Thursday, November 09, 2006

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.

No comments: