My Writing Week: Issue 14, Year 5

Article on Climate Change Submitted to Divine

Last week began well when I submitted my eighteenth article to Divine magazine. The article was about the health effects of climate change. I did a fair bit of research for the article reading large chucks of IPCC and Australian Climate Commission reports.

  

I had a bit of serendipity while writing the article. A program on ABC radio told me about a disease that increased four–fold in the Darling Downs after the recent floods in Queensland. I then read the disease is on the rise due to climate change, in an IPCC report.

According to the reports, climate change will increase not only deaths due to heat and more frequent extreme weather events, but also increase infections, allergens, diseases and mental illness. And the worst affected state, by a long way, looks to be Queensland.

Hopefully the article will be up on the Divine site soon.

Bookshops Versus Online Buying.

Last week I suddenly realised my mother’s birthday was coming up. I knew she very much enjoyed reading PD James books, so I decided to pop down to my local Collins bookstore and buy a couple. I walked into the store and after searching for a while found only one PD James novel, her most recent release, which I had already given to my mother for Christmas. 

I then went next door to a newsagent that sells a few books, no PD James. I searched a few of the chain stores, one had the most recent release, the other none. Unbelievable.  I was left with no alternative but to buy online.

I knew the Book Depository would deliver within ten working days, so I went to their site. I bought two PD James paperbacks and CD, for $39. If my Collins bookstore had of have the good sense to stock some of the backlist of a major author, the same books and CD would have cost $80-$100.  I wonder if my local bookstore will survive much longer.

Publishers Accepting Manuscripts.

I am way behind in my newspaper reading, the stack is nearly six weeks high, so this might be old news to many. Jane Sullivan in her Turning Pages column on the 25^th of February in The AGE mentions a number of publishers are now accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Pan McMillian has a Manuscript Monday, Allen & Unwin a Friday Pitch and now Penguin has a Monthly Catch where manuscripts can be emailed to them during the first week of each month. Penguin promise to read all the manuscripts they receive too. 

Why the change of heart? Are less manuscripts being sent to traditional publishers? Are Australian writers not even bothering with local publishers and submitting them to overseas publishers first? Or are Australian publishers worried that the next JK Rowling will give up after the first three rejections and self-publish an ebook? Ben Ball from Penguin said “the digital world is bringing us closer than ever to readers and, therefore, writers…we want to be an even more active part of the community.” 

Whatever the reason, it is good news for those who have a manuscript to submit. I am still a long way away from that stage. The novel I am barely working on is a long way from finished. Currently I am 82,000 words in, with an estimated 30-40,000 words to go.

My Writing Week: Issue 40, Year 4

Hi from Grumpy Graham,

I felt so tired last week, moody too. I also worried about pains? strains? in the lower back. But I still managed to write a little every day.

I have nearly finished the second draft of a short story that has grown from the nice size of 5,000 words to an awkward 6,600 words. Perhaps I am enjoying the voice I have created for its main character, a curious dog, too much.      

I also got into critiquing a novel. I have previously critiqued a now published novel from the same author.

Terra Nova

I am one of the few people in the world who wasn’t a producer or writer of the new science fiction series Terra Nova. It premiered on Australian TV last night. I think there must have been at least ten producers as well as four writers for the first episode.

The series is set near the end of this century in a grimy and overpopulated world. A porthole is discovered that can take people back 85 million years. It is a different timeline, so they can’t stuff up the future. A settlement is established and humans get to flee the bleak future to live with the dinosaurs.

The plot for the first double episode had holes wide enough for a herd of dinosaurs to stampede through. The one that really irked me was the fact that the main family consists of a cop and a doctor who for some reason had a major compassion and brain fade when deciding to have a third child. They could only legally have two children. This meant that they would have to hide the third child from the authorities forever: what a great life for the kid. So I have the parents pegged as arseholes at the moment.

The characters all seem to have been transported from the 1990’s, not the 2090’s. Apart from the dialogue being full of 1990’s clichés, the kids behaved in the same spoilt manner as today’s kids, not that of kids who have had to live in very austere times where an orange is a rare and special treat and where authorities seem to ruthlessly tackle law breakers.

Other plot elements include a group of settlers who have broken away from the settlement and a mad missing son of the settlement’s commander. The son runs around writing predictive equations on rocks.

I thought the dinosaurs being near bullet proof was ridiculous. You reckon if they were going to send people back to a world full of dinosaurs they would at least take decent weapons, like machine guns with uranium depleted shells that the US army currently uses to shoot up tanks or even a few rocket launchers.

Unlike Primeval, this series seems to be trying to take itself seriously, and if the first episodes are anything to go by, I think it will struggle.

And I really appreciated Channel Ten putting up graphics telling me an ad break was coming up soon. It gave me ten or so seconds to decide what to do during the break: perhaps ring up Channel Ten and tell them to piss off the graphics.  

Bookshops Closing in the UK.

I have read a number of articles in the past few months about the diminishing number of bookshops in the UK, but none as foreboding as the figures contained in Sept 10’s Bookmarks column in the Age. It said that in the past six years 2,000 high street bookshops have closed in Britain, leaving 2,178. English authors have 2,000 less places to sell their books and 2,000 less places to promote their books. Online shopping and ebooks were blamed for the decline.