Tonight was Writing Night, and my task was to read three chapters of The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. In what I’ve read so far, Flannery went back to the beginning of life on Earth and explained how the great airy ocean that is the atmosphere has changed radically, often killing off as much as 90% of the species living at the time. We have the pleasure of living in the Holocene Era, culminating in “The Long Summer” over the past 150 years. Apparently we’ve had it uncommonly good for a long time, and that might be about to change because of the amount of carbon our species has released into the atmosphere over the last 8,000 years, first by burning trees, then coal, then hydrocarbons.
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In describing all this, Flannery explains a lot of science related to the atmosphere and chemistry. He does it well, but… Zzzzz. Phytoplankton — I mean, how can you get excited about those? Okay, they’re why we have petrol, but still, there’s no story there.
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I’ve got a niggling feeling that I should be writing, or at least outlining, but my ‘over-sense’ of the project is the knowledge that it’s really not time for that. I need to do my homework on the topic and find which part of it resonates and would make for a good story. What’s fun is that I’ve already ‘met’ two of the characters. I’m happy that the lead in this one is different to Fix, Hugh, and Stefan. He’s a bit of a smart-arse, and less nice. His best friend (though neither of them likes the other) is a pill, too — hopefully in a fun way. (I hate stories in which characters do nothing but suffer.) She’s my cipher for that annoying tone that often goes along with discussion of climate change.
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So I read my three chapters of The Weather Makers. I was also supposed to come up with one solid story element, which turned out to be an idea of where the character is from and where he’s living now. With this book, I’m not setting it in a specific place. That frees me from attempting to understand and express Scotland while wrangling with this huge topic. And I get to make up stuff, which is ultimately what this is about.
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I don’t know where I get this idea, but there’s supposed to be something secret about writing a book. Still, it’s nice to share the raw rudiments of this thing, even if they’re not so pretty.
