Amanda Fleet's Blog, page 24

Ignorance and learning...

I realise that's an odd title. It comes from my increasing realisation that there are far too many people in the world who DON'T know what they're talking about, but refuse to accept that someone who is an expert in the topic might know more than them...

BBC radio 4 recently (and deservedly) got flack from scientists (and others) who were understandably outraged that Lord Lamont was brought in 'to add balance to the climate change discussion'. Lord Lamont may know a lot of things but he patently knows nothing about climate change science. And patently told a heap of lies that went unchallenged by the presenters.

Donald Trump doesn't appear to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction (and won't accept being told that). If he doesn't like something or doesn't understand it, it's 'fake news'.

Most of the UK government are not scientists and yet make wide-sweeping (and incorrect) statements or policies about a whole heap of things - neonics and the effect on insects, whether badger culling reduces the incidence of TB in cattle to name but two.
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Nero...

NeroAs you may know, I lost my darling Sly (Sylvester) almost a year ago. At the time, I swore I wouldn't have any more cats while we lived here. We lost Sly's brother, Kiwi, many years ago, hit by a car on the road. What was more heartbreaking than his loss, was that we didn't find him for several days and he was still alive (though very, very injured).

Roll forward to last November, and we adopted two little boys from our local cat shelter. They were deeply traumatised when we got them but slowly developed into a couple of adorable hooligans.

Every day, I was terrified they wouldn't come home, that they would get hit by a car. Every single day. I was less worried about Max - he seemed to stay pretty close to home - but Nero... Nero had that same Wanderlust that Kiwi had.

Just over a week ago, Nero didn't come home. We hoped he had just got himself shut in a shed or a garage, but deep down, we knew he hadn't. We found his body the next day. The small mercy is that he would have been killed instantly.

I've been trying to console myself with the thoughts that we gave him everything he wanted - food, warmth, shelter, love and the opportunity to explore and roam to his heart's content. I just wish he'd had the sense to roam in the acres and acres of fields at the back of us and not on the main road.

He was a beautiful, beautiful boy and my heart is broken.

More Murder and Mayhem!

They're back! This time at Blackwells in Edinburgh, on 17th March. Are you brave enough to join them? Not everyone will come out of it alive!*

See if you can spot which of the crime writers is the murderer, and win a freebie if you manage to catch them out. There's also plenty of time for chatting about the writing life, getting published and writing crime.

Each time we've done this, it's been a hoot, so if you're in the area, pop in and see for yourself. Entry is completely free. See here for more details.

The writers are: Tana Collins, Wendy H. Jones, Lesley Kelly, Chris Longmuir and Jackie McLean.

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Unwelcome sign of age!

Glasses.

Actually, I've worn glasses for short-sightedness for about 40 years now and am so short-sighted that without glasses/contact lenses, I would struggle to see beyond about 5 inches from the end of my nose. I certainly can't read without them as the book would be stiflingly close. I actually can't put my contact lenses in using a mirror, as there isn't enough space between my face and the mirror to have my hand. I've always put my lenses in by touch.

No. The new glasses hell is that I'm now old enough to need reading glasses too. If I'd had perfect vision before, this might have been a smidgen easier, but as it is, I now have: my contact lenses, a pair of reading glasses for when I'm wearing my contact lenses, a pair of glasses for when I'm not wearing my contact lenses and not reading/writing either, and a pair of glasses for when I'm not wearing my contact lenses but am reading or writing.

Why not just get a pair of varifocals? They would cover all instances of not wearing my contact lenses.
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Throw away your crutches!

Every writer has crutch words - words we rely on or are our go-to words. Words we over-use. Words we don't need at all.

Having finished the structural edit, the next stage for me is to tighten up all the writing. I know the foundations of the book are right. Now I need to make the building as good as possible. Once that's sorted, I can fine-tune and add the finishing touches that (hopefully) make it sparkle.

I keep a running list of the words I over-use. Some of them I know I over-use because I've seen them for myself. Some of them have been pointed out to me by my editors. Another way of finding them is doing a word-frequency count. I do this via Scrivener - it gives me a list of all the words used in the book and how often they appear. Obviously "the", "a", "and" and so on come up hundreds of times, but it's in the block after that, that I need to check - words that shouldn't be as common as they are in the book. Some of my worst offenders are "nodded" and "looked", but the list is long.

Crime at the Castle

Do you read crime novels?
Do you fancy trying your hand at writing a crime novel?

If the answer to either of those questions is “YES” then Crime at the Castle is a must.

