Thomas W. Devine's Blog, page 11
April 15, 2017
How I do It
When people talk to me about fiction writing they sometimes want to find out, “How do you do it?”
I reply along the lines of setting out my process, “I never stop learning about the rules and techniques, I come up with a storyline (the hardest part) and let scene ideas flow from my head to the keyboard as I sit at the PC and type.”
Which really doesn’t solve the mystery of it at all, not that I could explain it better.
Sometimes my subconscious works on the novel even when I’m not in front of the PC. It may come to the surface with semi-random bits and pieces of scene description or dialogue (not always at a convenient moment) and I have to write them down in longhand before I forget. That helps my progress in the first draft.
Or I might see ahead for 2 or 3 chapters and, in outline, write down a one-liner for what will happen in a properly sequenced way. I’m not one for having a total outline in advance.
That’s just how it works for me.
I reply along the lines of setting out my process, “I never stop learning about the rules and techniques, I come up with a storyline (the hardest part) and let scene ideas flow from my head to the keyboard as I sit at the PC and type.”
Which really doesn’t solve the mystery of it at all, not that I could explain it better.
Sometimes my subconscious works on the novel even when I’m not in front of the PC. It may come to the surface with semi-random bits and pieces of scene description or dialogue (not always at a convenient moment) and I have to write them down in longhand before I forget. That helps my progress in the first draft.
Or I might see ahead for 2 or 3 chapters and, in outline, write down a one-liner for what will happen in a properly sequenced way. I’m not one for having a total outline in advance.
That’s just how it works for me.
April 8, 2017
Resting My Bones
In the last year or so, as age creeps up on me, my brain has become hard-wired to take the shortest route when on foot and do everything in the easiest way possible, and provided I don’t forget, doing that with cautious body movements in case I put my back out or aggravate the pain of some arthriticically challenged joint.
Apart from that, I’m a box or birds now that I’m writing a new book. There’s the usual, most difficult, challenge – I’ve faced up to before – of coming up with enough plot scenes to make the story longer than a novella.
Apart from that, I’m a box or birds now that I’m writing a new book. There’s the usual, most difficult, challenge – I’ve faced up to before – of coming up with enough plot scenes to make the story longer than a novella.
April 1, 2017
Writing Again
I’ve started writing my eleventh novel (a thriller) after taking off the Southern Hemisphere summer. I’m up to the first draft of Chapter 4. Scene ideas have been fizzing in my head and bubbling up like a soda spring.
In the last few years, I’ve found writing the start of a novel is less of a hard slog than the rest.
It’s a delight to let my creativity flow again. My enthusiasm in the first week saw me put in such long working hours as to leave me exhausted, leading to some lazy evenings and, this weekend, some early nights. I couldn’t stay up for a TV movie if I tried!
I'm legally blind my optometrist says, when it comes to driving, but luckily, with glasses and a couple of taps on the + sign, I can still clearly see Word text on my PC screen.
When I say I took the summer off, it was just from starting to write a new book. I still spent time producing and promoting my last novel, “The Assyrian Girl.”
The idea for my next novel has come out of the alleged involvement of Russia in skewing the US presidential election, but that’s not the exact theme.
The tax year has ended and my business tax return (which I prepare myself) will be due soon. Yeah!
In the last few years, I’ve found writing the start of a novel is less of a hard slog than the rest.
It’s a delight to let my creativity flow again. My enthusiasm in the first week saw me put in such long working hours as to leave me exhausted, leading to some lazy evenings and, this weekend, some early nights. I couldn’t stay up for a TV movie if I tried!
I'm legally blind my optometrist says, when it comes to driving, but luckily, with glasses and a couple of taps on the + sign, I can still clearly see Word text on my PC screen.
When I say I took the summer off, it was just from starting to write a new book. I still spent time producing and promoting my last novel, “The Assyrian Girl.”
The idea for my next novel has come out of the alleged involvement of Russia in skewing the US presidential election, but that’s not the exact theme.
The tax year has ended and my business tax return (which I prepare myself) will be due soon. Yeah!
March 24, 2017
A Blot on Our Humanity: Slaughter of the Innocents
Columnist. Gordon Campbell, wrote (The Wellingtonian, March 23, 2017):
“If the political will existed [in New Zealand] change could proceed in two stages. Abortion could be removed from the Crimes Act where it (oddly) sits at present and be placed under the Health Act, as a procedure between women and their medical practitioners.”
