Screaming into the Virtual Wind

The first draft is back from my mum, my official editor/proof reader/unpaid cheerleader; and perhaps worryingly for a horror/fantasy novel, some of it made her laugh. It really is amazing how many glaringly embarrassing phrases you can shoehorn into a manuscript without ever noticing (can’t see the wood for the trees and all that). My mum gives great constructive criticism, but if something strikes her as hilarious, there’s no reigning her in (which is good, incidentally, because then I can laugh at my mistakes too… often until my mascara runs down my face and my throat hurts). So, because a good laugh can add five minutes to your life, here are some of my best crappy phrases:-

“He shook himself and sat beside Sapphire, reaching for his own vodka.”
– Apparently, my mum stopped when she read this and turned to my sister: “Do you shake before sitting down?” You can already guess the answer was no.

Arm crossing.
– The outwardly innocent act of having my characters cross their arms when they faced other people or leant against door frames garnered much red pen. “Why do they keep crossing their arms?” my mum wondered… and so did I once I realised how often it actually happened.

“An uncomfortable silence bloomed between them, only broken when Dylan frowned and crossed his arms.”
– More arm crossing! Plus, in my mum’s words: “How did Dylan break the silence? He hasn’t said anything yet.” Doh!

“Zach refused to shake the man’s hand. He looked down at it and wrinkled his nose slightly, as if he was looking at something that shouldn’t be borne amongst polite company.”
– The wrinkled nose came under the same category as arm crossing – Over Used and Unnecessary. The rest just prompted much hilarity. “…Something that shouldn’t be borne amongst polite company” – What was I thinking?! Truly tragic…

“It was the smell of raw offal, of bad prawns and rancid, sweaty cheese.”
– God damn. Sweaty cheese?!

“Her eyes slid across the floor to the wall…”
– Next to this my mum wrote: “I hope she put them back in again.” Oh, and there was more than one incident of incredible sliding eyes. Sigh.

That was probably the funniest one. I seem to have an ongoing fascination with eyes. My characters’ eyes are luminescent or hooded, or they stare crazily or wildly… all the time. Yes, very lame.

Thank the lord for editors/proof readers/unpaid cheerleaders.

A little aside concerning my last blog post :-
I’ve considered what I wrote and now realise that calling the ability to do what you love while getting paid for it a “modest” want is more than a little ridiculous. Being able to do what you love for a wage is a privilege enjoyed by very few - movie stars, big name musicians and professional sportsmen and women among them; and breaking into any of those careers is hardly easy, nor is the dream of doing so a “modest” one. Dammit.

I was trying to articulate my wish to simply afford boring life stuff like bills and food and takeaway pizza on a Saturday night by writing, which certainly is modest when compared to the huge fortunes amassed by the J K Rowlings and Stephen Kings of this world. Maybe I didn’t do this very well. Maybe I blogged about whiny pussys who love to wet-blanket all over writers’ dreams and ended up sounding like a whiny pussy myself. But I really was having a bad day. Could you tell?

Then again, who the hell cares anyway, right? I’m just screaming into the virtual wind (which smells a little like raw offal, bad prawns and rancid, sweaty cheese… but only a little).