Eleanor M Cook
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So, you think you’ve finished editing?

6/29/2016

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I wrote The Minerva Project during the Spring of 2014. I was pretty strict with myself: gave myself a writing schedule and a daily word target. It took me three months.

Having finished the first draft, every piece of advice from writers was the same – leave it alone for a few months.
I tried; I tried really hard, but leaving my baby alone, my creation that I had lovingly brought into this world was, I found, impossible and so I started adding bits here, changing bits there, altering names, and generally titivating until I felt I could do no more.

In the Autumn I went back to it and was amazed at how I could have thought that I had completed the editing process and so I went at it again. This time, cutting whole chunks became easier – I no longer felt the pain of deleting a paragraph or page or sometimes several pages over which I had sweated blood just a few months earlier.

It was then that I started querying agents. I also asked a select few family and friends to read it; the feedback was underwhelming to say the least. Primarily I was too close to the story to be able to view my work objectively. As anyone who has ever created a piece of art will know, the decision to share that work is a decision to share a part of one’s soul. Any criticism at this point was, in my mind, personal and hard to take.

As the responses from agents asking for full manuscripts failed to come flooding in, I became disheartened. Nobody, it seemed, understood my world I had made, nobody loved the characters like I did.

I was a failure.

It was not until this point that I adhered to the advice I had been given at the start – leave it alone.

I started writing the second book in the series, I began blogging (a bit) and expanding my internet profile. I did my research about the market and looked at the alternatives to traditional publishing.

Two years on, Spring 2016, I read The Minerva Project.
My initial impression was what I had known all along; it was a great story with some well-developed characters, but definitely not polished to publishing quality.

Heartened by the enjoyment I gained from reading my book, I attacked it without mercy: characters went, geography was altered and chapters were slashed. My husband read it and, reassured that whatever he said about it I would not immediately file for divorce, he gave me honest feedback about what did and did not work.

Several wine-fuelled nights of rehashing the story later, I edited it again to the point that I feel genuinely proud of my work.
Now the submission process needs to start allover again, although I have, obviously, reduced the number of agents I can send it to, having queried so many in my haste to see my work published.

This was a lesson I learned the hard way, but The Minerva Project  is much the better for it.
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I wonder what I ‘ll think of it in 2018!

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Why a senseless death is so much more powerful than one with meaning

12/1/2015

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WARNING: SPOILERS
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It is easy to be overly earnest, to feel the need to make a point, but life doesn’t make points; life just happens… and so does death. Anyone who has experienced death knows that there is no grand dramatic exit. Rarely is there any meaning to it, any sacrifice. Death is just what happens at the end of life and few of us are ever to make any sense of it, particularly when it happens to a loved one. So why should fiction be any different?

Joss Whedon is the master of senseless deaths but then, with long-running television shows such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the storylines would be utterly implausible without the demise of main characters (particularly those who live on a hell mouth). However many writers choose not to include deaths as part of an ongoing storyline, particularly not those that serve no obvious purpose to the main plot. The impact of such events, however probable though, can be immense and, particularly in fantasy and science fiction, grounds the characters in reality.

The episode The Body from Joss Whedon’s cult vampire show was one of the most shocking and moving of its time. Aided by the lack of any soundtrack, it elevated a geeky fantasy drama to a new level through its exploration of sudden death at a very human level. Similarly, the exit of Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation forced viewers of the classic sci-fi series to forget the futuristic spaceships and alien life forms and to re-examine how life and death and all the emotions mixed up with that transcend genres and touch all of us, whichever universe we are living in.

The BBC’s recent killing off of Clara Oswald in Doctor Who provided us with a new perspective on the Doctor and his companions, presenting a futile death brought on by mistake, ending an enduring partnership in the space of a few misspoken words.

And then of course there is Wash. Few even hardened sci-fi fans can suppress a lump in the throat as Wash deftly flies Serenity through Reavers, The Alliance and a tragically miscalculated cancelling of a television show, only to be impaled by a giant flying splinter, just minutes prior to the final climactic scenes. “I am a leaf on the wind…”

Senseless death is part of life and its inclusion within the realms of fantasy writing brings gravitas to the genre and elevates the stories beyond fairy tales, although of course that is perhaps from where some of the greatest fictional deaths originate. There is a limit of course, over which more recent sagas have deliberately stepped. Game of Thrones, for example presents us with a masterclass of fictional demise and, although we know that rarely is a beloved character likely to last beyond a single series, still we are shocked every time half the cast are massacred.
Martyrdom has had its day in fiction; we see though it and rail against the predictability of self-sacrifice. The meaningless death resonates with the ordinary, allows us to relate and even to make sense through fantasy of what we cannot even contemplate in reality.
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…and besides, in science fiction and fantasy there is always an alternate reality to bring them back to life again…

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Does Doctor Who really matter?

