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I’M TOO OLD TO START WRITING I’m Quitting I have sometimes envied other writers on this site when I read their bios or read their postings about their experiences. People who have been writing fiction for decades or young people (you pick an age) who are getting started. I have wondered if I am too old to start writing fiction. there are a lot of advantages to starting when you are much younger. Maybe there are some advantages to starting when you are older ( I will let you pick an age). Writing takes time, dedication, and focus. I took time, dedication, and focus when I was younger to get undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, finish law school, pass the bar exam, and the professional engineer's exam. I spent about thirty-five years working in demanding and rewarding jobs including international postings in senior positions. I wrote a lot of technical and legal documents, some of which were published. I enjoyed the joy and sorrow of marriage, divorce, children, and the loss of many loved ones. An accumulated lifetime of experience, failures, and successes. Like me, if you are older and starting out as a writer, you have a lifetime of accumulated experiences that can fuel your writing. You also haven’t spent decades using up hundreds or thousands of story ideas. You have a fresh battery in that regard. So, don’t use your age as an excuse. Use it as an asset. Young or old. |
Monster With Iron Tipped Razor Sharp Teeth and Venom that Accelerates Blood Loss Not Credible for a Horror Story? Scientist have recently discovered something that makes the Komodo Dragons sound like fictional monsters. Komodo dragons are fierce predators, powerful and while they are not particulary fast they are stealthy and can strike quickly. They can weigh nearly three hundred pounds and reach lengths of nearly ten feet. They have a sort of boney body armor under their scaly skin. They are already pretty scary. The bite from the powerful jaws is a frightening proposition that includes anticoagulating venom that causes the victim to bleed more quickly. Now scientist have discovered that their razor sharp, serrated and curved teeth are tipped with iron. That’s right, teeth like curved iron daggers. There are several stories about this recent discovery. Here is a link to one Komodo Dragon Teeth  |
| Most Monitors have been found to have some form of venom. We have the Perentie near where I live, and it used to be thought that they had a dirty bite that caused issues; now it seems they have venom. Imagine what the Megalania could have done! And cryptid hunters claim it is still out there! And, yes, I have written a story about it. |
The Obnoxious Dullard Say you have a character in a story, who is either evil, obnoxious, or a dullard, or some combination. When you name the character do you search out a name that fits the persona? As an alternative, maybe you’ve given such a character a name very similar to someone in your personal life, past or present. Maybe even made their physical appearance very similar in the story. Someone who has wronged or betrayed you in some way. People who know the person would immediately think of this someone when they read the story. But, not so explicit it would put you in legal jeopardy. Imagine if that story made it into a commercially published anthology. Would you feel (a) excited, (b) ashamed, or (c) worried about revenge? Would you anonymously send the victim a copy of the book? This is purely hypothetical and I would never advocate such heinous and childish behavior. |
| I’m definitely game for using people from my real life as characters in stories. I haven’t done so in anything in-depth enough for the character to be recognizable thus far, but the novels I’ll be writing any day now will certainly contain at least one villain who is strongly inspired by someone who’s caused/causing emotional upheaval in my RL. I’d be careful not to make the character’s physical appearance similar to the actual person, though I’d take the time to come up with a name that’s somehow a twist on their name or something that suits them as I know them. Names carry power and I’d be taking my power back.  I’d be excited, ashamed, and worried about revenge, but that wouldn’t stop me from doing it!  . I wouldn’t send them a copy of the book, though I might anonymously make sure they knew about its publication. All this shows that I’m not actually ready to be back among y’all on WDC.  Still feeling so cranky.  s  - I thought maybe your book was somehow cleverly titled.  |
