Shouts From Down Under

Not thalidomide, no, it's Cyclohexylthiophthalimide.

Sometimes, things don't work.

It looks good, for a while, and the idea seems legitimate, seems valid, seems lots of things. Passive voice = seems. And unworkable = seems. Weak. Hopeless. Short lived. And the cliche of the late 2000's, 2010's - FAIL.



This can also happen with your plot. Even after you finish the book. There can still be a niggling problem that you thought you'd fix by now, you thought you'd nut out something, anything, and it'd be no drama.

160,000 words and you still haven't nailed it? Edited professionally, tuned up, turned upside down and spat out, regurgitated and rejuvenated, optimised and truncated, polished and elasticated. After all that process, after 6+ years, after personal growth in writing so that you slashed and burned stuff you'd originally written because it sounded childish.

And there's still this thorn, this nail, this obstacle you've avoided and now it's poked through your shoe almost, and drawn narrative blood. Drawn the ire of your editor who has pulled out hair over this thing.

I'm talking about a ticklish problem of getting the MC out of his indigenous birthplace and nation, out of his comfort zone, and into an ALIENATION ZONE, forbidden, illegal (definitely) dangerous, mortally so, and then. Then, bringing him back from places afar where he has dodged security contractors, dodged accurately fired projectiles intended for his unique heart, mind and soul.
He then returns to the land of his forebears, and dropbears (terrible beasts inhabiting Terra Australis) and Koalas (not bears) to then live in comforting, safe, warm, cosy, Timtam eating, Milo drinking, wet socks in front of fireplace drying, anonymous living for the rest of his life's hours.

You see, the problem is his name. If he uses his name through life, and has a birth certificate and passport, and then uses these to go on escapades, then the safe return is just not gunna happen, is it?

And to try changing a MC's name and convince the reader it was necessary, and to convince the MC it was necessary and even welcome?

What if you suddenly realised you've "painted yourself into a corner" in the plot and narrative, and dropped your MC into a situation they are not equipped to deal with? What if you've mucked up the whole thing so that it doesn't work?

What if you use the mistake, use the wrong way, the blind alley, the blocked, cemented over, bricked up wall to your advantage? Use the ridiculous situation you've (perhaps accidentally) created as a real life problem?

At least you've probably made a plot move that is unique, because no one else could be that stupid? :P Hmmm. I'm that stupid. And I'm sure many writers if not all writers make glaring errors, major stuff-ups.

I had an embarrassing boo-boo in my manuscript. I mentioned Barack Obama and implied he was President. But this was in 2007. Ok, I'm not American, but still. Yeah.
So, after editing I changed it to Ned Kelly. Don't know who he was? Well, he was around long before...Google.

What if a huge mistake, and I'm not talking something plain wrong like I'd done, but just what seems like your character has gone nuts? What if the situation is very far fetched. Then it should be changed. Unless your book is obviously fantasy or is meant to be the impossible, then stuff that is way out there just won't be believed. Like skating on a glass skateboard. Lucky someone wasn't killed, cut by shards of glass.

Wasn't rubber discovered because a guy accidentally burnt a batch trying to figure out how to make it? And realised it was just right? Let's research that thang.

Yes. here it is. Thomas Hancock, and Charles Goodyear apparently made the discovery at almost the same time. Goodyear says "He was surprised to find that the specimen, being carelessly brought into contact with a hot stove, charred like leather".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization

People at the time took some convincing. And if Goodyear, or someone else hadn't been careless for a few minutes, vulcanising wouldn't have been discovered.

A mistake wouldn't have been made. That's key. A mistake made all the difference.

Further "improvement" of that "mistake" was Cyclohexylthiophthalimide.

That is a retarder. Accelerators and Retarders became a thing, almost as game changing as Vulcanisation, because it meant rubber could be used to seal moving parts of machines. Up til then, only leather could be used, and wasn't good enough for higher pressure or bigger loads.

Where would we be today, without Accelerators and Retarders, I ask you? And we wouldn't HAVE (what is it again?) Cyclohexylthiophthalimide.

So what mistakes will there be in real life in the future in genetics in people in the world? Incredible mistakes maybe. Misery for mankind or peril for peoplekind. Mutations for porkrind and polymer for sheep and kine?



Think this is stupid, impossible and far fetched? If this was plotted in a book 20 years ago, it would be written by Isaac Asimov or similar. And telepathy. What about that little strawberry fruit of biological gene splicing, injection plasmogrifying mistake? What if autism isn't a mistake but synthetic, genetically engineered evolving of the human race?

What if the rest of us were a mistake in nature (I wouldn't blame God. I believe he doesn't make mistakes). There are errors that crop up from time to time. Stuff that's not meant to be, shouldn't be, is so rare to be almost incalculable, yet exists.



But, for the simple story that we write, perhaps mistakes are to be resisted. Otherwise wouldn't we just have chaos? Anything goes, doesn't matter if it's crap quality because "it's just a mistake and we can turn that into a magic wand every time".

