Month November 2020

‘Research’

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This week’s editing journey has been a little disrupted.

I normally invest some time each weekday evening after my day job has finished, with the exception of Fridays, which is my evening off. On Saturdays, after my morning walk or cycle, I settle down for a few hours – this is my time to deal with the real nitty gritty things that have arisen during the week, and usually involves me hopping from chapter to chapter to iron things out. On Sundays you find me here, and also over on my Facebook page.

This week however, I found myself gritting my teeth through a couple of days of a constant, grinding headache that wouldn’t disappear. Since I can’t just halt my salaried job for a headache, no matter how bad, I had to put Anti-Virus to one side and give my eyes a breather. I’m glad that I did. Sometimes you need to rest, right?

Anyway, I was wondering what to write about this morning, and the answer revealed itself to me when I cranked open my laptop. All the tabs I had left open on my browser when verifying a few things yesterday proved to be very useful indeed.

To give you a flavour:

  • 1970s handheld tape recorder
  • Cassette recorder
  • Dead letter drop vs dead drop
  • Polaroid
  • Polaroid camera
  • Zippo lighter
  • Zippo lighter fuel
  • Cigarette lighter flame colour

In the midst of editing I am very disciplined indeed. I hop onto the internet, search, find the answer I am looking for and incorporate what I need into my manuscript. I leave the page open, but that’s it, I’m done. Back to editing.

The thing is… Having left those pages open my monkey mind continues to whirr away in the background, prodding and poking and generally creating new ‘things’ to occupy my mind with.

Here you go, this is what my brain did:

  • You can still get those handheld tape player/recorders on Ebay, why not have a look and see what they sell for? Although you can get a new one from Argos. But the new one doesn’t look so pretty and will probably last about 5 minutes (I don’t need a tape player/recorder. I don’t have any cassettes to play in it).
  • Remember how you used to like to play with the Zippo your friend had at university? It was so pleasing and weighty, and ohhh the click and clunk sound it made when it opened and closed… and they are windproof so could be useful (for what, I have absolutely no idea).
  • Those 1980s Polaroid cameras are ugly, but what about the Polaroid SX-70 Instant Camera that came out in 1972? That’s so sleek, has a lovely manual focus action and it folds up neatly. Just perfect! But ooh, properly refurbished ones are expensive. But then you know it will work, so it’s worth it (…).

Dear reader, it’s the last one that I’m stumbling on. You see… (cue shameless justification) the world of Anti-Virus is very much a world where censorship is a way of life and, due to a number of factors, people accept it. It is benign, it is for the common good, it is for society’s protection. However, what do you do if you find out that all is not as it seems, that something horrific is afoot? How do you go about recording all of the things that are hidden below the surface, behind walls, inside buildings, without being caught? Analogue technology is your friend.

I can hear you. ” But Freya, just because that’s your made up world doesn’t mean that you have to shell out on a camera, lovely though it may be! Get a grip!”

Yes, but… here’s the thing. One of my plans, alongside the actual novel, is to create artifacts that are part of, or linked to, the plot. There will be a book that is central to the story (very meta, a book within a book), there will be newspaper clippings, there will be tracking devices, there will be a gun (no, I’m not going to buy a real gun, I’m in the UK, but I will make a model of one), there will be a Zippo (OK, I might end up buying a Zippo, fair do’s), there will be Polaroid photos. See! There you are! And, as anyone who follows my Instagram account knows, photography is a ‘thing’ I use to keep the mood alive, create interest and so on, and I also really enjoy it. In my mind’s eye Callie (my main character) has one of those 1980s Polaroid cameras, but just because that’s the case doesn’t mean that I have to have one (I really, really don’t like them).

So, my novel will be surrounded by lots of other ‘stuff’. I want to create a tangible example of what’s inside my head. Who is it for? Mostly me. It’s an art project if you like. Creativity is what keeps me alive (oh OK, water and food also help) and my imagination going.

So, yeah. I’m still pondering about the Polaroid SX-70 Instant Camera…

Stream of Consciousness Saturday – SoCS Oct 31/2020

freyathewriter 3 Comments

Here’s this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday, courtesy of the lovely Linda. Please do take part, it’s fun to write and also fun to read the contributions from everyone else.

This week the prompt is the word ‘trick’. Here’s my contribution (albeit late!). And you’re welcome to another segment of my life. Who knows, you may eventually have the whole citrus fruit that is me! (No you won’t, by the way).

