Resting on my Laurels

Well I had such lovely feedback on my short story "A Strong Coffee and a Cigarette" that I began to rest on my laurels somewhat. So this morning, I had to force myself to write a new Morning Tale. I did it, but I know that it is nowhere near the standard of the last one. Still, I only do them to conjure up ideas and keep the creativity ticking over and of course, no one will read them unless I want them to. It's only practice and I'm sure that another one will just leap out of me again at some stage, but I've been a bit spoilt - "Coffee and Cigarette" was effortless - I wrote it in less than an hour and re-wrote it in less than half that time. Oh to be so lucky again! 

I have noticed that all my tales tend to be bleak and sad and very emotion centred. I don't know whether that is a good thing. Maybe, tomorrow I will try to write something light-hearted - that should be fun - I don't think I've ever written anything light-hearted in my life. Oh dear, what is that saying about me?

Anyhow, I will check the competition rules and their policy on publishing entries on a personal blog and if it doesn't violate the rules I will post "A Strong Coffee and a Cigarette" on my fiction pages here.

Watch this space!

New Fiction

I have just posted another piece of fiction, The Song of the Siren -  an excerpt from my never-ending novel!

The three excerpts that I've posted all come from one chapter entitled 'Horse Latitudes' - a sequence of disturbing dreams encountered whilst my protagonist is in a coma.  

Changes Afoot

As I seem to be getting a few people coming here and hopefully reading my blog rather than just arriving here by chance and then running away, screaming - I have decided to implement a few changes.

I set this up primarily as a show case for my writing and seem to have done precious little of that. So now, anything fictional will appear on separate pages - the titles of which will appear in the sidebar. Anyone who has actually read through the blog will recognise the ones that are already there, but I will endeavour to include more as soon as I can.

I promise!

Competitions and Rats!

Well that's it then! I've done it! I've just submitted my new short story to InkTears.com Short Story competition! OMG! I must admit I was very pleased with it - which, for me, is saying something. I am not very good at praising my own work. It's very difficult to hear your story in any other voice but your own - if you see what I mean, but I would be too shy to ask someone to read it aloud to me - in case it really did sound like an utter pile of shite! But The Lad read it and said it was "really good" which means he either genuinely liked it or he wanted something! The Significant Other read it and his immediate response was to ask a question about the ending, which I was thrilled about because obviously he was still thinking about the story after it had ended! He also said it was a nice piece of writing - never sure about the word "nice" though! And my lovely friend, gave me some useful feedback, said it was grand and was supportive, as ever. They do say that you should never ask opinions on your work from friends or family as they are likely to be biased and afraid of hurting your feelings - sometimes I just need my ego feeding!!! Fingers crossed for me - please!

There was a rat in a friend's garden today. It looked as though it was sunbathing. I was just helping out with a bit of weeding and was about to empty my bucket on the compost heap. I hate rats. I am also terrified of them. I dropped my bucket, having murmured a few choice expletives (in my shocked and distressed state - I'd never use language like that normally. Well not much anyway!) and rushed to my friend and The Significant Other, who happened to be there making a gate - all sweaty and panicky crying out "Rat! Rat!". They thought I'd gone a bit loopy, too much sunshine, perhaps! (We're not used to it!) My friend is like me, she hates them as well and it was left to the Significant Other to shoulder the shovel with which to smack it on the head and carry out the dastardly deed. He returned with the now lifeless but nonetheless, vile and intimidating creature balanced on the shovel looking very pleased with himself. I half expected him to drop it at my feet as a present as a cat might do. Thankfully, he didn't. I didn't go back to the weeding. We sat in the sun eating shortbread biscuits and drinking coffee whilst the deceased rat floated down the river to the sea!

How Does Your Garden grow?

This is a picture of my courgette plant taken at the beginning of July. I was very excited because it (and the other ten) looked so healthy and lush. Now here we are at the beginning of September and apart from two marrows (that were obviously too much of a challenge for the slugs!) I've been harvesting weedy little things, more akin to gherkins than sleek, long, well-shaped fruits! Why do they keep rotting at the flower end? All my books tell me it's down to slugs but I've put down pellets (organic, of course) and kept them weed free (well almost) and still they rot. I've tried pruning back the leaves so that they get more sunshine (a bit of a joke this summer!) and planting bee attracting companion plants to aid pollination - all to no avail. Could it be down to the amount of rainfall we've had this summer? No solution to that one, I guess, except to grow them inside the poly-tunnel - but I have no room. 

Most of my crops were very disappointing this year. We had to pull the potatoes early, for fear of blight and the onions, which are great but just a little too small. My broad bean harvest was meagre and short lived and as for my turnips, well they got mangled by Cabbage Root Fly! On the plus side though - my tomatoes seem to have picked themselves up and at last, the runner beans are coming. So all is not lost. I love growing vegetables but get very disheartened when things go wrong. 

I wrote another Morning Tale this morning. I think it is my best one yet and will be entering it into a competition. I had it completed in about three-quarters of an hour - well the bare bones anyway. I think I will re-write it this evening - maybe after University Challenge and Only Connect on T.V.! 

I am such a procrastinator!

Creativity

My morning tales are positively dripping from my pen! I am so happy. My main problem as a writer is finding ideas so it looks as though I've conquered that obstacle. Now, just from a sentence, the words just come and a (usually dark and sad) tale emerges. To be sure, they are just rough and need plenty of tweaking, but at least now I have things to work on and polish up and hopefully publish at some stage.

I wonder if it is just me whose brain is connected to a pen. If I try to type - nothing ever happens but put a pen in my hand, it just flows and the characters almost write themselves. This is what happens with my novel. My main character is so real to me (he lives in my head!) that he dictates how he is going to react to the situations I put him in. It's like magic. I wish this gift would make me some money soon though!

The teenager saga of the early hours of this morning went from bad to worse. Four more turned up at about 1.30 am and created noise and mayhem. They left at 2 am, just as I was descending the stairs to be really brave and chuck them out. The lad informed me that one of the girls had had too much to drink  (not in my house, thankfully) and had vomited outside my front door! I then spent the next ten minutes swilling down the pavement with buckets of water to clear the resultant mess. Just what you want to be doing at at 2 o'clock in the morning! I guess there's probably a short story in that too!

Teenagers

It's gone 1 o'clock in the morning and two teenage girls have just come to visit the lad! What do I do? I've told them that they have half an hour and then they have to go. Thank god, I have the bottle of wine up here in my room, at least they can't get drunk, unless - oh my god - they brought their own! I find it very difficult to know what is acceptable. The lad is a night owl and cannot understand other people's need for sleep. Is this my fault? Am I not firm enough? Or should I just go with the flow?

My Chemical Romance have it right when they say "Teenagers scare the living S**t out of me". 

When they're babies you can't wait for them to grow up and when they're teenagers you wish they were babies again.

One thing's for certain, my little biddable boy is no longer biddable!