Category: Uncategorized

Ahhh Thursday, what have we done?

Well, today my goal was to see if I could reshape this section of the book that had been bothering me for a while now. It’s one of the buildup sequences to a rather large climax and it wasn’t doing enough for my character – wasn’t giving enough depth and intensity. So how did I choose to work on this matter now? By listening to the Alien/Aliens/Alien3 soundtracks of course. There is no better way to write fear than to listen to it in its purest form. And fear in space – even more appropriate.

Jerry Goldsmith…you are the man! James Horner…OK so it sounds like some of it might have borrowed ideas from the soundtrack to 2001 A.S.O, but hey, its still possibly the most amazing thing Horner has ever done and kills me every time i hear it! (Also possibly my favourite film theme ever.??) And who could forget Elliot Goldenthal – Alien3, this score is possibly the main reason I like that movie, a heart wrenching journey though orchestral sound, stunningly beautiful. Thank you ALIEN!

As a person who works in film sound, sound and music play a key role in my writing process, both the presence of it and the absence of it. Sometimes I need quiet to write, but most of the time, if I’m at home, i have my juicy Genelec speakers blaring away some music to set the mood. Most of the time its film scores, especially since (lets face it) writing to someone singing is just distracting.

So for this book, I would say i have rotated around 200 different film scores to fit the sections I’m working on. Sadly, some of the best soundtracks are just too short and I need to listen to them on repeat…other times i find a series of films can fill many hours of fresh music (see the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy for a tasty 17 hours of running time music)

Yes, living in Wellington, this kind of music is heard on every street corner, I can’t go for a run in this landscape without feeling like I’m running away from Orcs. No…there are no Orcs in my book, well…maybe Orc-like aliens. Still, this music is so epic it is appropriate to write to no matter what genre I’m writing.

OK, now I feel like listening to it, since my action sequence take place in a cave, khazad-dûm here we come!!

This is very better… yes, i could actually be moderately productive. Maybe I’ll blog more than once a month if I don’t have to stomach the bothersome, loathsome process that is navigating my archaic host site.

So, news for today? I just had sushi!

I would say that is one of the greatest victories I could hope for in a day.

Working on what is officially titled draft 5, although its more like draft 8. I’m up to chapter 30 out of 43, sitting somewhere around 70,000 out of 97,000 and although this draft started out as being a project of elimination where I would cut out unnecessary sections and tidy up any lose threads, it has become instead a processof reducing needless adjectives. Sadly, (Yes I know that is an adjective) this process is one that increases my word count so I have slowly gained a few thousand words.

I feel like the person who starts going to the gym and then uses this achievement to justify increasing her ice-cream consumption. (Yes, even though Wellington is much colder than Sydney, I find that ice-cream is an ever increasing trend in my diet. But Kapiti…oh Kapiti, why is your boysenberry and vanilla ever so creamy?!)

In addition to this reduction-expansion approach to my 5th draft, I’m also going to try and punch some more energy into my intro and climax sequences. Lord help me stay under 100,000 words because I just don’t want to chop those sections that are already swimming with comment flags and question marks.

Hold on brave sections, don’t die yet. Not till I’m sure I have something better to replace you with.

 

I’m trying out a new blog because my other one seems to tricky to operate and there is no in program spell check. For me, being a spelling spastic this equals death.

So lets see if this one is any better?

Why do I avoid blogging?

Well it’s not that I avoid it, but I guess more that I’m not very good at it yet/ that I’m scared of it/ and I’m so busy doing other work that it fails as a priority to me.

Moreover, I never liked the idea of blogging. Its something I think is more suited to those people that have to say every little thought that pops into their heads. I have always thought of bloggers as being mindless blabber mouths who clog up their lives, houses, pantries, cyberspaces with pictures of their everyday meals, thoughts about what they might do after breakfast and lists of their most hated condiments.

They are the people with collections of bread tags and bottle tops in boxes under their beds. Blogging is for people with no real insight and too much noise rambling through their heads. People who think ‘quiet’ is having the TV turned down low.

As a sound editor I know that the world is never quiet. As long as there are ears to hear and a medium through which vibrations can move then there will always be noise. Out in a quiet field there are the birds, the crickets, the wind, the distant traffic, the planes that cross the sky every 3.5 minutes. There is the deep unknown hum of something mechanical that you cant identify, but are not at all bothered by because deep miscellaneous hums and mechanical interference is just a part of the life we have grown accustomed to here on Earth.

So why did I start a blog then? Simply because someone said that it is expected that authors blog. And they are right. Authors do blog and some of them say great things.

I think the idea that authors should blog has to do with the need to constantly compete with the entire planet to have fresh cyber-trash for the search engines to find us. So that every day, there is a chance that someone will click on our little pages and say;

“Oooo I like that, let me commit my love to it by subscribing.”

The truth is, I haven’t been ready to blog properly. I am so unused to having my opinions reviewed by strangers or friends for that matter. I hate even changing my facebook status.

I mean really. All I have done so far is complain about things or think I should drink more coffee. (I’m drinking coffee right now actually, big surprise!)

Yet, I must get better at this blogging. Maybe if it wasn’t called blogging, I’d be more interested. A Blog sounds like some monster from an old horror film.

Well, it is what it is.

So, here it goes, here I am trying harder.

Look at me go.

 

To begin with I think I have to admit that I did this because I’m writing a book and that I don’t want this to be just a hobby, I want it to sell. I have to take it as serious as any other job I do. So that in mind I can consider that now I must think of myself as an author.

