by Australis

Last Stop

January 16th 2007 11:03

This is where I get off.

I wanted to spend more time building this and the Scriptwriting Blog up into something interesting and useful, but with so much time being consumed in my real world, and struggling to get rid of writer’s block (and it is slowly going), and so many projects to work on, something had to give.

So I’ve decided to lay this to rest and get my life back on track.

It’s odd. From the very first day, 2007 felt like turning a corner towards something better and more productive, and I’m determined to live up to that and make it happen. And to live up to that, I have to devote my meagre resources to whatever it is I need to reach the potential I’ve always known I had.

Ahead await novels, a bunch of short stories, and a lot of scripts, as well as a couple of memorial cds some guys and I are going to produce of one of our number, a pretty damn fine songwriter, felled late last year by cancer (and hey kids, don’t smoke. Seriously). Oh, and my own music, hopefully available on MySpace later in the year. It’s gonna be tough. And it’s gonna be exhilarating.

Will it happen the way I want it to? Who knows? All I can do is try.

Thanks for dropping by. I’ve hope you’ve taken something away from my ramblings, and somewhere down the track our paths might cross in the real world.

Until then, take care.

Australis

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Favourite Authors - an occasional series

December 17th 2006 11:51

In this occasional series, I thought I’d tell you about another reading pleasure, Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series.

Running now for more than twenty years, the series is set on a flat world riding through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Because what’s really important about the series are the characters.

The great delight in the series is that, no matter how outlandish the story might seem, the depth of the characters keep you enthralled. You may think that fantasy stories are lame and for geeks, but you are doing yourself a great disservice here. The other great thing of the series is that it has gotten better and deeper as it’s gone on. Early on, it was very funny. These days, it’s still funny, but the characters have taken on a richness and depth rarely seen in contemporary novels (hence the title of a recent UK publication, ‘Terry Pratchett – Guilty of Literature’).

There are series within the series: The Death series, The Guards, Rincewind, and the Witches are the main ones, and over the last few years a few new ones have started, one featuring young witch Tiffany Aching, the other former con man now supreme government administrator Moist van Lipwig.

If you start talking about the characters… well, you’d never stop. The main city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork, has as a ruler the Patrician, Lord Havelock Vertinari; he makes Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ look like an apprentice shoeboy. The Chief of the City Guard, Sir Samuel Vimes, rose from street kid to become one of the most powerful and richest men in the city, a kind of British Clint Eastwood. Rincewind, a wizard so bad that if he dies the actual magic quotient per person will actually go up, yet has some strange powers all his own, like being able to flee at the slightest hint of danger (my favourite line about him is, that if a warrior can be an avatar of the Hero With A Thousand Faces, then Rincewind is an avatar of The Coward With A Thousand Backs). And Death – tall, very thin, black robe, scythe. TALKS IN CAPITALS. But he isn’t a killer. He’s just the Final Step, the Reaper, the Harvester of Years, the Ultimate Reality, And he has an abiding curiosity about humanity. So much so that he adopted an orphan girl, and even had an apprentice ‘to take over the business’ at the right time. One of the first, and funniest, passages I ever read was the opening section of ‘Mort’, as Death recruits young Mortimer as the potential Reaper (“They call me Mort, sir”. WHAT A COINCIDENCE, Death replies).

I once read an introduction to the Discworld that went something like this:
“You can’t talk about the Discworld to people who haven’t read it, because you’ll start raving about how it goes though space on a giant turtle, and Death rides a white horse called Binky, and there’s a dog called Gaspode that can talk, and the University has a computer that runs magic, and has a real spell checker… and soon you realise the person you’re talking to thinks you’re mad, and the only thing that can be done is to kill them and bury them behind the barn…”

And it’s like that, it gets into your system, and best of all, your imagination. Really, give it a try. You can read from the first one and in sequence (the later editions have the correct sequence), or if you want to jump into some of the stronger stories, you can try any of the first novels of the series in the series: ‘Mort’, ‘Wyrd Sisters’, ‘Guards! Guards!’ and ‘The Colour of Magic’. There are a couple of standalone novels too: ‘Pyramids’ (a take on ancient Egypt) and ‘Small Gods’ (not so much a poke at religion and spirituality itself as the organisation of religion).

