THE STORY SO FAR: PART 274: SUNDAY

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR HELICOPTER PILOTS

The time I spent researching the U.S. Army for my books was both fascinating and—literally—life-changing. The highlight was my period with the 101st Airborne (Air Assault). The following was sent to me by a close friend I made there. And yes, I am absolutely fascinated by helicopters. Fly in an Apache AH64 attack helicopter, like I was privileged to do—both by day and at night—and I’ll be surprised if you are not thrilled.

Attach helicopter pilots have their own particular ways of making light of the dangers they face every mission.

1.  Keep always thine RPMs, for without them the gates of heaven shall be closed to thee, and thou shalt pass directly to Brick City.
2.  Guard thy tail rotor as thy loins; it is a sacred thing and its loss maketh the earth spin, and rise up and smite thee.
3.  Pickest thou up and sittest thou down with great care, lest thy machine roll in the mud like the swine and makest thou an impoverished pedestrian.
4.  Loadeth not thy machine unevenly or excessively, lest thou wander and stumble like the braying ass.
5.  Run not thy fuel or oil dry, for surely it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a fool to autorotate in the wilderness.
6.  Linger not in the curve of the deadman, for it tempteth fate, and shall bringeth thee back pain.
7.  Swoop not low, for many are the snares of Edison and Bell; their wires yieldeth not, and makest thou a yo-yo.
8.  Loseth not sight of the earth, if thou are not a master of the black art of IFR, else thy machine shall seek the earth without thy council, and thy friends shall mourn the passing of a fool.
9.  Loseth not thy G's for the sake of pushover or other folly, lest thy blades smite thee, and journey on without thee.
10.  Descendeth not without airspeed, for the air directly beneath thee is wrathful, and wouldst swallow thee up.

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 273: SATURDAY

A MYSTERIOUS GAP—WHICH I INTEND TO CLOSE

For some mysterious reason, I temporarily stopped blogging around this time and didn’t restart until mid July 2013.

We are talking a six week gap. Ye gods!

The odd thing is that I didn’t consciously decide to stop. I just did other things first—and the days passed without my getting around to blogging. I was quite shaken when I found out. I was determined to write 365 blogs without missing a day—even if I had to go back and fill in some gaps which I expected to have to do occasionally. I just didn’t expect a gap of this length.

As best as I can determine, there were two reasons:

• I decided to do a further draft of the screenplay I was working on—and need all my energy to work on that,
• I injured my back quite badly—and though I could stand or lie down without excessive pain—sitting down to write was agony.

I am now going to try and write 40 plus blogs in arrears to fill in the gap.

It feels like Mission Impossible at this stage, but one never knows. I might surprise myself.

Wish me luck.

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 272: FRIDAY

REACTION…I AM BEREFT (BUT WILL RECOVER)

I instinctively went to the screenplay after I awoke—I normally write before I even have a mug of tea, let alone breakfast—and then remembered that I had finished the work and sent it away.

I felt absolutely lost and quite disoriented. The focus of my life had gone. Gone, I tell you!

I would have made a terrible actor.

Sanity returned as I looked at my backlog of other work, but the feeling of reaction and depression lingered for several hours and I found it near impossible to focus.

Intense focus for weeks on end—seven in this case—absolutely has consequences. There is a reaction similar to that following an adrenalin rush. The solution I always recommend is to have a vacation, or at least get away for a few days. But I won’t be following my own advice in this case for a host of reasons.

Much cheered to receive an invitation to attend Army National Guard training from a military friend. War is a truly terrible thing, but to see the military in action—without being shot at—is fascinating, at least as far as I am concerned. Actually, to be shot at briefly can be quite exhilarating, but to face danger day after day—from such arbitrary weapons such as IDEs, for example—requires a special kind of courage. U.S. troops—that select group who venture outside the wire—have been displaying it for years.

The photo is of my sister, Maxine—who is looking remarkably well. It was taken recently by my marvelous sister, Lucy—a regular hive of activity. Though can one person be a hive?

Maxine’s life is something of a mystery to me, but she trained as an actress and at one stage was highly successful on Irish radio. But she left at the height of her celebrity. She is probably a secret agent. Every family should have one.

