Tortoise and Hare

When our little group of writers meet to share ideas and practice our craft, we often use "prompt based" exercises to get the creativity moving.  A word, a phrase, a setting, or an object - or several of each - is placed on the table and the a timer is set running.  The pens and pencils set off in hot pursuit and, after fifteen or twenty minutes has passed, an end is reached.

An end, I say, because that's where we stop, even though the finish that each writer was aiming at, if indeed they knew for certain what their target was, might have needed many more minutes or hours to achieve.  After a brief examination of each work by the group, another prompt is chosen, and the race begins anew.  I tend to leave these sessions in an uplifted and enthusiastic mood.  I seem to be one of those people who finds it easier to begin a work with some costraints in place - such as theme, setting, and a time limit for completion. 

I also leave with a collection of short pieces that need further work - sometimes they merely need tidying up, but more often the ending has to be written, and the middle properly fleshed out.  Then, of course, the beginning will often need a bit of a re-write as well.  Occasionally, I find myself with a page or two that could turn into much more than a short story.

Some teachers of writing insist that this is the best way to write - pick up the pen and set out on the journey, never looking back until the destination is reached, and only then commence the task of perfecting the work.

Is it better to rush forward, spilling words across the paper until the conclusion has been attained, and then go back to begin the painstaking review and reconstruction of paragraphs and chapters - or to shape each word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph into a perfect form before moving onto the next?

Is that even possible if the writer does not yet know the ending?

For the writer, though God of the Universe that is flowing from the Authorial Pen, is not - cannot be- Omniscient until the final word is on the page, and the new universe has taken its full shape.  Only then can the true relevance and aptness of each word and phrase be known.

Others advise that, instead of reviewing and reworking, the author take the first draft and hurl it into the fire, before starting afresh and producing a new body of work from the ghost of the old. Finding the "best way" to write is a question that is always lurking in the background - whether I am at my desk or not.

I recently read Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life"  In it, she examines the alternatives, and gives reasons why each method is good, without selecting one above the others - which left me wondering if Professor Tolkien had been having a dig at teachers of writing when he had Frodo say "And it is also said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.'"

I will just have to keep wondering, I guess - and keep that pen scratching across the page while I do so.

Bald Faced Satire

The only national art competition to be judged by a Cockatoo - the 25th Bald Archy Exhibition - has taken to the road.  Until the end of June, it is residing in the Club House of the Leura Golf Club, and is well worth a look.  If you can't get to The Blue Mountains, check the schedule on the website - it may end up closer to you, sometime this year.

It is as wide ranging as ever in the variety of styles displayed, and range of subjects portrayed - for copyright reasons, photographing the exhibits is not permitted, so you will need to make the trip to see the real thing, though this article from the ABC gives a sense of what is there.

Many of the usual suspects are represented, some of them in most unexpected poses and settings, while the winner - Anh Can Do by James Brennan - is a wonderfully whimsical work. Keep your eye out for Sam Dastyari -his portrait is a rib tickler, and not the only one that will make you laugh.  A couple of our more rough and tumble politicians have somehow ended up looking almost cute.

Between the politicians you will find a superb portrayal of one of Australia's best known rock stars, as well as an equally well known, but non-human figure - it's possible Maud the Cockatoo was slipped a bucket of oats by this character.

A certain former Prime Minister makes a number of appearances, with the most notable being a blend of reality and fictional mythology that is a dark but apt caricature - it needs to be looked at closely, there are subtle details near and far that add meaning and pathos.

My favourite was not a prize winner; perhaps it lacked the levity that many other pictures had, but it is possibly the most original and subtle work in the show.  See if you can find the two dimensional representation of a three dimensional image of our present PM - the artist has done a superb, poignant work, and she deserves to be more widely known and viewed. This one picture would make the trip worthwhile.

The Long Goodbye - or How Things Stay the Same

Raymond Chandler's novel The Long Goodbye - published in 1953 and set in the previous few years, contains substantial amounts of social criticism - something writers are warned against doing by publishers and creative writing advisors.

Yet Chandler has woven it into the story deftly, in mostly small doses, as part of conversations and descriptions that fit neatly in with the action and the characters. 

