#AmWriting – Fiction Can Be Fun

One day my Prince will come…

My mother believed this would be my fairytale happy ending, so I’m afraid I took a dastardly pleasure in telling her every time a Prince of a Nigerian republic contacted me, telling me about the millions of pounds available which he would share with me if only I would… well, I don’t need to tell you that tired old story, do I?

After a while, she asked me to stop – and even I had to admit my practice had gotten tired, so I was entirely happy to acquiesce. Thereafter my love life trundled along, pretty much in the normal way – some bad guys, some nice enough guys, some commitment-phobes, some far too keen and desperate to settle down. But – yeah – absolutely no princes.

Keen to become a grandmother, the pressure was being put on, especially as my 30th birthday approached. My mother was non too subtle, and had even resorted to talking about ticking clocks and diminishing fertility – as if that was going to make me more inclined to partner up and pop out a sprog.

The day of my 30th birthday came and went, and my mother stopped nagging. I was so relieved, I wasn’t even suspicious. Not until my father suggested we take the dog for a walk together. Now that was suspicious, so I put on my coat and scarf with no small amount of trepidation. All manner of scenarios rushed through my mind before we even got to the end of the road.

We’d only just made it to the park gates, when I couldn’t hold on any longer, and begged my father to just tell me – whatever the bad news was, I could take it.

“Oh love” he said with a sad smile, “it’s nothing like that”.

Long story short, the last guy who’d made it to boyfriend status for long enough to have to endure the ‘meet the parents’ experience had been one of the desperate to partner up types. It had not lasted long beyond that weekend, and we’d gone our separate ways soon after.

Except… turns out he met another girl who was keen to partner up and have babies, and guess where she came from? Yeah, my home town. Not only that, but her parents had bought them a house as a wedding present, and enjoyed telling everyone of their acquaintance about it. But most especially, how he’d had to pass on me because I was a career girl who was determined not to have children.

It had been unkind of them to say that to my mother, especially knowing how much she wanted grandchildren, and so he’d taken her home with the excuse of a migraine.

To sad I was furious was an understatement. No, I’d not found the one I wanted to settle down with, and while I wasn’t feeling any sort of clock ticking, I did want to have a family of my own. I left my father with the dog in the park and rushed home to hug my mother – and to re-assure her. I promised her I would take the finding of someone to settle down with more seriously.

This time round, it was my mother telling me about the Nigerian princes in her in box, and I would tell her about my many first dates. The online dating world is known to be a bit of a sewer, but I’d made a promise and I intended to keep it.

Then one day, after having one glass of wine too many, I re-wrote my profile headline “looking for my Prince”. When I woke up in the morning with a hangover, I was surprised and a tiny bit worried to find a reply.

His name’s Daniel Prince, and we’ve laughed a lot about my drunken profile and how grateful I was for his funny reply. I was happy to delete my profile soon after, and my mother is delighted she can tell everyone that grandchild number 1 is on the way.

And I’m afraid she took especial pleasure in making it clear to my ex-boyfriend’s parents-in-law that the true story is I was waiting for the right man to come along… and when he did, he turned out to be a prince among men.

The Beach

Except what sort of a beach is it exactly when there’s no sand? Yet, something about it allowed Melanie to breathe. Not those little shallow breaths she’d been doing of late, but great big lung-fulls of air. And even if that meant she was gulping in the odour of fish along with the sea air – something which normally would have her making that heaving gesture which annoyed her parents so much – it really wasn’t causing her any bother.

She’d heard Jeremy’s mother talking about it – saying they had “a little place on the beach” and so she’d jumped on a train. What she hadn’t expected was for the place to be full of old people, and people walking dogs. There was this little alcove which looked a bit like an old fashioned bus stop, and even though she apparently had absolutely no self-awareness (thank you Mum), she knew she had openly gawped at the old men sat in there with their shirts off.

She grabbed a coffee and a pastry from the cafe next door and sat on one of those picnic benches people like to pretend are comfortable to sit on, but which are actually awful. But it allowed her to gawp with a little more discretion. The wind kept blowing her hair into her cappuccino – duh, that’s why the old men were sat in that little alcove, it kept them out of the wind.