No, Mr Campbell, the status quo is not odd. Even the permissive Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act, in its long title, provides for “having full regard to the rights of the unborn child”.
A human dies whenever an abortion is performed.
Scientifically, there is not some sort of developmental stage whereby the unborn child is less than human. Even when the unborn’s capacities are not yet fully developed, they are still present. The unborn child is as much a person as the born child, and has inalienable human rights, including the right to live.
So, Mr Campbell, every abortion that is not sanctioned by law is a crime, and should remain one under the Crimes Act, if only to remind us that the rights of an unborn child, in a legal abortion, are being sacrificed by society for the sake of its mother.
The fact that polls in New Zealand suggest there is overwhelming support for legal abortion on permissive grounds will never change the human cost of that sacrifice.
The majority view is a blot on our humanity. We sanction killing our own children, putting women’s wants and needs first. Out of sight, out of mind, when it comes to the unborn.
“If the political will existed [in New Zealand] change could proceed in two stages. Abortion could be removed from the Crimes Act where it (oddly) sits at present and be placed under the Health Act, as a procedure between women and their medical practitioners.”
No, Mr Campbell, the status quo is not odd. Even the permissive Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act, in its long title, provides for “having full regard to the rights of the unborn child”.
A human dies whenever an abortion is performed.
Scientifically, there is not some sort of developmental stage whereby the unborn child is less than human. Even when the unborn’s capacities are not yet fully developed, they are still present. The unborn child is as much a person as the born child, and has inalienable human rights, including the right to live.
So, Mr Campbell, every abortion that is not sanctioned by law is a crime, and should remain one under the Crimes Act, if only to remind us that the rights of an unborn child, in a legal abortion, are being sacrificed by society for the sake of its mother.
The fact that polls in New Zealand suggest there is overwhelming support for legal abortion on permissive grounds will never change the human cost of that sacrifice.
The majority view is a blot on our humanity. We sanction killing our own children, putting women’s wants and needs first. Out of sight, out of mind, when it comes to the unborn.
March 19, 2017
Self Image
A headline - “Of Winners and Losers” - jumped out at me because of the title of my 9th novel, “Losing & Winning”. While the novel was about the consequences of the theft of a winning Lotto ticket, the article under the headline was about the struggle to maintain a healthy self-image.
The author of the article under the headline (Ronald Rolheiser, NZ Catholic, March 12-25, 2017) asserts that:
“When we divide people into winners and losers then our talents and gifts become sources of envy and weapons of competition and superiority... Rather [we should believe] that other people’s gifts are not a threat, but something that enriches all our lives, our own included.”
“Community,” Rolheiser writes, “can only happen when we” take that approach. Otherwise, “we vacillate between feeling depressed and belittled when others outscore us, or inflated and pompous when we appear superior to them.” It becomes an obsession,” Rolheiser says, when we give in to a need “to stand out, be special, to sit above, to make a mark for ourselves.”
In the last decade, I’ve certainly skated on thin ice in promoting myself as a novelist. Self-promotion was foreign to me before then, a character weakness that held back my career according to a boss I worked for over several years in public administration. So, being out of character, self-promotion has not come easily.
I certainly don’t do it to show off but as a necessity to gain readership. At the same time, there is a sense of pride in being a published author – it’s not an easy road. I don’t however look down on anyone who doesn’t have that talent, or feel more than admiration for writers who are more successful than I am.
To do othwise would leave me in an unhappy place.
The author of the article under the headline (Ronald Rolheiser, NZ Catholic, March 12-25, 2017) asserts that:
“When we divide people into winners and losers then our talents and gifts become sources of envy and weapons of competition and superiority... Rather [we should believe] that other people’s gifts are not a threat, but something that enriches all our lives, our own included.”
“Community,” Rolheiser writes, “can only happen when we” take that approach. Otherwise, “we vacillate between feeling depressed and belittled when others outscore us, or inflated and pompous when we appear superior to them.” It becomes an obsession,” Rolheiser says, when we give in to a need “to stand out, be special, to sit above, to make a mark for ourselves.”
In the last decade, I’ve certainly skated on thin ice in promoting myself as a novelist. Self-promotion was foreign to me before then, a character weakness that held back my career according to a boss I worked for over several years in public administration. So, being out of character, self-promotion has not come easily.
I certainly don’t do it to show off but as a necessity to gain readership. At the same time, there is a sense of pride in being a published author – it’s not an easy road. I don’t however look down on anyone who doesn’t have that talent, or feel more than admiration for writers who are more successful than I am.