Quirks of English Imagine a German high school student who has been studying English for three years and he is reading his first fictional short story. The main character is Don and his wife is Linda. Linda pushed a pair of men's dress shoes and a pair of gray socks under the bed as she cleaned the floor in the bedroom. “Don, you need to get dressed. I laid your clothes out on the bed.” The student has the mental image as Linda leaves the room and Don comes into the room. Don put on the shirt and pair of trousers that Linda laid out. But he can’t find his socks. Pair of trousers? Zwei hosen? The student consults his study material, is there something strange in this story or with this language? There are some curious explanations the student finds on the internet that trace this back to a time with pantaloons were two separate items connected together around the waste. From tradition, the reference to a pair continued into modern times. The next day, he consults with his tutor, a friendly and helpful woman from Bristol, UK. She explains that this construct is used for nouns that only come in plural form, plural tantum. Similiar examples she gives him are scissors and pliers. He doesn’t push for a further explanation; just another quirky rule of English. A week later, the student is doing some writing exercises on the whiteboard as his tutor watches. He has just written: The girl’s mother said it was time for her to study her pair of maths. The tutor shook her head, “No love. Why did you stick pair of into that sentence?” He smirked, “Because you Brits turned math into a plural tantum.” Any thoughts on a pair of pants, scissors, pliers? What about this silly British reference to math always in the plural. Yeah, I know its only a different spelling of an abbreviation, but it makes me want to stick them in the boot of a lorry. |
| Because mathematics is plural, so its abbreviation should be plural as well. In French, pantalon is singular, but ciseaux (scissors) is plural. Languages are just weirds. |
| Robert Waltz said it first. There is more than one branch of mathematics. If in the US you only study one form, that's your problem. In the UK and Australia, we study multiple forms of mathematics, and so, "maths" it is. And in the US you have trouble with "autumn", so you call the season "fall", because that's what happens - leaves fall. So why don't you call summer "hot", winter "cold" and spring "green"? Of course, you know I'm joshing. WdC members have had discussions about cultural differences on my blog often enough. |
| Well, when your island gets invaded by the Romans, and then the Norse, and then the Normans (and probably several others I forgot about), each bringing their own languages and imposing them on the populace as a status symbol, can you really expect a simple, easy-to-understand language to arise from that chaos? |
The Word Count Counts I have heard some writers say that a story will be as long as it needs to be, either a thousand words or two hundred thousand words. Something to that effect. This makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me from an intuitive level. When I start any project, I have some idea of what it is that I’m starting. Am I building a birdhouse or an addition to the home? Same with writing. I know if I’m starting a new short story or a major project of a novel. But that is about personality types and I can appreciate those who are more free-wheeling in their approach. Nothing wrong with that. But you better pay attention to word count if you want to be traditionally published, short stories or novels. Every single call I have seen for short stories has at least a maximum word limit and many give a minimum and maximum. Same for publishers of novels, they give a range and I bet they toss things away that are far outside those ranges. If you want your story to be traditionally published you better have an idea of how many words it’s going to take to tell your story. If you want to win a WDC site-wide competition in the regular rotation you better be able to tell your story in 2000 words or less. If you want to write your story and self-publish or post it somewhere like WDC then practically speaking I understand that you might have no idea of how many words it will take. Best wishes and enjoy the journey. Am I missing something? |
| I think this is probably symtomatic of plotting versus pantsting. Different ways to the same spot. I wouldn't be surprised that plotters have an idea of WC before they start and pantsers dont. I stand by the underlying premise, if you want to submit your story for publication you gotta respect the word count. |
| I believe that there's a difference between writing a story of an idea you have and writing a story to a specific set of requirements (size, genre, style, etc.) given to you. If you have an idea for a story but nothing (contest, publisher, etc.) is forcing you to write it as a specific size, do you set your own limits on the story when you start? |
Wordsmitty ✍️  - You are right, for me I either write short stories or novels. Novels have a certain range of expectations on length from publishers in the genre. If I write a short story, I have a target in mind, either a magazine or journal or a call for an anthology or a contest. I don't just start writing a story because I think it's interesting. I write down story ideas in my journal and keep them in mind for an opportunity. |