They were surprisingly brown too. All of them – the big tummies, the scrawny arms, the ones with tattoes – sitting peacefully with their eyes closed. And she had to admit they did look dead relaxed. Not one of them had a phone, earbuds, or even a book with them, and she began to wonder if they were actually asleep, when one of them snorted awake, and caught her staring.

She turned her back pronto and gazed out to sea – if it was good enough for the old men, surely there would be something out there to amuse her. She watched a ferry going into a nearby harbour, saw a couple of tiny little boats on the horizon, and eventually a ferry coming back out again. Other than the old people and the dog walkers, it was just seagulls. Why on earth was Jeremy’s Mum so pleased with herself?

Coffee finished, she decided to go for a walk. Passing the beach huts, all locked up tight, she started to read the inscriptions on the memorial benches. Right at the far end of the walkway, there were loads of ’em, with engravings on little metal fishes. Some were funny, some only had a name and dates, others had a little message which would mean nothing to anyone not in the know.

And then she saw it – carved into the chalk cliffside “Kathryn, marry me?” with a big heart around it. She went back and checked all the fishes to see if there was one with Kathryn and the mystery person who’d proposed – but no. For some reason, Melanie felt choked. Had Kathryn said yes? Had she even seen the message? Surely she hadn’t said no…

Giving herself a good talking to – why on earth was she taking this so personally – nevertheless, she walked back along the cliffside looking for an answer, only to realise it had been there all along. Inside that heart were two dates, with a two year gap between them. Surely it must be the date asked, and the date they wed? The tears sprung to her eyes, and she wiped them away crossly – what was the matter with her?

An old couple walking by with their dog asked if she was alright, and she surprised herself by not being rude or dismissive in response. They looked so concerned, anxious even, and she found herself telling them how touched she’d been by the carving. Before she knew it, she was petting their dog and they were telling her about how lovely the wedding had been – Kathryn and David’s wedding that is.

Not that they knew them, oh no, but lots of the regulars who walked along the front had seen the carving. A few of their number saw the story of the upcoming wedding in the local paper, and so they’d gone to stand in the churchyard, and watch. Naturally Kathryn had looked beautiful and David handsome, the little bridesmaids had been adorable, and the chief bridesmaid and the best man seemed rather taken with one another.

Normally Melanie would’ve found their story eye-rolling and overly sweet, but she couldn’t stop smiling. There was something so utterly lovely about their joy in the happy pairing of two strangers; and not just them, but every member of this little community of beachside walkers.

#IWSG: Distractions with the power to derail

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. It’s an opportunity to talk about doubts and fears you have conquered. To discuss your struggles and triumphs and to offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling.

The awesome co-hosts for the May 1 posting of the IWSG are Victoria Marie Lees, Kim Lajevardi, Nancy Gideon, and Cathrina Constantine – do take a moment to visit them.

May 1 question – How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?

I’ve not been able to carve out a fixed time when I write, instead my process is a mindset – that when I sit at my desk and put my hands on my keyboard, it’s time for writing.

I work full-time and have plentiful calls on my time, so distractions are my constant companions, and I’ve had to learn to work around them. What’s key for me is to capture an idea before I forget it. Then, when I’m at my desk, I can re-visit the idea and get writing.

Mostly I capture ideas on my phone – usually the Notes feature, sometimes by recording a voice message. On the rare occasion when time and the materials have been available, I’ve used pen and paper.

What I do have to guard against is not spending enough time at my desk. If more than a few day goes by without writing time, I examine, analyse and strategize. What’s the cause? Is it a short or long-term issue? Is it a genuine roadblock, or is there a workaround? Is what’s keeping me from my desk not a practical issue but an emotional one?

Emotions have the greater capacity to derail me, but it’s not a cut and dried scenario. For example, my ability to write was seriously limited for almost a year following the death of my father, yet when diagnosed with cancer myself, I was strongly motivated to write.

For me, identifying what’s going on is paramount, for then I can focus on addressing how to ensure any derailment isn’t a permanent one.

Clearly my process to date is to focus on the why of distractions, so I’m especially interested to learn what practical tips and methodologies other writers use to handle distractions.

