Life in progress

Monthly Archives: August 2013


by Leave a comment

The Flying Curtain

Wise words of encouragement for the writer in all of us.

eternal Domnation's avatareternal Domnation

The flimsy blue curtain dangled loose from its Velcro snap.  I caught a glimpse of the other side as it swayed with the turbulence.  Between waves of blanket blue, I spied warm peanuts and champagne.

The curtain separated two classes.

Economy.  Why not just call it regular?  Or cattle?  Either way, the curtain seemed to define it.  Well that and my cheap bag of pretzels and plastic cup of water.

I could see curtains in other parts of my life.  Flimsy messages that I’m too young, too old, too early, too late, to do this or to do that.  I looked at my manuscript and saw an iron curtain between written and read.  It was a message: this is your station, best to buckle in.

I ignored the message.  Even curtains made from iron fall.  And that’s not just peanuts.

Truth is, every once and I while I get an…

View original post 52 more words


by 16 Comments

Adventures on my Paper Route – All about living

Sometimes we have happy hour,

Dregs

and sometimes (apparently at 9pm especially) we have sad hour.

We all have to work, in some capacity, to feed ourselves

Bee and flower

but I’m reminded by my son that every once in a while we just have to stop

Smell the flowers

and smell the flowers.

(Preferably the ones without bees.)


by 25 Comments

My addiction

The words buzz around in my head. I see an object, or I glimpse an expression on a face and I feel like I could base an entire novel on that very subject. The words – I can see them – twitching out from my fingertips on to the blank page. I imagine them there before I type them, and then my muscles obey, my digits stretching to reach this key, that letter. Suddenly, there they are. Right there before my eyes where I can read them. Do they make sense? Are they in the right order?

I inspect them. I skim them: sometimes I read them out loud. They are never good enough the first time around.

Inspiration is like having a balloon inside my head. It grows, it expands, until I can no longer contain it – until it either gets out or I go mad. And I do, sometimes. I’m sure my family knows when I get to the point where I MUST write. It’s almost like a disease, like an addiction. I suppose it is, in a way. I ignore my family, my housework, my social life suffers, I do nothing else in my leisure time. I haven’t watched TV in over a year.

And I can’t live without it.

I suppose, as with almost anything, if you do it enough and you’re lucky, you develop at least an aptitude for it. And if you’re really lucky, you find you have a talent for it. In the case of writing, if you have a vocabulary and an adequate imagination, all you need is a knowledge of grammar and you should be good to go. And yet, when I read those who are very talented – those who make it look easy – I realise I have a long road ahead of me still.

So, I write. The compulsion to put into writing the thoughts in my head is undeniable. As long as I have this driving will, this vast, open plain of ideas, and the means to make my hands work the magic that pulls rabbits out of hats in my noggin’, my addiction will be a part of me.


by Leave a comment

Day 15 Prompt – Bun

Day 15 Prompt – Write about a stranger you see. Either their back-story or what they are thinking in the moment you see them.


by 2 Comments

Day 12 Prompt – This wasn’t easy

Day 12 Prompt – Find 10 random words and create your own definitions.


by Leave a comment

Day 11 Prompt – An Hour without Power

Day 11 Prompt – Write A story where the characters go without power for a day.


by 19 Comments

Summer Camp

You never know what you’ve got until you lose it. It’s a saying we hear all the time; sometimes in moments of profound loss, sometimes it’s trivial. In my case, in many ways it’s the latter.

There’s no summer camp for my youngest son this week. I used to think it was a luxury to have the time to write. Now, however, my luxuries include sitting for more than two minutes at the table to eat a meal without being interrupted, showering, and going to the washroom.

The latter of these I believe, falls into the profound category.

So if you see a woman walking around the grocery store buying finger foods, with stringy hair and smudges of dirt on her face and with eyes bulging out of her sockets and her legs crossed, try not to point and laugh. It’s probably just a woman who’s missing summer camp.


by 2 Comments

Day 9 Prompt – My Favourite…

Day 9 Prompt – Write a Story in 250 words or less about your favourite City


by 33 Comments

Reading and Writing – is it ‘Rithmatic?

It all started with my romance writing course. The course was a requisite to acquiring the college certificate I’m after and I thought it would be fun to do anyway. Just to get a feel for the genre I went in search of novels to read that would cost me little or no money. Enter the freebies on my e-reader. Out of the ten or so I downloaded, two were well written – the rest, not so much. But I read them anyway. It was the general feeling I was going after, not the quality of writing.

At the same time I was finishing up the rough draft of my novel. That done, I started the editing process. In the meantime, the romance course finished and I went back to reading what I normally read. Well. I tell you.

After reading Stephen King (who, no matter whether you enjoy his stories or not, you must admit is a master of the craft of writing) I realised that my novel was right on par with the free romance crap I had been reading! Granted, I’m taking a grammar course now, so I’m finding mistakes I didn’t know were mistakes. But I still want to rewrite my entire manuscript.

I was amazed at how much influence what I read had on what I wrote. The time I spent describing things in minute detail instead of simply relating how my characters were reacting to things; the extra word count that came from blathering on about things that don’t matter is astounding.

I still have to cut down my word count by about 40,000 words in order for it to fit into even the most generous publisher’s limits, but I’m hoping with Stephen King’s influence I’ll be able to accomplish that. And from now on I must remember to keep away from authors I’m not interested in emulating whilst I write.

Oh! Oh! Can I play?

by 11 Comments

noughtsandcrosses (1)