To do othwise would leave me in an unhappy place.
March 12, 2017
Remembering A Brother
I’ve just embarked on a long delayed reading of “Older & Wiser: Essays 2002-2009” written by a brilliant international journalist and editor, my eldest brother, Frank Devine https://www.theguardian.com/theguardi... .
In his liftetime I never knew him well. I must have been about 8 or 9 when he left home in New Zealand to seek a career in Western Australia. Up until just before his departure he largely ignored me, as the youngest of the family, and he tended to treat me as the kid-brother even in my fifties and sixties. I’ll always remember, though not in detail, that one evening at our family home in Blenheim he came and sat on the side of my bed and had a long talk with me - lots of advice about my future.
This one on one, just before he went overseas, was unique. I grew to miss a brother I’d never really spent any time with.
He made infrequent visits to Blenheim (each of which the family treasured) and we made even less frequent visits to see him. In between his visits home, he widely spaced letters to our parents, the reading of which were major events. They brought a taste of cosmopolitan life to our small-town lives.
He was always accepted warmly as part of the family when he did return on visits. Now, reading his essays, I realise how little we knew about his other persona – then so foreign to our more limited experiences of life and adventure.
I’m taking delight in reading more, in his essays, about aspects of his life previously largely hidden from family in New Zealand, and find myself in increasing admiration and awe of his literary skills.
https://www.bookdepository.com/Older-...
In his liftetime I never knew him well. I must have been about 8 or 9 when he left home in New Zealand to seek a career in Western Australia. Up until just before his departure he largely ignored me, as the youngest of the family, and he tended to treat me as the kid-brother even in my fifties and sixties. I’ll always remember, though not in detail, that one evening at our family home in Blenheim he came and sat on the side of my bed and had a long talk with me - lots of advice about my future.
This one on one, just before he went overseas, was unique. I grew to miss a brother I’d never really spent any time with.
He made infrequent visits to Blenheim (each of which the family treasured) and we made even less frequent visits to see him. In between his visits home, he widely spaced letters to our parents, the reading of which were major events. They brought a taste of cosmopolitan life to our small-town lives.
He was always accepted warmly as part of the family when he did return on visits. Now, reading his essays, I realise how little we knew about his other persona – then so foreign to our more limited experiences of life and adventure.
I’m taking delight in reading more, in his essays, about aspects of his life previously largely hidden from family in New Zealand, and find myself in increasing admiration and awe of his literary skills.
https://www.bookdepository.com/Older-...
March 3, 2017
Am Reading
Recently, I re-visited the boutique “Writer’s Plot Readers Read” bookshop in Upper Hutt, New Zealand.
I wanted them to display a poster of a book review about my latest novel “The Assyrian Girl”, which they agreed to do. The shop currently has this and one ofther of my 10 novels on its shelves.
The bookshop, on the outskirts of the Upper Hutt CBD, is a well-run cooperative that stocks books provided by New Zealand writers, for sale on an agency/commission basis, and doesn’t discriminate against self-published works. That makes it a rare treasure for budding New Zealand writers.
I make it a rule for myself that whenever I visit the shop I will buy a book to reward the shop’s enterprise and to encourage a fellow author. The latest book I’ve picked up and read is Trish McCormack’s “Assigned to Murder”. I’ve added a review of that crime novel on “Goodreads” today.
It’s only fair to confess that my rule has cost me a lot more money than revenue raised by sales of my books at the shop. I wish other Wellington writers would follow my lead. And, yes, buy my books if they see fit.
I wanted them to display a poster of a book review about my latest novel “The Assyrian Girl”, which they agreed to do. The shop currently has this and one ofther of my 10 novels on its shelves.
The bookshop, on the outskirts of the Upper Hutt CBD, is a well-run cooperative that stocks books provided by New Zealand writers, for sale on an agency/commission basis, and doesn’t discriminate against self-published works. That makes it a rare treasure for budding New Zealand writers.
I make it a rule for myself that whenever I visit the shop I will buy a book to reward the shop’s enterprise and to encourage a fellow author. The latest book I’ve picked up and read is Trish McCormack’s “Assigned to Murder”. I’ve added a review of that crime novel on “Goodreads” today.
It’s only fair to confess that my rule has cost me a lot more money than revenue raised by sales of my books at the shop. I wish other Wellington writers would follow my lead. And, yes, buy my books if they see fit.