There are much much worse places to visit than the Disc. You should go there. Now.

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Tough Times, Moving Forward

November 26th 2006 03:03

It seems to me that I write here more about the difficulty in writing than other writers in their ‘writer’s life’ stuff. Maybe because I don’t have a big income. Maybe because I don’t have a family that believe in what I’m trying to do. Maybe because an old back injury is making it hard to sit still. Maybe because I figured out I have a mild depression hanging over me: when there’s no one around my default states are sad or angry.

But the thing is that there’s an overriding compulsion, to create a story that I can share with people. The easy thing would be to give up. The hard thing is to keep going. But there’s no question which I will do.

So that’s today’s advice: if it’s not driving you, if you don’t have that monkey on your back… don’t do it. Really. It’s just stuff, you can express yourself other ways. But if you must tell stories, must communicate them to a wider audience, give it your best shot.

When no one else believes in you, I’ll be here. And so will the other people who post here. Don’t just say, “I want to be a writer”. Do it. Prove to the world, and more importantly yourself, that it is what you want to do, now and forever.

In conclusion, I offer the final line from my latest post over at the Scriptwriting Blog: Now – get to it!

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Moving and Family

November 19th 2006 06:46

Apologies for the long gap between columns. Writer’s block kicked in with a vengeance, and there have been a bunch of issues at home, as well as work and death (see previous posts). I’m writing about them here because something similar may have happened, or quite possibly will happen to you.

Had to move again, from the no longer ‘spare room’ to the garage. Yep, me and the dog, out in the garage. No, wait, the dog’s in the house now, being spoiled ‘cause he’s getting old. And I’m in the doghouse. Mind you, as I clear space and put all my reference books and favourite novels back out, it feels at home. Even the large and battered old office desk I use is good; it may be a little bowed, and the surface scuffed and rough, but it’s great for a mouse, and there’s plenty of room for the two PCs I’m currently using (one for writing and internet, the other for songwriting and production). There’s still a lot to be done, the place is barely habitable, there’s lots of dust and it smells a bit odd, but if I take an hour every day to straighten it up a bit more, it’ll work

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This Mortal Coil

October 22nd 2006 13:56

I got an email from a friend the other day, hadn’t heard from him in years. He’d been doing all the normal work things, but it turns out he’s had his hands full, because his wife had cancer and their younger child has a neurological disorder. Only now, after about 12 years, is he beginning to surface again.

A couple of months ago, I got a phone call from an old friend, about his brother, a guy I used to flat with and played in a band with. He’d been in hospital for a while, had two brain tumours removed, and wasn’t expected to survive the lung cancer slowly chewing at him. Just last week, I went to his funeral. At 50, he was too young, and as a writer, musician and songwriter, a serious talent was lost

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The Block! The one writers fear...

October 3rd 2006 13:05

Some people says writer’s block is a figment of the imagination. Some say it’s like Winston Churchill’s ‘black dog’, his name for depression, which often visited him, never leaving his side. You sit down to type… and stare at the screen. You know what you want to say… but there’s a curtain between your thoughts and the impulses that drive the muscles to tap the keys. You’re desperate to get it out… and it sits there like a lump of unfermented dough in the middle of your head. And then there’s the internet, if you’re silly enough to have your work PC hooked up to it. It’s like a library and newsstand combined, and open 24/7, even longer. And as a writer, there’s all the research you need to do. It’s easier to research.

Two hours later, you’ve trawled through Japanese ceramics, the ancient gates of Bukhara, the coming uses of robotic warfare, new developments in computer science, read a dozen short articles on English towns… and still haven’t written a word. Because it’s easier. You can sit at your desk and pretend you’re writing. Act. Simulate. Pretend

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Crime Time, All The Time!

