coffeecoffeecoffee and an excerpt

Yum! I just made an iced coffee in the blender. Delish. It's tropical in London today. Thick and humid and damp. Yesterday we had thunder storms. It's supposed to hit 30 degrees this week.

I'm so glad I don't catch the tube to work.

Here is the conversation I've been writing recently. It's been really hard. But I'm mostly happy with it at the moment. Enough to move on to the next bit (which is what? hmmm)

@ the surfery boy party:

She kicked off her shoes, and clambered up the ladder one-handed and awkward. Jake was at the top, reaching to lift her up the last part. The iron of the roof was rough and rusty and warm under her feet. It creaked as she followed Jake along the the rivets to the peak. There they nestled, where the ocean wind blew full of the scent of salt and ozone and seaweed.

"Why the roof?" she asked, hugging her knees.

Jake cracked a beer open, snick and hiss, and sipped the froth. "The view."

"But downstairs..."

"There's a party, sure. But sometimes, you want to get away for a little bit."

"Okay." She rested her chin on her knees and looked out. The grey beach, the black sea with its slick of moonlight. The sprinkling of lights around the coast, occasional cottages and cars and streetlights. The dense black edge of the cliffs, heavy arms that encircled the scene. She imagined what the two of them looked like. Human huddles, perched like seagulls.

"It is lovely," she said.

"You get a feel for a place when you're on the roof."

"I didn't know those brownies you made were special brownies," Molly confessed, ducking her head to peer at him, one-eyed. Cheek on knee.

Jake laughed. "Shit."

"Yeah. I was supposed to pick up my friend, Geordie. And I couldn't drive."

"You were giggling too much to drive," he said.

"Something like that."

"I'm sorry, Molly. Hope I didn't get you in trouble."

"Not too much trouble."

He sipped his beer. He looked sideways at her. "Why are you here?"

"Sometimes, you want to get away for a little bit."

"You're not drinking your beer."

"No... I guess I don't feel like it anymore."

A shriek from below, that was clearly Geordie having the time of her life. Molly shivered, as the wind cut through her clothing. Why am I here. What am I doing?

"You seem like an innocent person," he said.

"What?"

"I don't mean that in a bad way."

"The brownies."

"More than that."

"Then what?"

Jake shrugged. "Couldn't say. Not exactly."

She considered. Watched the beach. The shapes of people walking along the sand. Some of the boys were down there, yelling at each other about driftwood and building the bonfire.

It wasn't the word she would have thought. And if that was what he thought, then who was Jake?

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"Just living."

"You live here?"

"For the summer. Teach surfing to all the tourists, round the point."

"And then what?"

He smiled at her. "Back to the snow, Molly."

A man of the seasons, she thought. "A nomad."

"Something like that. You live anywhere in particular?"

"Londontown."

"City girl," he said.

"Something like that." She shifted on the iron, trying to find a more comfortable spot. "You snowboard."

"Good guess."

"And how's that for you?"

"I'm trying to make it. This year. This year's my year."

"How do you mean?"

"I'm trying to go pro. I'm going to make pro."

"Wow. You must be good."

Jake grinned again. "I'm excellent."

She grabbed the other beer and opened it. Guess she did feel like it after all. "So how do you make pro, then?"

"You get yourself known. Make a name for yourself. Get sponsored."

"I assume a level of skill is involved."

"There is a measure of skill involved, yes," he said.

"How long have you been doing it for?"

Jake shrugged. "Since I was little. Started skiing when I was kid, then switched to boarding. Do you board?"

Molly shook her head. "I've been skiing a few times, but haven't tried snowboarding. It looks a little... fast."

He laughed. "That's only a problem if you're not in control."

"Exactly."

"But you have to lose control to get good at it, you know."

"Really?"

"You let go."

"Maybe I find it hard to do that," she said. She sipped the beer. Fizzy, malty, and cold enough to make her shiver. Rested her lips on the edge of the can. Let go.

"I'll show you."

"What?"

"I'll take you boarding, in winter. I'll show you how." He smiled sideways at her. She couldn't quite tell how much he was joking.

"The best way to learn is to follow someone who knows how," he added.

Molly grinned. A vision of herself shrieking in terror, hurtling down the mountainside, and poor Jake below suddenly realising what he'd got himself into.

an update and a new blog

Not a lot of writing -- on Molly -- recently. I am still working on the scene with Molly & Jake on the roof. In fact, I may even post an excerpt here...

But I have been doing other writing, on the new blog! This is the blog I have set up with my workmates. It is a total blast and we're having so much fun playing with it. Our general theme is 'money'. Yeah, that basically means we can write about anything, because everything has some kind of tenous link to money, finance, being paid, cost, etc...

Here it is: iwilldothatformoney.com -- go visit and marvel.

Our top keyphrase right now is "dumbasses with money". I had a giggle this morning when I saw on the stats that someone found our blog by Googling "what a crackhead will do for money".