Z – Zealots, Zeitgeist, and Zoomancy

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

Travelling around the 50:50 Earth represents a dichotomy, one that could spiral into existential crisis if allowed to fester. One of the great advantages of being a travel writer is that one doesn’t just have to travel for work, because one can simply work wherever one is, and migrate as necessary, sometimes on a whim, sometimes by direction, all the time living where one is working, really getting to know the place you are at the moment.

As at any time of history, there are zealots of various affiliations, although such people seem to be more mellow than in the past – is a mellow zealot an oxymoron? Certainly they seem more inclined to talk and argue their point. There is much more in the way of chequebook diplomacy as people attempt to protect the thing they are interested in, whether it is heritage from before, cultural and civic evolution, or the interests of the part of life unable to talk for itself.

Perhaps this stems from the zeitgeist. The population, on average, seems content with the world that we live in today. Of course there are malcontents, but they seem to be tolerated rather than accepted. Those that would see humanity exert its will over the whole world are vocal, but on the whole ignored. There’s plenty to do off-Earth, for those who really seek adventure, and there are amazing opportunities for those who prefer to keep their feet on the ground and atmosphere over their heads, even if there are places their parents went and things their parents did that they will be denied. Within these constraints, there is a certain dynamism and drive that had been missing in the general population for some time.

Bit perhaps the most important sign that things are going in the right direction is that the Earth is recovering, and endangered species are coming back from the brink. There is still a long way to go, and there are still a terrible number of species at risk: extinction is still a possibility. But if one were to predict the future from the animals of the 50:50 Earth, it would have to be one that looks a lot more positive than at any other time that human beings have been sharing the Earth.

Y – Yomp

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

In reply to some of the reactionary, libertarian articles about the loss of freedom to explore, it can only be said ‘what a load of old nonsense’. The new hedonism seems to involve an awful lot of effort to try and circumvent the rules – perhaps much as it has always been. We can only be thankful that some of the extremes such as big game hunting have finally gone extinct, but there are still those who would fork over frankly ridiculous sums to get close to a creature they’re not supposed to be near, or climb somewhere verboten, or any number of other activities which require access to land that has been set aside.

Some people, who should really know better, spend a great many column-inches expansively extolling the virtues of getting away from it all, getting back to nature, being at one with the world. Such trips as they suggest seem to involve environmentally and financially expensive trips to secluded parts of the world (‘Is this the world’s loneliest beach?’, ‘Is this the perfect place to forest bathe in solitude?) .

There are two answers to this.

The venerable Microadventures movement, founded by Al Humphreys in the early 21st Century, teaches us that adventure is all around us. An adventure can be as simple as doing a regular activity at a different time of day. Who, walking their dog, for example, has not experienced complete aloneness, or a new group of friends, simply by walking the same route at a different time of day. Or take, the cult of Cloud Appreciation. Again founded in the early 21st Century, this extreme form of hyperawareness shows how taking time to really look at things around us can change our understanding of it immensely.

Or, then again, one can take the time to go further afield. The 50:50 Earth where humans live is not limited to Judge Dredd style megacities, we do not live in a dystopia, just because we cannot go everywhere we want to, when we want to, instantly, and without thought. The parts where humans live is not limited to high-rise accommodation, vertical farms, and mineral reclamation. There is plenty of countryside to enjoy, being mindful of the other residents and habitats that we are moving through.

In any case, the art of the yomp is in no way dead, and whilst, perhaps, it does not quite have the cachet of exclusivity that some may aspire too, it’s an activity that can be done alone or with friends, as you wish.

*Shout out to Al Humphreys, who is in no way venerable, but has packed more into his life than can be captured in a few lines, and is also a really nice chap. I can’t be certain that he coined the term Microadventures, but he certainly wrote the book, which I highly recommend.

*I should probably also note that the Cloud Appreciation Society is not a cult. But who knows what could happen in the future, right?

X – Xeric habitats

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

One of the most difficult things for people to adapt to in the 50:50 world was the concept of places that were not possible to access whenever someone wanted to. Not all at once, but place by place, region by region, people removed themselves or were removed, and the planet shared on a more equitable basis.

Some of the first places to become free of humanity were, naturally, the most extreme of places, those with little to no available moisture. Strangely, some of these places became more populous, in a sense, after the locking down of the world.

