Shouts From Down Under

Dreaded nothingness- the panic of NaNoWriMo- the worst yeah?

There have been numerous comments from people doing Nano this year, that they have nothing, no words. They sit in front of the computer, and feel blank.

Well, think about this situation. It's stage fright. Relax. Your life is PACKED with a supply of material. JAMMED TO OVERFLOWING. Think about what you did today, yesterday, last week, last year, last summer, when you moved house, when you had that bout of vomiting, when you had the prang in the car, when you were booked by the police, when you got arrested, or when all this drama happened to someone you know.

Think about the times you've listened to your friends or relatives, the tall tales they've told, the parties, the lonely times, the fretting, the arguments, the differences of opinion. Think about your own house right now, that you sit in. Or think about being homeless. Whatever!

Think about your Grandparents lives. Your neighbours, what are they doing now? What do they do that bugs you every day? What job would you love to have. What is your ideal lifestyle if you had fifty million dollars tax free to work with? What are your beliefs? What do you aspire to? What have your children done or will do? What stinking rotten disasters have happened to you or someone you know?

All this is a goldmine of stuff to churn out into words, for Nano. It doesn't have to be detail perfect or even right. Who cares? You have the perfect excuse to draw on all the bull scheisse stories and dad jokes you've ever heard, all the exaggerated stuff that people talk about, the rumours, the utter rot. If you don't have that, or can't remember anything, make it up!

Writing a book is freedom = IMAGINATION NIRVANA. Suck it up like a vacuum cleaner. Spit it out through your fingers / keyboard / monitor / SAVE button.

Freedom. Throw the excuses, blank mind, and rule book out the window. Write your thoughts straight into words, whatever you are thinking right now. Make it your characters thoughts. Who cares if your character is full of bull dust?

The photo at the top of this entry is an old place where we lived for 14 months until we bought our own house. This 6 bedroom 2 lounge, heritage listed residence used to belong to a doctor, we were told, and there is quite a history to it. But for me, it became a rich vein of writing ideas and material. Being opposite a primary school, and almost full cemetery, made it near to perfect for a nice juicy nightmare scene. The scene and place where a couple of my main characters lived. What a coincidence...



I'll paste here a couple of excerpts from my first novel, that demonstrate how you can use this, your own, real life experience, or SOMEONE'S experience that you know; use it as material for your story.

Think positively about this. Forget the excuses why it won't work. Write the scenes like stand alone stories, like patches, software patches that you can fiddle with, manipulate as in puzzle pieces until they form part of a whole, form the big picture, form the plot, form your up and coming best seller.

Get excited! Those snippets of everyday incidents, even an overheard conversation while you order at Macca's, is the stuff of great novels, and could potentially be $$$ in your bank account. Don't think so? Sorry but look in your local library and tell me there isn't money writing books. That's a lot of investment for there to be no money in it. Nope. That's negative thinking. Stop thinking that way. Convert all that free life stuff into words = cash one day.

Excerpts from The Influence Gene relevant to the photo of where we used to live. I've used that house and the setting, but made the address a different place, so it's no use trying to find the actual home, like people do with London locations from Harry Potter's muggle world. No, I don't want sight seers when this novel becomes famous .

What? It WILL. It will (cough ).

From Chapter 2 Family Nucleus

Pyotr and his mother Anna lived across the road from the school. He could see the cemetery from his bedroom window and the tops of some of the monuments sticking up above the fence.
Their home was built in the late eighteen hundreds boasting high ceilings adorned with elaborate roses and intricately worked cornices inside and outside the house was completely surrounded by a veranda with spidery wrought iron trimmings.
There were eight bedrooms, two lounge rooms, a large kitchen with a dining area, and two other smaller rooms opening from it.
One his mother used for ironing and linen. The other was a walk in pantry with the fridge and freezer on one side and food preparation benches on the other.

Sadly the house didn't have a cellar or attic like old homes did in Europe or other parts of the world; omissions that Pyotr wistfully imagined would make his life much more adventurous. His mother would be horrified if she knew he'd watched one of his favourite movies Amityville Horror a few times.

They had lived in this old sprawling house for as long as Pyotr could remember. He didn't have a Dad. All Anna would say about it was that his Dad died in Ukraine before he was born. And the more Pyotr tried to question her, the more she stubbornly refused to tell him anything.

'There's nothing to tell Pyotr, we live in Australia now, our life is here. Why ask questions?!'

From Chapter 3 Pyotr's Fallout

The usual dreary meal of sliced “Devon” and watery boiled vegetables was eaten in silence except for the off-putting sound of his mother chewing. Although it wasn't extremely cold, he'd stoked the freestanding heater and adjusted the flue, hoping it would last through the night.
Spring rain was bucketing down, making loud white noise, on the corrugated roof of their home in Dial Street, but even with the distraction he finished his homework in record time. Though every effort was made, his teachers rarely gave him anything remotely challenging.