I have started a series of posts about Kayleigh-Anne Boyd, a fictional Big Brother contestant now on the path of fame. She's a total riot. Hilarious to write about. We found a free photo stock library which had these awful, just awful, photos of this woman with frosted pink lipstick posing in over-the-top-sexy mode. She has become Kayleigh-Anne.

Next up will be something like, "The Wannabe WAG Pregnancy Trap, a guide by Kayleigh-Anne Boyd, aged 22 and one half". I am also starting some posts around UK NHS dentistry, and "litigious lifestyle choices"...

We would love to have other people contribute to the blog, so if you have something you want to write about (usually in a bitter or scathing kind of way) please give us a bell...!

it's something like a poem, jim

I wrote something. It's something like a poem. It's a scene from Molly, one I haven't got to yet, cut down and made in to... something like a poem.

~
Sick urban stone

Melting water halos in the neon
Dusting in her eyelashes, running her mascara
And she tastes in the back of her throat
The scent of a wet city at night
Coiling trickles along her collar bone
And down
And drips off her fingertips
The eternal man stands crying beside her
He told her his secret
It's too big for her to hold right now
~

I haven't moved forward with Molly yet -- she's still at this surfery boy party at the beach cottage, waiting for me to send her up to the roof and talk to Jake. I'm dragging my heels because I want it to be this note perfect scene and I'm not sure what they are going to talk about yet. I'm thinking -- brownies, and music, and some kind of confessional? I want it to be all about the things that aren't said.

Have you watched Sex & The City? There's an episode in season 4 where Carrie meets Aidan again, after they broke up because she was cheating on him. It's at the launch of his new bar. There's this scene -- really short. They're outside, and they talk. It's sad and jagged and underwritten. Everything is in the spaces. Everything that's being said is not in the dialogue.

I wanted to find a clip, or at least a script of the dialogue, but I can't (curse you, internets). It's season 4, episode 5, "Ghost Town", if you want to check it out.

I want that kind of dialogue.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I just recently finished watching the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. And I'm in love. This is some show. And I'm heartbroken, because it hasn't been renewed for a third season.

I like so much about this show, and I wish I could give a better and more critical review than the one I'm about to do. I wish I could be a more critical reader and watcher in general.

This is a very spoilery post, so please avoid it if you haven't watched the series. Seriously.

edit: I thought that James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd were involved with this show as they were credited as writers, but further digging revealed they were credited with the (characters) so I am unsure whether they actually had any input!

The first series took a little to get going. It looked like it might be all about running and running and chasing and so on. I thought there were dropped storyline threads, especially around the school. But it picked up. And the second season is great.

It's clear that the writers are not making this shit up as they go along. They have story arcs and character arcs planned. This means I found the show satisfying. I want shows to be satisfying. Like, Battlestar Galactica or Lost never were – those shows ultimately disappointed me.

I felt like Chronicles wasn't trying to reinvent the mythology of the franchise, but build on it. For instance, there's an episode where John finds the polaroid photo of his mother, the one of her and the blue heeler in the desert, the one he will give to Kyle Reese in the future. It's just a moment, but it's there.

The characters are layered, developed. I even found the secondary characters more interesting sometimes. Perhaps this is because they are able to have more scope simply by being new to our screens compared to Sarah and John, with their familiar struggles and needs. Derek Reese is just awesome. The scene where he watches Cameron dance, in the first series, could be one of my favourite moments on screen, ever. He brings scarred, he brings internal struggle.

Cameron the 'good' cyborg has these wonderful touches of humour, and then can be so unsettlingly inhuman. The final episode has her echoing Arnie's rampage through the mental hospital in the second movie, as she breaks out Sarah Connor from prison, and she is a much finer and more competent and threatening cyborg than Kristanna Loken ever was. Then there is Riley's final scene, when she confronts Jesse about the truth of her mission, and I could really feel it as a desperate struggle of life and death.

Although - I felt Jesse was miscast, and I'm not that interested in Mr Ellison. During his scenes, I was always waiting for the rest to come back. And there were some episodes that I didn't care for - especially the dream sequence vs dream sequence one about Sarah.

But the second half of the second season got particularly interesting, with the development of John Henry, and Mrs Weaver starts saying more than, "Ah, Mr Ellison." It became clear than Savannah is very important. We already knew she must be important because Mrs Weaver – a cold-blooded liquid metal monster – had kept her alive when she'd killed her parents, and was concerned for Savannah's wellbeing and mental health. What is her motivation? I'm still super intrigued but I guess we'll never really know. Mrs Weaver – she of the moray eel – and the eel that worms its way out of the doomed submarine – I think are one and the same. They ask and reply to the same question, in the present, and in the future. She isn't Skynet after all, as she is actually against Skynet, but what she is creating with John Henry is actually not on the same side as John & Sarah either.

The end of this season – gosh. The loss of Derek, so brutal and sudden and then pushed aside because John & Sarah don't have time to grieve – nor do we, not yet. My heart broke a little bit.

