life settling down

Life seems to have settled down a bit. My mother in law is still terribly sick and not likely to last out the year but at least she’s back home. We had a big family lunch on Saturday over at their place where I cooked a lamb roast for the family. There was me, Kirsty, her parents and her sister Fiona, and her husband Nigel. It was a yummy lunch and Kirsty’s mum really liked it though she was pretty exhausted yesterday. Fiona and Nigel fly back to Dubai today so at least if Ks mum does slip away she had one last family meal/get together.

The writing has settled down into a nice rhythm as well. I’ve been working away on decompressing one of my previous draft’s chapters into three separate ones. So far it seems to be working really well and makes this section of the novel really exciting. Or so I reckon at least I’ve also been thinking of crunching the novel down to a much shorter length. As I mentioned earlier the previous draft was 260,000 odd words which is way too much, especially if I want a publisher to take it seriously. I’m starting to figure out a way of working it so it’s much shorter. I still haven’t decided to do the change but its definitely worth considering.

bleak family stuff

It’s a bleak time in my household at the moment. My mother-in-law is very close to passing on and we are just waiting for it to happen. Obviously it’s pretty terrible at the moment. Kirsty is not home most nights until around 9 as she’s working and then spending the rest of the time at the hospital. So yeah, not good at the moment. We’re going to see the Killers tonight at Vector Arena so hopefully that’ll give us a break. It’s Ks birthday present so I hope she can enjoy it.

Rob-ril

It’s unbelievable how good the weather has been lately! I just love this time of the year, it’s pleasant during the day and brisk without being cold at night. Plus its usually fine. The other reason it’s good: pretty much all my sports are on. Cricket is usually into its last couple of games, the Super 14 is on, the NRL has started and the NBA is getting to the crunch time. Maybe we should change the name from April to Rob-ril. Heh.

It also seems to have refreshed me somewhat. I’m feeling a bit more optimistic about things.  I spent my writing time this morning pulling apart a pivotal chapter from my previous draft and replotting it for the current draft. As a result it will now be three chapters! I definitely wasn’t expecting that.

Anyway, I should go and pretend to do some work.

stagnant

I haven’t really talked about my writing for a few weeks and the reason is a bit stupid. I’ve been ashamed with the (lack of) progress I have been making. In some ways writing is a simple activity. You set yourself down somewhere and write. Anyone who has written knows it isn’t that simple, there’s dreaming, planning, plotting, writing, revising, more revising and even more revising. By the end your finished piece probably shares little in common with your original idea.

At the moment I’m trapped in the “even more revising”. In the past few weeks I have rewritten my opening chapter several times. It hasn’t felt right at all. Now I’m a bit worried that I have turned what was an interesting opening before I started tweaking, into something jumbled. Ack. I think I’m getting stumped by the paralysis of closeness. I need to move on to something else and come back to the chapter in a couple of months.

revisions

The writing on the latest draft of the novel has been going slowly lately, mainly because I’ve been having trouble with Chapter 4. I finished it a couple weeks back but ended up scrapping everything and starting again. It was just too disjointed and fragmented. There was this definite sense of “this happens then this happens then this happens then this happens” and on and on. It wasn’t good. Part of the problem is that Chapter 4 combines two chapters from previous drafts and in those previous drafts those chapters were very distinct.  But a weird thing happened when I started rewriting the chapter, I realised that the bones of a good chapter are there, it just needed to be reshaped. I’ve cut out some of the events and streamlined moments and suddenly its working a lot better and I’m feeling more satisfied.

I’ve also been developing some ideas around another story I’ve been working on for years. I have a kick arse setting, some awesome characters and the structure of the world and its culture but no real story. But the other day some ideas for the story came to me and I’m letting them percolate.

thanks global warming!

“It’s like Asia.”

That was the comment someone at Kirsty’s work made about the weather. And when I heard that I wholeheartedly agreed. A couple years back we flew in to Hong Kong in August in the middle of their rainy season. Leaving the blissfully air conditioned airport was like walking into a wall of wet heat. You could literally feel your clothes getting heavy with the moisture and it always felt like a thunder storm was just moments away. On our last day there we saw the laser light show over the waterfront and then the weather broke and we had to run for cover as lightning and a torrential downpour hit.

