Tag Archives: author

Random Thoughts

Quiet please

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Remember the Cat Stevens song, Father and Son?

Pico Iyer’s article talks about the same thing, only reversed. I see it myself in my own life. The difference is, I think, that technology is to us adults what addictive substances are to addicts.

We get addicted, distracted, embroiled, discombobulated.  Children can take it or leave it. My daughter has a mobile phone she uses less than me to check on the world and her friends.

She has a Mac desktop she uses mainly for homework. She also has an iPad, which she uses primarily for games.

The world is open to her. She knows how to get at it. Yet because it is normal she is not enamoured. She is a jaded technologist. And I am glad.

Me, I need to watch what I let my phone interrupt. I need to take a break, regardless of my job.

I have always said that for all of this doubling of speed and new and improved technology, how useful is it really? What do I use regularly? Notepad, Word, Excel. Extensions of paper. In fact, nothing more. And really only because of ease of reading (my handwriting is getting worse, not better) and ease of access – it is harder to lose an online file than a piece of paper…yet only slightly.

Sure there are useful websites (google maps…i.e. an atlas, or Trello i.e. a to do list), yet are they worth the aggro? Really?

I don’t think so. I do not know where all this is going. I do think the internet will really come into its own when oil is scarce and travel is truly a luxury once more.

Then solar powered totally self-sufficient data centres linked by solar powered satellites will link billions of hand crank kinetic powered laptops and computers.

Steampunk, here we come! ;D

a day in the life, Compilations, ePublishing, Random Thoughts

junk jettisoned, ebooks printed…and all’s well

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This is just a quickie…I know, I know, usually it takes a good couple of dates, some wining and dining, a few smiles, a hug, a kiss a cuddle…and then onto the final frontier…space…or at least what’s left of it aside from the junk we jettison out there as the ultimate chav planet in the galaxy…but more on that later.

(No, more on that now! Are those in charge of disposing of earth’s rubbish the same senseless oiks who dump old refrigerators in front of their homes on the off chance someone else wants it, or maybe the neighbours will get fed up enough – as I sometimes do – and clear it to the dump themselves? Seriously! If I was an alien race hell-bent on world domination, or just a friendly neighborhood alien race looking to drop in on the newbies and see how they are settling in, whether the kids have found school to be tough, or even just to borrow a few million gallons of oil, and I saw the rubbish floating around our planet by way of dead satellites, space waste, jettisoned rubbish and general debris that we humans have surrounded our planet with…well, I would think twice about visiting. Do you regularly go meet and greet neighbours who have old kitchen sinks dumped in their front gardens? Think about it! We could be missing out on the evolutionary-jump of a sentient race which thinks we are the chavs of the Milky Way…and we’ll never know…and now back to our regular broadcast…)

What was I on about? Oh, yes, I’ve published three compilations of, well, stuff from this blog as ebooks on Amazon – just search for ‘Emerson Freedman’ on amazon, or type in ‘Poemetics’…or even just click on one of the three links to those books on Amazon on the rigth hand side here…no not there…over to the…yeah…to the…to the right…your other right…yeah, there, the ‘Poemetics’, ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Storytology’ links. Yup. Those. No, you can’t download them for free. They cost a whole £0.71. Not cause I’m greedy. Cause Amazon don’t do free ebooks. Go figure. Cheapest I could make them….no really…it was….whatever.

So, go on, have a look, download them, let me know what you think. Share them with a friend. This is the first foray into epublishing for me…the first ‘real’ epublishing books I created…by way of Word to Plain Text to Jutoh to Amazon…cool stuff, eh?

Let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated. Even if it is not precisely what I want to hear. (The truth is not always pretty, I know. But if you’re going to be honest, go easy…I am more fragile than I look!)

Til next time, bon nuit,

Em (mE)

ePublishing, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, Writing

the rewrite thang

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Some say that the first draft is the beginning of the story. That all we need to do is get the story down in the first draft, beginning to end. Then we can start rewriting it for the second draft. We can clean up the prose, cut down on the fluff, align the story, pull the threads closer and knit ourselves a mean novel.

From recent experience rewriting Killer Application I am not so sure that the first draft of a novel is, as I originally thought, actually a first draft. In my estimation the first draft is more like the clay a potter makes before making the pottery. Or even the dough the baker beats for hours or days before baking the bread.