One passage that caught my eye in particular was a monologue from the extremely wealthy Mr Potter to the hero, Philip Marlowe, set out below......

"There's a peculiar thing about money" he went on "In large quantities it tends to have a life of its own, even a conscience of its own.  The power of money becomes very difficult to control.  Man has always been a venal animal.  The growth of populations, the huge cost of wars, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation - all these things make him more and more venal.  The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals.  He has to buy food for his family.  In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals.  You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality.  You can't have quality with mass production.  You don't want it because it lasts too long.  So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence.  Mass production couldn't sell its goods next year unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now.  We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world.  But in the lovely white kitchen the average American housewife can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry.  We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe.  The stuff inside is mostly junk."

As Chandler wrote and published this novel that included many critiques of American society, especially of the wealthy parts of that society, Ayn Rand was busy compiling her longest and most controversial work, Atlas Shrugged - a work that in so many ways opposed what Chandler was saying about the root causes of societal problems of the day; problems that were with us long before he wrote, and that continue to plague us today.

In Mr Potter, Chandler has managed to introduce us to a man who, while not the real villain of the book, still imposes his own warped agenda on the other characters, and is Randian in his ability to set out many of the problems of society while not quite coming to grips with the real causes of what he has perceived, nor with his own part in the forming of those problems.

Being a child of the times during which this book was published, I was surprised by the extent of the cynicism and world-weariness of so many of the characters in this novel.  After all, was not this the beginning of the new golden age of peace and modernity that had been ushered in by the great victory against fascism? 

It seemed to me, as the Fifties folded into the Sixties, that it was a golden time, despite the dark threats the cold war from time to time imposed upon my awareness.  But if it was so golden, why did Philip Marlowe resonate so strongly with so many readers?  And why does it feel as if nothing much has changed?

Last weekend was a big celebration of the arrival, 150 years ago, of the railway at Mount Victoria in May 1868 - less than a year after the first train steamed into Wentworth Falls station, many miles to the east.  A great crowd turned out to see the sights, welcome the VIPs, and soak up the sunshine and the history.

Every year, Mt Victoria holds a Great Train Weekend - celebrating the role played by the railways in the history and development of not only that part of the upper Blue Mountains, but areas like Jenolan Caves, Lithgow, and the plains around Bathurst and Orange.

This year, it being a special anniversary, we were offered the spectacle of two different historical trains; one being an example of the workhorse of regional passenger service - the "tin hare" or rail motor - which first hit the tracks in 1923, and was still working what are now suburban lines, such as Blacktown to Richmond, until 1984.....

....and the other being one of the titans of the steam era in Australian rail - the Beyer Garratt AD60 Class Locomotive "6029"  The 255 tonne behemoth was a late arrival in NSW Railway service, first going to work in 1952, not too many years before diesel heralded the imminent end of steam power on the tracks of NSW

Am I betraying a level of nostalgia?  I guess so - as a child I would often wake to the rhythmic sound of the steam locomotives being brought up to working temperature and pressure, over in the shunting yards at Clyde, 3 or 4 miles away.  Later in the day, it was common for the boys of my group to gather on the bridge over the line, just west of Auburn station, competing with each other as to who was game (or silly) enough to pull back last when the locomotive charged under the bridge, sending its column of coal smoke and sparks swirling up into our faces.

It can be difficult in these days, when transport takes so many forms - trucks, busses, all sorts of modern cars - to understand just how significant these narrow ribbons of steel were to people who, until the trains came, had to walk for days or weeks to reach destinations that we now attain in minutes or hours.

Within a few years of the arrival of the rail at Mount Vic, as the locals call it, the line had reached down along the western Zig Zag to Lithgow, out through the vale to Wallerawang, and then on down the Fish River Valley to Bathurst and beyond.  Prior to that, heading west from Mt Vic was an arduous and dangerous journey. 