September 28th 2006 13:52

The idiot’s lantern fills the gloomy room with all manner of fractured imagery. One of those staples is the crime drama, wherein a ne’er-do-well strikes at the fabric of society, and the forces of the law have to track down this pawn of the forces of darkness and administer unto him the full force of justice. Or something.

Are cop shows a cop out? Producers going for the easy answer? Easy because each episode can be filled with some new situation, giving the stern looking heroes another way to clench their jaw and stare off into the distance with a hawklike gaze, as they scan the horizon for their quarry. What annoys me is that each show pushes its edge along, to try and squeeze out a slightly more heinous crime, because if they don’t they’ll start repeating themselves, and down that road lies staleness and cancellation

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Keep Going

September 22nd 2006 15:26

Some of you are lucky. You have love and support, a safe place from which to struggle with the muse, whether it’s your bedroom, your college dorm, your study or office. Some of us aren’t so lucky, and they’re the people I want to send a message to tonight.

I don’t necessarily mean you’re being abused or beaten. I’m talking to the ones who, when they announce, “I’m going to be a writer”, the reply is usually a small frown, a pause and then, “Yes… but what will you do next?” Or possibly, “Yes... but what do you really want to do?” Own up, there are a LOT of you who have heard those words, aren’t there? They, whoever they are, however well meaning they are, don’t get it. They think this is some kind of passing self expression thing, like writing angsty high school poetry that you rediscover in a box twenty years later, causing you to reel in horror when you reread it

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The Journal - A Tool And A Friend!

September 11th 2006 13:57

A journal is, apparently, a good idea. Some are basically diaries, some are deeper, a catalogue of daily events of not just he writer’s life but the world around them. Then there are things like, say a ship’s log, which is basically its journal. Australia would be a much poorer place without the log of the Endeavour or David Collins’s Account of the English Colony (or to give it the full title (deep breath)… “An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1, With Remarks On The Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. Of The Native Inhabitants Of That Country. To Which Are Added, Some Particulars Of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From The Mss.Of Lieutenant-Governor King.”). These are day to day books, listing the many things that happen to a group of people in extreme situations. Collins was one of the primary sources for the Mary Bryant story, but is a fascinating book beyond that.

I could never be bothered with a diary. I did too many embarrassing things as a teenager I’m still trying to live down (and I’m in my 40s now!), but I found I was coming up with all these stories I didn’t have time to write, they were seeping out of my head, forgotten and by all unmourned. So I started writing them down as sets of notes, anything from a heading, a logline half a paragraph, up to pages and pages of character and plot notes, with potential sequel storylines, even in one case, filling an entire small A5 book with just one story. To try and keep track of what idea was where, I indexed all the headings on the first inside page as a mnemonic (hopefully) and numbering each book. Because I had this constant stream of ideas, I called the series Notes From The Flow, and while the first few are missing, which were those very small notebooks and a couple of A5s, latterly they’ve been A4 or foolscap size, filled cover to cover, and there’s about twelve of them. If I never had another original idea again, I could go back to these and find a wealth of starting points. Recently I’ve delved into them and combined a couple of different, not-so-interesting ideas, into something better, and that’s the beauty of these kind of journals, you don’t have to remember it all, and you can reassess the ideas at different times in your life, saying “that idea I wrote at 22 isn’t all that good, but knowing what I do now, if I add this component to it, it’ll be much better”. And sometimes the idea you had for a novel then, you realise later might make a better short story or script

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Favourite Authors - an occasional series

September 6th 2006 14:31

I said in an earlier post you need to read everything you can find. This occasional series will point out authors you may not have come across. The main thing about the ones I will mention is they really know how to tell a story. And what the hell? You need to put your feet up and let the brain do the work for a while!

Robert Goddard is the writer I describe as ‘Agatha Christie for grown ups’. The plots twist like knotted string, and the characters are often multi layered and deeper than they first appear

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January 2007

1 Posts

December 2006

1 Posts

November 2006