The first draft, although lovely in its completeness, is just that, the lump of unmolded clay or unbaked bread. All of the ingredients for a good story are there in pretty much the right form and consistency, with all of the possibilities that a wide-open horizon can give.

Only now do I realise that the rewriting, that which defines an author (as I have been told / read many times over), is where we really begin to hone our craft, to shape the dough into something special, something unique, something extremely personal.

Here is where we get to put our own touches in. Like my grandmother baking the boiled egg smack dab in the middle of her meatloaf (oh for a slice of that meatloaf now, so succulent and crumbly all at the same time!), a good author can work in their sense of humour, personal preferences, world view, perspectives, thoughts and feelings into the story without letting it take over.

All the while this weaving is happening (apologies for the inter-changeable metaphors – rewriting really is like a cross between pottery, baking, knitting, weaving and eating egg-centred meatloaf all at the same time, seriously!) the story itself is given new life. Characters that were stretched too thin are removed or fleshed out, killed or fattened (only to be killed off later or even reborn, depending on the angle of the story and where the rewriting takes us).

In truth, I find the rewriting almost more exciting than the original writing. Okay, that is not entirely true. This is a different kind of excitement for I am watching the story mature and grow under my own hands. I get to watch the characters delve into themselves and pull out wonders of unique personality with which I can help them along, or change the story itself. Anything is possible right now.

I am excited by the process of writing. I can see why Philip K Dick used to get depressed after finishing a novel. (Not that I am comparing my writing to Philip K Dick, just the sense of accomplishment at each stage of the writing, and the subsequent emotional endorphins triggered by that feeling of ongoing success and creation.) It makes perfect sense.

I managed to keep myself away from my ebook publishing games this evening, mostly because I wanted to get some good writing time in before going to bed (not too late this time!).

That’s it from me, for now.

Til next time, enjoy life,

Em (mE)

a day in the life, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, Novels, Writing

We’ve only just begun…

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Killer Application novel update…

…from the first set of feedback I received on my novel, I realised that I had some major rewriting to do.

In other words, I was going to have to buck up and blood myself as an ‘author’ by doing a serious rewrite of my novel, pretty much from start to finish.

I think it was more difficult to accept that what I had been doing for the past few weeks up until this ‘revelation’ was mere dabbling, rather than proper rewriting.

Yet when the pieces that needed some attention were pointed out to me and the repercussions in how much work was still required before this piece of writing could be taken to the next level, i.e. professional ‘2nd draft’ editing, I had to swallow some semi-sweet pills regarding my writing style, including the banks of snow I had plowed right up across my own driveway (in some cases).

Basically, this was a wake-up call.  So I sat down on Saturday and started to put together a proper outline of what I thought the story was, where it was going, who the main characters were and all that jazz.

You’d think, after writing more than 500 pages or nearly 170,000 words, I would know all of this off the top of my head…and you’d be right – I did.  What I did not realise is how much ‘tweaking’ (read ‘major overhaul’) I had to do to bring the story back on track.

I think the major issue is that I knew in my head all of the missing gaps – I had been living with this story for so long that I presumed anyone reading it would know it as well as I.  Then in midst of my outline writing and drafting of character and plot and subplot details, I realised in a ‘Eureka’ moment, that I did not have to sacrifice what I was writing.

In fact, I had to admit to myself that I had ‘chickened out’ of the original underlying subplot I had thought of writing in the original storyline.  I had ‘chickened out’ by justifying that it was too much to put into one story – it would meander and get lost in details.  It would take too long to play out.  It would not be interesting enough to everyone.

In rejigging my original idea to fit what I thought would be a broader audience I had sufficiently transferred what (I think) is a good idea into something that had to be padded to make sense (and even then was trying ‘too hard’ at times, and ‘not hard enough’ at other times).

In other words, in 500 pages I had written the skeleton of the story with some padding that I thought made sense.  Going back to it now, I have to strip almost all of the fat (tasty bits) away and get to the gristle, muscle, tendon, ligaments, bone…the gruesome guts of the story and build out from there.

Maybe this is the experience that all writers have, I would not know.  In the blogs, books and articles I have read writers talk about how they ‘got there’ (made it into a deal with an agent or publisher) or how they ‘got their idea’ (the basis for their story) or ‘the journey’ (the whole or any part of the start-to-end journey of their publishing life).