The descent of Victoria Pass to Hartley required the drivers of horse or bullock drawn wagons to chain a great log behind the vehicle.  Its purpose was to serve as a brake and prevent the wagon or coach from running over the draught animals and plunging down the cliffs into Hartley Vale or Kanimbla Valley.  Over a few years, the surplus logs began to pile up at the bottom of the Pass, obstructing the Great Western Highway.  It makes the modern journey seem blissfully easy - as long as you don't forget the speed cameras at the top and bottom of the mountain.

You Just Never Know

Endings can be hard - be it poetry or prose, if it began at its beginning, its ending is not always obvious; in fact, it often feels easier to seek a beginning to suit a good ending than vice versa.  The perfect ending can seem impossible to find, and yet sometimes it is the one that looks least suitable that can turn out to be the one you were seeking.

In 1978, a few creative types were sitting around, contemplating an offering made by one of their group to be used as the closing song for an otherwise almost complete movie.  He sang it - they didn't like it.  They adjourned for lunch, and came back for the afternoon's brainstorming session.  The disliked song was fiddled with, adjusted, and tried in different styles.  No one else could come up with anything that the group agreed upon as better, so they decided that "it would do"

The movie hit the screens in 1979 - in 1982 the crews of two British warships that had been sunk in the Falklands war were singing that song as they awaited rescue.  That song went on to be covered by other artists from almost all musical genres, it was adopted by Aston Villa football club as the team chant, was performed at the close of the 2012 Olympics, and has been one of the more popular pieces to be played at funerals in many parts of the world.

It is, of course, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"

Almost eliminated in the opening round of consideration, it was given a second look and went on to be considered the perfect ending to Monty Python's "Life of Brian" - even reaching number one on the charts in Ireland, despite the film having been banned there.

This little story doesn't tell me how to produce the perfect ending for a piece of work, or even how to formulate a pretty good one - but it tells me that if an ending has presented itself for consideration, it should not be tritely discarded or dismissed.  Pin it up there with the other working notes and come back to it later.  Turn it around, or inside out, or read it aloud in a few different voices - after all, changing the singing style of "Always Look..." from deadpan to comedic was all it took to secure its spot in history.

A Matter of Appearance

There has been some discussion in the media and online about the way some male writers depict female characters in their books, particularly those men who seem to focus - in a teenage boy sort of way - on the breasts and figure of the character, as well as using descriptions of figure, face, and clothing, to imply sexual availability or inclination.

This article in the Guardian is a case in point https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/apr/03/male-authors-write-female-characters-twitter

The Guardian article particularly highlights the way some male writers have their female characters dwelling on - for example - their own breasts or legs or hips, but in a way that is obviously from their own male perspective of what is attractive in a woman.  In essence, projecting their own feelings into the female character.

It made me wonder about the way I describe the physical attributes of characters, so I opened up the first chapter of the novel I am working on.  A quick read showed that I had put very little direct physical descriptions of characters into the work, and certainly have not indulged in that behaviour some call an "all points bulletin" - that top to toe, point by point itemisation of height and weight, skin and hair, that can so derail the flow of the story. 

This could, in some ways, be a good thing, as too often a writer can end up displaying more about his own prejudices than actually helping the reader understand the character and why the story is progressing as it is.  On the other hand, how little physical description can an author provide and still engage the imagination of the reader?

The question seems to be, what physical characteristics are important for the development of the plot/story etc and how might those aspects bring about reactions or behaviour from the other characters in the book or story?  I asked a writerly friend - one who is actually selling books - what she thought was the appropriate amount of description.

My friend offered the opinion that description is good as long as it adds to the story - but that there should be plenty of room for the reader to insert their own images of the characters, including imagining themselves into the position of the heroine (or hero)  - this relates to the romance novel that she is successfully selling at the moment - the hero gets a reasonably thorough description; after all, he has to be attractive, but even then she leaves leeway for the reader to apply their own preferred characteristics to the love object.

Yet some authors insist on dictating the physical attributes of the characters - often going into bullet point descriptions of the person, with extrapolation from certain of the attributes and how they are displayed or how they are thought of by the character, to indicate the character's feelings towards the hero or other people.

