Archive for Writing

April 2013 Writing Update

April 30, 2013 Writing No comments

writing promps creative fiction fountain pen writingFirstly, a big apology because I have only just realised that I completely neglected to write Marchs writing update. Mind you I was just about to go on holiday so I guess I can be forgiven for having my mind elsewhere. So, I suppose this should be more of a two month update.

If you want to acquaint yourself with the previous update you can read it here or you can read all the updates here. Oh, and my 2013 writing objectives are here.

Now, I believe that most of my updates are along the lines of ‘Oh, I didn’t really do this’ or ‘I was having difficulty with this’ well this time I am going to try to do things differently. Celebrating the successes and not dwelling on the stuff that may not have gone so well.

So since the last time I updated you what has happened?

But it’s all the things that don’t have an objective for them that I am feeling best about. I have started a new project, a locked room mystery, and I am really enjoying it. It’s getting all the right parts of my brain going again. Rather than an intensive world building session I am finding the joy in research; grappling hooks, hallucinogenic plants and police procedures are just three of the things I’ve had a look at. It feels good to get everything going again, rather than feeling stuck in the creative mire.

Secondly, I am still going to the gym. I think I briefly mentioned this in February’s update. Thanks to a fairly intensive (for me) regime I am the lightest I have been for at least a decade, my strength, my lung capacity and my general level fitness has improved no end. So I am feeling immensely proud of this, after all how many times do you get to drill two more holes into your belt because it is now too big for you.

I passed my theory test (the second time) I aced the hazard test, but how could I not it’s just like a computer game. I am almost ready to take my practical test, but that one’s a little scarier and I am not quite confident enough to take that one yet.

There is still an incredible amount for me to do, I hope to build up the courage to write and send an article off to a magazine. Something which is taking for more courage than I would have thought initially, I also need to get my head down with the course and do my gods honest best to spend my time more wisely.

It’s a short update, but a positive one. There is plenty more writing for me to do, and I just need to keep the pace and plod on, after all I may get a job soon and then where would all this lovely free time go.

Hope everything is going well with you.

Backbenching the WIP and Writing Something New

April 21, 2013 Novel Writing, Writing 4 comments

Blood dagger knife murder drips dropsThere are many rules of being a writer, the most obvious being that you must of course be writing something to be a writer. Another rule fairly near the top of the list is that you must always finish the story you’re trying to tell.

If you begin writing something you should get to the end of it no matter what, otherwise you could be starting a dangerous precedent in which you never actually finish anything you start to write. It’s a sound piece of advice, and one that I have sincerely tried to stick to, but I am afraid that just this once I am going to have to break this near cardinal of rules.  The current story is going to be put on hold, on-hiatus, I’m taking a break etc. Read more

Flash Fiction: Phenomena

April 14, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 4 comments

flash fiction ufo chryssalid alien attackThis week’s flash fiction challenge by Terribleminds.com follows on from the previous weeks challenge. The previous weeks challenge was to write a corker of an opening line. Chuck Wendig would then choose the lines that he thought were the best. Well this week, we have to use one of those opening lines as a starter for a piece of flash fiction. Any genre, any style, but it has to be less than 1000 words as.

The line I chose to start with, well it’s kinda obvious as it is the first line but I will write it here as well out of a sense of completion.

“My brother’s birth was preceded by three distinct and inexplicable phenomena.”

You see what I did with it? Well, I hope you like it and feel free to add a comment or two.

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More Writing Prompts and Ideas

March 24, 2013 Fiction, Writing No comments

writing prompts creative fiction fountain pen writingWriting Prompts are useful. There we go, a very obvious statement to open up with. Especially for those times when you want to write a piece of flash fiction or a short story, maybe even a whole novel if it is a particular empty Sunday afternoon, but your inspiration has deserted you and you just don’t know what to write about.

I wrote a post a few months back (Creative Writing Prompts and Exercises) that listed ten ways of flooding your mind with new writing ideas. Is ten ideas really enough? Does my list of ten writing prompts cover every single possible way? You bet your ass it doesn’t, which is why I’m going to list even more for you here.

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Flash Fiction: Cube Route

March 23, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 4 comments

flash fiction library booksWell, I’m still trying to get back into a regular writing routine, and the flash fiction challenges hosted at Terribleminds.com are a damn good way of doing it. The challenge this week was to take five from a given list of ten words and write a piece of fiction in which those words are the main elements. This time I can’t just crowbar a word or phrase in, they have to be elements of the story.

I chose the following words:

  • Storm
  • Cube
  • Ethereal
  • Undertaker
  • Library

I’ve gotten a bit out of practice with these flash fiction challenges so if you do read this and have the sudden urge to leave a comment it would be graciously received (providing it is graciously written of course) and very helpful.

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Flash Fiction: Inspiration

March 13, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 3 comments

abandoned factory industrial building ruin Ok, so it has been way too long since I have posted anything, especially flash fiction. This is due to two things. Firstly, I have been having some major concentration issues with the release of Simcity. I’ve been finding it difficult to focus on anything except increasing the efficiency of my mass transport network in my gambling town. Secondly, whenever I have dragged my ass out of the pit I’m in to write, I have been trying to write bits of my novel instead.

