Category: Writing

When I was a young man, I was swept away by the movie Mutiny on the Bounty. Not the Mel Gibson one – ew, no. Not the Clark Gable one – I mean, come on, I’m not THAT old.

No, no, it was Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard as the salty Cap’n Bligh. Oh, a good pair those two made.

I tell you this in secret, because it’s kind of embarrassing: I spent the bulk of my days the summer that movie came out way up high in a neighborhood castor bean tree.

I climbed up as high as I could go, and the wind would blow, and the tree would rock, and the leaves would sigh like the open sea, and the sky was so blue, and I went a’sailin’ away towards romance and high adventure in the Great South Sea.

Stupid story. Sadly true.

Anyway, the book Fragile Paradise, written by Glynn Christian, a great, great grandson of Fletcher Christian, revealed that Fletcher Christian bellowed “I am in hell with you, sir!” at Captain Bligh.

“I am in HELL with you, sir!”

Mel Gibson kind of squeaks it out in his version of the story. Fortunately, Brando was spared the opportunity as the book was published after his version on Bounty debuted.

Why are we poring over all this old film rubbish and nonsense, you ask? Because we took my globetrotting daughter to LAX this morning, and drove not once, but twice through Malibu.

I know, Malibu, blah blah blah. But it IS beautiful, and the weather was epically gorgeous, and we spotted not one, but three container ships in the inside channel, laden deep and headed north. Three!

Not one was the converted collier Bethia, purchased by the Royal Navy, and renamed Bounty. But then again, neither seemed to be undergoing a mutiny. See? Never change a ship’s name!

So, our drive up the coast, from Santa Monica, beneath the rugged Pacific Palisades, through Malibu-Barbie Malibu, up into Ventura County, past the ginormous Mugu Rock, and around thorny Point Mugu felt an awful lot like driving alongside the Great South Sea.

Duh. Same ocean.

My book remains unread by that certain someone, the very love of my life, whilst her sister, the one who read it twice and said I had done an amazing job of creating a splendid fairytale, has yet to send me her notes.

Every day, when I get home from work, I rush to the mailbox because maybe today, today is the one. Nope. Just bills and junk mail.

I am in hell with you, sir! Or, well, madame…

I’m terrible at transitions, you know, moving characters from scene to scene. My wife the editor tells me so all the time. Maybe I’m bad at them because I just plain hate writing them.

You’re a writer, you know how it is. There’s always something your just not good at writing, and typing it out is always a painful chore.

For me, it’s the laborious task of getting characters from here to there so that they can meet up with each other. It takes so long and is so hard to not write a transition scene that is empty-headed and shallow because really it’s not a scene at all. It’s just movement.

I read a piece of e-fiction this week that has a great story. You could tell the author was having a blast.

But to get to the actual story, you had to wade through pages of uninteresting setup, with throw-away characters and dull, half-hearted descriptions. You could so easily tell that the author didn’t enjoy writing that part, but felt it had to be in the book. You can hear him whispering “don’t worry, the good parts are really good!”

You and I are writing in a time much like that of William Shakespeare. In his day, there were no mega-publishers. Just small-time patrons to help you sell your work.

Most of the publishing and the selling was done by you.

And won’t you now take a look at the online marketplace for books? Are you not writing posts on your blog to sell your book?

Is it not the same, Iago?

I mention that because of this e-fiction I read.

This author published his book, hoping you’d see past the heartless parts and enjoy what he really wanted you to read.

Like dancing with a wooden leg, I ask you to watch my arms and my torso and my good leg and enjoy the show. Wooden leg? Oh, just ignore that.

I suck so completely at writing transition scenes that my wife the editor told me to stop trying.

“You’re no good at them, and they ruin the flow of the story.”

So, I quit writing transition scenes, and my story is muuuuuuch better. The new novel, which is waiting to be read by a certain my-wife-the-editor, has none. Zero.

He braved the dark and frightening alleyway, his heart in his throat, finally breathing a sigh of deep relief as he entered the warm, cheerful pub. See? No long description. Just get him in there!

Better yet, ignore the transition altogether and start the scene with the character in the pub. He can explain the transition in dialog: “Oh, I came down the alleyway – a dark and frightening bit of roadwork was that!”

No transition. No hard, stupid scene. Bye bye.

If it’s painful for you to write, you can believe that it’s painful for your reader, too.

I enjoyed the e-fiction, and so entirely hope this author writes another.

And, although I haven’t said it before, I truly do thank you from the very bottom of my heart for following me!

Okay, so The Sequel is gelling right now – pieces are flowing into place while I sit and do other stuff.

You’re a writer – does that happen to you? You have a scene playing out in your head. Eventually, after you’ve played with it for a while, you get around to writing it down.

While that’s going on, the structure of the new story slowly drifts into place, and, son of a biscuit, color-me-surprised if it doesn’t somehow make use of those dopey little scenes you’ve been jotting down.

The mind is a fabulous thing, isn’t it?

In between scenes, I sometimes get a little nervous that I’m going dull. You know, same-o-same-o, so-so writing, using the same, lame words.

To challenge myself, I’ll play dumb word games, like Word Cookies. The words aren’t hard, but there are a lot of them, and it reminds me that, duh, I know a lot of words.

My personal challenge is to give this game three words it doesn’t know in each round. To this game’s credit, it has a huuuuge dictionary, so it recognizes most of my words, even though it doesn’t play them in the game.

And that’s how it goes in the hamster wheel of my mind whilst I wait and wait for my book to be read.