Essay

Inch by Inch

By Sparkie on Flickr

I’ve been out of it for quite a while. The explanation is simple: some life stuff happened. But I joined a writing critique group and am trying out a new (to me) tool called AutoCrit. I’ve signed up for a class where you focus on getting in-depth on a POV and I’m looking forward to using it to get a short story idea written out.

I’m hoping that this tool will help me with my plotting problems when I’m writing novels, keeping the pace and not bogging down with too much detail.

In the meantime, I’ve been focusing on short stories, which I don’t seem to have a problem with. Writing a novel chapter is like sweating blood, but writing a short story – for me, at least – is being in the zone and it always comes together fast and I’m always happy with it. Part of me is wondering if writing short stories is what I should focus on. And I have to say that’s a big fat maybe. That’s because I’m stubborn and it takes a lot of repeated fails before I give up on anything that interests me.

There was an old Vaudeville routine that the 3 Stooges revived in the 50s, where Moe told the story of the man who stole his gal and how he got revenge at Niagara Falls. And every time someone said “Niagara Falls” Moe would advance on Curly, saying “Slowly I turned, and step by step, inch by inch…” and then Curly would have the stuffing beat out of him, only for it to happen over and over again. So the Writing Life has been a little like that for me the last couple of years. Nobody’s saying “Niagara Falls” but life has been beating the stuffing out of me for a while and I figure what I have to do is turn that around. So step by step, inch by inch, that’s what I’m trying to do.

What Will the World Look Like?

My current expression

Sitting in my living room darkened to keep the heat at bay, I can’t help but think about how climate change is affecting our world. And as that goes on, here we are dealing with the threats to democracy on our own soil while thousands die of Covid in South America and Africa. Political turmoil, poverty, and corruption are wrecking Haiti and South Africa imprisoned one of their foremost leaders against apartheid because of personal greed. The fighting because of religion and land and ethnicity in the Middle East is driving thousands to seek shelter in countries that don’t want them. In many African countries there is no medical help, no government help, only disease, warlords, kidnapping, and murder.

The real world now seems to be tipping in favour of dystopia. How will we writers document it? And how will we write about the world that this one will become?

We are 21 years into this century. How much worse will it get before it starts to get better? Because I KNOW it will get better. Nothing lasts forever. Not good. Not bad. But how long will it take, I wonder. How long? And what will the world look like then?