“Hope” is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Emily Dickinson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson
The real definition of loneliness…is to live without responsibility.
Nadine Gordimer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadine_Gordimer
This article discusses how a lot of writers hear the voices of their characters:
I’ve been even more aware of it recently, as I gear up to become a narrator of my Cornish Detective series. I’ve ‘heard’ my main character and his detectives’ voices in my head many times, but actually expressing them with my vocal chords is going to be a challenge!
The novella I’m writing at the moment, set in Georgia after the Civil War, has made me contemplate how I’ll make my veteran soldier sound. He’s from Pennsylvania and has been warned by people he’s met to modify his accent while in the Deep South, to avoid antagonising the locals. On the other hand, he’s just met a cultured Mulatto ex-slave who makes him feel like a hick. This man doesn’t sound like a black slave, more like a professor of English.
Do you hear your characters speak?
With dark days ahead of us, as restrictions bite about wandering, we’re all going to be reading more. Perhaps now is the time to widen our reading tastes, try something new.
I read about 365 books annually, about half of them in my chosen writing genre of Crime.
If any of you shun Crime stories, I specifically recommend Kim Zupan’s The Ploughmen, which is one of the most unusual crime stories I’ve read
https://www.amazon.com/Ploughmen-Novel-Kim-Zupan/dp/1250074789
If you can’t get your hands on that, try any of Walter Mosley’s street smart private eye stories. Devil In A Blue Dress is the best known, filmed starring Denzel Washington.
You’ll learn a lot from Mosley’s writing technique and I recommend his This Year You Write Your Novel as a common sense guide to being a writer.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219462.This_Year_You_Write_Your_Novel
I rarely read Romance stories, so can any of you recommend titles to me?
Which books in your writing genre do you admire?
And, which genre do you dislike? Perhaps a fan could change your mind.
Things that go ‘bump’ in the night
Should not really give one a fright.
It’s the hole in each ear
That lets in the fear,
That, and the absence of light!
https://www.best-poems.net/spike_milligan/index.html
I was drifting off to sleep last night when a metallic tinkle sounded from somewhere beyond the end of the bed. It was surprisingly loud, but familiar, as I realised it was a teaspoon rattling against a mug. It had been slowly, slowly shifting for hours, since I last had coffee. Even though I knew what caused the noise, it still took me a while to calm down and fall asleep.
Stranger and harder to identify was a schruff noise that lasted only a second a few years ago. I searched the bedroom in the morning, finding nothing. I wondered if it was me wheezing in my sleep. Months later, while dusting, I noticed a sheet of a wall calendar had detached, sliding down the wall to get trapped behind a radiator.
One of the funniest stories I’ve heard of strange sounds in the night happened to a friend. In the early hours, he became aware that there was someone else, apart from his wife, breathing nearby. Fearing a burglar, he slowly reached towards his bedside table where he kept a cricket bat for just such an occasion. He froze when hot breath blew into his face! Then a dog licked his cheek. They didn’t own a dog. Lights on, they realised it was their neighbour’s corgi. It had somehow sneaked into the house when they had a barbeque that evening, hiding away until it decided to say “Hello.”
I’ve used strange nocturnal noises in my stories. In The Perfect Murderer, one of the killers experiences exploding head syndrome. It’s happened to me a few times, but not for years.
The noise is loud and scary, sounding like a door has crashed to the floor next to the bed.
There’s a scene in An Elegant Murder, where the detectives are staking out a field at night, hoping to capture livestock rustlers. There have been sightings of an exotic big cat, which might have been killing sheep and cattle. As they wait in the dark, they realise a mountain lion is standing on the other side of their hide, which screams loudly! I based this on a true incident that happened to a sound recordist acquaintance of mine.
He was part of a team sent to investigate reports of a mountain lion being sighted near to Minions on Bodmin Moor. The plan was to camp out overnight to record audio and video of the big cat on the prowl. It rained heavily, so thinking the assignment was ruined, the sound recordist duo were just about to return to their car when they heard something big moving stealthily outside their canvas hide.
Figuring it was one of the camera crew having a laugh, their annoyance changed to terror when the mountain lion screamed! Holding onto one another, the two men attempted to work out where the big cat was, backing away from that wall of the tent. Their car was parked 200 yards away, too far to run in pitch dark, so they spent a sleepless night waiting for dawn. The cat only screamed once, and they hadn’t recorded it. Tracks around the hide had been made indistinct by the rain.
Imagine hearing that in the night, just a few feet away!
Fear of strange noises in the darkness is natural. It kept our ancestors alive.
Have any of you used such a situation in your stories?
What bumps in the night have you heard?
A good friend, who is an avid reader, asked me for a book recommendation last week. I suggested my favourite read of the year so far, which is Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. It’s a book that deserves its good reviews and it will be one of my annual Favourite Reads of the Year in December.