*****

That word ‘trickcyclist’ always used to confuse me when I was growing up. I think I heard it on a sitcom back in the 1970s, and couldn’t understand the context. Of course, being a little girl, I imediately thought of someone doing tricks on a unicycle, à la countless Royal Variety Performance shows, or a clown riding a bike that gradually falls apart as he rides it around the circus ring.

Eventually, of course, I understood that it was a malapropism for psychiatrist, and everything fell into place. But then I began to wonder if it was a way of referring to a need for psychiatric help that kept mental health in its dark, shady, uncomfortable place. By using a jokey term, we place mental health problems firmly in the ‘other’ category of health needs that we humans like to keep tidily organised and reserved for acceptable physical issues such as cancer or a broken bone.

We have got better at looking at mental health issues with less of a side-eye over the decades, we have got better about talking about mental health more openly, but there is still a long way to go. I personally have had my struggles, I’ve had therapy and I’ve been on medication and I’ve learned, over time, how to manage my anxiety and depression. It’s part of me. And I’m OK with that.

Those plot holes

freyathewriter 3 Comments

In this week’s instalment of my novel writing journey, I’m thinking about those annoying, wake-you-up-at-3am issues. You know, you’re happily writing away, (or in my case, editing) and something just feels a bit off. But you carry on anyway thinking ‘I can edit that later’. And then before you know it you’re wide awake, staring into the abyss, screaming inside your head.

Let’s set the scene. Your protagonist is doing their thing, tracking someone using their security services issue tracing device which is never to be used in anything other than an official capacity (but hey-ho, she’s doing that anyway), and then it all gets a bit shady and so you decide to highlight the paragraph, make a note in the sidebar and move on.

And then a few weeks later another scene links back to that first shady scene, but you decide to highlight the paragraph, make a note in the sidebar and move on. Because it’s not central to the plot, but is a wrinkle. And you can edit that later.

Repeat, until you have eight of those ‘edit that later’ moments.

Ladies and gents, that ‘edit that later’ time is now. Or rather, for me, it was yesterday. In my initial editing phase, I had still skipped gaily over those ‘edit that later’ highlights because, I could still ‘edit that later’. Here’s the back story. I had made an abortive attempt to completely edit my novel at the beginning of this year. And then Covid happened and everything was chaotic and well, you know. Everybody knows. So I stopped editing and put it all to once side until the last day of August.

So where I am now in my super-charged editing phase is that I am in the final third of my manuscript and I haven’t read this part of my novel with an editing hat on since the end of last year. I don’t know about you, but my memories of the previous year are generally really rather vague, even more so now because, well, 2020. Anyway, on Thursday evening another scene popped up, linked to the earlier eight scenes up above and you guessed it, I had, when I first wrote it, highlighted the paragraph, made a note in the sidebar and moved on.

You might be shaking your head by now, quite possibly rolling your eyes so loudly that I can hear you (yes, I can hear you). Well, nobody is perfect, especially me, although I am making an attempt to be better because… I fixed all of these plot holes yesterday in a four hour stint of get your head down serious work. By the time I had reached the final stage of my normal back-up process (save on laptop (and therefore the cloud), save on pen drive, save on Time Machine external hard drive), I felt accomplished. One small step for Freya, one giant leap for Anti-Virus.

Perhaps I could have gone about this in a more efficient way. Perhaps I could have been more of a planner, less of of a pantser*. I’m pretty certain that I’m in that hybrid plantser category – you know, plan a bit and wing the rest of it. My novel started out as a germ of an idea entirely focused on a dis-United Kingdom scrabbling over water and other environmental resources in a climate change situation. That was a long, long time ago. It has evolved. It still does consider the human impact on our planet, it still is set in a dis-United Kingdom (and good heavens I really hope I’m not foreshadowing the future in too much detail), but it is very different from the ‘worthy’ nature of its beginnings and is firmly dystopian because that’s my bread, butter and jam. So, plantser. (I still have the initial handwritten notes I made about this, so I have the proof that I did plan, well, something).

I’m feeling good about where I am with Anti-Virus. Even if it is going to wake me up at 3am again (it probably will). Onwards and upwards!

*For those not in the know, ‘pantser’ as in fly by the seat of your pants. Planning and pantsing is a hot discussion topic in the writing community!