Mike Crowl's Blog, page 9

Taking a lesson from the past

 Still struggling to get moving after being overseas. It’snot the fault of ‘overseas’ but just a lethargy that seems to have taken overafter I’d recovered from jet lag and general tiredness. Did I mention that onone part of the trip I was awake for something like forty hours straight, includingthe 17-hour trip from Dallas to Sydney?

Anyway, yesterday I read back through some notes I madeon my previous book, the one that was published late last year. The file wasentitled: Notes on The Coun...

Coming back home

Coming into Manly Beach, Sydney, on the ferry. 
 An overseas trip is great, especially if you’re catchingup with grandchildren you’ve never seen face to face before.

It’s not so good when it completely takes your attentionaway from a work in progress, and you come home feeling you have to start fromscratch.

Which is what’s happened in my case. All my creativeenergy has gone into getting to know little people I’ve never met before, orones who are now several years older than the last time ...

Don't press

 In my WIP I have at least two major issues I need todeal with before I can move forward. The temptation is to dig and dig at the problemin order to make the solution come out of where it’s hiding in thesubconscious. If that’s what it’s doing.

I’ve worked on both issues, jotting notes down aboutthem, thinking about them while walking and so on. No solution has yet appeared. Not a workable one anyway. I have to be willing to say to myself:‘This isn’t the answer – yet.’

I watched Alfred Hi...

Having a cold but still getting some work done

 Last four days I’ve had a cold. Started Sunday and thenshifted between suddenly feeling better and just as suddenly feeling quiteunwell. Monday, for instance, after expecting to have a runny nose and cough, Ihad next to nothing, and I thought maybe what started on Sunday evening wasn’tgoing to amount to much.

And then Tuesday arrived and I wasn’t well at all – yup,just a cold. I know.

And Wednesday (yesterday) came and I started cancellingthings I had to do yesterday as well as today. ...

Foreign Correspondent re-viewed & Mr and Mrs Smith noted

 Back in 2012 I wrote a post on my favourite Hitchcockmovies. I came across it again this morning after checking to see if I’d ever mentionedForeign Correspondent, which stars Joel McCrea and Laraine Day, and was releasedearly in 1940, in this blog. I had, with fondness.

I watched the movie on You Tube last night (Spanishsubtitles included) and it remains an absorbing movie - with some absurdities.Not unusual for Hitchcock. Though it was shot in the States, it has a largecast of Brits; man...

Foreign Correspondent re-viewed

 Back in 2012 I wrote a post on my favourite Hitchcockmovies. I came across it again this morning after checking to see if I’d ever mentionedForeign Correspondent, which stars Joel McCrea and Laraine Day, and was releasedearly in 1940, in this blog. I had, with fondness.

I watched the movie on You Tube last night (Spanishsubtitles included) and it remains an absorbing movie - with some absurdities.Not unusual for Hitchcock. Though it was shot in the States, it has a largecast of Brits; man...

Ways to keep the brain exercising

 My wife and I are going to the USA from late March tomid-April, to see our son and his wife and their four children. We haven’tseen the two youngest children face to face before, so we’re looking forward tothat. The youngest will be about three months old when we arrive, so it’ll benice to handle a baby again – haven’t done that with any of our family babiesfor some years now.

I haven’t travelled such a long distance since 2012, so I’mhaving to get my brain into gear to deal with a coupl...

Intuitive ideas

General Carrera Lake, inside Marmol Caverns, Aysen region-Chile
Photo: Nico14uc 

I made a note to myself today: Don’t get ridof intuitive ideas just because you can’t initially see how they fit.

When writing asa ‘kind of pantser’ – the best way I can describe myself – odd things creepinto the writing that I know have a part to play but don’t immediatley see how theyfit into the overall plan.

Two such thingscome to mind about my latest book. First, there’s a traumatic event in theopening c...

The Great Escaper

 You know when a movie starts off slow – three shots of wavescrashing in, a long shot of a man standing on a beach looking at the sea, more crashingwaves, the man in close up, and so on – that generally the pacing is going tobe off. There are ways to start slow and there are ways not to. If a movie doesn’tengage in the midst of its slowness, then it’s likely not going to engage fullstop.

Which is what happened with The Great Escaper,starring Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson as an elderly ...

Backstories and bios

 I remember reading a novel some years ago in which theauthor plainly thought that his background notes about each main character shouldbe included at some point in the book. This led to an absurd climax where everythingstopped while the author gave us the backstory for one of his characters rightin the middle of the action. Not just a paragraph or two, but pages.

 

Writers often create long, detailed backstories fortheir characters, and it’s a great temptation to put most of this into the ...