More than Writers

On 28 December 2020, and again a few days ago on 29 January 2021, Trevor Thorn posted about experiences of Christmas during lockdown.  He set all we More Than Writers contributors a challenge, to record this strange Christmas for future generations and to identify the ways in which it was unique.  My husband and I spent Christmas by ourselves.  We would’ve much preferred to have spent it with family, and had made plans to meet with our daughter and family on Boxing Day, but then Boris made his announcement and we were resigned to being just two.  After a mad rush to send presents by Hermes, suddenly Christmas was less work and less frenetic.  Husband and I watched Midnight Mass and Christmas Day services online.  We WhatsApped son and Zoomed daughter.  We walked around our village in the cold damp air and looked in wonder at the flooded river. Present-opening took just a few minutes.  We were fine, just fine. Then I received a text from my frie...

As I was thinking about Details for my extra blog a few weeks ago, I thought about story details. I find it hard to add details to books, for I can picture the scene. To add colours, smells and sounds to my story has to be done deliberately. There are small comments or accidents, that can swing an entire book around. As a pantser, I don’t normally plan my book. Little things happen, taking me by surprise, steering the book in an unexpected direction. This time, I have started a project that is reasonably planned, and therefore in the past tense. It’s totally different for me, and I’m enjoying the plotting and planning involved. I can see little twists coming up, things that will change the story or the outcome. It isn’t planned in great detail; there is still enough freedom for my characters to keep me wondering what they will do next. At home as a child, one of my favourite books was a history book called, The way God’s Finger Writes (something like that. Details are a pain when trans...

What do you like most about writing? What aspect of writing gives you the most joy?  I’ve always loved inventing characters. For my flash fiction, this is almost continuous. Generally it is one character per story and I’m writing a fair number of stories in a year!  What do you enjoy most about writing? Pixabay   Some stories I hope will make it into my next collection. Others I will submit to places like CafeLit or Paragraph Planet .  Still others I will put aside and consider for competitions such as the ones that crop up in Writing Magazine . Their 500 and 750 word story competitions may not officially be designated as flash competitions but it is what they are! So I like, as much as possible, to have something ready I could polish and submit for things like that.  Inventing characters is one of my great writing joys. Pixabay   I also use flash fiction for some of my Facebook posts if I want to illustrate a point I want to make about writing.  So g...

   IT - The big IT of the year is already a month past. How do you remember it? Was it a relief amidst the gloom? Was it a day that emphasised the 'Winter of Isolation’? Was it a unique celebration that brought a thankfulness for a quiet day to reflect on ‘The True Meaning of Christmas? In my last ACW spot on 28th December, I suggested that as a sort of federation of writers, it would be good if we could capture our thoughts of the way this unique Christmas (we hope) had played out for us. It wasn’t intended that the exercise should be co-ordinated in any way but that we used our writing skills to simply record the nature of the day so that in years to come we had a touchstone to remind us of little details to tell friends and possibly younger relations how it had been. A sort of one-day journal really. Having made the suggestion, I turned my hand to the task with some gratitude that my preferred genre is poetry and if possible at least a touch of humour. However, a couple of ...

I am in a somewhat barren place at present, rather like the fields in the middle of winter.  Lots of gungy mud, dirty brown grass and stark trees in the distance.  As I sat at the computer to write my blog, I thought, where does my inspiration come from?  I so need to be inspired.  My thoughts are so sluggish and heavy.  Inspiration please come to me! Inspiration?  What is it really?   A voice booming from the Heavenlies? A light turning my darkness to day? A sudden urge to take up my pen and words flowing without thought or plan? A story line or article theme just dropping into my consciousness? Is it a happening in my everyday suddenly being outlined in florescent yellow like the speaker square in Zoom?  Or something that I need to dig deep for, delving in the innards of my mind and heart to find something Precious, Illuminating, Life giving, Wondrous? Inspiration.  We all seek it but what is it really we are looking for?  Does it...

One of the things I have been missing most during the lockdown and the ongoing restrictions is singing with my brothers and sisters in church services. There is something about corporate sung worship that I really love. Music and singing help me to draw close to God. I love to sing about my love for him, to worship him in that way. The right tune combined with the right words can be truly awesome! Worship, of course, is more than just singing. Worship is what we do with the whole of our lives. Everything we do, say and think should be an expression of our worship to God. But there is something special about sung worship – something powerful about gospel truths put to music. At an online prayer meeting last week, we read together the words of a well-known worship song. (Not quite the same as singing them, but I wasn’t about to do that on Zoom!) It led into a beautiful time of prayer and worship.  Now, of course, song lyrics do not replace Scripture. That goes without saying....

 I've just finished the latest book by Canon Andrew White (alias Vicar of Baghdad),  Glory Zone in the War Zone . Awesome! It reads like a sequel to the book of Acts. Some of you will know the backstory: how Andrew worked in surgery at St Thomas's Hospital before undertaking ordination as an anglican priest. Then came the devastating diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Before long he was considered unfit for parish duties in the UK. But Andrew had been impacted by the words of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggin; that 'take care' was bad advice in God's economy and 'take risks' more appropriate. From early childhood various people had spoken prophetic words over him and his own inner sense of calling was profound. This led to a passion for the Middle East, Israel and Judaism. The book opens with an account of the Bethlehem siege in 2002 when Andrew received urgent calls from such diverse people as Rabbi Michael Melchior, Yasser Arafat and the Arc...