11/21/2015

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A few days ago I posted on Twitter a quotation from Doctor Who in response to the attacks on Paris. It was referring to the fact that wars are started with no knowledge of the individuals who will be hurt or killed by their actions:

“When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who’s going to die.”

It is since that post that I have come to realise how many people on social media feel the necessity to express outrage, not at the indiscriminate acts of violence that tragically blight our lives, but at the way in which normal individuals show solidarity with the victims.

This made me wonder about a kind of moral pecking order that we seem to have created, a scale of righteousness that the average man on the street (the type who probably changed their Facebook profile picture to reflect the French Tricolore) has yet to climb. Peter Harness and Stephen Moffat – the writers of the episode from which the quotation was taken - must be viewed as some kind of hideous anti-moralistic monsters to have even suggested such simplistic anti-war themes within a family television programme. Whatever will we be indoctrinating our children with next? Liberty? Equality? Fraternity?

Recently I wrote about the versatility of science fiction; that it spans every human emotion without the constraints of reality. What it does as well, though, is to encapsulate and verbalise feelings that might otherwise be too immense to consider in the light of real life catastrophe.

Classic literature and poetry have always provided an insight into our innermost feelings, it is one of the most effective ways to access those parts of ourselves that most of us have no other means to reach; it is the purpose of art at its core. And times change; television, film, social media have joined the rich diversity of creative expression available and, in particular, open up new pathways for younger generations.

Wilfred Owen’s Futility, for me, resonated as I learnt the lines at school, naïve and idealist as most teenagers are. Should it matter from where I draw my inspiration to empathise, to help me to connect, to understand?

 Move him into the sun--
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds--
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,--still warm,--too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?


Now I teach ten and eleven year olds and we inevitably discuss the news of the day and what it means to them and the impact it has on their lives. What better way to begin to understand recent events than to relate them to something the children know? To use popular culture does not diminish what has happened, rather it provides a wider range of people with a deeper appreciation of what has happened, in particular those people who are most likely to be making the decisions that will affect all of our futures.

So I stand by my post if it touches another human being and provides them with a way in.
You don’t know whose children are going to scream and burn, how many hearts will be broken, how many lives shattered.”
Such sentiments remain the same, whatever the media through which they touch our hearts.

“How much blood will spill until everyone does what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning: sit down and talk?”
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Who can argue with that?

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WHY SCI-FI?

11/2/2015

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What is it about this particular genre that engenders such strong emotions from nearly everyone who has encountered it? People seem to develop either an everlasting bond within the sci-fi community, united by a love of all things nerd-related, or else an overwhelming hatred of anything that might even purport to include the word ‘Star’ in its title.

Science Fiction is a very particular form of escapism that, admittedly, attracts complete nutters (and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word, ref. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) but also invites those who would, in any other situation, come across as complete normal. They’re not though; they have a secret.

Actually, this fascination with the future, the unknown, is within all of us and probably always has been. It is integral to human nature that we strive to better ourselves, to explore and to develop as a species and so it is only natural that our imagination compels us to delve into that part of our subconscious, to wonder and to project such a diverse variety of possible futures.

In the world of Science Fiction, anything is possible; that is why it is such a dream to write. Every human condition exists in science fiction, every emotion can be explored, every threat realised. It is a world of extended allegory, a metaphor for real life, but with its roots in the here and now. Science Fiction generally has the outward appearance of real life, more grounded in actuality than mere fantasy because there is always the possibility that ‘it could happen’.

Okay, so the chances of anything in real life springing from Science Fiction is remote, but plenty of technological advances have already born enough resemblance to those depicted in popular sci-fi films and TV shows to offer sufficient hope that all things may be possible. The evidence available does not back this up in any way that might be regarded as conclusive but then, of course, in the realms of fiction, evidence and scientific reality are irrelevant. Yes we got the flip top phone and the i-pad from Star Trek and flat screen televisions and 3D movies from Back To The Future, but what happened to the internet? Did worldwide communication really slip through the net whilst self-tying laces were considered to be what moved us forward as a species?

