More than Writers

One of my favourite restaurants in the Netherlands was called “Rust een Weinig”, Rest A Little. Such a quaint place, amazing food, lovely name.(Now closed, no rest for the wicked, obviously). Today NaNoWriMo ends, the National Novel Writing Month has come to an end for another year. This year wasn’t as stressful as last year, I’m not as writing-exhausted. Last year, I swapped projects halfway through the month. I had started off with a story set in Venice. Somehow, I struggled to get words into chapters, the story was boring me to tears. I suddenly realised that there was no law that said I had to write the Venice story. It was just something in myself, feeling I would be a failure for giving up, that made me sit down every evening, dragging myself through another chapter. So, mid November I started on the sequel to Walled City. It was a story I had really looked forward to writing, and the words just came. By the 30 th , I was 50,000 words into Beyond The Hills, loving it. I was als...

I have “done” NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. Why “done”? Why the speech marks?! Well, for a start, I’m not writing a novel! Secondly, I’m not worried about word count. (Given I’m a flash fiction writer, that makes a refreshing change!). If I write 50,000 words in November fabulous. (Mind you, if you add up my Chandler’s Ford Today posts, and my other writing, I would reach that target). Setting a goal and the pace at which you achieve it is important. Pixabay   Thirdly, because of the above, I’ve not signed up to the official website. Just as well, I hear you cry. What I am doing is using November to focus on a non-fiction project I have had in mind for a while and which I know needs restructuring, as well as new material added.    I've found setting my own writing project and word count achievement incredibly helpful. Pixabay   I think I am honouring the spirit of NaNoWriMo. I have got a project and a target. I have been following with interest the comments...

I’ll tell the story about this sketch of a Fireball  at the end of this post but first... In August, I promised to give some sort of evaluation of the effect of posting a daily themed series on a personal blog. My promotional method is to post a ‘pointer’ to a blog entry on Facebook and Twitter most days, although never on Sunday. These posts are available to anyone, but because they are in the main about science and faith, I do not allow any comment as I suspect I might become the target of zealous Biblical literalists and equally zealous atheists. In addition, I am part of four FB groups with a Christian focus. These groups have between 2 - 300 and 3500 (one group) members. I chose to run this experiment throughout Creationtide. This is the 34 day period designated within most mainstream churches to celebrate the wonders of our planet and our responsibility towards it. It starts on 1st September and ends on St Francis’ Day, 4th October. My contributions broadly follow that theme,...

It's important to take note of the glimpses of life that so easily pass us by.  To see something that we may not otherwise have seen; to choose to stop, to pause life's track; to dare to look and wonder. My friend Kim was shopping.  On her way back to her car she glanced through a hole in the car park hedge. Normally she would have just seen a view of the river; but at that particular moment, she saw a boat lined up exactly in the centre of her peep-hole.   Perfectly framed. A divine pause Just a glimpse A cause for conjecture Where was the boat heading?  Who was on board?  Were they happy, on an adventure?  Or were they sad or even trying to escape? She had a perfect glimpse which led to wonder and out of that wonder a photo which I too gazed at and in my turn wondered and created a story Life offers us such glimpses all the time. Glimpses that will, if we let them, reach deep within and empower us. not just to be imaginative in our writing, but to li...

My family was recently picked up by Test and Trace as having been in contact with COVID-19, so we had to self-isolate for two weeks. Being at home and unable to go out didn’t feel particularly strange – I guess we’d got used to it after so many months. What did feel strange, though, was waiting to see whether any of us would come down with the virus. Waiting. It’s not always an easy thing to do, is it? Yet life calls us to wait for so many things – big things, little things, and mid-sized things. We wait for public transport, or wait in the doctor’s or hospital waiting room for our appointment. We wait for test or exam results. We wait for special days – weddings, birthdays, anniversaries. Sometimes we wait in joyful anticipation – such as for a wedding or other celebration. At other times we wait in fear or anxiety – did I pass or fail the exam? What will the result of the blood test be? How did I do in the interview; did I get the job? Waiting is part of the writer’s life, too....

Fed up with Covid as it tips us further into isolation once more?  We should have been sitting in a remote Northumbrian cottage today (with sea at the bottom of the garden) instead of looking out on lockdown Leeds. Terry Waite has suggested via social media that we stop moaning – it could be worse. He should know! And there's other negative comfort around, like the facebook post with tips for survival: 1) Don't watch the news. 2) Don't get on the bathroom scales. But in spite of how it might feel, God is still around and there is one piece of news that offers a clue. Have you heard of the Eternal Wall of answered prayer; the national monument twice as big as the Angel of the North coming to Coleshill next year here ? It's not only that North Warwickshire planning council gave unanimous consent to this 'in your face' Christian monument, expected to be seen by half a million journeys each week. The story behind the vision inspires me beyond words. God delights in ...