Do you suffer from knee jerk reactions?  When a particular subject is mentioned, do you unthinkingly respond to it in a habitual and dismissive way? I was led to consider this topic as a result of reading a novel on Google Books. What a great resource that is! For free, you can read almost any book published before about 1923, on your tablet or laptop, and very often in the original edition. But to get to my point: for reasons I needn't go into (connected with Tolkien) I decided to read John Inglesant by J. H. Shorthouse, published in 1881. In its day it was a best seller. The author was even invited to lunch by the Prime Minister.  You and I would never even try to write such a book today. While in outward form it’s a historical novel set in the days of Charles I and afterwards, in essence and intention it’s the tale of John Inglesant’s spiritual journey. Curiously, although he’s a Protestant and greatly attracted to the spirituality of the Little Gidding community, he’s rec...

  Learning from Alpha: Back to Basics by Rebecca Seaton   There’s nothing like coming back to where you began for a bit of perspective. I’ve recently started helping with an Alpha course a little over twenty years since the one where I became a Christian. One of the things I really like about Alpha is that it goes back to basics: Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is Christianity? Whether a tentative explorer of Christianity or an experienced Christian, there is something vital about getting to grips with the key points. The same can be said for our writing. What are the basics of your story? It’s so easy to get bogged down. Years ago, I co-wrote a play with a friend and I was very keen that the actors really knew their characters. My co-writer, however, did sometimes have to point out the importance of plot (much more his forte than mine) and the fact that perhaps Carlo’s back story as a turnip farmer wasn’t integral to the main action. It’s all too easy to get carried away...

  On Tuesday evening, I received an email which began, ‘Thank you for your truly inspirational books.’ At the time it was sent, I was at (or in? I’m not sure of online terminology!) a Bible study, where we were looking at Exodus 17. As I was discussing the chapter about Moses’ hands being lifted, in encouragement and support, I later realised I had also received encouragement and support. ‘Thank you for your truly inspirational books.’ As writers, we often lock ourselves away and write, then we hope people read what we produce, but we don’t always know how our writing is received. Feedback is a wonderful thing. As I read the email further, I was overwhelmed. The next line read, ‘they (the books) have kept me going through lockdown.’ The email went on to say that the sender works in the care sector. Frontline. At the start of lockdown, there was a clear message, ‘if you stay at home, you’re helping.’ I duly cancelled events, or had them cancelled, shut myself awa...

"...Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you welcome me..."                            Matthew 25:34-35     I have been making pizzas as above for the past....ooo 50 years!  My latest writing project is to publish simple, tasty and nutritional recipes developed from years of keeping many different people healthy while living with us.  Last March many will know I felt led by the Lord to start a daily blog entitled: 'Food for Thought' which began with episodes, steps and then keys within a story.  It was my spiritual manna, and I hope for others too. Each series ran in conjunction with the three lockdowns and finished in December.  I considered anothe...

I decided at the beginning of the year I was not going to waste any more time. I couldn't bear the thought of days and weeks going by with little writing progress being made, unless there is a deadline - like these monthly posts for example. I watched a New Year Planning workshop on Facebook with Orna Ross of ALLi and Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn . Their determination and enthusiasm was not so much a breath of fresh air, as a bucket of cold water. At first it was a shock, but it was also reviving and refreshing. They knew where they were going, what was happening the following week and month. All I knew was I had to write this for today.   "I can't start until I have these." These ladies are organised, and I thought, THAT IS IT! I am going to get organised too. That was two weeks ago... Every time I went to start my planning, I got the heebie geebies! I would lie to myself and say I needed more time to think. Then I figured what I needed was markers, lots of mark...

  When I was six years old, I set up a little lemonade stand in the front of my house. It didn’t take long before neighbours started coming up to the stand and buying lemonade from me. They drank glass after glass and chatted about how they had their own stands once upon a time.I enjoyed this experience of listening, selling and chatting with friends and their parents. I decided to carry on after lunch. Eventually, around four in the heat of a Virginia afternoon; I shut up shop.  At dinner with my family that night, I received praises from my dad. “What an entrepreneur we have in the family! Well done, Kathy!”  I just beamed.  At the other end of the dinner table though, was my mother who was (as the British say) on her chin strap. She had been actually making the lemonade all day and had got nothing else done in her efforts in keeping up with my sales. She was exhausted!  In addition, I had no thought as to how much the lemons had cost, or the sugar. No wages w...

This week, a friend introduced me to a new music album by Chris Tomlin – “Chris Tomlin and Friends.” It turned out to be a brilliant, mellow antidote to the stress of the second week of remote teaching and remote learning that has blighted the peace of the Tennant household. One of the songs, “Tin Roof,” speculates about what heaven might be like, including the idea in the title that it might be like “rain on a tin roof.” I have to say, last time I experienced that sound, it was in a caravan in Devon, accompanied by 50 mph gusts of wind, so I’m not yet reconciled to the idea of this being heavenly. An extensive survey, however (two family members and three colleagues), confirmed that, my post-traumatic stress aside, rain on a tin roof is, indeed, a sound worthy to be included in eternity. Other ideas in the song that struck me were “Maybe the sun don’t set,” (we’ll forgive his grammar here, in the interests of scansion and a chilled reggae groove) and “…and the waters don’t rise,” – fo...