What Science Fiction does offer is the opportunity to explore themes and ideas within a neutral space. Only this week, a clear parallel could be drawn between the latest episode of Doctor Who  and the refugee crisis in Europe. Love, war, relationships can all be dissected and examined in the minutest detail without being weighed down by the trappings of historical accuracy or the emotional stress of real life.

Science Fiction is fun – the clue is in the name – fiction. Few claim that the genre has anything to do with actual science. From Frankenstein to Star Wars, millions have enjoyed the pure escapism alongside the more serious issues and concepts all enveloped inside a single art form, so why it has become both one of the most popular fiction genres as well as the most ridiculed, actually stands testimony to its enduring popularism. Everyone loves to cringe at Sheldon Cooper, central character of The Big Bang Theory, one of the most watched comedy shows in recent years. It is his public whipping boy status that enables the rest of us to laugh at his obsessions whilst understanding them completely.

Yes, we all want to embrace the nerd. Thank you Sheldon, Spock and Marty – and thank you Carl, Isaac and Douglas. We may stash you away in the closet when guests arrive, but it is because of you we keep flying.


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FEEL

10/20/2015

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A flash fiction from my LOST AND FOUND collection: FEEL
 
Clare did not feel any more; she had learned not to. It was easier that way.

At first she felt everything; her entire emotional arsenal in constant overdrive, overwhelming every other part of her, squeezing out logic and reality until only the very basic instinct of survival was left.

They had said there were stages of grief: anger, incomprehension; she could not remember now, not that it ever really mattered.

The hardest part was always in the early hours of the morning, waking from a troubled dream, only to find herself in an even more desperate place. There was nothing to be done then, but sit and think and project futures that were never going to happen, that had no chance of realisation. There was no hope in that place, no reprieve. Even now, that window before dawn, when time stood still, nothing existed outside of sadness.

As deep as those wells of despair sank, there were other moments, happier moments too. Sitting in the sun, feeling the heat touch her arms and cheek, yielding to the wave of contentment brought on by the warmth. They would never last more than a few seconds, but they provided just a taste of blissful release, the escape of which she dreamed.

Sometimes remembering helped; not when they were together – those memories stung like raw wounds; but memories of peacefulness, of contentment - walking across a field contemplating nothing more than the colours in the sky - times of nothingness, that is what they seemed – empty of terror and despair. There was a time.
Who designed her to be like this? Why furnish her life with joy and love, then snatch it away, holding it just out of reach to tempt and taunt?

No long now. The pain helped ease her suffering, made it somehow okay, her dues, her thirty pieces of silver.

Not that it mattered.
Not that she cared.
Not anymore.

She thought it would be easier than this; a gentle drifting towards the sleep she craved. One last bitter joke denied her even that as death’s cruel fingers clawed their way around her heart, teasing her with their grip until finally wringing the life from her, slowly, simply, finally.

Clare did not feel anymore. She did not need to.

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THE NERD IN ME

10/15/2015

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How can you love sci-fi and not love all the paraphernalia that goes with it. Nobody ‘quite likes’ Star Wars (with the notable exception of my husband, although I think he only says that to appease me!) and if you grew up on a diet of Star Trek, you will no doubt have followed The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager; you probably even ploughed through Enterprise because by then it had become a matter of pride.

Science fiction is not merely a genre, it’s a commitment. I used to think it was a phase, but as I have grown older I realise that it is my filthy secret, hidden inside the closet, along with my Barbarella costume and Star Trek communicator. It is an addiction that I cannot break.

Then there are the sub cultures. As a child of the 70s growing up in the South West of England, my influences were Blakes 7, The Hitch-hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy and Doctor Who, a far cry from the sophisticated production and state of the art effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Close Encounters of The Third Kind. I’m still a dirty sci-fi kind of a girl, which is why I love Firefly above all the others – that wonderful escapism so deeply entrenched in reality. Give me a couple of horses and a ray gun over 3D virtual space walking any day.

So how did sci-fi become so rooted within my soul? Well, my parents were the generation that followed the space race, watched the moon landings live and imagined a future where, by the turn of the century, we would all be vacationing on Mars. They had that desperate need to believe, in the same way I leave out mince pies and sherry for Santa on Christmas Eve, long before my teenage children have gone to bed. They introduced me to the next best thing to actual space travel: they read me Carl Sagan as a bedtime story. It runs through my family’s DNA, it is part of our makeup.

