splish splash

It's a "spot the anomaly" quiz today. A quiet road scene from a few days ago. What are the strange conditions in this picture?

checking for bark scorpions and Sedona gas stations

Fortunately I took some snapshots when we were wandering around the deserts a while ago.

It's meant that some of the scenes I'm writing at the moment can be at least partly based upon some form of reality.

I can even remember the boot bashing and clothes shaking rituals associated with checking for scorpions. The little itsy 2 inch cream coloured ones were supposed to be the most trouble.

Maybe it was exaggerated a bit because I was a tourist, but I wouldn't be taking any chances.

Anyway, my little cast are still out in the desert with all these creepy critters - although I've managed to keep a London angle as well. Although it's rather soggy wet and grey in the London parts of the story.

leaf less

I'm sure the last time I looked at that tree in the front garden, it still had leaves?

pen and paper time in #nanowrimo

I'd predicted that I'd have to slow down on the NaNoWriMo this week because of work, and that's exactly what has happened.

Fortunately, I front loaded the month's effort, with the intention of getting ahead, although it meant getting the word count up to 5k per day to achieve this.

The plan worked quite well and I managed to create the main story arc, but I missed a couple of major themes that I only thought of after I'd written past where they would occur.

I therefore decided to just keep going to the end. My plan would be to re-build the missing parts. At least I know that there is an end for the story; something that was a problem in my last 'completed' NaNo attempt.

Once I'd concluded the story, I printed the whole messy draft - which by now was 320 pages of typed, double spaced A4.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who is still trying to hit the 50k target, because of the temptation to start editing. As I'm up around 69k, I think I'm already in the safe zone.

The difference to progress since producing the hard copy is that the word count change is now minimal and probably will just about flip into 70k before the end of the month.

What is surprising me is just how much the story managed to cover in the main writing period. There's dozens of errors on every page, but it still feels like something usable.

Now for a proper pen and paper type edit.

spiking a little high

Morning and evening darkness and a very low sun yet still around a month to the shortest day.

As I returned from work the sun disappeared before I'd even caught the Tube.

Then when I emerged again, it was also steadily raining. I'd already decided that the evening would feature a spin on the bike, and by this point knew it would be a turbo trainer session.

The little graph shows that I ran out of steam before the end of the session. I'd not noticed that the last three blocks of spinning would be combinations of high effort mixed with short recovery slots.

I managed the first block's ups and downs, but then had to admit defeat. I can't really blame the depressing movie I was watching. I think I had the whole session dialled up a bit high. My tee-shirt noticed.

I'll admit I had spotted the hardest bit of the programme was the last 30 or so minutes, but not the spikiness. Maybe too much after a busy day. I bailed 23 minutes from the end.

I shall need to practice some more before I try that particular sequence again.

excuse to show a snapshot of a vinyl record

Okay, I know I was really playing around with wide aperture blurring of the background of a snapshot, after watching the sumptuous photography in The Killing III. I picked the record player because I happened to be sitting close to it.

It reminded me that we were chatting about old vinyl records on Friday and I mentioned that I still played them. A couple of others came forward and said they did too.

I've noticed the phenomenon that some new albums are available on vinyl again. I received one a few days ago actually - with its proper artwork and packaging.

I also ordered another one a couple of weeks ago, which gave me the instant gratification of a set of MP3 downloads, but I still have to wait several weeks for the actual vinyl copy to arrive.

There's still something right about the 20 or so minutes per side ritual of LPs compared with the snacking of shuffled single tracks.

the power of a bounce

The wonderful thing about this Tigger is as well as being bouncy, it can be trained to sit very still.

It's my temporary substitute for an upturned eggcup and a pingpong ball, which will become a minor project over the next day or two.

A group of us found ourselves marvelling at the effects that an Anglepoise lamp could have upon a circle and a rectangle, whilst on the 10th floor of the Blue Fin Building in Southwark.

It was a session with a gang of well-known photography types and we were all picking up tips on better ways to shoot pictures.

It was 'all about the picture' rather than about the gear, and very good for it. I was particularly struck by a suspicion that I've had for a long time being confirmed.

I've often wondered whether all those extra modes and menus on cameras were really necessary, based upon my days with film where aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focus seemed to suffice.

That was the general gist in this session as well. Simplified to 'Go manual'.

So I'll need the ping-pong ball balanced upon the upturned eggcup and an anglepoise lamp to 'play god' with the lighting of a scene, to simulate sunrise to sunset and the different positioning effects it creates.

In the meantime, its a bit of an experiment with a couple of speedlights to tide me over.

Not to mention some further experiments with that variable light source I've got access to for free. Yes, daylight.

cops and robbers

I was on a tube train today when I heard a typical exchange about the recent UK elections for the Police Commissioners.

I should note that London itself has been excluded from the voting; something to do with Boris, I think.

The exchange went something like,

"Did you vote?"
"No, not yet. When do they close?"
"What?"
"The Polling Stations?"
"Er..Yesterday."

It sort of sums it up for this piece of almost sabotaged democratic process. Hardly any publicity. No leaflets to voters in most areas. The official website for candidates gave slightly messy one-pagers from each candidate, which all said roughly the same things: More police on the street; clampdown on bad things; improve victim rights; control of finance.

And usually something about why whichever candidate is better than any other for some 'unique selling point reason'.

And mysteriously, quite a few candidates were ex Westminster politicians who had now mysteriously become experts on policing matters. Even some of the 'Independents' appear to be ex party folk too. It would surely be wrong to call the PCC a form of pension package?

So there wasn't really much to separate the candidates for a process that most of us don't understand, but which leads to the politicising of the police force.