I’m very proud of my sisters.

To work!

 

 

 

 

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 271: THURSDAY

FINALLY…

This re-writing phase has taken seven weeks of total focus. I tend to think of this kind of phase as a “writing bubble.” You know perfectly well that normal life is continuing around you (your bubble is transparent) but it is also irrelevant for the period in question. When you are in the zone, you stay in the zone – if you can and have any sense.

Then you burst the bubble when you send the screenplay away. The real world rushes in and and you look around somewhat dazed at the realization that the most important thing in the word, to most of the rest of the world, is not writing. Intellectually, you have known this all along, of course. Now you have to face the reality and its consequences. It can be quite a shock. There is a backlog of correspondence, and much more besides. The real world is distressingly demanding.

For all that, I feel immensely pleased and deeply satisfied with the end result of my work—albeit that the words “screenplay” and “re-write” are practically interchangeable (which is another way of saying that screenplays tend to be re-written multiple times often by a variety of different writers). It’s the nature of what is both a collaborative and cut-throat business.

The surprise of the day was to find that my sister, Lucy, has posted an old picture of my mother and first stepfather, Terrence O’Reilly, that I don’t recall ever having seen before. The date would have been 1945 or perhaps a year or two later.

Sadly, I have no recollection of him. If memory serves, he was a civil engineer who spent many years in Canada. He was quite a bit older than my mother—something like 20 years—and died of cancer in Ireland within a few years of the marriage.

My mother wrote a short book called THE HIDDEN GEM about their romance and Terrence’s tragic and premature passing. They seemed to have been very happy together.

Both my grandmother and my mother were widowed early. My grandmother never re-married nor showed any inclination to do so. My mother let a more complicated life—to put it mildly—and was re-married twice.

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 269: TUESDAY

I HAVE ALREADY SQUEEZED THE LEMON—NOW I’M SQUEEZING IT AGAIN

By now I should have sent this screenplay away—but I’m still wrestling with the damn thing. It would be easier if I wasn’t finding anything. That would be clear-cut. Instead, better ways of doing things are still emerging after every read. Most, to be fair, are minor, but every small improvement helps.

Your work should always be as good as you can make it is very much my mantra But, let me tell you, it’s exhausting. I feel terribly tempted to throw in the towel—and yet, after every fresh read, I see items that can be improved.

Hola! My squirrel has returned. What a beautiful sight.

I picked up the expression “Hola!” (as in “Hola, Sir Knight!) from an Arthur Conan Doyle historical novel, SIR NIGEL—one of my favorite such books, but much less known than his Sherlock Holmes books. More is the pity. The first one, set in that period, is THE WHITE COMPANY which is set during the Hundred Years War—a period during which a summer vacation meant marauding in France for a couple of months. Given the superiority of their archers, the British were hard to stop—though crossbowmen tried their best.

Tourism tended towards the aggressive in those days. If others rose early and grabbed all the sun-loungers positioned around the pool (Germans are notorious in this regard) you just killed them.

Great books!

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 268: MONDAY

JOHN STEINBECK’S TRIBUTE TO U.S. ARMY HELICOPTER PILOTS IN VIETNAM

 Military matters have been a deep interest of mine for most of my life.

The reasons are several: I was a WW II baby, born in 1944 and grew up surrounded by people who had served; there was a military tradition in the family; I received military training at school; and like most boys I was fascinated by the numerous war stories I read and war movies I saw. Finally, I was in awe of the people—almost all citizen warriors—who had endured so much to free Europe from Hitler’s truly evil regime. A number had been relations of mine. One, John Lentaigne M.C., was killed at the Battle of El Alamein. Another, Joe Lentaigne, made general and ended up commanding the Chindits in Burma. It was, indeed, a world war.

Incidentally, M.C. stands for Military Cross. It’s roughly the equivalent of a a Silver Star.

For much of my youth I expected to go into the Army – there was National Service (conscription) in those days, but then National Service was abolished, and I realized that I had no particular desire to live my life within the constraints of military discipline. Boarding school was enough as far as I was concerned. I had the temperament of a maverick, was prone to question everything, and I craved a life that allowed greater freedom. Such a difficult human being was clearly destined to become a writer.