My friend texted me this afternoon to say that she’d finished the book in four days and that she dreamt about it. She cried at the ending. It’s now her favourite story, and she’s recommending it to her friends.
Such word of mouth support is what turns a book into a bestseller. Grabbing the reader by their heartstrings is essential to make them read on. If they care about the fate of the characters, they’ll be moved to laugh, sigh in relief and cry in disappointment. Sad stories sell well. Think of Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling and To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee.
I’m one-third of the way into writing my third novella about an American Civil War veteran. His fiancée died the year before the war started. Since the peace treaty, he’s hidden out in the mountains, trying to recover from what we now call PTSD. He’s just travelled to Atlanta to help his sister rebuild her plantation, ruined by Sherman’s March to the Sea.
I intend to have him fall in love at first sight with a former slave freed by the abolition of slavery. There will be passion, fulfilment and heartbreak, for my hero will be returning to the mountains alone to become a trapper in Book 4. Having a love interest isn’t in his destiny. I’m going to kill her off. I hope to make the reader weep! (I’m such a brute).
Which are your favourite sad stories?
Have you written anything that made your tears flow?
I followed the link to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ from this article:
(pwned definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn)
What I found was alarming at first sight, but reading through the results, the personal information that could have been stolen was from historic data breaches dating back six years. I’ve changed passwords on every site I use since then and I use a password manager.
My results were:
Hotmail/Outlook – nine breaches.
Yahoo Mail – no breaches
Gmail personal – four breaches
Gmail business – no breaches
I’ve signed up to be notified when there’s another pwned attack.
Feeling paranoid yet?
I’m contemplating recording audiobook versions of my five Cornish Detective novels.
I’m picking your brains for advice. I’ve been looking at microphones for sale. This evening, I opened a newsletter from Yanko Design (worth subscribing to) to see an article on an affordable microphone from Rode:
It’s pricier than the quoted $91. In rip-off Britain traders on eBay and Amazon are asking £109.99, but it looks easy to use and has good reviews.
I live at what used to be one of the noisiest places in Cornwall, during the day, at a petrol station on the flight path to Newquay Airport. In normal times, it’s very quiet after 7.00 p.m. These days it’s silent! I wouldn’t be disturbed by aeroplanes or passing vehicles. My room is compact at 18’ x 12’ with sloping ceilings, so I don’t think I’d need to build a recording booth. But, what do I know?
Will I need sound-absorbing material on the walls, a book stand, a microphone stand or a digital audio workstation to mix and edit?
What can you tell me?
ADDENDUM:
It’s commonly said that we’re surprised by how our voice sounds when we hear it on the playback of a recording. Usually, it sounds higher than we think it does. This article discusses the problem:
The real reason the sound of your own voice makes you cringe
I’ve been told several times over the years, that I have an attractive talking and singing voice, which gives me a little confidence to narrate my books. At the moment, I’m researching microphones and such things as polar patterns. It looks like I need a cardioid pattern mic.
I remember reading advice that it’s best to slow down one’s narration, as it’s easy to gallop through a story.
For those of you who’ve created audiobooks, were you surprised by the sound of your voice? What about the dilemma of imitating foreign accents? I get the impression that extraneous noises can sometimes be edited out. But, what about the microphone’s sensitivity—can it pick up the sound of the narrator sipping water?
I know that book narration isn’t making a radio play, but have you ever included sound effects? Way back in the 1970s, I worked as a motorcycle dispatch rider. One of the regular clients was a Foley engineer who added sound effects to films and videos. Her recording studio could be a surprisingly messy place. I was shocked one day, when I arrived with a package, to find her slashing a pumpkin to pieces with a machete, the pulp flying everywhere. This was to simulate a stabbing scene in a horror film. I’ve never looked at pumpkins in the same way since!
I’ve also been investigating affordable video cameras. This assumes that I can bear the thought of appearing online.
Who knows where I’ll end up?
I listen to music while writing. For years, I used cheap earbuds, favouring those that fitted into my ear canal, rather than models which perched in my ear as I found them uncomfortable, and they allowed too much sound leakage in and out.
Such budget plastic earbuds don’t last forever—one earbud fails—I’m a decent solderer, but the wires are finer than human hair and difficult to connect if you’re thinking of joining two working earbuds.
Frustrated by their short life, I decided to splash out a tenner on a pair of wooden earbuds. This sounded like a gimmick to me, but, to my astonishment, the sound quality was brilliant! Playing songs, I could hear notes I didn’t know existed with the cheap earbuds. They also have a long lead, which makes moving around easier. Best tenner I’ve ever spent.
ZIOFEN Premium Earphones – Wood Design – Noise-isolating Ear Buds – Storage Bag. | eBay
I like them a lot, but wonder if over-ear headphones would be better for creating audiobooks.
