If You Were An Animal, Which Would It Be?

This is a question I asked myself the other day, because I was looking for something to write on one of the ‘platforms’ I’m currently using to try to earn some money. But of course these online platforms are hopeless for actually making any real money, unless what you write ‘goes viral’ and I sure as heck don’t know how to write like that!

‘Going Viral’ at the moment doesn’t seem like a good way to think about things, not with Covid lurking around, or rather Covid affected people doing, sneaking over borders when they whould be in lockdown at home, or somewhere else, away from other people …

Anyway, back to my initial question … This is the link to what I wrote, where I indicated that I suspected I’d be a Sloth, if I were an animal. But as I talk about that, and in thinking about the idea further, I ended up with a quite different animal, an Owl. This seems a much more impressive animal, a wiser one. Nobody ever thought on a Sloth as being clever.

In fact most people might consider the Sloth to be a rather icky creature, if they’d heard of the oft quoted idea of the Sloth peeing and or pooping on itself as it hangs around in trees, all of its life, there in Central America … I’m not going into the details of that, I have my lunch almost ready for me to eat right now, a healthy bowl of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds, with a coffee to come later, and I don’t want to be put off my food, (or my coffee)!

This idea about ‘making money’ on this platform where the article is, Vocal, which is the second such one I’ve begun writing for happened when a writing group friend mentione it, so I thought I’d take a look. I’ve been blogging on WordPress for some years now, and before that it was Blogspot. But these two now (to me) online platforms are something quite different.

With my blogging, it has been just me on my own, trying to connect with the broader world. With these online platforms though there is a whole online community present already, both writers and readers (although I suspect many are both). So I gave it a go, and why, I got some readers, and made a tiny bit of money. Even better though, I got some comments, and I found other writers whose words I liked, so I left some comments on their posts.

It has the feel of a kind of community, even though there are many only there for the money. I have no misty-eyed ideas I’ll make lots of money there. If I get some kind of payout at the end of the month on Medium I’m happy enough, even though I’m yet to have made enough money for a coffee … And on Vocal, you have to reach a certain amount, and I’m not even halfway there yet, and only making a cent a day, unless the Platform gives out a random encouragement payment …

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Heading back to the animal I’d be, and the idea as a possible writing prompt. It might work more I think, as something to help look back at who I am, and what I believe to be important. I may have used it as the prompt to get that Vocal article written, but I don’t think that article will lead to anything bigger, brighter, or that interesting really, to the greater world.

I did put in a bit of information about some animals though, so who knows … So I ended up conceding that I’d like to be an Owl if I was to be an animal. It was an interesting winding thought path, heading from Sloth to Owl. And really, isn’t writing often that, a thought path, taking you from idea to execution, when what is sopposed to one thing wants to slide off to be something else …

What do you do, when that happens? As friends and readers of this blog may now, I have a murder mystery I’m writing (slowly!). I use our writing group writing prompts to write another piece of the first book in what I had envivioned would become a collecion of such books, all using the same setting and characters, with more characters thrown in if and when needed.

I love my setting, and my characters, but the murder and mystery parts of the book aren’t really taking off in any way … I feel more like a lazy Sloth with this, rather than a wise Owl, but who know what might happen. If it all crashes down and doesn’t happen, I won’t be feeliing wise at all, will I?

I there is an animal that starts off with a big idea, then lets it all settle back down into a little pile of nothing much, that’s the kind of animal I would be, if I were an animal!

Visiting a Town, or Scouting for Settings?

Today I am heading off to a town I know of, and have visited previously, but don’t know really well. And because my novel is set in a town quite close to the one I’m visiting, I may well find some way to get some of what I do in my visit, into my current novel-in-progress …

And because I will be going to something, a strawberry fete, that I haven’t been to before, I’ll be looking carefully at what happens at this event, so if I every decide to run one (in my novel series), then I know what happens at them. Or if I decide to have one myself, of course! Haha, that will not happen!

I imagine doing this successfully requires lots of hard work from dedicated volunteers, and an ‘official’ who gives lots of support for the event. As I type this, I’m thinking about the characters in my “At Talloola” Cosy Murder Mystery series, and how they would fit into such an event.

The joys of writing a novel, nothing experienced is ever wasted, no matter how it goes, because you can use everything, to make it seem real. So yes, the Owen Strawberry Fete, here I come!

Novel Or Poetry Collection

Why not both? At the moment, I have two major writing ‘things’ happening. The Cosy Murder Mystery is the most important one, and is coming along mostly OK, with a bit of a slowdown over the past few days, because of other things. The second thing is a poetry collection, with the title of Pond-erings. The title tells you what one of those ‘other things’ is, a major development in our pond, in the form of ten fish,

This pond and these fish have attracted my attention, but I’m going to work hard to get the novel back on track tomorrow, so I can send the 500 words to my reader, (thanks Michelle!) again, as I said I would do every day in January. I was going so well, then for a few days, zero words sent to poor Michelle! I sent fewer than 500 words on Sunday, but at least I sent some more of the novel-in-progress.

