#sundayblogshare – Writing and Works

Myth Lost Lover

They carved a mirror out of shadows when you died,

just to pull your reflection from it,

held the silhouette up like a man

full formed and walking

despite the brittleness in his limbs

when he reached for anything other

than the stories they planted inside his mouth

like the kisses I used to keep there

when the world receded with the tides

on blue moons and snowy days in June.

I alone knew that you did not smile in that way.

I alone knew the curve of your mouth

was remade backwards,

the bend of your nose lost beneath legends,

a scar on your palm,

no longer than the width of one finger

healed by their songs.

If we had laid together I would not recognize the man they’d forged,

even your eyes changed colour

in the light of their voices.

In the end I had to learn to let them keep you

this other version of you,

that I did not own,

and I did not know.

Daily Prompt: Famous (Also inspired by Madeline Miller’s ‘The Song of Achilles)

Nightmare Before Christmas – Surviving The Weekend

Good Afternoon lovely readers. This week we’re still on spiced apple cider instead of tea and coffee I’m afraid. There are six bottles of the stuff still in the kitchen and I’m trying to judge if they’re anywhere close to going off? I don’t suppose you fancy taking one home with you?

This weekend has been something of a trying one and no, I’m afraid I’m not talking about the Tim Burton movie though I will have to watch that at some point in the coming week. This weekend has been a nightmare for some much more mundane reasons.

Firstly, I managed to smash my passenger side wing mirror on Friday evening, we came home to find one of the fish trapped in the tank filter [it proceeded to die the following day], Fiancee accidentally doused the kitchen in soapy water after trying to clean the blender without putting the lid on, and upon pouring water from the kettle into a mug for a relaxing cup of tea to recover from all this, the mug cracked in half.

Things have not been going my way.

But on the bight side, walking in to find the kitchen and my fiancee covered in water was fairly amusing so I might have to count that on the other side of the tally. The blender was on the stop/start setting so it went off again after he thought he’d managed to switch it off.

Luckily, no Christmas decorations were harmed in the process.

Last night I managed to turn things around on the writing front somewhat. I’m finally getting over the stomach bug which struck mid-week and I wrote part three of Solitary Creatures : Monsters Love A Church.

‘Well we’re not dealing with Ancients just yet are we hmmm? We’re dealing with something that’s stirring up the Ancients and that’s a whole different kettle of fish because we both know how uppity those bastards are and let’s be honest, it doesn’t take that much to get them muttering in their sleep.’

‘It takes a massive natural disaster, like the one that killed the dinosaurs.’

‘We that’s a bit of an exaggeration if you ask me,’ Edwin shrugged. ‘They’ve made themselves known now and again in the meantime.’

‘There have only been four recorded incidents of the Ancients showing signs of waking,’ growled Sammy. ‘All of them have preceded death tolls that totalled in the millions. Whatever it is that’s got them uppity is bad news and that isn’t an exaggeration.’

Edwin tutted and shook his head. ‘Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. What will I do with you?’ …[Continued]

Unfortunately it looks like I’ve lost of the momentum that I built with the blog a few months ago and my daily stats are lucky to spike above twenty recently so despite getting down to some writing I’m aware that things are now how I want them to be. I need to get things back on track.

With 2017 just around the corner I’m starting to make plans for what I want to get done in the new year. January and February will be pretty much dedicated to finishing my AAT qualification but for the rest of the year I want my writing and blog to come first. That means using the next couple of weeks to line up some posts for those two months so focusing on my studies won’t turn Writing and Works into an abandoned husk with tumble weeds bouncing through the posts again.

Solitary Creatures looks like it will become a running series for 2017. I feel like it’s got more body to it than Headquarters and there is the opportunity to work some of my older flash fictions into it as I progress. I’m really looking forward to bringing back some works from a few years ago such as a piece of flash fiction from July 2014 called Mist.

“We don’t enjoy being summoned by your kind Grail.” Pulling herself from the mist Merida pressed her fingers to the rickety table-top of the patio furniture and leaned in. “We are not your servants,” she warned.

Grail lowered his morning coffee and pushed it away. It had turned cold the moment the mist crept into his garden. “Why do they always send you,” he frowned. “Is there no one else?”

“No one at all,” said Merida, scowling impatiently. “ The council is less than forgiving when it comes to your crimes.” … [Continued]

Aside from that there isn’t much to tell you this week.

Let me know what your plans are for the new year. Is it time for a revamp on your blog? Are you having another crack as last year’s resolutions? Will this be the year that you finally get on and write that blook/short story/play?

Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Shadow Dawn – Wading Through The Middle Ground

I’ve heard it said that middle of a book is the hardest bit to write and right about now, that seems pretty accurate. In fact it’s pretty flipping complicated

That said, I am making progress on my novel and the real reason why I haven’t been making more is because I haven’t been sitting down to write it very much. Instead I’ve gone off to watch T.V, browse the internet, play computer games or as I’m doing now, write blog posts instead.

The main problem is that I’m too distracted my new shiny ideas for stories and poems. I end up chasing those brain bubbles instead of focusing on the complicated mess that is the middle of my story and because of that, the middle hasn’t really been written yet. I have the beginning, I have the end, I just need the middle.

