Shouts From Down Under

Does your version boast a hole in it? Theory, or Story?

Ever borrowed yourself? I saw a sign in a library that read "Self borrowing". I guess the joke isn't that funny. Not a joke even. Just a play on self-ish words.

Is your story a product of telling a whopper, or assembling a true sounding Big Mac?



Have you ever picked your self up..?

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We must all be stark raving mad, us writers. Whether we write books, or scripts. Totally bonkers with all the screws loose and a few missing, plus a cloud of bats in our sports bag; these bats have wings and fly by using radar. They are sometimes used to magnify the macabre. The macabre in films. Even short films.



When we write, we are putting into words something that another can share. Our thinking process is, can be, should be, possibly will be, perhaps could be, maybe would have been, totally was going to be, transferred into someone else's head. They see what we saw. We wrote down what we saw.

So this whole series of steps, like Chinese whispers, can lose continuity so easily. Like an electrical circuit full of joins, there can come corrosion, looseness, vagueness, confusion, and all the other open, or short, wiring problems that prevent work being done.

The Electromotive Force (EMF) that should propel from the scene we saw to our readers experience can be reduced, or cut off. And you know how it ends when you try to crank your engine on a frosty morning, already late for work, cut yourself shaving, spilt breakfast whatucallit all over the bench and floor, hung the...no stuffed the load of washing into the dryer because it looked like rain.

You're still sitting there trying to start the thing, hanging up the phone to the roadside assistance (if you can afford the sub fees) or fiddling with that cheap crap jumper cable set and a spare half flat battery you keep in the shed to run LED lights in the tent on camping trips.

Some things have their use. It's just a matter of finding it. And when you find it, then there's another set of problems opened up as a sort of success gift. An ironic one. Still, at least you've made a small step of progress.



I can't help but comment and say this film reminded me of clients I've worked with who have many many more difficulties like this every day. They are prisoners in their world, and we struggle to learn the dimensions of how their mind works, strive to communicate with them, fight to push our own feelings away that pre-judge them, our view that complicates, our ideas of how they think and feel and want and need and desire.

One hour at a time. One minute even. There's the secret.

And with writing, let's not be discouraged. We can pause time indefinitely. We have that power, as I've said in other blog entries. We don't have to rush. Come back to it again and again; come back and redo it many times.

Then we can tickle out the right word, the exact phrase, the best combination and composition, the optimal grammar and structure, a strategists delivery, a master order to sentences and paragraphs.

When a meal is cooked to perfection, and the various items plated up, sauces added, garnish presented, aroma tasted on the palate, you want this to be enjoyed as much by them as by you. I wonder if writing is like a musician's experience. How much of the writing, the final story is enjoyed by the writer as much as the reader?

Do we, because we've created the story, do we not see it in the same final light as the reader? Or adversely, is it more immersive because we created it and know it intimately, know it far closer than any reader could possibly understand it, however well it is written?

Are incidents the same for writers as they are for the general public? Do we think the same? I doubt it. Paranoid me says its just paranoia. Sensible me says its childish, attention seeking, compensative for some other lack such as any talent, skill, education or brain capability. Optimist me says it's a sign of a great mind, a unique mindset, a money maker in the making, a future famous millionaire blockbuster churner outerer.

The realist me knows those incidents, events, valuable family moments, and all the rest of whatever encompasses stuff that happens for each of us in our lives (what a guff filled way of saying a brief fact) are just the same for all of us. Dreary, boring and miserable.

Life isn't fun. There is no cheerful exciting side to it. That is just in our imagination.

So perhaps writers are just ordinary people who allow our minds to go those inadvisable steps further, go into no man's land, into uncharted territory.

From whence did all those thoughts surface?

Because I found a book, and purchased the book, from a book sale for 50c. That's why.
The book has a hole in it. The book itself looks average and for all I know IS average. The cover seems lacklustre and yes, I'm red cheeked guilty for judging the book by its cover in this instance. Because it fits the story that it seems only a writer would want to think.

Anything beats the boring version. You know what I mean sure enough. Don't you?

There are a few possibilities why there is a hole in the book.

A. Someone painstakingly used a hole punch, with a lot of trouble through the thick outer cover material, so that they could thread string through the entire collection of pages, so to hang it up. Maybe to use it for toilet paper in an old fashioned outhouse. As a child I witnessed (and used however uncomfortably) the phone book put to this versatile use. Maybe they never got to use it for that purpose seeing as they had to rush off in a desperate hurry. Maybe they still have some white pages left in their dunny.

B. Someone decided to drill a hole with their trusty Makita, Ryobi, Milwaukee, Skil, Hitachi, Dewalt, BOSCH, etc and approximately an 8mm or 3/16" twist bit, just to vandalise it in what they determined to be a hilarious, rebellious, clever and unusual form of damage so that the librarians would puzzle over it, and "just a regular guy" would see it at a stack clearance book sale on trestle tables, and decided to buy it BECAUSE IT HAD A HOLE IN IT and only THAT reason.

http://bobmay.astronomy.net/misc/drillchart.htm

C. Art. I know a very talented artist who takes old books that are destined for the recycle bin, and he cuts them, drills them, slices, spreads, and otherwise tinkers with them in all different forms and styles so as to create a very imaginative and satisfying work of art. He has won awards for his work, and rightly so. They are amazing and fascinating designs that have obviously taken a lot of thoughtful planning to make.

D. A Bullet Hole.

This is my favourite reason and a writer's version of why there would be a hole right through a book. Someone decided for an unknown reason (that I have speculated using my trusty story teller's mind- somewhat warped and exaggerating) that they would shoot that book right here and now. They'd kill those varmint words; yes they would. They would do for them in no doubtful manner, Sir! Comin outa between da covers of books attackin' a man whatsa fella ta do 'cept waste dat thang.

And so he did. he drew that...ok well maybe he didn't draw it out like a cowboy, or talk like one either, but he took his firearm (not a weapon because he's not using it against people) and fired a round at a distance. There is no muzzle burn or any sign of residue on the book cover. Perhaps it did used to have a plastic sheath so maybe there WAS residue at one time. The book was published in 1975 so its no wonder they put it out for sale.

Maybe he didn't like the author. Maybe he just wanted to try out a type of ammunition and see if it was any good. Maybe he or she (the alleged murderer) used the book to muffle sound so that the firearms retort would only be a dull thud, barely heard over the traffic, and other noise of a busy community living in close quarters in a block of housing flats in some run down estate off the Motor Way, under the Glide Slope approaching Heathrow.

Run on sentences attract such criticism. But maybe, like holes in books, its just a sign of a writer's imagination in a healthy, high performance mode.

Take advantage of it while its there. Before the hole, the gun, the projectile, the victim and the law enforcers, all line up and put a stop to all the fun.

The person who made the hole was only trying to get across to the reader how real the situation, how incredibly high definition. How highly deafening it was.

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Sparky