So, how much physical description of a character is needed to satisfy the reader?  For another opinion, I pulled out a few of the classic novels of various genres, and found quite a variety of approaches.  Some hardly say anything, while others offer half a page of physical detail for each character.

It is a vexed question, but an important one - for it is well established that we humans have a habit of looking at other humans, and quickly coming to conclusions about their character and honesty based on the first impressions garnered from that initial glance. 

We take in their height, gender, skin and hair colour, and hair-do, clothing (style and cleanliness), and footwear - and very quickly process that information through the filters of our past experience and prejudices (we all have plenty of both).  It is rarely done in a careful, conscious, item by item way - instead, it is a judgement based on a glance. 

At times, if the judgement is intense, we have a sudden sense that we have detected a good or bad "vibe" around the newcomer.  We can even take an instant dislike to that person, or fall head over heels in love (or lust - they are both four letter words that start with 'l' and can both get us in considerable trouble) - and it is not just authors dealing with this problem; vast reams of paper have been dedicated to the musings of scientists trying to understand this troubling aspect of human behaviour.

That suggests that when we write a phrase describing one character, we are doing it for two sets of people - our readers, and our fictional characters in the novel.  The reactions of the latter to the appearance of a new character can have a material effect on decisions and actions yet to be taken by the characters already on the page.  What one character says or thinks about some aspect of the appearance of another character can tell the reader so much about what has happened, and what might be going to happen as the story unfolds.

Le Carre tells gives the reader a strong description George Smiley while also, in a paragraph, letting us know what people around him think and feel about him.......

Short, fat, and of a quiet disposition, he appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes, which hung about his squat frame like skin on a shrunken toad. Sawley, in fact, declared at the wedding that ‘Sercomb was mated to a bullfrog in a sou’wester’. And Smiley, unaware of this description, had waddled down the aisle in search of the kiss that would turn him into a Prince.

Lee Child lets us know why the other characters in his books might be intimidated by Jack Reacher....

“His lazy lopsided grin. His tousled hair. His arms, so long they gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house. His eyes, cold icy blue like the Arctic. His hands, giant battered mitts that bunched into fists the size of footballs.”

Likewise, Bernard Cornwell makes sure early on that the reader can see the image of a tall, strong, scarred and battered man with eyes that have seen and survived much violence, and will not flinch at more.

But then there are the often sardonic descriptions offered by the thoughts and words of Chandler's battered private detective, Phillip Marlowe - his opening, self-description tells us not only what he looks like, but how he feels about himself and the world around him.....

“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” 

I haven't answered my own question, have I?  The best an author can do is what feels right as the words fall to the page - and perhaps we should not worry too much, because, no doubt, an editor is waiting, red pen poised, to correct us if we get it wrong.

Underfoot

The tourists are milling about the Mountain lookouts, taking snapshots and selfies of the sun-drenched ranges, but there is a long and winding road that leads to an entirely different view of the Blue Mountains. 

It is a route that requires carefull negotiation - in its upper reaches the kangaroos can take unwary speedsters by surprise, while, closer to the destination, the tight corners and steep grades demand patience and caution.

Eventually, the road brings you to a grand demonstration of the impact that water can have upon a landscape.....

....as well as the benefits humans can extract from that water and its surroundings.

The history of this place is a long and complex one - stretching through geological eons, along the ancient story lines and culture of the Gundungurra and Wiradjuri people, into a 21st century whose speleologists are still finding deeper tunnels and watercourses, far from the light of day.

Jenolan is possibly the best known cave complex in Australia, though far from the only one.  The caves open to the public are only a fraction of those known to the explorers and scientists, but many of the others would require a very strong personality, and skinny hips and ribs, on the part of any would be tourist.

 The forces that have carved, sculpted, and constructed the strange beauty in these caves are a complex mix of organic and inorganic chemistry, along with occasional bouts of the brute force that flood water can apply.

When you have finished underground, the views to be seen on the way back to the carpark are also wonderful......

 .....just kidding - there is a bus that will take you to the carpark at the other end of those stairs.  I kept looking, by the way, but saw no sign of orcs or dwarves, though you might wonder what those noises were, when the guide turned out all the lights, and darkness absolute surrounded you.