Places like the antarctic have long had bases for scientific study, and even with more extensive use of satellite imagery, there is still a need for bodies on the ground. This sort of model has been brought to bear on other locations of interest. Modern materials and designs are able to make even the driest parts of the world habitable, whether they be hot or cold. The hardest part of the long stints in these bases, stints designed to minimise travel to and from, is the necessity of recycling all the available water.

W – W350: Tokyo Plyscraper

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

Completed in 2041, W350 in Tokyo is a must visit site on any pilgrimage around the 50:5o Earth. At 350 m in height, this flagship of the Sumitomo Forestry Co. was built to celebrate the 350th Anniversary of the company.

The 21st Century saw the construction industry fall back in love with one of its most important and sustainable materials. Major projects were initiated all over the world, with increasing ambition, particularly with respect to height, although subsets looked at scale in other directions, or at complexity, or simply at excluding all other materials from the design – transparent wood was even used for windows in some cases.

But W350 was something very different – a step change in design which took the title of tallest plyscraper from the previous holder of a piddly 120 m in one fell swoop. Whilst other plyscrapers have subsequently equalled its height, or gone taller, none can quite match the reputation of W350, not even the twins built elsewhere in Tokyo or around the World.

V – Vehicles

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

One of the great dichotomies of the 50:50 Earth is that travel is either fast or slow. Shanks pony or a bicycle is the norm for most local travel, and a pod or some form of mass transit for a little further afield, but still basically in your locale. But if you want to go any significant distance you have two basic choices: a relatively slow airship or a relatively fast pneumatic train.

With the removal of many roads and railways, and with the reduction in jet capacity, the traveller must either sit back and watch the terrain pass by beneath a modern airship or descend hundreds of metres underground to access the network of high-speed trains that travel between the major urban centres quickly, and efficiently, if a little claustrophobically.

U-UN

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

A slightly different approach today, still in the 50:50 world, sort of, but a short story setting things up. Returning to the travelogue tomorrow.

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” – Ursula K Le Guin

No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s – which is just as well, because they weren’t. Earth was a mess. The oceans were littered with the waste of humanity’s profligacy. The politicians argued over meaningless trivialities. Alien invaders taking control might have even been preferable to those mired down in poverty and despair. Or a nice friendly apocalypse to wipe the Earth clean. No such luck.

But if there was no single catastrophe that brought the world to its knees and humanity to its senses, there were points of light and hope. There was the Dutch kid who didn’t just stick his thumb in the hole in the dyke, but set out to capture all the plastics in the seas. There were the make-do-and-menders who furnished their homes out of upcycled pallets and drinks bottles. There were the architects and engineers who stopped competing over the biggest pile of concrete and started building ‘plyscrapers’ instead: wooden towers, taller than trees that changed the urban environment forever. There were the city planners who grew up reading sci-fi stories about ‘Caves of Steel’ and arcologies and pneumatic trains. There was the migration off the land and into the cities, leaving vast swathes naturally depopulated.

It never happened all at once, but change happened. People started stepping up, accepting the responsibilities that came with their rights. Meanness and ill-will still exist today, and the world still has its problems, but the environment is getting better.

So what happened? Like I said, it wasn’t any one thing that caused all this. But one big thing that happened was the UN white paper. And my grandmother was a part of that…

Andriana perched on the edge of Will’s desk and tried to resist the temptation to roll the document in her hands. It would have been tricky, because it was 150 pages, but she’d only thermally bound it thirty minutes ago, and the anxiety was building up inside her. Anne was trying to keep her head down at her desk, and failing. Anandini and Kwesi were trying to be casual by the water cooler, arguing the merits of various independent coffee shops. Odette, as ever, was running late.

Andriana tried to decide if she should knock on the Director’s door, or wait to be called in. When she’d woken that morning, she had been fired up: she would stride into the office thump the document down on her boss’s desk and demand that it be taken to the Secretary General. Since then she’d flip-flopped approximately every five minutes between this (uncharacteristically) decisive stance and something which she’d tried to convince herself was more moderate, but which might be construed by others to be wishy-washy.

Every now and again the cycle was broken by a desperate need to be sick. This had not occurred, so far.

