How My Writing ihas Changed
Round Robin time again~
So, how has my writing changed since I began?
Quite a lot, because my first stories were published in 1970. Back then, I had just started high school and already had some competition wins under my belt. In primary school, we were taught to express ourselves with lote of adjectives and adverbs, and with lots of imagination. I've never quite managed to change that mode of expression, although I suppose I've damped down the tendancy. I have also cultivated lots of different styles.
Having gone through multiple typewriters and various computers I don't have much left from before the computer age unless I retype it, so here are some samples from my writing... dated. Over to you. How much have I changed?
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Beginning of In Search of a Husband from 1997
The Viking had a great blade of a nose and watchful,
sea-narrowed eyes. These features were framed by a sweep of shaggy blond beard,
tangled locks and a horned helmet. The cross-gartered leggings and rough fur
garments barely concealed the magnificent body, just now filmed with a faint
glaze of sweat from the Queensland sun.
"Lovely!"
said Rue Trevallyn. "And--action!"
The
Viking's muscles rippled convincingly as he hefted the great, two-handed sword.
The weapon was made from bronze-colored metal, lead-weighted for authenticity.
A light-weight plastic replica would have looked convincing, but for the
effective play of muscle, real weight was necessary.
"And
again!"
The
Viking adjusted his pose a little, and the flood of molten sunshine struck
gleams from the sword and the upthrust horns of the helmet.
"OK,
that's it," said Rue. "You can relax now, Ryan. Your prints will be
ready to pick up in a couple of days--you can decide about enlargements once
you see the proofs."
The
Viking lowered the sword gingerly onto a chair and used both hands to remove
the helmet. "You say they didn't really wear these to go pillaging
in?" he said.
"Probably not." Rue's delightful smile flashed out as she slipped the lens cap onto the Vermeer. "Another myth bites the dust! But it's great for keeping all that false hair anchored to your head. And besides--this is all about fantasy, and in the fantasy world a Viking simply must have his horned helmet."
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These days I would render the "OK" and "okay".
Beginning of Crock o' Gold from 2003.
Sarah
O’Shanessy exhaled, emptying her lungs to their depths. “Now, Millie!” she
breathed as the last vestige of air sighed past her parted lips, and, clasping
the bed post, braced herself for the final cruel tightening of her stay-laces.
Millie pulled with enthusiasm, and
Sarah saw in the looking glass how the maid’s plump scrubbed face reddening
with the strain. “That’s h’it, Miss,” she wheezed at last, her usually careful
diction blurred by effort. “That be as far as h’it will go.”
Sarah could well believe it. She
released the bed post and cautiously straightened herself. She fancied she
heard a faint creaking of tortured ribs and ligaments, but after all, it was
only the whalebone in the stays and a minor coin to be laid out for a
fashionable tea-cozy figure. Sarah’s many admirers claimed (with only a
moderate amount of exaggeration) that she was as slender as a willow wand. This
meant that judicious padding must be added to hips and bust and her hand-span
waist must be pulled in farther before she could create the desired effect. She
breathed shallowly, in and out, in and out. Dappled spots danced before her
eyes, and for a moment she thought she saw an apple-wizened face mocking her
from behind the bed-curtains.
“Get out of my chamber!” she
protested, and the face gave an impish three-cornered grin and vanished.
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Now, here's the beginning of Fairy on the Christmas Tree from 2016. It may not be suited to a general audience, so I've gone for some asterisks!
“Fran? Did
you pay the balance on the cruise today?”
Frances considered
Casey’s as the cordon bleu of voices. She had been seduced by that dark
chocolate voice when they’d met at her office party back in June. Casey had
been there as the guest of a guest and the words, “Hello, Frances,” in that
melted chocolate tone wooed her in an instant.
Melted Belgian chocolate, she specified,
pooling in her navel *** . Mmmm. Chocolate.
“Fran? The cruise?”
Frances tucked her
head sideways to hold the phone so she could go on stirring the custard on the
stove. Frances was so incurably right-handed she seldom used her left for
anything except—oddly enough—brushing her hair which was long, luxuriant and
red as a hearth-fire with licks of yellow and cream. Most people meeting
Frances for the first time assumed it was a creative salon effect, but it
wasn’t. It was simply Frances’s left-hand-brushed hair.
Apart from its
hairbrush duties, her left hand was there, she considered, just to satisfy the
curious requirement humans had for pairs. Pairs of eyes. Pairs of nostrils.
