ST ALBANS AND THE FORGOTTEN VALLEY

Settlers Arm Hotel St Albans

St Albans Book Feₐst,  It kicks off at 10am on October 5 with a full program of things bookish, historical, musical and culinary.  Children are catered for and you can meet favourite authors and bag one of their books in the lucky dip. Kate Grenville will be there as will Traci Harding, Jo Mitchell and Laurie Forth. Cocktails and Conversation follows at sundown and those still left with stamina after the fun filled day can repair to the Settlers Arms  for dinner, but book to ensure a place. .  Email kayeremington@gmail.com for information

St Albans is just seventy five minutes drive from Windsor NSW and a million miles from stress. You can sit in the garden of The Settlers Arms and eat real old-fashioned food, delicious.  Follow with home-made lamingtons and relaxation! The atmosphere of this historic pub was worth the time it took to get there, the country side is an artist/photographer’s paradise, wild in places but with pastoral vistas stretching out to mountains rising above.

ARSON IS NOT A RELIEF FOR BOREDOM

In the sky there was smoke, in the garden was hope 

This week I watched the black smoke billowing just a few streets from my house as bush fires, driven by a north westerly wind burned out properties and a nearby nature reserve and threatened to destroy many homes. For one man, thirty years of work was lost in an afternoon. Helicopter pilots and hundreds of fire fighters risked their lives to put out the blaze which they believe was lit by someone who thought arson was fun. Rather than show the arsonists the images of their mischief I send this bouquet of flowers to the firefighters, the pilots and the people who lost property or had their lives disrupted.   

In this country and in other places, fire caused by weather is an ever present danger in summer, but what this country doesn't want is lives lost and property consumed by fires lit by people hardwired to destruction. Let us not promote them by sharing pictures of their work.

Are Google Passwords Invented to Annoy Writers?

You may wonder why I don't blog very often or maybe you don't care, after all you have your own problems. Is is only me, or do you also find that whenever you try to sign in to your blog, Google refuses your password?
 I have changed my password so often I am running out of 'words'. The same happens on Facebook. The result is that I tend to ignore both, because jumping through Google's hoops takes up too much time- my writing time. Today, I spent about thirty minutes trying to convince tGoogle that this was my blog and we have yet another password. I have used the name of an 'ex'. Now, I can't forget that but maybe Google will.  I will let you know how long it takes for the locks to be changed yet again. Please Google, stop complicating what was a perfectly friendly site.

On a happier note, if you are looking for a good read , try Kate Atkinson's "Behind the Scenes at the Museum".

The Right to Bear Arms

Another school shooting, another senseless tragedy....to quote  Peter Seeger who asked in his  1950s song,  Where have all the Flowers Gone?– "When will they ever learn?"

The flowers that have now gone in this latest carnage are not soldiers lost in war. They are the flowers of childhood, children whose  lives have been wasted, given up to the God of the gun lovers. The mourners are not young women who have lost lovers. They are parents  who thought their children were safe in school, who should have been safe.

The  innocence of childhood has gone from the lives of the children who witnessed this outcome of everyone's right to bear arms. 

In eight days the people who defend their right to bear arms will attend their churches to celebrate Christ 's birth and pray for peace that will never come in a society with an enemy within. God's own country?   Perhaps  God has left the building.

Stephen King Said

I don’t want to plagiarise the master but the gist of what he said was – if he didn't know how the book he was writing would end then he was sure the reader wouldn't know either.

Thank you Mr King.  Having had your book “On Writing” on my book shelf since the time it was released here in Oz, it sure has taken me a long time to follow your advice.

I am usually a plotter and a planner. But having decided in October to write a book in a month in November, I made a change.  

With a ‘what if’ that gave me a problem and a cast of characters, I set out with only a mud map and no destination in sight. My task was to write a 60000 words in the month, 2000 words a day,  to make the writing as good as it could be given the deadline, to be aware of structure and to carry along all the threads of the story and not leave smoking guns lying about.

I made the 60000 word deadline but the destination is still not in sight. More writing has to be done.  Much editing and rewriting is required. Much research is needed. I guess I will kill a lot of ‘darlings’ before it is finished. 

But what an enriching experience to find that what began as a crime fiction story became a multi-layered novel about the dynamics of friendship along with the mystery, crime and romance-I hadn't anticipated the latter but it evolved.

It took a lot of self control to not look back, not to read past chapters. No time for that. Resisting  the urge to print the day’s work, to read and edit it, broke a lot of my entrenched writing habits.

Magic happened and I learned a lot about motivation, cause and effect and all the other aspects of writing we read about but maybe don’t give enough attention. It was a great experience and I recommend it to any one who wants to lift their writing to another level.

My Word Train Waits

I am going on a journey. A writer's journey. I have made my booking, made my commitment to travel from chapter one to chapter ? At this stage I do not know how many chapters there will be. The destination is 60 000 words and I hope to last the distance. My word train leaves on November 1, by then I will be packed and ready. The journey concludes on November 30. This call to adventure came on September 1. I had three projects clamouring for attention, one social history,one crime fiction and the other a memoir. I was waffling and dabbling in all three and getting nowhere fast. I needed a deadline to break out of my procrastination.  The decision to write a book in a month seemed like a good idea. Like all successful journeys, this one had to be planned. First I had to leave my comfort zone, make my decision public, do the ground work...get out of bed earlier.
The word train lingers at the station while we take on board what is needed for the journey. Ideas, the necessary elements,  begin to appear. Like the usual traffic before departure, some arrive quickly and others drag their feet as they dawdle along.  Some ideas arrive without a ticket and are rejected, some decide to wait for a later train and others become something else. As I mull over the crowds of ideas jostling for a berth, plot and character begin to make their presence felt.  I test what is logical and what  doesn't work and I realise the wisdom of waiting . It is a mistake to begin writing too soon, before all the actors are assembled and ready to await their curtain calls.
There are eleven thinking days left before the writing begins.

Writing the November Book in a Month Novel

I have been going to do it for ages but November 1 rolls around each year and the calendar is usually full of the stuff of living and the preparations for Christmas. Usually it is a time when less writing gets done, not more.  Which goes to prove that  “ if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” as someone once wrote in advice to writers.

Fail? In the past, I didn’t get started.  November 1 is too late to decide what to write about. This year I am ready and I am clearing my life’s decks for a good solid month of writing.

Why am I going to cancel just about all social activity, cease house work  and hope it rains so I won’t have to water gardens?

Because I need a deadline.  I discovered that deadlines make it possible because without one, it is easy to let other stuff push the writing out of the way. So I am making it known that I am hibernating  in the writing cave during November, rather like the French novelist who told his friends to “consider me dead until October” whenever he was about to write a book.

By November 1, I will know my characters,  I will have exercised my ‘what if’ muscle and will have mapped out their journeys with enough flexibility to allow for surprises.  I might know the outcome, but once the journey begins who knows what will happen?

On November 1 at 6am  I will write the words… “…

But that would be getting ahead of myself. Let the planning begin.

I dare you.