Reality, what a concept

Word count: 274                                                                                                Reading time: 2 min

Recently a friend said that not everyone reads like I do. Apparently I demand a lot from novels because I want credibility. I don’t want reality to the exclusion of caricature or metaphor or other wondrous literary devices. I’m not looking for it in sci fi or fantasy. But in everyday garden-variety fiction shouldn’t the laws of nature and human nature be evident?

It’s late summer and daffodils are blooming in the garden. Really?

A 19^th century schoolteacher with no income, other than her subsistence level job, is fired. Can she really afford to live on her own, in a hotel no less, for an indefinite period until rescued by a proposal of marriage?

A character goes to a big high school and finds a secret room where she can hide every time her demons overwhelm her. Is it possible only one teenager in an entire would test doors to see if they’re locked? That only one teenager would go places she shouldn’t? Can I believe that this room will remain undiscovered for the whole school year or until the climax, when the protagonist’s tormentor finds her there?

When I hit one of these road bumps, I usually re-read the earlier part of the book to see where I missed the essential detail. Once I’ve satisfied myself that it’s a simple continuity error, I never engage with the story in the same way again.

Do credibility issues suspend your belief in a story? If so, can you remember any really good ones? Or do you just read past structural weaknesses?

Lastly, where have all the editors gone?

Falling In Love

                                                                               

Word Count: 227                                                                    Reading time: 2 mins

Autumn is dragging its wild cloak across the landscape and every day the scenery changes. Rain-drenched soil sweetens the air with rich composting fragrance. Our neighbour’s chestnut tree sheds a few more leaves and opens the view of the city just a little wider. The streetlights flicker on earlier each evening.

The closing season is on us and the earth is preparing to sleep. Do you dread fall as a harbinger of winter? Does it fill you with anxiety about the approaching cold and the long dark nights?

For me, George Eliot said it best:

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

I love the smell, the light, the gentle chill in the air. And I love what it signifies metaphorically to writing. When the last breath of life seems sucked out of a piece I can bury it for a while and wait to see what rises from the humus.

Do you rest your work? Is there an autumn or fall in your creative process? When you take it out again and turn the soil, has life regenerated?

***

Thanks to writing coach Daphne Gray-Grant for the helpful technique of prefacing posts with word count and reading time.

http://www.publicationcoach.com

Journal Entries

Word count: 250                                                                                 Reading time: approx. 1-2 min

If you have ever worked in an accounting department then the term journal entry may have several meanings. To me, as a writer, it means one thing: the lines I scratch into a notebook at the end of the day.

My journal entry is when I capture my day with pen and paper. 100 words or less.

I’ve kept diaries before, volumes of them. Kept them, read them, and burned them. So I’ve been cautious with my current journal as I will be with this blog. I’ll keep the entries brief and germane.

Sometimes even as I’m writing in my journal I wonder why.

Does it matter that it was 24 degrees out today and for the first time in a week cool air blew in on the evening breeze? Maybe not immediately but when I set a story in Vancouver on a late summer’s day, it may be important to know that the robins have stopped singing and the Stellar jays have started tapping on the back window again.

The line drawing I did of the person I watched when he didn’t think anyone was looking may inspire an entire character.

My journal is both a record and a resource.

What do you write regularly? An update to your FB status? A few lines of verse? E-mails to a friend? Notes on a calendar? Or are you more visual – do you record the passing time in photos or sketches?

Greetings from the sunny Gulf Islands of British Columbia

Today I have waded into the waters of web construction.

So far I have uploaded three of my short stories for your reading pleasure. You will find them under Short Fiction on the menu at the right:

• A Matter of Choice was first published in the anthology Breaking Free http://www.nswrapecrisis.com.au/Resources/BreakingFree.htm.   More recently it was selected for inclusion in the 2011 Penguin Review Anthology.
• Blind Date won the Pauline Walsh Friends of the Hills Library Prize awarded by a chapter of the Fellowship of Australian Writers.
• Constant Cravings, previously titled, Hunger, was published in the Writers Writing Right anthology and later was included in Sarah LaPolla’s blog, Glass Cases. http://bigglasscases.blogspot.com/