  Back in the 1970s, my dad used to contribute short reviews of popular science books to a monthly literary magazine. Looking through those copies of this magazine, which I still have, is like going back into a forgotten world. The magazine was called books and bookmen (they always wrote it with lower-case initials). Bookmen! Such a title would be impossible today. And indeed, men were the main contributors. In the December 1973 issue, for example, of the 45 authors of articles listed on the title page, 3 were women. 6%! And this was matched by expressions and attitudes. For example, a certain Audrey Williamson complains in a letter to the editor that ‘Prof. Rowse assumes I cannot read’. The magazine prints A. L. Rowse’s rejoinder: ‘I did not say that the lady cannot read; I said, she was in no position to judge.’ The lady! But then Rowse was born in 1903. books and bookmen was highly regarded, and the contributors included some of the most famous people of the time: not only wri...

  Foreshadowing  by Rebecca Seaton Ominous? What is foreshadowing? Foreshadowing is a warning or indication of future events. It’s hints or clues at things that will happen later in a story, often symbolically. It’s the subtle hint that makes sense later on. Why bother to do it? This strategy engage our reader and credits them with a bit of brain power as developments become evident over time. It should be noted that this relies on using commonly understood events, symbols etc. The real goal, I think, of foreshadowing, is to create the perfect ‘Oh, of course!’ moment at the end of the book. This is particularly easy to explain in crime fiction, although it applies to other genres too. When the crime novel ends with a big reveal (Commonly the identity of the murderer but sometimes other secrets coming to light), we don’t want the reader to think, ‘Well, duh!’ because that means our writing has been too obvious, we haven’t foreshadowed anything, we’ve hit them over the h...

  On 12 November, I had the privilege of attending the online book launch for A Beautiful Tapestry, by Tracy Williamson with Marilyn Baker. I was not asked to plug the book here, but I am choosing to, because it’s a great book. Have a look, and you can watch the launch, too: A Beautiful Tapestry Book Launch During the day, before the launch in the evening, my internet decided that it didn’t really want to work. I really needed it to work, at least briefly that evening, as I had been asked to say a few words. So I sent out a few texts – and emails if I caught the internet at the right time – asking people to pray the internet would play ball. Prayers were answered, and the internet remained connected for my little slot. A few days later, Tracy and I were chatting, and she asked what I’d thought of the slide show of photos at the end of the launch. I had to confess that I hadn’t seen it. You might suppose, from what I said above, that my internet had given up by that po...

"David was greatly distressed, for the men spoke of stoning him  because the souls of them all were bitterly grieved,  each man for his sons and daughters.  But David encouraged and strengthened himself  in the Lord his God."                                                              1 Samuel 30:6   How do we encourage ourselves?  David used praise and worship and the words of this Psalm would seem appropriate to his situation above, and ours now. The music here might have been God inspired, but obviously not David's tune!!  For me, starting  " Food for Thought " my daily blog in the first lockdown kept me inspired and encouraged.  With daily publishing of the third series coinciding when this lockdown began, my hope is this will encourage the reader to st...

  After hearing Paul Kerensa at the  ACW Zoom event in October, I decided to sign up for his six-week online course. Paul has such an engaging and generous nature; it really was a joy to listen to him each week. There over twenty of us at the opening session. Paul invited us to introduce ourselves and he gave an overview of what the course would entail. He was very interested to hear what the participants wanted to get out of the course and was happy to tailor it as the weeks went by. Session 2 was about Character & Relationships – finding a character’s funny and/or testing their limits. Then using the connection between different characters to bring those traits out. There was also a discussion about characters in non-fiction. I’m writing memoir but had not thought of myself as a ‘character’ in the story. That’s going to be so helpful as I continue editing. Sessions 3 and 4 were about Story Structure – we spent these two sessions discussing the various different ve...

Thanksgiving No Matter What   Colossians 3:17  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.   She is so young, and of great courage, my daughter in law.  Coming into our family of many cultures, she inspires me. You see, she is English-English. In our family of Irish-American, Russian-English, German-English, American-English and a few others which my leaving out could cause an argument or two, having one passport is a novelty.   This daughter in love has an incredible gift of valuing other cultures. She WANTS to make Thanksgiving dinner for my son and her to enjoy. She really does want to learn my grandmother’s recipes for the day. We’ve even confessed that no one really liked my mother’s turkey gravy but that we never had the courage to talk about it this side of her going to heaven. I’ve saved the recipe due to my mom ( a magazine editor) writing it out in her beautiful han...

Did you hear the wonderful news story, last month, about the huge art installation in the Netherlands that caught a train that had overshot the end of its tracks? The stop blocks somehow failed to do what they said on the tin and the whole of the first carriage (containing the driver, at the end of his shift) ended up dangling over the end section of the track. Here’s where the art installation came in. Aptly named, according to some sources, “Saved by the Whale’s Tail,” the enormous sculpture, placed there some twenty years previously, found itself supporting a whole carriage of the precarious metro train, preventing it from plummeting thirty-three feet to the ground beneath. (There are no copyright-free images that I can post here, but have a look at this link and others for some fascinating pictures). Something about that story captured my imagination. Here was a piece of art that had brought enjoyment to passers-by for twenty years. Maarten Struijs, its creator, may have envisag...