A Problem With Maps Lydia is a creative arts major, with a flair for language and deep dives into character arcs. Egbert is a physics major who wants to write science fiction. He has been struggling in this class on writing short stories. He has been improving with better character development and improving his mechanics. Lydia has gone out of her way to snub Egbert all semester as not being a real writer. It’s a small class of only ten students and Egbert is the only one from outside the creative arts department. The last day of the semester, the class is surprised to learn that a guest speaker is joining them. The managing editor of a major publishing house. They are gathered around a small table as the managing editor lays a large map of the earth on the table. “We are planning on publishing an anthology this summer with only new emerging writers like yourselves.” She gestured at the map. “Imagine a character on a flight from JFK to Dubai that experiences some sort of life-altering moment tied to a spot below near the midpoint of this journey.” The editor waved a hand at the group. “What might you pitch?” Lydia eyed Spain and the Mediterranean, it looked about halfway. She quickly introduced herself and gave fifteen minutes about an immigrant Majorcan family's difficult struggle to make it in America. One of the descendants is a passenger on the flight and carries emotional baggage from her origins. The editor rubbed her chin, “Interesting. Any thoughts?” Egbert leaned forward, “I think Lydia has forgotten that the earth is roughly spherical and not flat like this map. The plane will not come anywhere near Spain. The flight path will come close to the British Isles roughly in the middle. I can imagine a passenger passes through some sort of time portal and finds himself in the middle of a Celtic battle alongside some of his ancient ancestors.” The editor smiled with a nod, “That sounds like a fun story. You also correctly point out the importance of knowing the flight path.” Thinking about long distances and relative sizes of countries in a story? Take a look at a globe. Greenland ain't really so big is it? |
| s - Interesting statistics in four big English speaking countries. UK always blows my mind. Population Pop. Density(peop/sq.km) Australia 26 million 3/sqkm Canada 38 million 4/sqkm UK 67 million 280/sqkm US 340 million 37/sqkm. |
Damon Nomad  - The way I grew up, my dad use to have Map Books and I would look at it all the time. I miss having them. |
Maximum Safe Capacity Of Earth Many scientists believe the safe human population is around ten billion people. You might think that is a very long way off if you don't pay attention to the people count. Did you realize the world population just crossed over eight billion? See the plot of population from 1600 to 2021, you can see that around 1950 is when population growth began to accelerate. In the Middle Ages, the population was doubling about every 300 years. In the twenty century, the population doubled in only 44 years, from 1930 to 1974. Projections say the ten billion mark will be reached sometime in the 2080s. Add this into the mix with global warming projections and you have a formula for a ‘good’ plot of a dystopian future. Maybe colonies on the moon and Mars don’t sound so crazy. |
Beholden  - This is very true and most experts who study this with mathematical models believe we are approaching an inflection where the population curves will bend over, either slowing, stabilizing or even dropping. But that doesn’t help with my dystopian scare mongering plot.  |
| Damon Nomad - My beef is not with you, Damon. It's much more about those who spread scare stories by giving only one set of statistics while ignoring those that show that things are always more complicated than they have suggested. In the sixties we were told food would run out before the end of the millenium, yet more people are eating better now than ever before. Then we were advised that a new ice age was overdue - until they changed their minds and discovered global warming. The meteor is always a popular suggestion and I won't tackle the virus that was going to wipe us out and turned out to be no worse than a bout of the flu. You'd think we'd have become wise to these things by now and learn to wait and see before going into major panic mode. |
| This has every evidence of being a logistics curve, not an exponential one. They look alike until they don't. The mathematical models of population dynamics are well-studied, with many empirical studies to verify their validity. That's not to say that a population of ten billion is a planet we'd want to live on. It just says that exponential growth will level off due to resource limitations. Other sources of instability, like resource failure, predation, or disease also have impacts. Black swan events are, by definition, unpredictable. But the apparent exponential growth in the curves is, by itself, not alarming since it's not really exponential but logistic growth that we're seeing. |
Sofa Cushions A sequel to the Amazing Housefly See "Note: The Amazing Housefly Magda gestured at H..." *** Magda’s best mate visited her a few days later. Magda poured herself another G&T and sank into the easy chair as she finished the story. “That’s honest to God how I found him.” Zelda gleefully convulsed as she cackled. “You’re wicked Magda. Absolutely wicked.” She slurped down some of her martini. “Sorry love, I spilled a bit on the sofa.” Zelda hated Herb and wasn’t the least distressed that he was dead. “But we shouldn’t be talking ill of the man. You just buried him yesterday.” Magda waved a hand. “Pish, posh. Good riddance to the lazy sod.” She drank a slug of her gin and tonic. “Don’t worry about the sofa, doll.” She shrugged, “Probably should have gotten rid of it after he died.” Zelda bolted up out of her seat and nearly spilled half her drink on the floor. “This is the sofa he died on? Covered in house flies.” Magda snorted a laugh, “Don’t go having kittens. I turned the cushions over.” Zelda bent over and took a sniff. “Smells a bit peculiar.” Magda winced, “His bladder emptied when he passed. Might be a bit of an odor.” Stay Tuned for the Continuing Tale of Wicked Magda |
