o my lord

Doubts Begone!

Posted By vbpurcell on December 20, 2009

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It seems the bane for every writer – rework. You pen a story that seems fantastic at the time. It’s full of your passion and the inner workings of your imagination. You then share it with people who collectively comment on its construction and ways to make it “enjoyable” to others. Most of the comments are helpful and some are bias. It’s at this point you feel a pin burst your bubble and all that hot ego go pfft. Still, you recognise good feedback when you see it and feel motivated to revise and correct errors. After many more hours of revision, you share the story again to receive even more helpful and bias comments. You revise until you are certain you have a watertight story.

It’s very easy during the revision period to lose your passion and doubt your ablities as a writer. This is the testing time and pretty much decides the story’s fate. Is the story worth enough of the hours and effort? You could make the decision of stopping and starting a fresh, armed with skills you had gathered along the way or plod along and hope it’s worth it in the end.

I have one story which faces the chopping block every day. The axe swings over its head as a foreboding shadow. It’s only by a word or contribution of a fresh idea that the story is saved and passion is rekindled for the moment. My doubts as a writer has almost killed the Seriphyn Knight Chronicles. Indeed, it has actually died and been resurrected!

The point I make here is, no matter what your doubts are as a writer never doubt the story. When you pen a story, it gradually breathes on its own. It’s your creation. So rather killing it, put it on hiatus and create another until you feel the confidence and passion to come back to it. Keep writing and revising. The more you believe in the story the less your doubts as a writer will be. I have found that the key to being a comfortable writer (i.e., fluent with your ablities) is to read, write and share. After all, writing is a skill as any other where you need to consistently practice to make it perfect. No matter how harsh the feedback you receive at the time, it’s feedback nethertheless and possibly invaluable for future revisions.

Finally, doubts are there to serve as checkpoints. When a doubt appears, work through them, write them down and perhaps use them as a contribution toward the story itself. Everything is a resource.

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Sticky note #762

Posted By Kate on October 6, 2009

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Beware the sticky note, gentle reader… it spawns and devours the ink which marked it as important, leaving a pale ghostly scribble and general confusion:

smoke detectors

The confusion as per this note relates to how long it’s stayed stuck to the wall, something like ten months. That’s how long its been since my world revolved around Spite, the 2nd Pandora’s Edge novel. It’s a crime series with an undercurrent of fantasy which the main character refuses to believe in. Wow! So the smoke dectectors must be important, significant, plot-critical, had to be disabled in a really clever way. Ahh, no, not exactly. Turns out the character who should have replaced the batteries is short, and let practicality slide.

Good times, goooood times. But I can probably take the note down now. Once I’ve changed the battery.

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Alone

Posted By vbpurcell on August 31, 2009

Filed Under 1. Story Length, Flash Fiction, General | Leave a Comment

Emma opened her eyes then squeezed them to a close again; an instinctive reaction to the graces of daylight. She tightened her squeeze and allowed the darkness to assume control of her mind.

A different sort of light eased into her view. She found herself standing on a beach dune, overlooking a sea of swaying rye. Turbulent breezes whipped her cheeks, stubbly stems of rye and whirling sands scratched her legs. Misshapen clouds were scattered across a morose grey sky.

Why am I here?

Her heart thumped with a dull ache and a longing for something that was missing. A trace of what was. Cut scenes of people, places and a different life flashed through her mind. Tears welled in her eyes. The landscape before her was wrong and incomplete with the same swaying rye and sand. It was a prison.

Emma shook her thoughts away. She unclenched her fists, leaped into the air and landed into an angry sandstorm. She lowered her head and pushed against the force of the wind, struggling to run up hill and away from the baron lands. The sand whipped her skin. It stung her eyes and caused them to overflow with hot tears.

Let me go!

Voices rushed through her ears with words that promised love, passion, companionship and security. Shadows in the sand stopped her struggles. A man emerged before her with an expression of understanding. His crystal eyes danced with light and madness. He was a conundrum.

Emma – open your eyes… His deep voice resonated through out every corner of her brain. Emma shirked backwards and lost her footing. She fell into a bed of rye and a grave of sand.

Open your eyes!

NO! She screamed and struggled against the sandstorm, which threatened to bury her alive.

Open your eyes or die!

Bile burned her throat and caused her to gag violently. She rolled about the ground in a panic; shaking off the sand from her hair, squeezing vision into her eyes and using every bit of strength she had left to stand up.

The sandstorm eased around her face, and a soothing warmth stroke the pain away from her body. The winds died into a calm breeze. Emma watched the image of a valley revealed before her.

She sprinted for it, ignoring the burning to her skin, and fought back her tears and hopelessness.

I don’t want to be here! I want to be home. She breathed and unleashed her determination. She ran faster until the world whizzed into a blur, the wind lost its voice and her pulse beats drummed into her ears. Waves of nausea caused her vision to move in and out of focus, until she slipped off the edge of a cliff and fell. Nothing.

###

Daylight streamed into Emma’s room through papery cream curtains and graced her unresponsive eye lids. Her husband moved the chair, he had been calling a bed for the last few nights, closer to her bedside and leaned forward to take a better look at her angelic face; hoping her eyes would flicker, her mouth would open with any sound and cheeks flush with the doll rose-red blush, which made her skin more porcelain and flawless. He prayed she was still there; her mind still remembering him and their life together. He begged, to a God he had never believed in, every night for her return from the coma that kept her captive in her own brain. And, every night he waited.

###

Emma opened her eyes to the grace of day and breathed in the cool taste of a new beginning. A man stood before her with an expression of patience in his eyes and the stance of a school teacher.

“Are you ready now?”

“Ready for what?”

The man smiled warmly. “To open your eyes of course.”

Images and memories rushed through her mind, evoking feeling and the want to live again. She felt safe.

You don’t have to run any more Emma, the wind sighed around her.

Emma’s smile widened. She closed her eyes and embraced the darkness. A moment later her grey eyes opened to a new day.

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outlaw love will never bind

Still Falling

Saving books…

Posted By Kate on August 11, 2009

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… by Australian authors published in Australia, a situation under threat of Parallel Importation. This act is prohibited by the UK and USA; why would Australia want to change?

To paraphrase the circular: While it’s possible that lifting territorial copyright restrictions will bring down book prices, it’s more likely to result in less Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror being published – by the big houses anyway. If you go to the website http://savingaussie books.wordpress. com/ you can read up on parallel imports. You can also get the petition signed and sent off so it can be presented to parliament in September.

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Posted By Kate on July 11, 2009

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For all those lovely Kindle fans out there, After the Fall: Witching Hour is available early… click the cover for the link.

A bit of background: the Mistress of the AtF Universe said a particular alien species did not come in shades of grey, despite our insubordinate attempts to paint our characters that way. Ha! She should have known better. Rebellious instincts aside, I needed a reason for the grey and I remembered the old saying/insult about all cats being grey in the dark. That’s as far as I got until December 27 ticklish when I woke myself up thinking “But he only went out for handcuffs…“

And there was Marco, quickly followed by Vieve. My favourite line is Vieve’s “Glory hallelujah, there is a god and she loves her badass kittehs.” And being so lovable, they will of course be back in another adventure.

AtF: Witching Hour releases in other formats this Wednesday.

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