So, I sit here in a well-known coffee shop franchise far away from my computer so I have no excuse not to get some writing done, and hoorah I’ve done it. It may be a little rough around the edges but I don’t think it is too bad. I’m trying to work on that whole description thing which I’ve heard is quite important for telling tales and writing fiction.

Any who, this week’s flash fiction from Terribleminds.com is to randomly generate a sentence (from here) and use it in your flash fiction entry of no more than 1000 words. Well, I clicked a few times (I was allowed up to 10 clicks) and I got this…

“The researcher burns the rabid musician?”

I have to be honest I kinda side-stepped the use of the sentence because I didn’t want to write something about rabid musicians being burned.

Well, here it is. Hope you enjoy and you feel the need to comment. Hopefully good, but bad’s welcome too just keep it constructive.

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February 2013 Writing Update

February 28, 2013 Writing 2 comments

jim franklin work in progress updateIt’s that time of the month. It’s time for me to look over the past 28 days and update y’all on just how well I am doing towards achieving all my objectives; an opportunity for me to describe in great length the massive echelons I have traversed in such a relatively short period. Yet this was not the month for great leaps in productivity, as far as my goals go, I have not done a great deal.

In fact the grand total of everything I have achieved in February consists of:

  • 2 pieces of flash fiction
  • 1 book read

However despite what looks to be a tremendous lack of productivity, I have not being sitting on my hands. The exact opposite in fact. (Sitting on somebody elses hands? Hands sitting on you?) OK, not the exact opposite in literal terms, but I have been very active. For those who read this post (It was one of the only three posts I wrote in February) you’ll know that I am hitting the Gym (again not literally, I have better things to do than physically assault a place of exercise). It is all this exercise business that has thrown my otherwise routine existence into chaos. New schedule aside, I am enjoying going I just haven’t got into a routine so it’s a bit more time-consuming than I would like.

So I may not have hit many objectives this month, but I am still feeling pretty good about myself. After all, it is alright for goals to change. Saying that I don’t want to make a habit of using it as an excuse, there are plenty more hours in the day to write in.

Recently, I have noticed that I’m suffering from FAE. For those not in the business of made-up psychological illnesses, FAE is Friend Achievement Envy. I have started to notice just how many people are achieving things (Jo at TheHappyLogophile.com completed the first draft of her novel, another friend of mine is planning to climb K2 or some other insanely large mountain, and I have just received a Facebook invitation to go to a play that another friend of mine is directing, and there’s other stuff too). Now I do want to make it clear that I am not bitter or hostile, I think what they are achieving is fantastic and the results are certainly a testament to all the hard work they have put in to get there. One day it will be me, proudly claiming that has taking real work to produce, but it seems for the time being my own achievements are a little further away.

One day, I’ll get my chance but it can only happen once I have learned to commit myself to something, and stay focused…

…it might be a long road but March is a whole new month. Wish me luck.

Flash Fiction: Devil’s Advocaat

February 19, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing No comments

Advocaat bottleThe gist of this week’s flash fiction is to take something from my own life and re-tell it by pushing it through the Magic Fictionising Machine. The first thing that occurred to me was that nothing at all interesting or in any way noteworthy has happened to me in my entire life.  I quickly shook away this rather absurd thought. I’ve been alive for over 32 years something interesting will most certainly have happened.  I just needed to think what it was.

I struggled over this for hours, until my brain got bored with stressing about it. So instead, I did my usual trick…

‘Just think of something; anything that I can write about and go from there. Maybe it will turn out OK once that writing machine has had its literary way with it.’

My brain whirred and clicked into action, it was too soon after brushing my teeth to consider having another coffee so I was on my own with this one. Then it came to me, there’s a rite of passage that everyone goes through; something that not only defines you as an adult but also dictates most of your teenage life. Today I’m going to re-tell the story of the first time I drank a little more than any normal person should.

So here we go. Hope you enjoy it, if not… well it’s keeping me busy. Oh and in lieu of the comments for the previous flash fiction I will be taking my sweet time and checking it through thoroughly. Read more

Flash Fiction: Terminus

February 10, 2013 Contest Entries, Fiction, Writing 10 comments

This weeks flash fiction is based around these rather spectacular Russian photos, and some of them are pretty goddamn weird. I advise everyone to have a look at them, and just try to imagine the crazy-ass circumstances that would have led to that photo being taken. Anyway, the Terribleminds.com flash fiction challenge requires me to choose one of those photo’s and use it as inspiration for a piece of flash fiction of no more than 1000 words.

I chose this fantastic image…

russian photo number 17

…and used it to come up with this. I hope you like it, and want to click the little like button at the bottom or even better leave me a comment packed full of free and useful advice. :)

Thanks for reading.

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January 2013′s Writing Update

January 31, 2013 Novel Writing, Writing 5 comments

writing updates 2013It has been near-as-dammit one month since I wrote my objectives for 2013, a relatively long list of thirty-four things that I had to achieve before the fireworks went off for 2014′s New Year. These updates did use to be quarterly, but I figured the longer it is between the updates the more likely it is that time will just run away with me. So monthly updates it is then…

If you want to refresh yourself with my targets you can look here, if you have memorized them all then you don’t need to check but that is one scarily-high level of commitment for minor details you have there. You’re not the one going through my bins at the dead of night are you…?

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