Listening to the 'selected ones' in this 14.99% turnout process is also salutary. Instead of recognising that they have paper thin support and in some cases were only elected after the first and second choice votes were merged illustrates the point.

That they are declaring themselves 'victors', when they have maybe an average of 6% support from the electorate already illustrates a lack of ethical compass.

Trying now to search for the actual results is interesting. It reveals the people with the highest aggregated votes, but even the official PCC site and the Home Office site is keeping quiet about the actual numbers.


In the end, I did some quick digging myself and created my own graph. The average % from this graph is 5.88% of the electorate selecting the winning candidate - and remember it can use two votes because of the arcane Supplementary Voting system used - which I suspect many didn't fully understand in any case.

I know the selected candidates are calling this a triumph, but I'm not sure for what?

printing a first #nanowrimo text

Tomorrow I'm out at meetings all day and Friday I'm on a course, so last night and this afternoon were my chances to crash out the last few sections of the NaNoWriMo.

I know I'm ahead of the word target, but that was partly a self preservation thing because I have some complicated weeks in late November which could interfere with progress.

I've therefore tried to blast through the writing part at an unhealthy and often late night rate to get the main wordage completed. I'm at around 69,000 words at present, against the NaNoTarget of 50,000.

I can honestly say I didn't really have an idea about this story until I started typing the first paragraph on the first of November, so it's quite fascinating once again as a process.

I've also just printed a first copy - I won't refer to it a first draft - there are way too many errors, typos and the like, including some large sections where I decided to skip fiddly speech punctuation in the interests of speed.

So the first printed copy will be the one where I realise just how many obvious bloopers there are, as well as needing to patch up a couple of significant plot points which have gone awry. I also had a good idea part way through which I haven't managed to incorporate. It will have to wait for the first revision.

Not forgetting a few notes to myself of the type that say "Describe the ..." where I was too dazed to attempt the relevant prose.

It's also strangely different from my normal blogging, where I'll usually try to keep the text fairly short. I've noticed the blogging word count creeping up on a few recent posts.

Something about "I didn't have time to send you a short report, so I sent you a long one instead?"

almost fictional

I suppose I'm making the most of the weather at the moment. We've had a couple of quite fine days with sunshine across the golden leaves. I think I've reached the end of the time for this year that I'll be going out cycling in my shorts, though. Standing on the grassy humpty bridge may look idyllic, but there's a distinct chill in the air.

It's also been interesting trying to keep up with the novel writing whilst doing other work as well. On balance, I think it's easier having some external stimuli, because if all else fails one can use the scene in front as the basis for something in the story.

Somehow I've managed to already get past the official target for NaNoWriMo this year, but I've still got a couple more sections to finish to get the first rough shape of this current story organised. I also need some pauses to gather my wits and to scheme and plot.

I think I may hit 70,000 words before I've completed the first incredibly rough draft. Then I'll need to go back through the wreckage and see whether I can salvage anything usable.

I've just had an interesting section where I sat several of the characters down together to talk about what had been happening. I wanted to see whether they could figure it out more than I could. Fortunately they had some better ideas than me, so naturally I'll follow their line of thinking rather than my own.

Some would say you can't make this stuff up.

scorpio

A late breakfast appointment in Surrey before a sunny stroll in the countryside.

As my picture shows, we enjoyed a look around the remains of a 12th Century Cistercian Monastery. Henry VIII had it closed down in 1536, although there's still a good portion of the Waverley Abbey remaining.

Then later, an evening back in Spitalfields, where we visited another chapel, this time from the Victorian era and nowadays a rather fabulous restaurant.

Time for some Michelin star gourmand dining, with accompanying sommelier wine choices.

But then, in fairness, it was my birthday.

Ian Rankin documentary in #nanowrimo month #nanolondon #nanoscotland

I think I owe Ian Rankin something.

It's not as if I've been a great fan and read all of his novels (though I have read a couple and seen some of the Rebus series on television).

But the other night on television there was a documentary (click here for the iPlayer link) about him and his writing.

I found it quite fascinating. Rankin is one of the best-selling UK authors and has written many principally crime-genre books, most of which climb straight into the top of the charts.

During the documentary there was a sequence at a Waterstone's bookstore and the assistant there was saying how much Rankin novels help keep them and other bookshops going.

The fascinating and quite generous spirited part of the documentary for me was the relatively raw access to Rankin's writing process. He'd been given a little camcorder to make a diary of his start on the latest book. He talks to camera quite a lot and that gives the whole piece something of a conversational feel.

We see him collect various scraps of paper with ideas, sift them, start writing and sketch out a first draft. He makes various asides about how good (or otherwise) it is, whether he's really worked out 'whodunit' by the end of the first draft and so on. Even a glimpse that this is maybe a kind of a road trip disguised as a crime fiction?

There's long start-up times in the morning, involving coffee shops and newspapers.

There's quite a lot of self reflection about the quality of the piece. There's clearly an ego, like the shot as he passes Ian Rankin Court in his home town, but there's also a good amount of introspection and critical self doubt.

Ian Rankin is a millionaire writer, so his credentials and popularity can't really be questioned. Nor can the long lines at his book signings.

What made this a fascinating piece in NaNoWriMo month is how the human process looked so similar to the one that most of us rather more amateur scribblers must go through.

Rankin makes no bones about how additional television presence helps sales and that he'll look at 250,000 units from a new novel, maybe aided by some on-screen publicity. Acknowledging his pre-Chrietmas book launch, it was still a good decision to schedule this episode of the "Imagine" series during the Nanowrimo month.

I think I know what to do to say 'thank you' to Mr Rankin.

Update: