December update

Well apologies, I haven't posted anything in a few months. To say I've been busy is a bit of an understatement. Overtime at work, going away for a few days earlier in the month, Christmas shopping and getting ready for moving house (completion date on Monday all being well) have all contributed to my lack of writing activity.

Earlier in the month I went on a coach trip to Valkenburg in Holland, with trips to Aachen and Monschau in Germany as well as Bruges in Belgium. I kept a journal throughout the holiday and with some extra research there's at least a couple of small articles in there which I intend to write. If I get time, I may write a Christmas story/article or two while I'm off work. Then come the new year (after 6th January expected move date anyway) I intend to get down to doing lots of writing, and regular posting on here. Things I'm looking at writing are:

First Time Buyer - Guide to Housebuying (Article)
Further Lancaster articles - travel & local history
Article on Fair Trade
Article on early history of America, possibly a couple of poems too.

I'm also thinking of having a go at a science fiction short story, after a long absence from the genre (both reading and writing).

Anyway, I'd like to wish a Happy Christmas to everyone, and hope you have a good new year too. I may squeeze another post in before then, but wouldn't like to guarantee it.

Steve

A poem about a word....

Well I had a go at a poem, my first proper poem in a long time. It's hardly very serious or literary, but it was fun to write and, I hope, fun to read too. It's about the word 'comestible':

I would like to introduce you to a word,
It’s quite likely you have never heard.
You’ll know many words, silly and sensible,
But how about the word comestible?

It is sometimes an adjective, other times a noun
But it is hardly a word of great renown.
As an adjective it describes something edible
But as a noun, it is something that is eatable.

As a small child it fooled my teacher,
Ha ha I thought, that’ll teach her
When my creative story she had heard
And said “comestible, that is not a word!”

So if you are ever deserted by your muse,
In search of a delicious culinary word to use,
Why not try comestible if you’re in the mood
For tasty, nourishing, yummy food.

I put the story on writing.com yesterday and so so far I've had several comments, all positive. One person however said it was 'extremely cute'. Not sure how to take that, but will take it as a compliment!

A mini course on starting a poem...

BBC Get Writing Mini Course: How to Start a Poem

This course starts off very arty sounding, the type of poems it is talking about the ones that I don't want to write. It got better though and has given me some useful pointers:

Write what you are interested in - commen sense really.
Relax before writing a poem, don't obsess over the language but make it flow.

The writer of this course suggested that poetry was about three 'breaths' and the way they interact:

Logical breath - the breath you take at the end of each sentence
Emotional breath - The breath you take where you finish a verse. Each verse should leave you thinking, feeling some emotion. Each verse usually changes the focus.
Musical breath - when you finish a line. Either it ends on a good, musical rhythm or it doesn't. Good poems always do.

Often these co-incide, so you might have a musical breath, a logical breath and an emotional breath all at once. The simplest poems do this - ballads in particular often do.

A couple of suggested exercises include trying to come up with a poem based on a word and writing a poem based on the 'visual residue' left by a scene in a film or tv programme. Presumably this is not just the visual residue but emotional residue too. The final suggestion is write a poem based on a memory, strong impressions, feelings and fragments of memory from the past.

To sum up, the 'tutor' quoted Sylvia Plath who wrote that in contrast to a novelist, a poet must be "an expert packer of suitcases", i.e. they've got to fit a lot into a small space and make every word count.

I think I'll have a go...

WEBSITE: BBC Get Writing

While browsing the internet looking for an online beginners guide to poetry I found this website:

BBC Get Writing

Now I have come across this website before, a few years ago when it was a fully fledged online writing community with people posting their writing regularly, with hundreds of discussion threads at any one time. I wasn't really much more than a passing visitor, and always intended to come back one day and devote some regular time to it - as with so many other things however, it passed entirely out of mind. These days it's like a ghost town, maybe one of those trading outposts which sprung up in California during the gold rush but later abandoned when the gold ran dry. The analogy probably quite an apt one - a few years ago the BBC had a big online budget and were getting involved in many areas of online life, but these days the online budget has been cut and Get Writing was left mostly abandoned.

Having said all that, while the online community has moved elsewhere, there are still some good resources on the site. There's a good selection of articles and mini courses, divided into 'beginners', 'intermediate' and 'advanced'. Taking a look around, I'm tempted by 'How to Start a Poem', 'Rhythm, Rhyme and other Techniques', 'How to Start a Short Story' and 'The Art of Reviewing'. OK, so they all sound interesting. With my shortage of time in the run up to Christmas (Christmas shopping, house buying, going to Christmas markets in Holland and various other matters demanding my attention) I'm at the moment going to just dabble with a bit of poetry, being as I am under the possibly false impresson that it's quicker and not as time demanding as other writing forms. We'll see.

BOOK REVIEW: Split Second - David Baldacci

Essential Details
Genre: Crime/thriller
Setting: Present day USA, East Coast.
No. of pages: 600
Standalone (subsequent books with same main characters)

Synopsis
Secret Service agent Sean King is momentarily distracted, and a Presidential candidate dies. Years later, a different Secret Service agent, Michelle Maxwell, makes a mistake and another Presidential Candidate is kidnapped. On the edge of losing her job and career, Michelle seeks out Sean King, drawn by the similarities in their downfall. Together they investigate both cases and are drawn into a complex and dangerous situation…

What I Liked
Baldacci’s writing is good quality, and I like his style. He pays a lot of attention to detail, draws a good plot and has likeable characters. The opening third of the book is particularly good.

What I Didn’t Like
The final third of the book really went downhill in my opinion. There were four separate characters all working together like a committee, and when is a committee ever a good thing? After a masterfully plotted storyline the final third, and in particular the ending, was poor.

Plot
The build up of the plot was good. You really didn’t have much of a clue what was going on for a long time, there were two main plot strands and various sub-plots that I knew must all tie together, but couldn’t fathom out how.

Characters
The main character, Sean King, was quite well drawn. I was interested in what happened to him, and by the end of the book felt I knew quite a lot about him. I’d be happy to read another book with him as the main character. I didn’t feel any especially strong emotion or attachment towards the character however. The secondary character Michelle was also moderately well drawn, however the other characters were fairly two dimensional.


Language/Structure
The language was good, well written but easy and quick to read, with no swearing or bad language. Lots of short chapters quickened the pace of the book and made it easy to read.

Overall Impression
A fairly standard, run of the mill crime thriller. It started well, and had the potential to be really good, but the author let it slip in the latter stages. Of the three books of his I’ve read, this is certainly the worst.

Rating – 6/10

Poetry? Surely not!

I've never been one for poetry, I rarely find poems I really like but then I hardly ever read many. In high school I struggled through poetry lessons and didn't see the point in them. When I had to write a sonnet for an English assignment, my dad offered to help and ended up writing it. It ended up being published in a poetry anthology and performed at the annual school drama evening. I got book tokens for my poem being published, but didn't pass them on to my dad!

Anyway, my aversion to poetry largely continued after I left school. I occasionally came across poems I liked, but never wrote any. However reading and reviewing a few poems on writing.com has got me thinking about writing some myself. Two in particular set me on this line of thinking. One was a long poem and the history and legend of Saint George. It was an acrostic poem, using 'SAINT GEORGE PATRON SAINT OF ENGLAND' as its basis. For those of you that don't know, an acrostic poem is one where the first letter of each line of the poem spells out a word or phrase. So in this poem, the first line begins with the letter 'S', the second line with the letter 'A' etc. It wasn't so much the fact it was an acrostic poem which made me like it so much, but the fact that it told the story of a historical or mythological figure. I liked the fact that poems didn't need to be abstract, arty things but could tell a tale and teach the reader something.

The second poem I liked, was very different in style. It was short, with shorter lines and less verses. Also easier to read. It was about a word: its definition, usage, pronunciation and history. The word was ' Floccinaucinihilipilification' and the poem's title was 'Ode to a Word'. I loved the fact that the poem taught you something in such a simple but interesting and amusing way. So now I'm going to try my hand at a poem or two. Watch this space!