There was a blockage in the spouting outside, overflowing water from the overhead gutter staining rust down the wall of the veranda, leaves and sticks caught in the wrought iron trim patterns.
He heard moaning gusts rattling the bleached and peeling double hung windows of his bedroom.
Dusty white Venetian blinds swung back and forth, clacking against the draughty reveals.

He made every effort to block the view of the trees in the cemetery. They were whipping around; their thin trunks looked like cats tails and were held on an angle by the gusts, like a half shut pocketknife. Their shadows were disturbingly lifelike, especially when he was here in his bedroom alone and the complaining wind through the eaves added to the isolation. Somewhere a loose bit of roofing iron was banging.
He angled the slats fully closed so that the sepia light from the street couldn’t penetrate and the creepy view beyond the paling fence was hidden.
He felt like the last person alive on earth, and the elements would soon remove him too, if they could gain a chink of access.

The rain seemed determined to get in, needling the glass panels, with a malicious life of its own - wanting to dissolve the tuck-pointed double brick walls - wanting to invade his room, soak him instantly and turn his cosiness to misery.

Exhausted, he’d managed to struggle into his PJs and tumble into bed, but had forgotten to turn off the light.
The light switch was so far across the painfully cold floor boards. Now that he was snuggled in bed he lay there staring, willing it to turn off.
The 60-watt globe with its white porcelain light shade hung from the tin ceiling above his bed. It was still casting its yellow Victorian era glow parsimoniously across his bedroom furniture.

But Pyotr was finding it difficult to see. He forced his eyes open wide and leaned forward. Why was it so dark? There were shadows but if he looked carefully, he’d be able to get out of bed, see where to walk to switch the light off and save power as his mother always said.
But instead of polished Tasmanian Oak floorboards fading into the corners of the room all he could see was a road. He blinked thinking it would go away.
It was an exposed defenceless area. The foliage and tree trunks along both sides looked a much safer place to hide. These trees weren’t blowing around and there was no rain.

Was there danger? Was this the familiar gravel road in the cemetery? Had he fainted? Was his tunnel vision the after affects of being unconscious? That had happened once playing Rugby when he was suddenly covered in other players bodies in a crunching tackle, his head given enough of a bump to knock him out, and he felt the same disorientation now.

There was a fog in his brain and the last thing he remembered was Anna tucking him safe in his bed and forgetting to put the light off. He was too old to be babied, but he still appreciated his mother’s care.

The road became a stronger reality. He felt himself lurch on the uneven surface, as his inner ear adapted to a different incline, the tactile sensation of dirt underfoot.
The road was worn, full of potholes and deep dusty grooves; some sort of vehicle had churned up all this mess and if he were not careful he’d twist his ankle in the dark.

He wanted to be back in his bed. With straining eyes he peered around again.
Even with such lack of light, it was obvious any sign of green grass on the verges was long gone. With another sudden feeling of vertigo he heard a distant thunder and felt the ground shake. He could hear distant shouting and engines. Was that noise a machine gun chattering?

What was this place? Where was he? He couldn't think clearly. Who was he?
He looked at his hands in the gloom. They looked too small and pale, with slender but with dirty fingernails bitten unevenly to the quick, and small grubby warts. Not his hands at all.
His mind was so dark, misty and strange. He watched and smelled smoke drifting through the trees obscuring everything.
So it was a foggy night, but no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t remember how he came to be here.

He couldn't remember his name.

So, see what you can think up. Even if you feel its drivel, write the bits and pieces down. If nothing else, it'll make up the word count for NaNo. And NaNo really should be NanYES! Keep saying yes, I can do this. Yes, I remember that funny thing that happened when hubby's mum helped me with the laundry, or when my wife lost her temper with the call centre guy.

Life is happening around us every second. Time, ticking away, unrolling events right before our eyes, unravelling like a roll of toilet paper behind the bride and groom's car. Below; another incident, surrounded by a special event, that shaped a thought in my head, later becoming a few words in a blog entry here for you to read.

Invalid Photo #1037413 Invalid Photo #1037414 Invalid Photo #1037416 Invalid Photo #1037417

Make the opportunity something profitable to you, by rolling that information right up into your head! Can't remember? Then take notes of stuff. Do it every day, even while Nano is going on. Only takes a second to jot it down, poke your smart phone's screen and save it into notes. Come on! It's FREE, and millions of dummkopfs don't realise the value of it. Life, people, objects and drama.

It's like chocolate cake for a writer. Elbow others out of the way and get your teeth into that material!

This is your baby...

Sparky