And the final episode is brilliant. It ends on this note, this perfect and sad note, as John Connor looks at Derek and Derek does not know him, as he sees his father Kyle for the very first time, and as he sees Cameron - and then realises that she is not Cameron. That change of expression on his face is done so, so well.

There's references to the Wizard of Oz several times – the last names they take on as part of their false identities (Baum, Gale), the reading of the book by a child in one episode. I noticed the references and I'm still thinking about why - the tinman, maybe, who wanted a heart. The search to go (find) home? The wizard behind the curtain – perhaps this was John Henry. It has been a while since I read that book, feel like I need to do so again.

What else? I keep thinking, churning it over. I'm sure more will come up in my brain.

And there it goes. I fell in love with another amazing and cancelled sci-fi show. I can't believe that hohumblahmeh Dollhouse got renewed, and Chronicles didn't.

three little words

The other day, some of my colleagues and I held a brainstorm as part of an internal project. Following a few fun exercises to warm up our brains, we went on to think more specifically about the project.

Later on, I looked down at the page where I had been jotting down words, as part of the warm up exercises, and saw:

Sick

Urban

Stone

And I think they are such a nice clump of words, they need to be made into something. Use them as a writing exercise prompt, perhaps, or even to build a poem.

Anyone keen to join in? Take those 3 words and make them into something...

writer's cafe

I hope you all had a lovely Easter! I did, even though typically the weather was shite. I had the flat to myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I went to the gym, surfed around the net, watched bad television, ate delicious food, drank delicious red wine - and did some writing!

I got up to 15,000 words on Molly, writing some fun scenes. Again, more dialogue. I am really loving the dialogue between Molly and her best friend Geordie. I can hear them in my head, bantering and teasing.

Not so much written on Tom yet, although I've been doing lots of research for him. I found a great archive of WW2 memories, on the BBC website, which helps me get to know what people thought, how they felt, in wartime Britain.

I'm getting closer to the point where the story begins to get... "unwieldly" is the word that comes to mind - at least, in my experience. Where it has grown enough that there are so many strands to hold in your hand, to keep weaving with, trying not to leave any sticking out and forgotten about.

Maybe this time it will be easier to hold all those strands, as I have just started using a piece of software called Writer's Cafe. Geoff told me about this, so I downloaded a trial version to play with.

The best way to describe it - at least the way I'm using it - is a digital version of using post-it notes to build your storyline. You can write a scene on each note, assign it to a thread, and see how these threads align with each other as you proceed through the story.


I've set up two storylines for Molly. In the first, each column is a day, so I can keep track of how time is passing, and what events happened for each character on each day. I don't want to start writing that autumn has arrived, when it should still be summer. The first day is Saturday night, when Molly gets her heart crushed by Lucas. This storyline works as my continuity editor.

The second storyline is more like the 'heartbeats' of the story - the scenes and chapters - who has screentime, what did they do, what information was shared in that chapter, etc. I think this will be the most valuable display, but it's also the hardest to set up in a way which makes sense for me - I'm still working on it. But this will give me visual snapshot of my story and all its threads and, hopefully, I will be able to quickly see where one is beginning to unravel.

There's a lot more to the software (see the features here) but as I only have the trial version I haven't explored any further than these basic storylines.

books books!

Last weekend I went bookshopping (yay!) and bought a couple of books from my wishlist. I also tried to find Frankie magazine - artsy cute indie magazine from Melbourne - their website msg board says you can buy it over here in Borders, but I was not successful. Boo. Perhaps I just need to try a different Borders?

I have read this book already because it was so very fascinating:

The Unthinkable: who survives when disaster strikes - and why - by Amanda Ripley

I can't remember how I found out about this book, I actually think someone on my LiveJournal flist mentioned it.

It's a look into disasters and how we react in them - the common reaction of individuals and crowds. Denial, deliberation, decisive moments. How we more often than not just totally freeze up and very few will act quickly enough. How some people are 'heroes'. The author uses real disasters and survivors for reference - from 9/11, to the July 07 London attacks, Hurrican Katrina, plane crashes, fires & tsunamis.

There's something... voyueristic about reading this book as well, getting these glimpses into the absolute horror that some people have experienced.

It makes you think - how would you react?

I know that I'll definitely be reading the safety card in planes from now on...

I'm now reading:

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed - by Jared Diamond

I've read part of this book before, as my Dad had it, but I never got to finish it.

I don't always agree with Jared Diamond, especially on some of his approaches to human sexuality (he's got a very, very masculine-centric view), but I did enjoy this book when I first started reading it a couple of years ago.

It's environmentally focused, but includes other elements, looking at how societies have failed or succeeded in the past - for instance, he looks at Easter Islanders and Mayans as those who did not manage to succeed, and Tikopia in the Solomon Islands as an example of a society which is in harmony with its resources and environment.

I'm also reading:

Half of a yellow sun - by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

- which I got for Christmas 07 and have only just cracked open! This is fiction, set in 1960s Nigeria, and so far is fine, although I did put it down to read The Unthinkable instead....