Article written and general update

Well I have now written an Article about my home town of Lancaster, a historic city in the north west of England. I've put it on writing.com (see link to my portfolio on the side if you want to read it) and had a few reviews and ratings. One person in particular gave a really good, detailed review. He rated it 3.5 out of 5, which I thought was fair, and suggested a number of areas for improvement. One of the main criticisms of it was that there was no unique twist, or even a clearly defined focus for my article. On the review's recommendation, I am going to re-write it and focus just on the Castle and the Priory, with a quick stop in the pub at the end! I am also going to try and write it for publication. I've got a couple of magazines in mind, so I will read them and try and fit my article in with their style. I need to do a fair bit of research in the local library on the history of the Castle and Priory too, so it may be a few weeks before it gets done.

In the meantime I'm working on a 100 word short story for a writing.com contest, the twist being you can't use the same word twice in the story, not even 'a' or 'the'. My wife's already had a go at this successfully, but it is really hard!

There are a few other contests that look interesting which I may enter, time permitting. However my next piece is going to be a short story I think. Now I haven't written one for a year or more, and there haven't been many I've been particularly happy with so I will have to see how it goes. I've got two Christmas stories to have a go at, but think I will have a go at a non-Christmas one first. It might end up being not much more than a warm up exercise, but it might turn into something yet.

My writing.com portfolio

I've split the links on the right hand side of this blog into the main links section and a section for 'My Pages'. It's got my Librarything bookshelf on there so you can read reviews of books I've read, and I've just added my writing.com portfolio so anyone can read my work if they wish to. There's currently just one short story on there, but I'll be adding more soon!

Writing.com update

Well I've been on writing.com for about a week now. I started off reviewing other people's work, short stories, articles and even a couple of poems. Most of the people whose writing I have reviewed have responded to me and been really pleased with the review. More importantly, I have really enjoyed reading them all. I reviewed a couple of articles by one writer about her home town in Massachusets, USA, and exchanged a couple of emails. She's challenged me to write an article about my home town, which I am currently working on. It also transpires her ancestors originally emigrated to the US from Buxton, England. I know the area as my wife's parents live not that far away from Buxton and the Peak District, so I'm going to go there when I can to write an article on Buxton, and maybe take a couple of photos. It's really good to think I'll have at least one reader who is really interested in the article, it'll hopefully spur me on to write it.

I've added one of my short stories, Crime Pays, onto Writing.com, and so far received three reviews, and an average rating of 4 out of 5 which I'm rather pleased with. I may put some more of my stories up, but really I want to write some new pieces to put up. I'm keen to write both short stories and articles, and I may even try a poem at some point. Since starting on writing.com a few days ago, I've had lots of ideas for articles and stories. The fact that now I've got a potential audience to read what I write is going to be a big motivator for me.

A couple of days ago, some kind person (or group of people) paid to upgrade my account to an 'Upgraded account' which has loads of extra features that the free account doesn't have. Instead of being limited to 5 items in my portfolio, I can now have upto 250 items. I can also enter contests on writing.com, of which there are many. There is one in particular which I've decided to enter, and that's a contest to write an original new take on the Christmas story. I've got an idea for that, so now I've just to get down and write it.

For any budding writers out there, I'd really recommend writing.com. It looks a complicated site at first, but you'll soon get the hang of it and I'm sure it will be well worth it. I'm only wishing there was more time in which to write.

Writing.com

Today I've joined Writing.com (link on the right hand side). The site was recommended to me by friends and is probably the biggest writing site on the internet. Thousands of people publish their own work on the site and/or read and review other people's work every week. It looks quite a big sprawling site which is going to take a bit of getting used to, but looks like it has a lot of potential. The plan is to read a few people's works, post some reviews, and then submit something of my own. Give something to the site first before you expect anything back in other words!

More soon.

A long absence

Nearly a month since my last post. Hopefully this will not be the norm. There are a number of reasons I could attribute my long gap to: being ill with cold/sore throat for two weeks (but not off work, otherwise would probably have been on here a few times), busy at work due to lack of staff, busy working on my gifts website in the run up to Christmas. None of them really good excuses.

The lack of writing on this blog is also an indication of the lack of writing in general I've been doing. I'm working on a ghost story for a Writing Magazine competition but it's still all in my head. Also had an idea for a Christmas story: ditto.

