Storytime

Testing. One...two...three.... Recently I was invited to send some of my 'audio poems' to Lipservice Journal  - Maurice has included my work in his online journals for the past few years, and now he has branched out into the spoken word. My first thought was great. Very quickly followed by - I have no audio poetry...how do I do that? So after quite a few hours playing around with my computer I found how to record my voice. In some ways that was the easy part...choosing what to read was one of the hard decisions. There a few that I recite that I consider spoken word rather than serious, on the page poetry. These are what I considered. But then a few 'on the page' poems had great imagery, and I thought perhaps they could work as well. It took longer to build a collection of poems to choose to read than I had considered. Day one gone. The next spare day I began to record some of the said poems. I learnt a lot. Heavy rain on the roof makes for an interesting ef...

Ziggy, my lovely little run-around, is one of those cars that likes to tell you how cold it is outside, how far I can travel before I need to put in petrol, and loves to shout that SERVICE IS DUE NOW. Complete with warning light. I've never had a car before that could do all this (they merely got me from here to there...mostly). And while I still enjoy all of his extras, I decided it would be ideal if we, as writers, could have a SERVICE DUE NOW message. Imagine a little notice popping up on our monitor or lap top screen - politely informing us that it is time for a check in. A bit of maintenance, usually long over due. For myself I would like a variety of notifications. WEEKLY- just a quick note to look over the past week, and to see what progress has been achieved. If none, to look and see why not. Perhaps life, as it does, got in the way, perhaps work and stress and family and just plain living meant that writing was put on the back burner. But I think looking back ov...

'Can you just check to see if there is another book after this one?' 'Another novel by the same author?' 'No, is there another book with the same characters. Is this part of a series?' Moments later. 'There doesn't appear to be any others, this is a stand alone book' 'So why then doesn't the ending make any sense?' Oh if only I had a dollar for every time we get a question as above. It happens time after time. A poor puzzled and confused reader comes into the library wanting to know what happens and we can't help them, because there is no continuation. The book simply stops. Perhaps the author had meant there to a be another, maybe this was book one in the original concept. (It happens so often with television series, so many are simply put aside after a few seasons and this leaves a very frustrated patron who wants to know why nothing was made after 2004) I find this interesting as most writers when they begin a novel...

I have a small..the word obsession is too strong....shall we call it liking to 'bling'. Not that I can't walk past a jewellery store, I can and do, without the need to buy, purchase, to have. However if some piece calls, I'm all eager to listen. This has resulted over the past decades in a lot of earrings. I could wear a different pair of earrings each day for a month. Make that two. Okay, hard to admit but lets put it at two and half months....ninety six days. These are not just bits of plastic or silver or gold or gem (whatever the case may be ...I do not discriminate)...these are memories of times and places and people. The amber means Moscow. Not that I've been there, but he did for work. The amber means those weeks of just me and the kids. Meals became less organised, scrambled eggs on toast became a regular, but it also meant those long nights when the bed was empty. When I would star fish, revelling in having the space to myself. When I would end...

'If I read one more description of clouds racing across a summer sky, I will throw the book. Just get to the damned story.' Quote from a friend of mine. Says it all doesn't it? Don't get me wrong I do like the colour purple, I have it in t-shirts, cardigans, jumpers and even pyjamas...and I do love my amethysts...and let's face it, it is divine in the garden. But purple in your prose?  Mostly it's because a writer wants to show off. Put in as many twenty dollar words as they can, to impress, to show how great their vocabulary is.  The days of a novel beginning with a page and a half of description is gone. Today's reader wants the story. Now. Don't mess about with fanciful overly vivid description because it will draw attention to the writing. Yes the writing, not the story. Some writers seem not to be able to help themselves. They have to add flowery ornate phrases. They want to be extravagant with words, they want to have ...

 Due to my case of winter blahs (see previous blog) I have now come down with an attack of Writer's Guilt. Great isn't it? Not only do I have exercise guilt (yes I will walk, maybe tomorrow) and food guilt (how did those chips follow me home?) and of course the old favourite of parental guilt (how did my children survive and turn out to be fully functioning human beings?)... I also have Writer's Guilt. Capitals are necessary. Of course I'm not new to writers guilt. I think very few writers are. Being human, we can't help but compare ourselves to others...and when we KNOW that such and such not only keeps down a full time job but has produced a 50 000 word novel in six months we can't help but wonder what on earth are we doing with our time. I begin to wonder if sleep is needed. I have a friend who is very prolific in her arts who seems to exist on a sniff of sleep for months on end. Alas, sleep is my friend. I can't function on little. I have trie...

Yep it is that time of the year, it is cold...damned cold (although I know my Dad will be saying it's colder up at his place, and it will be) ...and all I want to do is hibernate. But there are some things that have to be done, going to work the main one. As for the writing...what writing? I seem to have come down with a severe case of blah....or in medical terms...the winter blues. I have a small whiteboard near my writing desk and each month I put down my goals for the following weeks. Could be a deadline to meet, a poem to finish, a submission to get out there, a word count on a novel, an event to go to. This is what my whiteboard looks like... Empty. There is nothing on there...not a word, not a hint, not a suggestion of something to achieve for this month. Pretty sad really. In fact I don't even have the birthday reminders that I put up there either. Like I said, the winter blues have come down hard and fast. I think a contributing factor is that I'm (stil...