I still retained a keen interest in the military, but my compromise was to observe as a writer – and that is exactly what I have done for all my adult life. Further, I have incorporated aspects of what I have learned in all my fiction books and in one memoir, GETTING TO KNOW THE WARFIGHTERS.

The highpoint of my military experience as a writer was the time I spent researching various military units in the Nineties. These included the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) and the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) where I had more fun than any human being has a right to experience—even though I got injured in the Mojave Desert. All I can say is that the pain of the latter was worth it. Furthermore, I made many good friends during that period and am in touch with most of them to this day. All, being human, are flawed—and all are magnificent people.

The most special time of all was the brief period I spent with some of the Apache helicopter pilots of the 101st Airborne – which culminated in my flying in an Apache AH-64 helicopter gunship both by day and by night, and in making one of my closest friends, CW4 Tim Roderick. I was much blessed that day and since. Funnily enough my pilot was not Tim, but the awesome CW4 Ron Thompson—a truly superb aviator.

It is in the spirit of such warriors that I am including John Steinbeck’s tribute to helicopter pilots in Vietnam. His sentiments are mine.

On January 7, 1967, Steinbeck was in Pleiku, flying with Shamrock Flight, D Troop, 10th Cavalry and wrote the following home:

"Alicia,
I wish I could tell you about these pilots. They make me sick with envy. They ride their vehicles the way a man controls a fine, well-trained quarter horse. They weave along stream beds, rise like swallows to clear trees, they turn and twist and dip like swifts in the evening. I watch their hands and feet on the controls, the delicacy of the coordination reminds me of the sure and seeming slow hands of (Pablo) Casals on the cello. They are truly musicians hands and they play their controls like music and they dance them like ballerinas and they make me jealous because I want so much to do it. Remember your child night dream of perfect flight free and wonderful? It's like that, and sadly I know I never can. My hands are too old and forgetful to take orders from the command center, which speaks of updrafts and side winds, of drift and shift, or ground fire indicated by a tiny puff or flash, or a hit and all these commands must be obeyed by the musicians hands instantly and automatically. I must take my longing out in admiration and the joy of seeing it.
Sorry about that leak of ecstasy, Alicia, but I had to get it out or burst.”

THE STORY SO FAR: PART 267: SUNDAY

IT’S QUITE STRANGE HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND A PHOTOGRAPH OF YOUR MENTAL IMAGE OF AN ACTOR

The above illustration is of Keeley Hawes, a highly regarded actress who is arguably best known for her role in the TV series about M-I5. Confusingly, it’s known as SPOOKS in the UK (where it originated) and MI-5 in the U.S.

Here is the even more confusing thing: Although Keeley is eminently recognizable in the above photo, it still does not look quite like her as she appears in Mi-5. It under-sells her.

Well, she is no longer in character,  I hear you say.

That’s an entirely reasonable explanation, but I don’t think an adequate one. You see I have encountered this issue many times previously—when trying to cast the movie versions of my own books, for example—and have come to the conclusion that it is more an issue of still photography being out of sync with modern video and film. Still photography remains locked in tradition. Other media have moved on. More is the pity.

I started the day by reading through the latest printed version of my screenplay through again—and it passed the test. True, my refreshed mind came up with a few more ideas—but it is time to send it away. But is it as good as I can make it at this stage?

I then tried to think of comparable movies. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO certainly comes to mind—though the ending is dramatically different. So what movie has a similar ending? I can’t think of a single one.

Not sure that is a good thing. A great deal of lip service is applied to creativity, but, at heart, movie people prefer to stick to a proven formula. On the other hand, I’m sure audiences will love the end.

Very tired. I think I’ll take a nap.

Back to work after a couple of hours. You know, it truly amazes me how, after all this time, I still find something else to improve, change or correct after each iteration of reading through this screen play. Or maybe I have fallen asleep and am dreaming.

To be fair, I am no longer making up major changes, but I’m continuing to find small errors—albeit not many. And a few additional ideas are speaking in. The polishing process is primarily getting a mass of small details right—and that, in many ways, is the hardest part; and it requires both patience and stamina.

Could it be I’m becoming obsessional about all this? Or merely just trying to make it as good as I can?

Damned if I know.