How do we react to mistakes people make? How do we act when the mistake is our own? What if it's a doozy? A gargantuan admission? There is the thing. Admitting to our mistakes sometimes takes courage. And describing these harbingers can sometimes be impossible.
I have made mistakes of monumental size when I was younger. I learned to be alone as much as possible, because then I could cover my mistakes up, and act as if I was a "normal person". But as I grew older, I've realised that everyone makes them.
It's a common observation among tradies that a tradesman is just an apprentice who's learned how to cover up his mistakes.

"Someone who never made a mistake never tried anything new". Albert Einstein. But, wait on. Did he really say that? Can we believe anything on the Internet and Google? If we did, perhaps it would be a mistake.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/12/16/no-mistakes/

Seems like lots of people said similar things. Amazing that humans could come to the same conclusion, isn't it? No. Not really. We could all be Einsteins if we thought on things logically, and tangentially. And, whoever said it, it's a true saying.

There goes another excuse for fearing writing, for worrying about plot so much we don't try, and for obsessing over a perfect story we lose the passionate vibe that readers' recognise, and search libraries to experience.

Remember the books you love the most? Even JK Rowling made mistakes, and invented what my daughter said was "a broken world". As writers and authors we have this incredible potential to do what we will with the world we have created and the people who inhabit that broken impossible, MISTAKEN landscape.

Google images for The worst mistake of 2016

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=worst+mistake+of+2016&biw=1366&bih=705&source...

Obama. Trump. A girl with her head in a Crocodile's tooth infested mouth. Guy accidentally texts his probation officer "You have some weed?".

Down the list that Google gave me there was this gem. We need to feel immediately guilty that we grow crops, and are, as humans, domesticated. Yes, you should all be ashamed of yourselves. As for books and writing, well. That's just the result of this terrible mistake of agriculture, "a catastrophe from which we have never recovered".

I wonder where you think your bread and jam comes from Dr Sunshine?

Here's the website quoting Mr Miseryguts himself, Jarad Diamond.
http://returntonow.net/2016/05/29/agriculture-worst-mistake-humans-ever-made/

He also says that for 2 million years before agriculture, gatherer-hunters enjoyed excellent health, social and sexual equality, very light workloads, plenty of leisure time, and freedom from any form of government."

Right. That ignores of course the government of the laws of physics, ie hurting yourself and dying from the injury, the government of the seasons, example, starving to death because there's no berries or nuts to be had from a bad season, governed by the odd bushfire burning your butts off and creating the situation of zero food, governed by having to go to bed of a night because the world has become this place where the sun don't shine.

But besides all those things, oh yeah we got on just fine and dandy without agriculture. We were all agreeable little monkeys living in perfect harmony and life was just a big holiday with only a few hours of part time casual easy work a year, and the rest of it just one big rostered day off x 320 days or something.

I think agriculture was the best mistake that could have happened. Because of some twit, some nincompoop, some dumbbum scored a bit of a groove in some soil and dropped his fruit pips into it. And those seeds grew, and the next thing ya know is everybody's doin it. Why? Because they were starvin hungry that's why. Indigenous Australian Aboriginals managed the land by burning off. They knew if they didn't the place would be so overgrown, so fast, that there'd be a fire so hot it would destroy the soil and nothing would grow.

Some people can't see the forestry for the sawmills. Yes, a few short million years ago people learned to grow stuff. And it is utter foolishness to think it was a mistake that was a bad thing. Have you ever seen plants produce any sort of fruit if left to themselves?

Maybe I'm making a mistake on this too. I'm biased that's for sure. I'm a farmer's son, and not a fan of evolution. Nor am I a believer of the big bang unless it was within the bigger scheme of creation. I'm constantly amazed that people will believe all sorts of random acts of chaos, and the most ridiculous notions, MISTAKES, and yet the simplest of explanations for it all cop a big NOPE instantly. Particularly if it means obeying, or submitting, or admitting a mistake.

Hmmm. Billions make them, and yet we tend to hate admitting to make even ONE ourselves.

One mistake people make is on Twitter. They begin to follow me. That alone is possibly not such a right thing to do, probably a bit of a doofusish stoopidity. Trying to sell me twitter followers. Yep. That's a mistake.

Tammy Wynette sang Stand By Your Man. And she spoke in the last show (?), with Gary Chapman, before she passed away, and said one line of the song could have been slightly different and it could have been a man's song too. She also mentioned Hilary, and it was said how Hilary had to "stand by her man" back then, @1998. Tammy passed away April 6, 1998.



It would be a mistake to blog about mistakes, and making the best of things, without mentioning Slim Dusty. (David Gordon Kirkpatrick) He said "I have to be fair dinkum with my audience. I can't see any other way of doing it. You have to believe in what you are singing about."

http://www.slimdusty.com.au/bio/

And that's how it is with writing. And talking. If it's waffle, then I need banging over the head with a waffle iron, make no mistake.

Because, sometimes things don't work.

Sparky