Rejigging Monster Moored

Scene in Monster Moored

I'm finding the most difficult thing while supposedly cleaning up a story for eventual submitting, is not to start any new threads.

I think it must be that I have a short fuse for boredom, and reading and correcting a manuscript for the so many-est times gets plain boring.

And so I have already failed this important step in my attempt to make Monster Moored a better story. My beta readers marked up the areas which needed more explanation and I was well on the way.

However, one of the suggestions was to have the monster eat someone, as in consume bloodily. This is not an easy matter, I found. The only ones in the surf with Tardi at the time of the the monster's manifestation were Polk, Tardi's best friend, and Threen, Tardi's secret love. (You understand I couldn't have the monster eat Threen!)

So, OK, it's easy to have the monster seize Polk and chomp into him. It's not easy then to write Polk's demise forward and backward. His end has to have some effect on Tardi, doesn't it?

And plus, the monster in the ocean is the hallucinatory version of the monster in Zoo Hall. So how does it eat Polk? How does Polk later re-appear? And as what? Also a hallucination? Suddenly Polk is more than just a shallow secondary character, he has to have oomph. He has to have likes and dislikes. Agency. In other words he has just become one of the do-ers.

I mean, Polk has to have a use in the ongoing story. In the goodness of time, after some heavy duty thinking, I decided he might be very successful in helping to free Tardi from the monster at the end of the story, because Polk, with lovely hubris, thinks he is the better person to be the monster's man. And so he helps enable the novel to primarily be Tardi's story, to be a standalone. (Which may help getting it published.)

Still writing

The calderafungi at blogspot.com

Draft one and notes of and on the new as yet untitled opus miranda

The eventual short story

The slight rejig of Monster Moored, preparations to submit it some time in April

and

Learning Scrivener

and

Finalising house renovation plans, choosing bathroom tiles, paint, a new stove, etc

Edge of shed that will be replaced, a hole in the storm in the distance

Walking, going right now, as soon as i post this, it is 5.34 PM here despite what it might say at the top of this post.

Reading, a History of Ash by Mary Gentle.

Euphoria and Depression

Euphoria and depression go hand in hand as we, if we’re so inclined, pass around the circle of life. 

First I had one of my euphorias. It was probably brought on by a year’s worth of stress. The last straw was being unable to force myself to have a viewpoint character doing physical violence to other characters in a story I was writing.

A fine insight you might say and I will agree with you. Another was the instant understanding of the difference between writing from the head and writing from the heart. A good story is under construction as a result.

But how does euphoria follow from that, you're wondering? I don't know. In three percent of us it does apparently. I go into a cognitive dissociative state, a trance, and my unconscious generates extreme bliss. With no help from any drugs. 

But the higher I go in the euphoria, the deeper the depression afterwards takes me.  And where the euphoria was a wonderful eight day event with two or three days to recover, the depression is, so far, a three week marathon and for some inexplicable reason, far more difficult to walk away from.  

The Short Story Abysm

Seasonal disruptions being what they are - the getting ready for parties, cooking, socialising, extra cleaning etc - I thought I'd have a try at a short story this month. 

There's a strong beginning, yes.

Is there a plot? Not yet.

A narrative, yes. Premise, scenario, world building, no problem. 

An interesting main character needing a bit of research to clarify his/her various genetic possibilities? In the bag.

No plot yet, but a squad of different scenes trampling the ground while they are waiting. For a plot, of course.   

No plot yet, apart from an escape. 

A cast of thousands, still being whittled. 

No plot yet. Or rather, the only plot that auditioned, the escape, refuses to fit itself into a three thousand word story. It's crying out for a bigger vehicle. 

There are a couple of levels of meaning, which is not really a short story thing as I understand it. The superficial adventuring thing and the ethical/philosophical thing. There's no bloody violence. There's no romantic love. It isn't fantasy. 

There's even an end. An uplifting one though the setting is bleak. Is that possible? 

I have no idea as to who would be interested in reading it. The usual problem. 

Thousands of words already. Several times more than the three thousand required. Whittling them is no longer an option. The detail required for the story to make sense doesn't allow it to be cut down. 

Maybe I should go and do a short story workshop or three. 

 

20. Hezzie MacPhee: The Fungi Spell

Now the wizard tried a spell. Gah gah gah. Gwum.

It’s only sounds, Hezzie said to himself. Nothing will happen. He lay down the vine on the stones and tucked the bitten-off end down in a hole between the rocks beside the stone most frequently wetted by the wizard’s eye-water.

He dug into the soil and mulch under some nearby trees, to loosen it. This was just like digging a hole to bury a bone.

Then he took several mouthfuls, one at the time, and ran to and fro the hole between the stones. He pushed each lot of dirt down into the hole to anchor the vine end and to give its new roots, when they grew, something to feed on.

The wizard’s groaning became a rumble.

It sounded like he was gearing himself up for a big effort. Hezzie hurried laying out the rest of the vine, round and round the angry man-mountain.

He dared to thread the last arm-length through the air hole in the wizard’s side. There the water-roots would find moisture in the hollows and cavities between the wizard’s stony bones.

It was necessary he hurry now for the wizardly rumble had become a hiss and the eye-water steamed when it fell past the wizard’s mouth hole.

“The spell, Hezzie, the spell,” he told himself. But he could only recall the fungi spell. It would have to do for now. He shouted it out loud, three times, in a hurry.

Fungi work between, sapping dead wood and releasing nutrients to feed the green. Fungi work between, sapping dead wood and releasing nutrients to feed the green. Fungi work between, sapping dead wood and releasing nutrients to feed the green.

He’d need more dead wood in the mix, wouldn’t he? He ran in under the trees bordering the garden and started biting down on any bit of old wood he saw, and taking it to the stone wizard’s staying place. Stuck them into the gaps between the stones.