Violating Conservation of Mass Science Fiction Before 1900 You probably learned in chemistry class in high school or an early university course that matter can never be destroyed or created. The principle known as conservation of mass. The mass of the reactants equals the mass of the products. In you weren’t into science, here is a real world example that might blow your mind if you've never considered it. Say you burn 300 kilogram of logs in your fireplace on a cold winter night. How many kg of ash will it leave in the fireplace the next morning? "Well, not 300 kg worth." You prefer not to guess wildly. "You have a number in mind?" "Yes I do as a matter of fact. It will be about 10 kg." "What happened to the other 290 kg?" You answer in protest. "It’s in all the smoke that went up the chimney. Believe it or not. If you captured and weighed all of the smoke and ash and precisely weighed it. The weight would equal the oxygen and wood that your burned up in your fireplace the previous night." Along came Albert Einstein in 1905, with his series of papers including two that were mostly about time and space and the speed of light. Buried in one of those papers is the statement, translated, ‘the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content.’ Mass and energy are in essence interchangeable through the famous equation: E=mc2 c: speed of light which is a really big number and this is a critical point. If you remember your chemistry well or you are involved in science and engineering, you remember the footnote on conservation of mass. It does not apply to nuclear reactions. What makes this interesting is the amount of energy you get if you convert mass to energy through a nuclear reaction. A nuclear fuel pellet of a typical nuclear power plant is about the size of the tip of your pinky finger above the last joint. It weighs about 6 grams which is about the weight of tablespoon of salt. The fission energy from that pellet gives the same energy as about one ton of coal (about one million grams). Unfortunately, the same scale of power applies if you want to violate conservation of mass to make a weapon. |
Science or Science Fiction Black holes were first formally predicted in 1916 by a solution to Einstein's field equations of general relativity. The work of Karl Schwarzshild was controversial at the time. In 1939, in the Annals of Mathematics, Albert Einstein concluded that black holes did not exist in the real world. An opinion he apparently stuck with until his death in 1955. So, science fiction. In 2019, the first image of a black hole was captured, more precisely the glowing accretion disk of incandescent material flowing into the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. An image captured from an array of radio telescopes around the globe. More images have followed and other confirmations associated with gravity waves, a subject for another time. Roger Penrose received the 2020 Nobel Prize for his contribution to showing that black holes were real phenomena predicted by general relativity. So, they are real. A real what exactly? If they are real, what are they? The name itself contains a paradox of sorts. Black hole, a hole isn’t a thing it’s a . . . it’s . . . well it’s a gap in something else. You search out an expert. I warn you right now, this is a subject where the physicists and astrophysicists start to sound a bit like dodgy lawyers and used car salespeople, sorry for any offense. It starts like this, “It’s not a physical object like a planet, star, or gaseous nebula. It is a region of space-time bounded by the event horizon. However, the event horizon is not a physical surface or membrane. It’s a boundary where the gravitational pull is so great that nothing can escape not even light.” You scratch your head as you ask, “Well okay, so what’s inside this region?” Nervous laughter and a shrug, “There is a singularity at the middle where the laws of physics break down.” Okay, this is starting to sound like science fiction again. |
Spooky Moments I’m not one to spook easily but a few nights ago I had a bit of a moment. I was watching TV at night alone. A psychological tale where a woman fears she is going mad or her life is haunted. She is creeping through the dark house fearful that something is inside. She expects something horrible to happen at a specific time. She sees something move in the shadows and glances at a clock, 10:25, the moment of horror. For some reason, I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was 10:25 and at that precise moment there was the sound of something moving in the corner behind me. I hopped up a bit startled and looked behind me. Our gray tabby cat was crouched atop a small cabinet. Probably chasing a house fly that had been buzzing about. I looked back at the clock and realized it wasn’t half past ten but only nearly nine-thirty. It was a false alarm for the main character as well. Just the wind and curtains of a partially open window. Ever have a moment when your mind played a trick on you and gave you a spooky moment? It might be a useful experience for a story. |