My first book, Wandering Stars, though unpublished is near completion. I have done so a number of draft, but it feels more like one draft that has never really ended.

Why sci-fi? It’s not a real sci-fi. Sure there are sci-fi elements, like how it is set in space and most of the characters are aliens.

Hahaha.

However, I never meant it to be a classical sci-fi, like in the model of the Prometheus myth where man pushes science too far and is destroyed by his own creation – the Frankenstein effect. I think when it comes to classifying this work, my book reads more like a traditional fantasy with two heroes setting out on a quest. So, is it science and sword then? Like Edgar Rice Burrows princess of Mars epics? Possibly.

I think I want to give to young readers a sci-fi that did what Star Wars or Star Trek did for our generation. Simply that it inspired a new generation to take an interest in space and science. I believe that we need a resurgence of interest in space exploration and I want to do that in a way that is both informative as well as emotionally engaging.

So, my blogging is now going to be more about journaling my books progress and less about ranting, hopefully.

GO

Why Time why?
Why do you do these things to me?
I need another nap to cope with the fluxing swing of my shifting consciousness.
From A to B and Delta wave states,

Flicking like loose channels of static.

I know there was a signal here before…
clogged like a rusted cog that doesn’t know how to shift anymore.
Oh how vexing to be awake without meaning.
Oh how grim to be dislodged from…
Slumped
Between ideas and execution.
The tyrannical act of hesitation that throws itself between my mind and my intention.

Jarring.

Halt.

Shudder.
Deprived of the drive that once welled in my well oiled hands.

Like sands through the hour

…whatever…

Turn off the T.V and save me please!
Oh I see.
I know what the problem is.
I must need more coffee

There are few places on this Earth that I can stand and find that people I will never meet are compelled to wave to me. I went sailing a few weeks back and as we pulled out of the harbor, sure enough, people on the shore began to wave to me. Not just children, but adults too.

Why is it that we stand at the shore and wave to people on boats? Where does this impulse originate? Do we all cast our eyes out to those upon the water and feel a pull of something primal. Something seeded with in our roots that tells us that we owe our cultural origins to those first explorers who ventured out across the deep blue sea.

Why do some of us feel that we belong to the sea. It’s clear that we can’t live underwater…. Well, not till my fantasy of some sort of underwater super society becomes a reality. So why do I feel this way when I’m swimming in the ocean, or on a boat looking down into the unknown. I gaze longingly down into the only domain of this world that we humans cannot inhabit. I feel so connected to my history, my ancestors, my genetic origins.

Such is our romance with the sea that bore life to our planet, that as a species, we yearn to be forever at her side.
We crowd ourselves into pockets of  fertile land that line her shores.
Sleeping cosy in houses nested close to the crushing roar of her breaking tide.
Her deep mysterious waters provide a bounty of life that has enabled us to survive in some of the most remote and harsh landscapes on this planet.
However, with the slightest wave of her rippling blue skin, she has time and again wiped whole cities clean away.

Yet, back we scurry to be close once again.

Such is our romance.

The oceans gave us life, and we are eternally dependent upon them…and though we cannot live beneath the surface, it is by no means safe from our destructive touch. Just like every other ecosystem on the planet, we are told how we are killing it.

Bite the hand that feeds you, burn the ones you love…such is the way of romance.

Sometimes I get that feeling that I’m entering a jelly bean contest. I put my two dollars in the little kids charity box, I take my coupon, I look at the jar of jelly beans and think about how great it would be to eat them all.
Sometimes I try to use my very limited powers of mathematics. I try to calculate the circumference, try to count the number of beans vertically and horizontally without making it look obvious that I’m counting. (As if making an educated guess would really be cheating and I might be disqualified.) Then my tongue sticks out the side of my mouth as I very carefully try to complete the simple sum in my head.
Iv’e got it!
I think.
It has to be close…maybe only a bean or two away!!
Its so simple…how could I possibly get it wrong?

But sometimes, there is no education that can save you, no enlightened vision, no secret trick. It’s just a gamble.
I don’t know how many beans there are, I don’t know if my guess will be right.
Is it my destiny to eat those beans or were they already divined for some other lucky soul?
I’m hungry. Screw jelly beans!
I’m going to go eat some cheese! And some freakin’ coffee!!!
Now there is a bean you can depend upon.

This morning I experienced my very first ever literal light bulb idea moment. I was dreaming about something completely different and then I saw in my mind that there was a light on in a room that was somehow through the wall of my bedroom. A big rose coloured globe. I thought to myself, “Is that a light that has been left on? Or is that part of the plot?”… I awoke immediately at this point with a brilliant plot saving idea for a part of my story that had been bothering me.
So impressed with the light bulb incident, I recorded it on Dave’s speech to text iPhone note taking app.  This cryptic message is what I magically recorded. Though it bears NO relevance nor resemblance to what I actually said…you bet I will be gleaning it for some deep special truths and radical subconscious ideas. ‘Grinstead’ for example…what an excellent name for a town! Oh wait…it is a town. Well, what a great location for some secret happening to occur!
And what about Testigo? What could it mean? Look out in the book for some amazing character called Testigo. Seafield Pizza Hut? Well that is just obvious isn’t it? That is precisely where Fahad times 10 occurs!

– I woke up this morning I had a dream that the weather light on and playing my dream iPhone is that not just Commodore is part of the plots 20 to 10 of an hour And I thought I see change Testigo to this planet to train with another Sea fair and that Seafield Pizza Hut Sheals he’s alright if you will from the enemy and Internet training Hills Haselen brings change it turn on and off a lot iwith his power Grinsted creates Fahad times 10 –