All of these are extremely useful, but I guess trying to explain the ‘Doh!’ realisation of what ‘rewriting’ truly means (the ‘blooding’ of an author) is like trying to explain what it is like being a parent…to someone who does not have any kids.

This is not something that is easy to explain, aside from picturing the growth and maturity of a writer into an author.

  • Imagine that writing the full novel is an author’s childhood, full of wide-open vistas and bright-eyed wonderment.
  • Then editing the novel is puberty, where I know what I am doing, I know I what I want out of the story.  I just need to massage it out.  The form is there, I just need to kneed the shape of the loaf, chip the remainder of the sculpture, colour in the rest of the painting, before I get to the final finished 2nd draft product.
  • Finally the birth of adulthood comes when I realise that the novel is not actually ready for ‘editing’.  The novel is awaiting the ‘breath of real life’, the rewrite.

Now, this probably all seems a bit coy or simplistic, and of course it is.  Trying to describe the growth of the writer to author-hood (child to adult-hood) is like trying to explain the psychological alteration of going from individual to parent.  There is no way to describe it aside from ‘it is’.

I also have to admit that I am in the middle of the transformation.  I believe I am on the cusp of the writer-to-author teenage-hood, where I have realised there is more to rewriting than editing, that first I must rewrite my story to make it stronger, to make it worth reading, to make it the best it could possibly be.

Yet even being here is not disheartening in the slightest.  I am excited by the journey as much as by the end result.  I am as intrigued and interested by my own development as an author as by the novel I am writing (or any of the poetry or prose that I may work on now or in the near future).

I say, “Bring it on!”

So what if it takes another six months to get to first draft status (again).

So what if it takes a further six months to get to second draft status (for the first time).

What matters is the journey, the experience, the growth and the end result.  It all matters.

Now I just have to stay focused.

I know in my heart of hearts that it will definitely be worth the trip.

What a great experience to have, to grow up a second time doing what I love to do.

In the meantime I will continue to self-publish more free ebooks of poetry, short stories, essays, quotes, rants and other bits en route – watch this space!

“In there always pitchin’ and sometime’s bitchin'” as my Gamp used to say.

Life’s gonna throw curveballs – you have two choices, swing or get out of the way.

What happens after you decide how to react is down to dumb luck.

Taking the outcome personally is not only grossly egocentric, it is also fundamentally shortsighted.

How do we know what is coming around the corner?

We only know what we want or what we think is the best for us and others. We never really know what’s right or wrong until it’s already been and gone.

I just hope my hindsight plays out true, that this is the right journey and not too presumptive on my part, seeing as I am only just beginning (cue “We’ve only just begun“).

Let’s see what the next step in this journey brings.

Hopefully the end result is not total pants! 🙂

Until next time – a river dare-chi,

Em (mE)

a day in the life, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, Novels

Just ‘About’ anything…really…as long as you can read it!

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I am an author (at heart at least).

I have been writing since I can remember – when other kids were playing in the sand during preschool I was crafting tiny foldaway books.

I would draw the cover of the book, title it, write all of the story, do all of the drawings and feel so very proud of myself when I was able to write in ‘The End’.

My first book had such a profound effect on me that I can still see where I was, probably no more than four or five years old, sitting in the middle of the classroom, studiously focused on my book, which as I recall was about a damsel in distress, a castle and a knight. (And I’ll be darned if it wasn’t hard to draw the teeny-tiny turrets on the castle fortress walls, but I did it!)

Many books were to follow, including two novel-length forays during a month of illness when I was 18.

Then for some reason it all stopped – life got in the way and fast forwarded me to the here and now.

So I thought it was about time to write another book…and two years later it is almost ready.

Not only that, but the “Killer Application” series of books (yes, I said series) has birthed a second book already (even though I’ve not finished the first).

I hope you like it – please come along for the ride as I rewrite the book to perfection (or as close as possible) and self-publish it as an ebook and POD (print on demand).

The pitfalls are many, the workload vast, the wordcount insanely high, yet I am undaunted – I am up to the task.

A nice little cheering squad would help me out no end when I hit those lows…so please come on in and sign up.

Your help in motivating me by reading and responding to what I write could be just the key to set me off on a fantastic journey as a writer.

I can’t promise you riches (I wish!) but I can promise you a good gas.

So come on for the ride – step inside and let me know your thoughts.

I look forward to learning more about you than you wish to say. 😉

Yours in trouble and out,

Em