Go read, now!

Tweet I don't normally like to "big up" other things, unless I'm reviewing a book I've found particularly helpful, or a web magazine that I think others might like, but I did stumble across a new blog that I wanted to tell people about.

To start with, I subscribe to Chris Guillebeau's blog, which is essential reading for anyone who wants to make a living in a way that suits them (particularly artists). After all, it's the dream of most creative people to make a living doing what they enjoy, or what they're good at, and in an age where a lot of people seem to work in offices doing jobs that seem not to matter a great deal, it's a good way to approach things. Anyway, through Chris' blog, I came across Zoë Westhof's blog. I've been reading back through her old posts, and I'm particularly interested in planning my own "creative mini retreat", since one of the biggest bugbears when it comes to writing is fitting it in. If you're interested in writing yourself, take a look.

On a slightly sillier note, I've now added a Twitter feed to my website. You're so lucky, you get to read all the drivel I come out with during an average day...

Recommended Reading

Tweet There are a lot of creative writing manuals available, most of which teach the technicalities of grammar, style or theme. Occasionally these are accompanied by short stories to illustrate the points raised, and almost all of them include exercises designed to get the creative juices going. However, few succeed as well as Monica Wood's The Pocket Muse. Full of photographs to kickstart the imagination, as well as inspirational anecdotes, story ideas or 'fill in the blank' exercises, it's possible to follow them chronologically, as part of a homespun writing course, or you can dip in and out, opening the book at random and using the suggestion or photo as a starting point for that day's work. I think all writers, both experienced and otherwise, should own this book.

Accepted again!

Tweet I had another story accepted and didn't even realise! You may remember my earlier entry in which I praised the Postcard Shorts website. Well, I submitted a story, and promptly forgot about it. They didn't reply, so I assumed my story hadn't been selected. Lo and behold, I was browsing through the posted stories today, and I found mine! So you can read Picasso by clicking here. It's less than 200 words long, so you have no excuse.

Catching the muse

Tweet Writing. It's a funny old game, isn't it? You want to write, you really do, but you find yourself making all sorts of daft excuses not to. For example, I've recently taken up knitting and I find myself wanting to relax in front of the TV, needles clacking away as my current project slowly grows, and it's only when it's too late to begin anything else that I lament not having spent the evening writing.

I'm currently reading Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction, and as with most creative writing manuals, it comes complete with writing exercises at the end of each chapter. I'm making a note of these, and mulling them over, but do I actually do any of them? Do I heck. I wrote loads of material when I did a creative writing night class, and I usually write my fingers off whenever a magazine or website has a closing date for a reading period. But without a teacher/editor to give me feedback, or a deadline to which I have to work, I often find it difficult to muster up the impetus to get the thoughts down on paper/screen.

So I've come up with a solution, in conjunction with a friend. He'd like to get back into writing himself, so I'm going to set us writing tasks based on those given in this particular book. We'll each have until Monday to complete them, by which point we swap work, and then have until Wednesday to read them, and come up with comments. Then the whole cycle will begin again. Hopefully, having someone to provide feedback, and having a deadline, will kick me back into writing again...

Watch this space.

Submissions welcome

Tweet I just came across a delightful little flash fiction website which requires stories of 250 words or less - the ethos springs from the concept of what kind of stories could you fit on the back of a postcard. It's an interesting idea, and I think that Postcard Shorts have hit upon something workable. After all, with the rise of the Internet and the ability to send email as long as you have a computer and a connection, postcards seem to have become somewhat passe...which is such a shame, since I find that there's nothing nicer than receiving a postcard, to see another corner of the world, and to have a snapshot of somewhere I've never been landing on my doormat. Logging on to view someone's photos on Flickr isn't quite the same.

Tenth story online!

Tweet I've hit a mini milestone in that my tenth short story has now been published online - you can read it here. I'm particularly proud of this one, not least because it's the third story I actually sold. So that's five published in 2009 alone...onwards and upwards!

On A Novel

Tweet God, where is this year going?! It seems like New Year's Day was only yesterday. Oh well. Plenty more of experience means plenty more ideas. I'm trying to read as much as I physically can right now, meaning I've got George R. R. Martin's A Sword of Storms, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life, Max Barry's Jennifer Government and various issues of BPRD and Hellboy on the go at the moment.

Checkmate should be appearing soon - I feel like I should do something to celebrate my tenth publication, but I think I might save that for the twentieth. In the meantime...I just need to write more work so I have more to submit! I have gone back to the novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo's 2008 campaign, so I'm editing and polishing with gay abandon. Time throws an unflattering glare across the work; the flaws are blindingly obvious, but thankfully that just makes them easier to correct. I keep finding bits I like about it, so with any luck I'll soon have a redraft I'm happy with. And then I'll redraft it again.

It's funny, I first "met" the character in 2007. I was on holiday in the Trossachs (Scotland), when my family and I decided to have a day trip to Glamis Castle. I'd heard about all the weird stories about the place and wanted to check it out myself. As the journey's navigator, I was poring over the map, when I noticed a tiny village named Fowlis Westenby. The name caught my attention, and a cavaliar named Fowlis Westerby strolled into my head to say hello. I originally wrote a short flash piece about him at the time, but he kept coming back to nag me to tell more. It took me until last November to give in to his demands. Hopefully he'll be happy with the finished novel...or he may nag me even more...