This was the big one though. If this report was accepted, with her as first author, then she could do anything. Perhaps she’d get the field assignment that she’d been angling for. Maybe promotion. Maybe…but what if it bombed? The nausea started welling up again…

She ruthlessly supressed it and with a surge of confidence came back to the starting point of decisiveness. She stood up and felt the eyes of everyone in the team turn to look at her. At this point two doors opened simultaneously. Odette threw open the door from the stairwell and flurried in, shrugging off her light coat and apologising for being late, juggling coat, briefcase, and reusable coffee-cup; at the same moment, the boss threw open her door:

“I cannot hear myself think with you all breathing so heavily outside of my door! You’d all better come in and tell me what this is all about.”

They trooped in and the Director shuffled papers around so that she could sit at the head of the six-seater table that was to one side of the room. Everyone coveted this office, with the big picture window with the amazing view. Everyone knew exactly what they would do when they moved in, what furniture they’d have. Some favoured the floor to ceiling bookcase that filled one wall. Some cubes bursting with books and documents, others tastefully bare, with just one or two tastefully arranged knick-knacks and souvenirs. Several held
autographed copies of books such as Tim Jackson’s ‘Prosperity Without Growth’ and EO Wilson’s ‘Half Earth’.

Andriana took the seat next to the Director and handed her the document. The others took their seats round the table, and Will, who’s desk was closest, brought in an extra chair. He and Kwesu shared the other end of the table.
Madura Pau, Director of the UN Agency for Global Sustainable Development looked down and took in the cover page:

White Paper on the principles required for promoting the 50:50 Earth

Prepared by:
Andriana Crowner
Anandini Choudhry
Will Ledgerwood
Odette Marcon
Kwesi Nwosu
Anne Rossnitz
Madura Pau

“I’m not sure I see how I can be an author of this document, when I’ve never seen it before, and I can’t recall commissioning it. I trust this has not been distracting you from your duties.” The complete absence of threat in her voice, combined with the merest flick of a raised eyebrow was, paradoxically, one of the most threatening things any of these people had had to face.

Andriana flushed, but managed to stop herself from choking as she said “The title is pretty self-explanatory, I think. We’ve all chipped in to write a definitive case for a world where humans only live in half of it. We’ve covered some of the most pressing issues, and we’ve tried to consider what would need to be done from a technological view point to allow this. Of course this is very much a first draft, but we were hoping that you would give us some feedback. And take it to the Secretary General. When it’s been revised, of course.”

Pau’s eyes flickered to the book on the shelf and back to the document. She owed them the courtesy of taking a look, at least.

“No promises. But I will look at it. Now get back to work!”

They all trooped out again, barely having been sat down long enough to warm the chairs. Will wondered if it had even been worth bringing his chair in.

In the comfort of her office, Madura Pau picked up the document, a red pen, a block of sticky notes, and settled into an armchair.

T – Trees

Welcome to Fiction Can Be Fun, a blog which has a mix of posts with thoughts on writing, tips and tricks, and the occasional stories. Here at FCBF, we’re long time supporters of the A-to-Z Challenge. It’s a couple of years since I’ve done the challenge myself, for a couple of reasons, but this year I thought I would have ago at a fictitious travelogue. Buckle up as we explore the 50:50 Earth…

Environmentalists love trees – and with good reason. Whilst there has been some argument over the overall effectiveness of trees as a means for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and adding oxygen, the bigger picture is to consider the complex ecosystems that trees create a home for, not to mention the spiritual and physical benefits from walking amongst them.

One of the great surprises was how readily some species travelled. For example, it didn’t take long for sequoias to establish themselves further afield than California. These trees still haven’t reached their full heights, and that may take another century or more. But today there are more giant redwoods outside their home territory than in them. Britain has been particularly welcoming to these trees, and in turn has sent the London Plane on to conquer new ranges, a popular choice where there is an air pollution problem to address.

Whilst there is some way to go until the lost rainforests are replanted to cover their full ranges of old, there is already debate over the areas that should be replanted and the areas where new biomes have become established and should be protected in their own right. It seems a strange thing to bring to the International courts, but there are those who fight the Treeherders to stop them planting trees – at least in some parts of the world. One of the big pushes has also been to prevent invasive species from being planted even in the urban centres. There is a lesson that people still need to learn in terms of the plant and animal life that escapes control and ends up where it shouldn’t be…