Do you have any recommendations?
Goodbye £214.94
I feel faint!
I’ll let you know how things go.
I’m happy with both bits of kit and have made test recordings with each of them. From advice, I read, it’s thought to be risky to record onto a laptop hard drive, as the fan noise will intrude. It hasn’t, so far, but the temperature in my flat reaches 90F/36C in summer, so it’s likely to.
As a way around this problem, I bought a cheap tablet. I intend to use it for reading the manuscript too, to avoid making scrolling noises with my laptop mouse or paper sounds from turning pages. The Ibowin 10.1” tablet is made in China and cost me £58.99. It’s the first tablet I’ve owned, and I was impressed with the quality of it. What didn’t impress me, is how damn difficult it is to connect to the internet using my GiffGaff dongle. The tablet uses the Android operating system and is designed to connect to Wi-Fi. I’m not alone in having difficulties—try Googling it. Apparently, there’s a way around the problem by ‘rooting’ the device, but this may not work and it voids the one-year warranty.
Feeling frustrated, I did more investigating and found that what I needed is a Mi-Fi router, a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, into which I insert the GiffGaff SIM which will allow me to connect my tablet and the laptop and up to six other devices. I found a refurbished model on eBay for £18.99. I hope that it works.
My test recordings, which I did without any sound insulation, showed that the ambient noise was surprisingly high. I had a brainwave to make a portable recording booth. When I work, I rest my feet on a black plastic recycling box, which looked the right size. Then, I looked at YouTube to see that a Canadian chap had done just the same thing!
This is a very good thing, as in the first recordings, I sounded like a cross between Stephen Fry being haughty and Kaa the snake from Disney’s version of The Jungle Book. I don’t think that sounding like a snobby hissing anaconda is desirable as a narrator.
I’ll keep you posted on developments.
Firstly, apologies to Gabriel García Márquez for riffing on the title of one of his novels. Love In The Time Of Cholera is well worth a read if you’re wondering what literature to tackle while self-isolating.
One happy effect of the crisis, for me at least, is that friends and strangers have been more friendly. I don’t mean face to face strangers, as people are observing the keep your distance restrictions, more correspondents met on Twitter, Facebook and various dating agencies.
I’ve been computer dating for twenty years, meeting a woman who became a wife and making several good friends. I look at the sites every day, not with a view to finding a soulmate, more browsing in the same way as I look at cars, motorcycles and property that I’ll never have. This activity may be what prompted half a dozen lonely hearts to contact me in the last month. That’s about the number of messages I normally receive in a year.
Solitary people are forced to face what they want from life – and, for the elderly, that includes a last chance at love. I politely declined these advances, as I’ve sold my heart and soul to writing – who is a haughty mistress!
There’s an increased warmth in messaging on Twitter and Facebook that is supportive. Friends I’ve been corresponding with for years are writing more frequently.
Displays of affection in the community, albeit at a distance, are forging bonds that will last beyond the crisis. It’s easier to spot who is a decent human being these days and who is a selfish rat, such as those who hoard supplies and those bosses who refuse to pay their staff or who fire them.
It reminds me of what my parents told me about how people pulled together in the Second World War.
In the UK, people have been applauding National Health Service staff:
Thousands of people have applied to join the 250,000 strong volunteer army that the government has appealed for. If that’s not loving, I don’t know what is.
What examples of love in the time of corona have you seen where you live?
There are fictional love affairs that have resonated through the ages. Some involved love at first sight, such as the Greek tales of Cupid firing a love arrows into the heart of someone’s intended.
In his 1598 poem Hero and Leander, Christopher Marlowe wrote: “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Shakespeare had Romeo fall for Juliet on first seeing her. Victor Hugo threw Marius Pontmercy and Cosette together in Les Misérables.
Modern stories include The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
A cynic might say that love at first sight is mere infatuation. Or, that it’s lust at first sight. But, it’s such a common trope in fiction that there has to be something to it. I’ve certainly fancied someone at first sight, but falling in love, for me, involves more than surface impressions. I once had a social date with a woman who told me of the first time she saw her ex-husband. Seated in the upper story of a restaurant, she was waiting for him to arrive. Looking down to the entrance courtyard, she saw him appear and knew then and there that she’d love him forever. They married within weeks. Their union lasted for twenty-five years until he died of cancer.
Scientists have shown that love at first sight is possible:
I’ve just started writing a love at first sight scene for my American Civil War veteran, where he is enraptured by the sudden appearance of a beautiful woman, a freed slave on his sister’s plantation. He’s shunned love for eight years since his fiancée died, so this is going to be a hammer blow to his heart.
Do you have any favourite love at first sight scenes from literature?
Have you written any?
Even Homer Simpson fell in love at first sight with Marge.
Has it happened to you?