Of course, that then leads to the level of commitment to which you aspire, the ‘nerdometer’ against which we measure ourselves. It is at these points of self-appraisal that I regress immediately to the primary school in order to assert my more highly tuned nerdiness, my deeper understanding and greater knowledge of all things nerd, over the pretenders around me.

How many times have you heard “I’ve watched Star Wars over 100 times,” as if that statement is some kind of badge of honour, membership of a club, extra merits for stamina, but few will admit that they did it purely to perfect their Chewbacca call or Hans Solo gait (although it has to be said, a sizeable proportion of time has been spent by half the audience studying Hans Solo in the utmost detail!

The real nerds embrace the commitment, the attention to detail. I cannot count how many months of my life have I devoted to creating the perfect fancy dress costume (and let me tell you, you do not attend a party dressed as a Borg if you intend to eat, drink, dance, sit or pee at any point during the event). Come on, who hasn’t got the T shirt with the obscure line from the film that only true fans would appreciate – why? To give that little nod, that knowing smile – ‘we know, we share something the rest of the world cannot understand’.

My children too have learned to live with science fiction, from being sent to school on mufti day as a very cute six year old Malcolm Reynolds, to attending Comic Con as Scarlet Witch. They knew there was no point in fighting it and so it is with a sense of pride that I dust the action figures and tidy away the Alien box set, knowing that I have done my job as a parent.

So yes, I am a sci-fi nerd and always will be. The costumes, the conventions, the DVD director’s commentaries, the fan clubs, the social media are so much part of the books, the films and the TV shows in which we can immerse ourselves. The more there is, the more we crave, which is perhaps why some of us go in to create our own, to be a part of it, to join in the party at a fundamental level. Why? It is because of a collective belief in humanity, in imagination, in possibility.

That is why I am a nerd. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

Isaac Asimov - "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all." ("My Own View," The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)


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The tools of the trade 

10/12/2015

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Every tradesperson loves their tools, cares for them, cherishes them even: a favourite screwdriver, a particular paintbrush, the worn but comfy chair.

Writers have different tools.

Yes, yes, yes I have a great fountain pen with which I love to write but, let’s be honest, writers will carve words out of stone if they absolutely have to.

Pens, pencils, notebooks; we all have our preferred type, but all of these are short-lived, disposable and, however much we may love a particular roller ball, one day it will make its way to the great pencil case in the sky.

These are the tools of my trade, oddly nothing to do with writing at all: drinking the right coffee from the right coffee cup; a slice of toasted sough dough or, on occasion, a bagel. My own space, no disruptions beyond the sounds of traffic on the road and the occasional snatched scrap of conversation from passers-by.

I can write anywhere, but I have to be comfortable in that space. I need to be able to immerse myself in the lives and minds of my characters, to become fully absorbed into my story. It’s not easy. The very process by which I am trying to promote myself in order to enable my writing is the very thing that detracts from that comfortable space. Social media, in all its glory, conspires against me and my grand plan, seeping into my subconscious, tempting me with tangents. It’s all there to disturb the balance.

My tools are my peace, my tranquillity, my imagination. Just give me a chisel and I am ready to go.



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Procrastination as an art form

10/7/2015

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I would like to claim I have been procrastinating for months about this post; in actual fact it has been getting on for half a century.
The issue is, I think, a firm grounding in the art of procrastination, along with a healthy dollop of self-doubt.
Writers' block? That's nothing compared to the stomach twisting, heart lurching agonies of accepting that somebody else might read, or even that they might actually want to read, what I have to say. In fact It was not really part of my agenda when I sat down to write The Minerva Project; writing is just something I do. The concept of other people reading what I have written had somehow hidden itself deep beneath layers of publishing dreams and projected successes as a multi-million pound author.
 

If only the rest of the world were to think the same as I do.

It would appear to me, in my own little writing world inside my head, that I am so full of wit when it comes to writing tweets of one hundred and forty characters. My perception of my own brilliance and hilarity thrives on the brevity of social media, but when it comes to the permanence of a blog, reality emerges into my head space and with it, an accompanying aura of self-doubt: yes a very definite sense of doom.

Like anyone who has ever taken the drastic step of combining paper and ink, I find it virtually impossible to prevent a tiny piece of my soul tagging along with each phrase, so that any published work becomes somewhat akin to posting naked photographs of myself on the internet. Twenty five years ago I might have possessed the self-belief to bare my inner being to the world, confident in my abilities and even oblivious to the concept of rejection. (Thankfully the World Wide Web did not exist then and consequently no such photographs exist!)


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    I cannot remember a time when I did not love to write.

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