| The thing that comes to mind is something that used to happen in the house I grew up in. There was a sliding glass door in our dining room that led out to the back porch and yard. With the house was set up, the living room was at the front of the house and the dining room was obviously at the back and the two rooms were separated by the kitchen. If you sat on the couch and turned your head to the right, you could look through the kitchen and dining rooms straight out to the backyard through the slider. There was more than one occasion, usually late at night, were I caught something out of the corner of my eye in the dining room. Like, something had wandered past the slider. It's quite possible that it was nothing, but my imagination and the occasional headlights reflecting in the slider door from the right angle. But it was always kind of creepy, especially when the house cold and the wind made the whole structure creak. |
The Amazing Housefly Magda gestured at Herb. “You gonna be on that sofa watching football when I get back from Liverpool?” She swatted a housefly with a rolled-up magazine. “Too bloody lazy to get up and kill a housefly. I counted four this morning.” She picked up her suitcase and headed for the door. Herb kicked his feet up on the coffee table and shouted as she slammed the door, “Them flies only live a few days. Why waste energy chasing them down you old biddy.” Five days later Magda found Herb dead on the sofa and covered with tens of thousands of houseflies. She clicked the remote to turn off the telly and waved a hand at Herb. “Yeah and they have thousands of offspring in those short lives.” She grabbed her mobile and looked up a number and tapped in the numbers. “I got a bit of infestation, when can you get here?” |
Kåre Enga in Montana  - Don’t worry Magda will leave the front door open so that some of the flies can escape.  |
The Voice Blind Auditions For Writers I used to watch the blind auditions of the show, The Voice. I’m a sucker for the emotion of some of the singers and their families as they put it on the line. Some of them have sung in obscurity for years and are brave enough to put it out there on television in front of millions of people. Maybe people will say it’s fake or rigged, it didn't look that way to me and I hope not. Imagine a show with the same format for writers. Reading to the backs of a group of famous authors and hoping one of them takes you on to a major publishing contract. Say a thousand-word short story by you that you have to read to the audience and camera. Would you do it? Would your voice crack with nerves? |
| s - I have seen these submission calls as well as ones only from certain demographics. I wonder if they demand proof that submitters are what they claim? Please send photo, DNA test, doctors diagnosis….. |
| Damon Nomad - Yeah, not sure about that either. I know one that asks for BIPOC authors also demands an author photograph (or no publication)... |
| I wish that's how all were done. So tired of the "you must be x, y, z, etc. I think more publishing companies and magazines need to go back to that- purely blind submissions. Judging stories and writing on purely merits. Back to basics. |
A New Joiner that will Blow Your Mind I saw a request on the newsfeed by "Ink Fluttre   to review an article. I saw that she had joined in May 2024 and I like to read new joiners. I figure I might have something to help them stumble less than I did along the way. I scanned the article about one of the prophets and then checked out the quite full portfolio and read a story. A sort of classic horror story that is very well written. You can see my review Invalid Review  by Anonymous. Check out the portfolio of "Ink Fluttre and see what you think. |
A Murder at the End of the World A Capsule Review of a TV Mini-series I recently watched a mini-series A Murder at the End of the World. Not based on a novel even though there is one of that exact title. I will not give any spoilers about the plot, the setting of the main storyline in a remote hotel in Iceland is great. I think the story, a murder mystery at heart, is intriguing and they did a good job concealing the real twist at the end. I did nearly freak out about how much the leading actress, Emma Corrin, looks like a young Jodie Foster. I guess I have never seen her before. Good acting and writing overall, I liked it, but . . . But for me, they killed the momentum of the story with far too many flashbacks. It felt like the equivalent of information dumps in a novel or story. Another minor complaint . . . they were in a hotel, where were all of the staff? All the people cooking and cleaning, where were they? Still worth watching and I have several notes for characters, settings, and plot ideas. If you watched it, what did you think? |
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Remember to show rather than tell and focus on the third person limited PoV...
But I was recently approached by a pair of women who want to write. They had no idea what they want to write, just that they want to. One is in her 40s, the other in her 60s. They are avid readers, so they do have that. Well, three months on, and they are writing some short stories that are quite good. Both are taking life elements and fictionalising them, something I think a lot of younger people would struggle with, not having lived as much. Of course, when I was a teacher, I had pre-teens writing some great pieces, one of whom is now a published author in her own right.
Age is just a number. (And immaturity is forever
If you want to write, write. Who cares how old you are?
Two thumbs up.