Pairs of ears. Pairs of ***. Casey sported a prime pair of ***; velvety
soft. Frances wished she could get a giant ***-shaped beanbag so she could
snuggle on Casey-style *** when he wasn’t there.
“You haven’t, have
you.”
“No.”
“You’d better do it
right now.”
“Right now I’m making dinner and I still have
the Christmas tree to do.”
“The what?”
“My Christmas tree. It’s an heirloom. You’ll see
tonight—in fact, I’ll need your help to screw the base together.” She put the
faintest emphasis on the last verb, but Casey failed to pick up the thread.
“Don’t you want to go
on this cruise?” The dark chocolate voice sounded reproachful. “If you don’t make that payment you’ll
forfeit the deposit.”
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Okay then. Fast forward to 2023 and Performing Pippin Pearmain:
Pippin Pearmain had a bucket list.
It was a lovely list, recorded in
green ink whenever she found a new bucket to add.
The list was her private
treasure—something to occupy her mind during those queueing-around-the-block
moments or green room marathons that stretched beyond infinity and back again.
Not that there had been green room marathons lately—or even snaking queues, now
she came to think of it. Jellico Bay, where Pip lived now, was deficient in
both.
Still…she remembered how it had
been.
Other people gossiped in the few
short queues there were at the supermarket or at Jelly-and-Juice, or scrolled
through their phones, sighed, and glanced at the clock, if there was one. Or they
calculated the exact second when the parking meter, still manual in Jellico Bay
though terribly outmoded elsewhere, might flick into an accusing triple zero
with a decimal point to inform one it was an emergency but not a phone-dialable
one if there wasn’t… a clock in sight, that was. Sometimes even Pip failed to
untangle her inner syntax.
Who cared? Little Nanna Laurel
had always said Pippin was one out of the box, and suggested they’d broken the
mould when she was made. She didn’t mention whether that was a good thing or
not. Little Nanna loved fiercely, and thoroughly, as she had done all things. The
younger Pippin had wanted to be just like Little Nanna Laurel, but she knew she
never would be. No one was.
Maybe that’s why they got along
so well.
Pip hummed happily in queues at a
pitch that made some fellow queuers want to rub their ears and blame their
tinnitus or a distant mosquito. They never blamed Pip because she didn’t look
like a hummer. She was so small and slender that she wore jeans in children’s
sizes and little shoes that could barely hold coal at Christmas—if she’d ever
been bad enough to deserve any.
People had never given Pip coal
for Christmas. To her disappointment they didn’t give her chocolate, either.
And, finally, to the beginning of The Luter and the Adventurer, written in mid 2026.
I was minding my own business when
George crashed into my life.
Well, to be honest, I
was composing a tune on my lute, but that was my business no matter what
my father said. I was good at luting. My father was good at disapproving.
“M’boy,” he said more
than once when he’d had a few drops too many of Ellie’s plum wine, “frequency
of luting is fine for a minstrel or a bardic sort of chap, but
it’s not what’s expected in a royal heir, unless he’s a poet prince
which you, old chap, are not.”
“No, Father.” That was
my stock reply.
Royal heirs male
(princes to you) are expected to lute. That’s fine. However, the luting is
supposed to be balanced by jousting, riding, carousing, wenching and preening.
Preening was the only
one I’d ever managed to do much of and that’s only because my hair stuck up on
one side in a convincing cowlick, and it took a good deal of preen-cream, which
I got from Feingold, to make it lie down.
Feingold is my godfather
and my tutor, and the palace cook. He is a Lone Wizard—by which I mean one not
attached to a Pentagate or Sixsome. He has always been important to me, but
this story mostly concerns how I met George and what happened next.
Maybe I should back up a
little. My cousin Brinnie says telling a tale in order is a necessity.
I’ll take her word for
it.
Lacking samples of my earlier work because, as I mentioned, I would have had to type them up and as I didn't mention my published books are all in boxes and I'm writing this from my daughter's place, it's hard to see how much my writing has changed in style. I suppose, as I age, I've started writing more of what I like, how I like, but, reading through this 27 year odyssey, I still recognise all the writing as "mine" and don't feel any great urge to rewrite.
All these books, with the exception of Crock o' Gold and the latest wip are published.
Now, over to my fellow round robiners...
Bob Rich - https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3HY
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Diane Bator https://escapewithawriter.wordpress.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Thank you, Sally. Even in the earliest ones, you've shown instant characterisation and world building.
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