I didn’t expect Auckland to get like that. It is so hot and humid at the moment. The only thing we’re missing is the thunder storms. I had to do two storytimes yesterday. After the first one I was sent home to have a shower and get changed as I was drenched in sweat. In the afternoon I did another storytime and I had to change again.

It wasn’t like this last year.

Of course being kiwis we never designed our houses to cope with either the heat or the cold. As a result we swelter in summer and freeze in winter. I feel sorry for the cats. Goldie, who is never one to indulge in unnecessary exercise at the best of times, simply walks onto our tiled kitchen floor and slumps to the ground. Tinka, his brother, disappears under the house for hours then in the evenings when it’s usually cuddle time (i.e. sprawling along the length of my legs and kneading my feet) he just lies like a corpse on the floor under the coffee table.

And its even hotter today

don’t catch shelving!!

Spent today shifting around the children’s fiction section of my library. Major lesson that I learnt: if you drop library grade shelving don’t try and catch it. I received a nasty cut on my palm doing just that. Still the shelves work really well now. 

I also managed to finish off chapter 2 today. Going into the revision I thought it just needed some cosmetic changes and a few updates to reflect the current state of the novel but I managed to cut out a whole page of stuff! Call me Rob the Butcher. The slaughter continues as I excise an entire chapter next (goodbye 4000 words) then move on to another chapter which feels uncomfortably long. It’ll be interesting though as I’m going back to a slightly naïve character who is radically different by the end of the novel. Should be fun!

A not so heroic effort – a Heroes series 3 review

(Spoiler Warning: this review relates to the episodes screened in NZ so far)

What’s wrong with Heroes Series 3? The first season of Heroes was great, a taut gripping drama that was genuinely compelling. Sure it ripped off other things – most notably J.M. Stracyznski’s Rising Stars and Brian Wood’s Demo but also a whole host of other comics as well as TV shows like The 4400, but it did so in a way that was grown up and sophisticated. Essentially you didn’t mind because it was just really really good. “Save the cheerleader, save the world” was a mantra that we tuned in for every week, it meant excitement and drama.

Then it all kinda went wrong. The season 1 finale fell a bit flat, we were promised (threatened) with the apocalypse and instead we got a literal puff of smoke. It was all a bit whoop-de-doo. Season 2 was wrong in so many ways. They introduced too many new characters, went away from the characters that we liked (Micah and his family should have had more of a prominent role, and Hiro was in the past for waaaaaaay too long) and made it too slow.

Pre Season 3 we were promised that they were going to go back to what was working in the first season. So far it’s been a failure. The action has definitely returned, there are a plethora of baddies out there and some of our heroes are turning villainous (rather apt when the season is titled: Villains), but it all feels very kindergarten. Everything is simplistic and the sophistication that seemed to be there in season 1 is absent. Or perhaps it was all just an illusion and we were so grateful to have a grown-up superpower show that we ignored its many flaws.

Whatever the case, Heroes season 3 has too many problems.

The show suffers from Peter being too powerful. He can literally almost do anything. They’ve tried to rectify this somewhat by having him firstly be stuck in the body of a criminal then by him contracting Sylar’s power. This has turned him into a powers vampire and we have an insight into what has driven Sylar to be a monster so far. Admittedly this story is strong and provides many of the more powerful moments in the show. However it has the potential to go farcical if Peter has to be restricted every episode, if they don’t he’ll logically be able to solve every dilemma with one of his myriad of powers.

There’s also a definite sense of the producers making things up as they go. Case in point is Peter’s Irish girlfriend from season 2. WTF is she? Isn’t she still trapped in that alternate hellhole future? I found this quote from Tim Kring to be quite shocking:

When the fan asked if Peter would ever acknowledge Caitlin or express any grief over what seems to be her dire fate, Kring replied, “No, we passed it. We leapfrogged it.” He added that when the idea of returning to Caitlin was brought up, they asked, “Really? Are we going to risk that? We have enough stuff to [deal with].”

That’s just bad scripting, bad storylining and bad producing. So we’re supposed to give a crap about characters that the producers obviously don’t? my wife, who is a storyliner for a television show, is absolutely disgusted by this and says that she’d be in deep crap if they pulled a stunt like that.