What’s annoying is that the middle should be really good! There are lots of conflict points that can come into play, but whenever I sit down to write it I realise that I’ve shot myself in the foot a little bit.

It took writing the first draft to realise where I wanted the plot to go. My first draft was sort of missing and middle. This means I need to go back and sort out the start, so I can then write the middle, so I can redraft the end.

Make any sense?

I have decided on a deadline however. I want to have the current re-draft finished by the end of October, in time for NaNoWriMo. That’s because this year I want to get stuck into Novemeber with a brand new story, one that I haven’t tried to write as a novel before. This will also give me a month away from Shadow Dawn so I can go back after November and start on the next set of edits before sending it out to readers to get some feedback.

Me being me though, means that this plan could quite easily go out of the window and never be seen again.

Redrafting has left me feeling quite good though. For example, I’ve been working on and off on chapter three for most of the day. It looks nothing like it did originally despite still having the same sequence of events taking place. It feels a lot better though. I’ve gone back through and cut out all those little bits that twinged in the back of my head and tried to write them in a different way. It sometimes took four or five goes and I had to come back over and over to some parts, but the chapter has benefited from me not going ‘oh well, that will do.’

It’s still not finished but I feel like it’s a lot closer to being finished than first thing this morning.

I’m getting there and that’s what matter.

Let me know about your writing tribulations in the comments below. Have you got your own novel that you’re working on or perhaps it’s a piece of poetry of flash fiction that you keep coming back to over and over again. Is it the beginning, middle or end that trips you up or does it all come up the same?

Until the next post!

via Daily Prompt: Complicated

A Not So Lazy Sunday Afternoon

For those of us living in the UK, today is the perfect day for a little stroll round and about in the beautiful sunshine. For once the weathermen have come through and we have indeed got glorious, warm, sunny weather. The English are busy peering past their nets to see what strange happening is taking place outside their windows because heavens above, shorts! Last week it was snow and hail and now we have people walking around in short and crop tops, dusting themselves with sun screen.

That is part of what I love about the British weather, it is totally unpredictable and just because one week is one way, that doesn’t mean the next will be the same.

So for me, this afternoon will be spent sat out in my garden, enjoying the sunshine and sipping a little wine while I try to write the two key chapters for what is left of the current redraft of the novel. Yesterday turned out to be a super productive day and just past midnight I went to bed with 4,000 words under my belt taking the total word-count up to 64,000 for the draft. Today I want to get another couple of chapters written and I’ve got a poem that needs writing for The Oak Wheel for the second week of the poetry anthology. You can check out week one here.

Overall it won’t be such a lazy Sunday afternoon and I doubt I’ll have time for a stroll about town, [though I did just manage 3k at the gym].

Cheers everyone.

Written for today’s daily prompt: Stroll.

If We Were Having Coffee

Yes, yes, yes, I’m aware that I’m a little late to the party this week and the teapot has gone stone cold and the coffee now has that weird film across it from sitting out all night. Apologies. Saturday sort of got away from me a little bit, but I’m here now.

So, if we were having coffee I’d be telling you that all in all this week has been pretty productive. Granted, my daily poetry guest post didn’t go as well as I hoped it would but we did get some fantastic posts from bloggers and the month isn’t over just yet. I’m also a little disappointed that I haven’t managed to get any more writing done on my novel. I’ve been keeping up with NaPoWriMo and writing at least one poem a day but when it comes to actual fiction I’ve found myself out of time in the day.

Instead of writing I’ve spent my week focusing on my AAT Level Two Accounting Technicians Course. I managed to get through a lesson a night Monday through to Thursday and module two has now been completed. This just leaves module three to complete and then I’ll be able to sit my first exam. This is why I feel my week has been productive, even though I haven’t managed to get much in the way of writing done.

This weekend was meant to be all about writing. It hasn’t quite worked out that way as Saturday was mostly spent doing housework and then going to a house viewing before having dinner out with my parents. Two glasses of wine in and once I got home the only thing I wanted to do was sleep. So that was Saturday evening gone as well.

I woke up feeling a little annoyed that I hadn’t managed to get much work done the previous day but seeing as I got through a lot in the week I’m going to cut myself some slack. The house is tidy, the laundry has all been done and I’ve got a lot of studying out of the way. I did deserve some down time so having a bit of a lazy Saturday is perfectly acceptable and I’ve still got most of Sunday to pull some productivity out of the hat.

Yesterday was a pretty cool day despite my laziness. It was 400 years since the death of Shakespeare. The NaPoWriMo prompt corresponded pretty awesomely with this in challenging participants to write a sonnet for the day. Here’s mine. As well as being Shakespeare’s death day it was also World Book Night. Unfortunately I didn’t do any reading last night which I feel a little bad about because I had been keeping an eye out for World Book Night but there’s always next year.

Talking of NaPoWriMo, there are only six days left until the end of April and the end of this wonderful event. Part of me is quite looking forward to not having to write a poem-a-day any more but I’m really proud of the stuff I’ve managed to produce this year. I’ve met some fantastic people through poetry and it’s topic I feel passionately about so April has been a great month in my opinion.

Anyway, enough about me. How are you guys? Has it been a productive week where you are?

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