The wizard’s waters cooled. The waterfall fell without steaming. The grumble went inside. The wizard slept.

Hezzie dropped to the ground. He panted, with his dog tongue hanging out of his mouth. The way dogs pant. He lay down. He wanted to sleep but he was afraid. What if after the night he couldn’t turn into his human self anymore?  

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

Atul Gawande Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance 2008 Profile Books London.

The sorting trolley at the local library can be the source of good reads without having to go to the shelves. When I’m in a hurry, must not tarry and cannot not allow myself to get sidetracked, I stick with the sorting trolley.

 

There will be the usual squad of noirish detective fiction. The odd sf and fantasy. Literature. And a  few non fictionals. Like this one. Better: a surgeon’s notes on performance.

I opened it a quarter of the way through, my usual check, and began to read. Page 65, the chapter heading was Casualties of War. Why soldiers refused to wear their goggles and that the reason for the increasing eye injuries. I glanced back at page 64, where a section conclusion said, Ask a typical American hospital what its death and complication rates for surgery were during the last six months and it cannot tell you.

About ten pages later I realised I was hooked. I checked the book out and took it home. I began from the beginning. The introduction is not a chapter that can be skipped as it states the premise of the investigation by way of a telling example from Gawande’s own, at the time of his residency, practice. 

“What does it take to be good at something in which failure is so easy, so effortless?” Gawande asks on page 3. This is when I really settled into this book for this is a resonating question in that it can be applied to almost any difficult endeavour.  Convincing the naysayers of the importance of preserving biodiversity at any cost?  Just one of the questions I regularly ask myself.

Though it is the examples for each of the three main topics that make the riveting reading, what area of human work wouldn’t be better with diligence, doing right and ingenuity? In relation to diligence, for example, there’s an essay on washing hands. In doing right, what doctors owe to society is investigated. Ingenuity is explored through the Bell Curve.

Yet it is the Afterword, with its Suggestions for Becoming a Positive Deviant that I want to remember. These are a set of suggestions for personal improvement that are plain and do-able, though they are aimed at doctors and surgeons at the forefront of doctoring.

1.     Ask an unscripted question. Make a human connection and life immediately becomes less of a machine.

2.     Don’t complain. Or in other words, don’t make yourself and other people feel bad by taking a negative view. Don’t necessarily see life through rose-coloured lenses but observe something and get a conversation going (my paraphrase, this sentence).

3.     Count something. Be a scientist in your world. The only requirement is that you should count something you’re interested in. Learning something interesting that you can then talk about, giving it to your community. 

4.     Write something. Add a small observation about your world. Don’t underestimate its effect on your world. Everything we know, all knowledge is observations made by interested people communicating for the benefit of us all. The published word (be it book or blog) is a declaration of membership and also a willingness to contribute something meaningful. Don’t underestimate the power of the act. Writing lets you step back and think through a problem.

5.     Change. Be an early adapter. (Not a late adapter, not a skeptic.) Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often you succeed and how often you fail. Write about it. Ask people what they think. See if you can keep the conversation going.

Don’t you agree that these suggestions are ways that anybody can take up and make habitual without too much pain?

Woodwork for Women

For the last five weeks I’ve been learning to join wood in a class taught by Patt Gregory at her workshop in Mullumbimby, NSW. In the first series of classes I learned how to make a housing joint, a rebate joint and a butt joint.

Patt is such an inspirational teacher, that the process of work and the finished beauty of my beginner project led me to immediately sign up for a second series of classes with the mortise-and-tenon joint as the objective.

I went home and revived my once-upon-a-time want-to-make-this-one-day list and embellished it with sketches. One and a half courses in, I’m fantasizing that I’ll build the window seats and bookshelves I’m planning as part of my house renovations, myself and from scratch at that.

Along with writing, gardening, knitting and embroidery, I’ve also always done do-it-yourself stuff searching out cheap second-hand timber furniture and taking it apart and/or changing its function. 

In that way I made a couch from a single bed. A sewing table from a desk. A kitchen table from a broken wreck I salvaged illegally from the local tip. Mostly these were needs-must projects. Ways of having what couldn’t be afforded otherwise.

Then came a time I was involved in planting and nurturing native Australian timber trees. I love timber and still have a three-metre (unknown species) dead tree as a life-size sculpture, its timber very finely grained, at present in storage. Learning ‘proper’ woodwork always seemed to be out of reach.

But now?

Yes I can, and yes I will make my wishful wood fantasies. Given that I can continue classes with Patt. Because I suspect that, like all things worth doing well, woodworking is a discipline and a craft with a life-long apprenticeship.

Patt’s book, Woodwork for Women: cutting a new path for beginners gives a step-by-step account of how to achieve the first project, along with tools needed and how to use them. 

Aspects of wood in general and radiata pine (for the first project) in particular. 

The sustainability of the timber industry, and sourcing timbers for woodworking projects. 

The design, and transferring it to the raw material (ie the wood) by measuring up, and a myriad of helpful hints, clues and uplifting stories about the women, and their projects, who have gone before you.

Finally there’s the making. Set out in step-by-step fashion, up to step 20. 

If you can’t get to Patt’s classes – say if you live somewhere in the world – this book is a good way into woodwork. 

And check out www.woodworkforwomen.com also. It will give you everything you need to know to be able to access these uplifting classes presented by a passionate teacher in a relaxed environment.

Glitches are welcomed. 

The story is that you can’t learn without them. 

And anyway they can mostly be corrected or, sometimes, be incorporated in the project. 

Phew. 

I learnt that at least a dozen times in my first project and it still looks great don't you think? 

Finished project in use