Shouts From Down Under

Expression, depth, soul, emotion, - or just crocodile tears?

Every day life's moments pass by, with the ordinary, the average and the boring. Nothing happens that is noticeable, nobody does anything dramatic, and the end of that day is as unchanged as the beginning.

Life is drab, sour and even bitter. We can all enjoy this flat-line sort of existence if we are people who don't like surprises, dislike the extraordinary, would rather not see displays of other's talent and skill, and can't stand change if we weren't the instigator of it.

Well, I don't think novelists are like that. Not this one anyway.

Hang on. Don't we like routine, predictability, plans, budgets, lists, files, organisation, control, practice and preparedness? All those things are what you need to write excellent stories, surely?

How about this, then?

If our lives were completely stable, with everything forecast happening as planned, and each moment perfectly in our control and under out command, what then?

What then? We'd have nothing to write about! Everyone would already know what a story would contain before reading it, wouldn't they? Stories would be the same old thing, nothing new, nothing original or at least with the appearance of being original. Nothing different would present as something remarkable or astonishing.
If our world was devoid of disagreement, missing any difficulties, struggles, pain, sadness, shock, outrage, violence, disharmony, dishonesty, as well as the other better qualities and experiences of joy, happiness, satisfaction, peace, reward, achievement, profit, sharing, helpfulness, heroes, heroines, and so on, well, what would we use for material?

We'd be one destitute sad sack bunch of writers, sitting around like painted up clowns, with mournful expressions, hollow distant looks in our eyes, and our shoulders drooping in miserable emptiness.

But, it's not like that.

So, next time life is dishing out every drama, conflict, unpleasantness, unfairness and crime, on your shift, don't despair or complain. YOU ARE ALIVE!

FOLKS.

WE ARE ALIVE. LIFE IS FULL OF CONFLICT AND USABLE MATERIAL

We just have to look on life and our surroundings with that in mind. Perhaps short of always being positive, because sometimes life isn't positive. Sometimes it's extremely trying, immeasurably sad and all that stuff.

*whispers*But it's still material for writing something of value.

Here, below, are a couple of links to stuff of drama, eye welling sadness, yet a lifting, swelling feeling of euphoria to behold LIFE! HUMANS! People doing stuff that matters, people not even realising that they are stars in their own show, celebrities of their own destiny, passengers of their own vehicle of fate, careering down a steep embankment of time that is pushing us all onwards.

Sometimes I get a strong feeling that time is being sped up. Do you ever feel that way? Lately, the last couple of decades perhaps more than before, even children comment that life goes by so FAST! Science would scoff at me for saying this, but we can only measure time by known natural physics etc. What if all of it was set to the same clock, somewhere else? As the total known, and unknown mass of existential material swirls through the unfathomable void of space time, is it too much to propose and imagine that a greater power has a hand on a dial. And that adjustment knob is being slowly turned to increase the speed, and decrease what can fit into, each moment of time.

And our awareness of this is foggy at best. Maybe I need more sleep. All I know is, time seems to rush to an infinite speed for those 5 or 10 minutes when you sink into the most blissful slumber, just before your alarm finishes it's snooze period. It happens every time.

Valentina Lisitsa plays to a remarkable rhythm of time, and throughout the pieces she plays, there are plenty of dramatic moments in her musical story.



And there HAS to be a series of novels jam packed with drama from the following news article. If this doesn't bring a tear to your eye...

https://www.facebook.com/bbcnorthwesttonight/photos/a.124055177625553.13155.1206...

Sparky