And today I’ve sent another 600 plus words to Michelle, yay me! I’m also thinking about a new poetry collection as well, and so am looking at things at our pond to gain inspiration. The working, and possible final title of this collection is Pond-erings and it will contain poems written at, or about, our new pond.

So sitting by the pond, listening to the birds, looking for fish (are there still any little fish down there, anyway?), and watching the sky reflections on the pond, these reflections will be in the collection, and more. I hope it ends up being a fine little collection, a chapbook, so only up to thirty pages …

This means I’m both writing a novel, and putting together a poetry collection, and blogging too, this feels like just the best life for me! I love words, lots and lots of words!

Keeping On With It

Writing a novel isn’t an easy thing to do. To have a piece of writing your could call a novel, you have to have written at least 50,000 words, and preferably longer. For general fiction novels you would be looking at 75,000 to 120,000 words for a book.

A Cosy Murder Mystery, which are what I am currently writing, ‘should have’ somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 words, is what my check on google tells me. I can do that, can’t I? This moment of wondering if I can do it, is a problem, because if I’m not careful, my mind will decide I can’t actually do it, and the 30,000 words I’ve managed to write so far will be a waste of my writing time.

I don’t want to have to just scrap those words, and the ideas I’ve had for the current (first) novel, and the almost twenty further novels I have planned. By planned, I mean book titles a a brief idea about the murder, who, what, or how … I don’t want to ditch it all! And I have to admit, I’ve fallen in love with the idea of writing these books, and I have a lot of affection for all of the characters I have, and the setting.

If I stop this writing, my main character, Meredith will get cranky with me, and so will some of my other characters. I get the idea many people in Talloola (my town I created), are looking forward to have lots of interesting things happening around town!

So I am going to do this, and to help me, I know have a friend who has been helping me get the words written, by asking me to send 200 words to her every day. I haven’t been able to do that every day, and then she put up the number of words she wanted me to send. Then of course, along came Christmas, and this novel writing thing went by the wayside, in favour of getting presents, and then visiting for the ‘season’.

But my friend, Michelle, can=me up with a plan, and told me what it was. I thought about it, briefly, and said yea, I can and will do that. So the plan is that I will send Michelle 500 words every day, and if I miss a day, I will send extra to make up for it. This plan begins on the first of January, and will continue for all of the month.

So, by the end of the month, I’ll have 15,500 more words written for my novel, on top of the number I already have for my partly written first book. So, my current word count is around 31,000 words. Add 15,00 to that and you have 46,500 words, and that is more than half way through!

So Michelle and I will have a writing session, talking about what is there, what is needed, how it’s all going, and what needs to come next. It should be a useful discussion for sure! So when/if I get this first book in the ‘At Talloola’ series of Cosy Murder Mysteries, written and published I’m definitely going to thank Michelle in the book, as well as a couple of other friends, Cathy, and Jill! Oh, and Alex too, of course.

This road is the sort of road my main character may drive down, as she works. Talloola is very much a country town, many miles from the capital city of South Australia.

Alex is a member of my writing group, and so is Michelle. Alex is the one who gives group members writing prompts for the writing exercise at the group meeting, and then for homework. These prompts have been excellent for getting ideas for this book, and for poetry writing too. Prompts seem to help connect with hidden spots in the brain, and very interesting things can crawl out!

Having this group, and the group members there who are interested in how my writing is going helps to keep things going, and Christmas has been a distraction from this novel. I’ve written blog posts, at least one, about life getting in the way before. But life is what you need, so you know lots of different things, to feed into what you write!

Write a Cosy Murder Mystery, Sure! I Hope …

Writing a novel is a strange thing, I’m discovering. When I write a poem or short story, I know more or less what I’m doing, and whether what I’m doing is working. But with this novel I’m currently writing, while I’m enjoying the process, I have no idea if it’s actually working.

A murder mystery needs a killer, and clues, and it needs someone who will solve the crime, and so make sure everyone is safe. So I created a town, quite similar to a town I know well, and I created people who live in or near the town, and I came up with a dead person, possibly murdered, and I know I have to plant clues, as well as ‘red herrings’ and my main character has to be interesting, and not seem to smart, or too stupid either.

I’ve read quite a few murder mysteries over the years, and I’m very interested in the whole idea of writing in this genre. But I’m not sure whether I’m capable of doing this. I like the town, and the people, I really like my main character, and some of the other characters feel like friends too.

I’m definitely going to go on writing about the town I’ve come up with, my town of Talloola. This is my town and I love it! There are some great things going on in Talloola, and I’m glad to be watching them happen!

So I’m going to go on writing away at this project, forwarding some of my writing of this novel to a friend, and she is enjoying what I’m writing. I hope I continue to write words that go on being enjoyable. And I hope I get my head around the necessary aspects of plot, that will make this work look and read like a cosy murder mystery!

If anyone could offer any ideas about things to make sure I have in the novel, I’m all ears!