February 27, 2017
Drugs & Unemployment
The Prime Minister of New Zealand grabbed a news headline (The Dominion Post February 28, 2017) by saying that the inability of many young New Zealander job seekers to pass a workplace safety drug test is a reason why overseas workers are needed in this country in record numbers. He based that statement on anecdotal conversatioins with business owners.
That sounds like a bit of political misinformation badly in need of study and statistical evidence to prove or disprove it.
I’d be appalled if it was proven to be the truth that a high proportion of the 140,000 unemployed people in this country are drug addicts. It would be a sorry state for New Zealand to have come to.
With a critical housing shortage in this country, and hospital services severely stretched, I would have thought the government would be looking at other solutions to drug taking and filling job vacancies than welcoming more migrants.
I’m sure economists will have a justification for the policy - money over humanity. The man in the sreet can only shake his head and wonder when the bubble will burst.
That sounds like a bit of political misinformation badly in need of study and statistical evidence to prove or disprove it.
I’d be appalled if it was proven to be the truth that a high proportion of the 140,000 unemployed people in this country are drug addicts. It would be a sorry state for New Zealand to have come to.
With a critical housing shortage in this country, and hospital services severely stretched, I would have thought the government would be looking at other solutions to drug taking and filling job vacancies than welcoming more migrants.
I’m sure economists will have a justification for the policy - money over humanity. The man in the sreet can only shake his head and wonder when the bubble will burst.
February 17, 2017
How to Live Your Golden Years
I’ve never been a proponent of the hedonist philosophy that you should live each day as if it is your last. I am however recently tempted by the variation: live one day at a time.
I worry a lot, which was keeping me awake a few nights ago. Then it came to me, like a personal revelation, that what I was worrying about might not happen tomorrow and that, whenever it did happen, I should deal with it then.
I’ve lived most of my life preparing for tomorrow. Among other things, it’s given me economic security in retirement.
Maybe that's why I decided it was time to stop focussing on the future and, as they say, smell the roses if they bloom today and not worry about whether they’ll be there to smell tomorrow.
I worry a lot, which was keeping me awake a few nights ago. Then it came to me, like a personal revelation, that what I was worrying about might not happen tomorrow and that, whenever it did happen, I should deal with it then.
I’ve lived most of my life preparing for tomorrow. Among other things, it’s given me economic security in retirement.
Maybe that's why I decided it was time to stop focussing on the future and, as they say, smell the roses if they bloom today and not worry about whether they’ll be there to smell tomorrow.
February 6, 2017
The Spiritual
How often do you experience peace of mind? Or are you just too busy to notice its absence?
Unlike the lead protagonist in my latest novel (www.createspace.com/6402249 ) I am not an atheist. But I am a sinner, so I’m not casting the first stone and this is not a sermon. I’m doing no more than revealing my personal experience.
I found a new faith in God late in life. I’d lost it as a teenager and lacked it for most of my adult years, even though I remained a church-goer. There seemed to be more reasons to disbelieve than believe.
Then, through study, I became aware within myself that belief in God is not a matter of weighing the odds but of experiencing blind faith. The doubts no longer matter. I simply believe.
What that has done is fill an empty space in my soul which, before then, I’d become hauntingly aware of almost daily. It’s led me to re-gain spiritual peace of mind.
Like anyone else, I experience ups and downs of worldly contentment, but I can always feel spiritually buoyed up by my faith that God is at my side even when times are tough. I no longer have an aching spiritual hunger. My soul is full.
I sincerely hope others will come to that experience too.
Unlike the lead protagonist in my latest novel (www.createspace.com/6402249 ) I am not an atheist. But I am a sinner, so I’m not casting the first stone and this is not a sermon. I’m doing no more than revealing my personal experience.
I found a new faith in God late in life. I’d lost it as a teenager and lacked it for most of my adult years, even though I remained a church-goer. There seemed to be more reasons to disbelieve than believe.
Then, through study, I became aware within myself that belief in God is not a matter of weighing the odds but of experiencing blind faith. The doubts no longer matter. I simply believe.
What that has done is fill an empty space in my soul which, before then, I’d become hauntingly aware of almost daily. It’s led me to re-gain spiritual peace of mind.
Like anyone else, I experience ups and downs of worldly contentment, but I can always feel spiritually buoyed up by my faith that God is at my side even when times are tough. I no longer have an aching spiritual hunger. My soul is full.
I sincerely hope others will come to that experience too.