Another problem I have with the show is that there is no real sense of a broader story like there is in Lost or Battlestar Galactica. This is something that the show definitely needs. Personally I would love it if they explored the reasons why the powers have come on now. Why can’t they have some otherworldly threat appear – it would give you a lurking menace and really, is it any sillier than the utter crap that they’ve pulled already? Maybe their powers are the world’s defence mechanism at some terrible tentacled menace that threatens our very existence.

The other problems I have are pet peeves:

Every time I see Parkman do that constipated turtle face when he is attempting to use his powers I want to throw my remote at the screen. Show the powers another way, the way you’re currently doing it is farcical.

They’re frikkin ripping off The Fly with Suresh’s story and it’s not even that interesting! It’s possibly because the actor is soooo bad but I doubt it. At least when Stargate Atlantis rips things off (which they do every second episode) they do it in a cheerful and exciting fashion.

And worst of all, they’ve ruined Hiro’s character. He was the best character and now he just seems annoying. Characters change and evolve, have him become that dark future assassin struggling to regain his happiness. He just seems like an annoying Chihuahua at the moment. I want Ando to kill him.

I don’t think the show is irredeemable but every week it gets harder to watch it. It’s a tragedy because once upon a time, Heroes was must see television. “Save the cheerleader, save the world”  now means “meh”.

Body counts

The oh-so bloody The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman.

I’ve realised that I am a bloodthirsty writer. In my novel I kill off several of my characters, including one pov character. It’s carnage.

I think I’m just channelling my influences.

George RR Martin is just the most obvious one – in his Song of Fire and Ice series he has a death toll in the dozens and it’s not finished yet. Oddly the character I got most upset about dying was Sansa’s wolf, Lady. I actually had to stop reading after that bit.

JV Jones is another influence. While she doesn’t rival Martin in sheer numbers, Jones on the other hand brutalises her characters. She puts them through terrible torments – characters are beaten, assaulted and tortured on a regular basis. But the sequences are always compelling, especially one memorable section in a Cavern of Black Ice where Raif, our main character, is tortured in a cell that regularly fills with water as the nearby river rises.

Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series exceeds Martin in body count. Of course you kinda expect that with a zombie epic but the thing I have learned in reading The Walking Dead is never to grow attached to a character (or family), they might not be around for long.

title? what title? who needs a title to their post?

Whoah, haven’t blogged in a wee bit. Been busy with work and sorting a few other things out, but I’m back now (famous last words, right?)

So what have I been up to? Last week I flew down to Christchurch for a work conference which was cool. I’d never been down there before and it kinda felt like entering enemy territory. (for those of you who have no idea what I’m on about, I’m an Aucklander born and bred and Christchurch is our arch nemesis in everything). But Christchurch was cool, very pretty and I found myself wishing K was with me so we could go exploring.

What wasn’t so cool was the flight home and the toddler in the seat behind me who only wanted to smash his hands on the window and kick my seat. That was until he went to the bathroom after stinking out the rear of the plane. I know we’re going to have kids within a couple of years but that almost puts you off them.

I managed to do more work on the novel. I’ve been getting twitchy with it, partly because I’m not “really” writing and also because I just haven’t had the time to spend on it.

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve sat down and written something substantial for the novel. I’m still ploughing my way through my revisions and they’re taking a lot longer than I expected. Saying that, I am really enjoying rereading and working on the draft. I’ve got it almost right – I can feel it. I think every second chapter or so is good, or pretty close to something I am really happy with. Most of the work needs to happen at the front end of the novel and that’s what I’ll be looking at when I finally finish.

I mentioned earlier that I was thinking about splitting the book but I’m thinking I’ll wait to see what the reaction to it is first. The story as it stands seems compelling and I’d hate to mess that up unless I absolutely have to.

Then there was the awesome Rugby League World Cup Final in the weekend. For those who haven’t heard (or didn’t hear me screaming with joy at midnight on Saturday) the Kiwis defeated the Kangaroos to win our first ever world cup. I can see why the Aussies are upset – some of the decisions definitely went against them (notably the strip on Benji Marshall) but on the night they just weren’t good enough. In many ways it was like what happened to the All Blacks in the World Cup last year against the French but no one felt sorry for us then.