Reading is a different matter however. Since the last post I've finished the Stephen Booth novel, 'Blood on the Tongue', and also read 'I'm Not Scared' by Niccolo Ammanti and 'Good News, Bad News' by David Wolstencroft (creator of Spooks). All fairly good, the best one being the Stephen Booth novel. Reviews of all of them in my LibraryThing library (link on the right of this page).

I tell a lie - I've done one bit of writing. I've done an entry for the History Matters: One Day in History project. The project involves getting as many people as possible to write a blog/journal/diary entry for 17 October 2006. It will be a kind of electronic time capsule stored by the British Library for future generations to look at. I liked the idea of the project, so wrote about my day yesterday. I also spent a bit of time reading different people's entries. It was rather interesting to get snapshots of different people's lives. Potentially a mine of story ideas there!

An eccentric whiskey collector...

I'm looking to buy a house in the near future (first time buyer) and yesterday after work we went to look round what looked like a promising house. We were greated at the door by a fairly short man, mid-fifties with wild straw coloured hair and a slightly disheveled appearance. His hair in fact was not dis-similar in colour and style from Dr Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future films. This man didn't have the same wild look in his eyes, but he did have a manically energetic air about him which was obvious from the wild gesticulating he did with his arms all the time. The faint smell of cigarette smoke emanated from him. The house was untidy to say the least, with piles of junk everywhere, a lifetime of belongings scattered all around. On the walls were cabinets filled with miniature whiskey bottles, some many years old and others from distilleries long since closed down. The man, lets call him Mr Bell, explained that he "wasn't a drinker" but just liked collecting them. It started accidentally when someone bought him some miniature whiskey bottles for his birthday, and on subsequent birthdays others followed suit. His job, installing and repairing cash machines, used to take him all round the country and he often would have several hours to kill in a strange town. He'd wander round the shops, and gradually started buying miniatures wherever he went. One day, so he told us, he'd like to travel round Scotland visiting all the distilleries.

In the course of showing us round the house, we found out he was just in the process of getting a divorce - I'm not sure what number wife this was, but it clearly wasn't his first. The kitchen, with its rows of bottles on top of the cupboard, many of them alcoholic, cast some doubt on his assertion that he was "not a drinker" but then maybe they belonged to his soon to be ex-wife. Mr Bell was obviously a DIY man, as the signs of his handiwork were everywhere, much of it unfinished. The only rooms which were fully decorated were a computer room (with a desktop, a laptop and various other computer equipment), and the attic room. The attic was reachable only by a rickety and unsecured ladder, but the room itself was nicely carpeted and decorated, with what looked like a serious collection of music kit. There were speakers, amplifiers, mixing stations and a lot of kit I simply didn't recognise. A man of many hobbies, that much was obvious.

So that was the story of Mr Bell (obviously not his real name). An interesting person, potentially the basis for a fictional character. Lets hope I meet someone else interesting soon.

What am I currently reading?

Currently reading 'Blood on the Tongue' by Stephen Booth. It's a crime novel, which follows two junior detectives in a rural police force in the fictional village of Edendale in the Peak District. I was once at a book event with Stephen Booth and he told us that he writes about junior officers as it's more realistic - the Inspectors and Superindtendants in the police world do a lot more paperwork than anything else. Contrary to what you'd believe from watching or reading Frost, Morse etc. 'Blood on the Tongue' is his third novel (the first is 'Black Dog').

Also reading 'America' by Alistair Cooke. It's a very well written and enjoyable history of America. About half way through and finding it really interesting, but put it down for a bit to read a novel.

Avid Reader, Aspiring Writer

Hi, I'm Steve, and if anyone is reading this then welcome! Inky Pages is my blog all about books and writing, by an avid reader and aspiring writer. I'm a little fickle at times so what will appear on here I'm not exactly sure but mostly I'll be talking about books, writing and anything else that happens to occur to me.

Also, if any of the books on writing which I've read or idly flicked through are to be believed, an excellent way to hone your writing skills and come up with lots of great ideas is to keep a writer's journal. This blog will hopefully also be that journal. This doesn't mean I'm going to write all about my day (that would be very boring and tedious most of the time), but the idea is I'll write about anything interesting I've seen or done, any interesting characters I've met.

Anyway, more soon...