The title? In truth, I couldn’t think of anything to sum up this month’s writing, so I bucked the Facebook trend of choosing the last thing I ate and the colour of my underwear and went with what I’m listening to — Phil Collins’ defining work.
Now, what a month. Gathering my thoughts I spent a lot of it in bed or under the weather, but despite this, I have completed much writing, including the re-write of my current story, Escape from Hades. I say completed, but in reality, it’s the section where I connect the new beginning of the story to the existing middle and ending. I had suspected this would be a smooth transition, but introducing three new characters and handling the demise of two others has made more things difficult for me. Yet, here on the 23rd of October 2022, I have completed that connection and, in my opinion, quite smoothly. There is the small matter of the remaining 40,000 words, but I’ll think about this tomorrow.
What else? Oh, I enjoyed some good TV, endured politics, and helped other writers by critiquing their stories.
I’ll save the good things for last and touch on the state of the Country. As a layman, I don’t see why our government can’t use a windfall tax on the energy companies to 1, help pay for government borrowing and 2, force the energy companies to invest NOW in green energy, like they should have been doing these past 12 years. But I’m neither a politician nor an economist; I’m just… enduring it, like many others. Rant over.
Good TV. Well, we’ve enjoyed watching the latest series of Professor T. Ben Miller is one of the best character/comedy actors around today, and, in my opinion, highly underrated. His portrayal of the Cambridge University criminologist Jasper Tempest, who suffers from OCD and a traumatic past, sees Miller at his understated best assisting the hapless local Bobbies to solve complex wrong-doings. I understand [from IMDB] it is based on a Belgian series of the same name, and one can’t help but draw parallels with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. This parallel echoes his past performance in another BBC production, Death in Paradise. Again, Miller plays an understated, genius detective solving the unsolvable using Agatha Christie-esque tools. Well worth a watch.
We’ve some pretty good movies, too. The latest was The Duke, starring Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren and Matthew Goode. It was after watching this film, based on a true story of one man’s determined if naïve fight against social injustice, that inspired me to write my [little] political rant, above. The characters are lovable and despite the predictable, feel-good ending, there is a little unexpected twist. Again, well worth the watch.
Last but not least, I have been determined to give back a little to fellow writers. As a member of a critique group, I, for the first time, volunteered to help other writers by reading their work and pointing out areas where they might improve. My most important rules were: to choose genres I would read (and therefore understand) and TO BE KIND. I truly believe in what we practised when bringing up our children. It’s easy to knock someone down, but it is better to be the wind beneath someone’s wings or the fertile soil in which they can grow.
With that, I can’t see a better way of signing off.
The Seven Systems 