You have a chance to hear the very best Scottish crime writers as they tell you how it is done in a series of talks and writer’s workshops in what must be one of the most inspirational venues imaginable. Glamis castle is holding its very first crime writers festival on Saturday the 24th February 2018.

The cost for the day is £55 and for that, you get to hear four speakers, or hear three speakers and take part in a writers' workshop. Lunch is included in the ticket and there will be book signings between the events.

Speakers include:

Lin Anderson, Chris Brookmyre, Caroline Dunford, Alex Gray, Sandra Ireland, Wendy H. Jones Chris Longmuir, Michael J Malone, Denise Mina, Shona MacLean, Val McDermid, Jackie Mclean, Frank Muir, Caro Ramsay, Craig Robertson, Douglas Skelton

Have you booked your tickets yet? No? Well hurry up because it's selling out! Click on the link below for more details of the event, including how to book.

http://www.glamis-castle.co.uk/event_detail.cfm/event_ID/147/title/title=Crime-at-the-Castle

Editing...

(I wouldn't have a disposable cup OR a straw...
but otherwise this is a fair representation!)The first round of edits - the structural editing - is done (though history teaches me that my editor will still want to shift several scenes around when she gets her hands on it). This is my least favourite bit of editing. I prefer the next stage: tightening it up and trying to make it sparkle. I enjoy spending time on the words, once the foundations are sorted. Only once a house is built, can you start decorating it. So with writing.

Structural editing starts with The Giant Spreadsheet which helps me to see where things are too long and also where there are gaps. Colour-coding which characters are in each scene shows me that sometimes characters seem to have wandered off, mid-manuscript. Where did they go? They need bringing back into the fold. Or I see that a thread that I thought was well woven in is actually half frayed and sticking out. Or not tied off at the end. Seeing the big picture helps me to make sure that it holds together the way I imagined it would.

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Are you gender-biased? Chances are, you are.

The past week has been full of stories about gender bias. There's been the on-going argument at the BBC about the gender pay-gap, and The Guardian had a piece about whether monsters must always be male (you can read it here) and how few female characters in children's books even speak, let alone are the main character. There was also an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 about women being biased against women. If you didn't hear it, you can listen to it or download it here (and I genuinely recommend listening to it).

You are probably gender biased, even if you don't think you are.
Much of our bias is thought to stem from the brain taking 'short-cuts'. The example given in an analysis of the radio piece (the analysis can be found here) cites burning yourself on a hot pan leading to your brain making a quick association between 'oven', 'hot' and 'pain'.

Likewise, if a person sees disproportionately more men than women in positions of power and leadership, and disproportionately more women in more lowly-ranked jobs, their brains quickly associate men with power and responsibility and women with less powerful, lower value roles.

So, what can we do to try and avoid this bias?
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The Giant Spreadsheet of Editing

  They say there are two kinds of writers: planners and 'pantsers' (who write by the seats of their pants). I'm a planner. And a scientist. Double-whammy!

I've just finished the first (rough!) draft of the book that follows on from "The Call". Yes, the one I've been writing since 2013. The one I've abandoned a couple of times and written "Lies That Poison" and two books of an urban fantasy trilogy instead. Anyway, I finished the rough first draft last Monday and so have moved on to my next stage of editing, which is to produce The Giant Spreadsheet.

I write early drafts of books using Scrivener and one of the features of the program is that you can export the novel outline to Excel. The folder and document titles are exported, along with notes, word counts and a host of other things. I'm mostly interested in the titles, notes and word counts for each document (for me each document equates to a scene), and I add in information about which characters are in each scene (using colour coding).

Why???
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Tea and plastic

My husband and I are tea drinkers. I don't drink coffee. I can't actually ever remember liking coffee. But tea - I love a good cuppa.

Like many other people I've used tea-bags for most of my life, but I'm not buying them any more. Not while they are full of plastic.

Wait, you thought tea-bags were made of paper? Hm. Partly true. They do have paper, but they also have a thin layer of plastic mesh, which doesn't biodegrade. It's there mostly to heat-seal the two layers of the tea-bag together and is usually polypropylene.

We'd suspected this for a while as we have a compost bin and used to put the used tea-bags in there. When we came to use the compost, there would always be the ghosts of tea-bags in the compost. At first I thought these were just the bags taking time to rot down. They're not. They're plastic and they will release microplastics into the environment. If you still don't know why microplastics are bad, read this... And if you really want to learn more, read this report by the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection.

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