Children's and YA Author
Hello cycling enthusiasts and welcome to beautiful Wollongong, here in NSW Australia.
I’ve laid my quill on my desk and put the lid on the ink for a moment to embrace this huge cycling event that has arrived on my doorstep.
It was the Mens Final today and what a race! Below you’ll see one of my reports for sporting news websites and channels across the world.
No news. At all. Nothing. To quote the modern vernacular: crickets . . .
Okay, Mr/Mrs Publisher, I can take a hint. Maybe we both need a break from each other.
I’m going on holidays! My wife and I have headed south – down Australia’s east coast to the region known as The Sapphire Coast. No, no. The waterways and environs aren’t littered with precious gemstones, rather the sea and the sky are sapphire-like in colour.
It’s happened. The first time, ever, for me in my fiction writing career.
A form of WRITER’S BLOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t if it was, you know, WB, but the other night, as I was on the cusp of sleep I pondered my novel and where I’d be going with it next. There was nothing. Just this dark wall-like thing in my mind (where I can usually play out the action like a movie) preventing me ‘seeing’ anything. Nothing. But the next day I had an answer (a key to The Block) and onwards I travel. Phew. From a writing perspective that feeling is awful. I felt lost. Hopeless. Plotless. I’m glad it was only overnight.
But now it is onwards and upwards with the manuscript – plus, I sat down and wrote myself a detailed plot line from where I’m at (close to the end) all the way to The End.
Now onto more more important matters:
Can you find the letterbox?
Okay. It wasn’t that hard. But this is still an obstacle course for your friendly Writer-Postman.
Manuscript word count: 81,408.
Getting close to the end now and I can’t wait to find out who the killer is. I have my suspicions, but you can never tell with a crime novel there’s always a final twist.
The weather continues to be the enemy of all posties here in Eastern Australia.
Rain, rain, and more rain. And then more rain, rain, rain.
But how does this ‘rain’ of which you write manifest itself? I hear you ask. (see below)
Need I say more? It’s a lot for a modern writer/postman to deal with, but deal with it I did. I mean, the sooner the mail is delivered, the sooner I can get home behind the keyboard. Of course I take care of family matters, domestic chores, and then it’s off to the world of . . . well, wherever my imagination takes me.
MANUSCRIPT UPDATE: Corruption is currently under consideration at a publisher. The Squeezed, my latest in-progress manuscript, progresses well. 75,000 words down. Editing on the run has got me caught up to where I’m at. This means I’ve added in changes, made adjustments, deleted unnecessary sections and generally tidied the draft. Now it’s on to uncharted waters. But never fear, there is a plot line for me to follow. Now it’s onward to:
T H E E N D
Hiding Letterboxes
My crime manuscript Squeezed continues to blossom. And bloom. And now I am pruning. Yes yes. I know. It’s premature – the blinking thing isn’t finished yet, but the edit is really tightening the prose and focusing the plot and developing the characters.
So it’s onwards and upwards. I shall continue digging out my novel and finding those pesky hiding letterboxes.
I’m doing something I promised myself I wouldn’t do. No. It’s nothing illegal or something that could be deemed ‘naughty’. I’m editing my manuscript before I’ve completed the first draft.
Finish the damn thing. Completely. Then tinker and cut and polish, the little voice inside my head yodels. But no. I’m editing.
Why now? you ask. Now, when you’re so close to finishing the manuscript. The short answer is: I have to.
This pollution monstrosity on my postie run is a pretty fair representation of what’s going on in my writer’s head at the moment.
But I shall prevail!
Onwards and upwards to ‘The End’
When mail thieves strike, your friendly writer-postman is on the job detailing their dastardly work!
What can I say? To some, the sanctity of the written word, of the Royal (okay, not anymore) mail means nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. And so these ne’er-do-wells swoop in the dead of night while good folk slumber – and steal their bills and junk mail!
Calamity!
But fear not, we are on the hunt and shall bring these perpetrators to book.
Spot the letterbox.
No Prize offered – just the satisfaction of solving a mystery.
The weather . . .
. . . enough said.
I understand maintaining your garden can be time-consuming and not exactly high on one’s priority list of household chores. But lorks-a-lordy, spare a thought for your friendly neighbourhood Writer-Postman.
Somewhere in that green Cousin It look-a-like vegetative monstrosity is a letterbox!
Pass the machete please!
Can you see the letterbox? Just right of centre, low down. Yeah low down all right! A Writer-Postman runs the risk of poking out an eye – or poking something worse.
So come on people, think of the hardworking postmen and postwomen who bring you messages of joy and hope (and the occasional bill) and get those hedge clippers out. TODAY.
Chris McTrustry 