Tag Archives: Writing
And so we reach the final month of 2012. This is the home stretch, the swan song, the last hurrah, the end times. December is what I would call a proper month. It’s got 31 days, the weather’s usually cold and about as awful as it’s ever likely to get, there’s holiday time; things happen in Decembers. You’ve got Christmas, you’ve got New Year’s Eve, you’ve got the inevitable fight with your family. It’s all of the things which fundamentally characterise a whole year squished up into one nice, parcelled up, 31 day period.
I’m coming to the end of a week off from work, using up my remaining holiday allocation before year’s end, pissing it away doing nothing in particular. This has been a week of rest and relaxation, a recharging and revitalisation of my mystic energies after a trying couple of months. I have done more or less nothing, and achieved more or less nothing, and this has left me utterly exhausted. Never underestimate just how tiring inactivity can be. Writing has kept me at least moderately occupied, preventing me from slipping into a coma constructed from my own listless ennui.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I should probably cut to the chase: it’s Pictonaut time, this month we square off against Leviathan.
Continue reading
2 Comments | tags: December, Fantasy, jamie jones, Leviathan, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
And at long last November limps its way to the finish line, finally collapsing to the ground. November is dead. Stone cold dead and along with it many other things. The latest pandemic of winter-writing-fever should now be in remission and this years flock of moustache’s wither and curl beneath the ministrations of the razor blade, gone until next year’s season. The end of November sees a return to normality, we are now safely out of this autumnal twilight zone. The normality we now enter is of course a sham. For the normality we now embrace is that of tinsel and snow and cheery faces, of panicked buying and dashing hither and thither to find just the right material expression of our love to foist upon family and friends. With such a prospect in store part of me will miss November.
The end of November brings with it the close of Pictonaut Challenge number 15, the sci-fi bonanza of The Grid.
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, The Grid, WipEout, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
Remember, remember the fifth of November; gunpowder treason and derp. A quintessentially British celebration of the complete and utter failure to instigate revolution. You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Guy Fawkes. Most of us only have to deal with our mistakes for a couple of years at most, but poor old Guy is still being burnt in effigy over 400 years after his particular little misstep. On the up side it has become a marvellous excuse to set things on fire and dick about with what are essentially improvised explosives. When I was a kid we even used to cook jacket-tetties by wrapping them in tin-foil and just hoying them into the base of a bonfire. We were very sophisticated up north. I’ll be spending this Bonfire Night as I do may others, occasionally peering out the window at other people’s fireworks and dearly hoping that none of the bangs are actually gunshots. They rest of my time will be spent beavering away at a new short story I’m writing. It’s a fairy tale for submission to Homespun Theatre’s upcoming eBook.
Continue reading
1 Comment | tags: East of Sun West of Moon, eBooks, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Homespun Theatre, Ramblings, Submissions, Writing | posted in Writing
November is a shambling odd-ball of a month. Were November a person you wouldn’t really like them. You’d suffer their presence quietly, hoping against hope that they’d just go away and leave you alone; you’d treat them with a passive-aggressive meanest that wouldn’t quite have the necessary understanding of social nuances to “get.” The sort of person who, the moment their back was turned you’d bolt for the nearest exit with a speed and urgency you didn’t realise you were capable of. November would have a bad moustache and no one had quite had the heart to inform them that it really didn’t suit them. November is forever going on about “their book” and how it’ll be amazing, yet no one has the heart to tell them it’s just as awful as their moustache. Add to this a distinctly pyromaniacal bent and you have the makings of someone who really should not be allowed near children.
So basically fuck November.
Perhaps I’m just bitter. I can’t grow a decent moustache and my body betraying me with maladies, plagues, facial twitches, heart-burn and fatigue has left me rather incapable of joining in with the NaNoWriMo fun. I can however still enjoy exploding showers of highly excited metal ion compounds with the best of them.
Now I’m sure many of you are embroiled in the NaNo frenzy, losing yourself to the 30 days of literary abandon. But for those not quite up to the colossal NaNo commitment I’m here to offer you an alternative. A quick jog round the park instead of a full-on marathon. It’s the start of November, it’s time for a new Pictonaut Challenge. It’s time for The Grid.
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: November, Pictonaut Challenge, Pictonauts, Short stories, The Grid, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
It’s getting to that time of year again
. The time when people all around the world abandon all semblance of reason and common sense and decided that it’d be a thoroughly great idea to lock themselves away for a month and write an entire book. 50, 000 words in 30 days. An average of 1666.67 words a day for a while month. It’s something that I recommend that everyone tries at least once, just to see if they can. I tried it last year and managed to “win” with a whole 6 days left to spare. It made me feel like a god, albeit a fairly minor one with a very, very narrow divine portfolio. It also left me exhausted and wanting to hide under a rock and cry for a bit. It was one of those experiences. And then a year rolled round and I found myself looking at an on rushing November and having to make a choice. To NaNoWriMo, or Not the NaNoWrimo.
Continue reading
3 Comments | tags: Fatigue, Illness, NaNo, NaNoWriMo, Ramblings, Writing | posted in Ramblings
If anyone ever tells you that writing is easy you should punch them in the face. Hard. If anyone ever tells you this they are either: a) lying; b) wrong, or; c) an idiot. Alternatively they could be one of those few, truly gifted individuals for whom words simply flow out of their minds and their hands like high pressure geysers of idea flavoured water. If that is the case you should still punch them, if only to make yourself feel better. People can harp on about how the struggle to write is a character building journey which makes the end result all the more rewarding. You should punch them too, because no amount of empty platitudes are going to detract from the fact that you and not them, still have to slog your way through to the end. It’s like telling a soldier not to worry, they’re fighting for freedom and democracy and justice and that in the end, it’ll all be worth it, to which the soldier in question is more than entitled to respond with “Well that’s nice and all, but I’ve just had both of my fucking legs blown off! You are not helping! Don’t just stand there! Help me stop the bleeding!”
My own personal foray into the world of writing really began with the inception of this crass and tawdry corner of the internet; my first tentative steps into the blogosphere. That was five hundred and ninety-nine days ago. This is blog post number ninety-nine and I will tell you now, it’s not gotten any easier and I still have no fucking idea what I’m doing.
- A Map of The Blogosphere – Matthew Hurst
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: Blogging, Blogging is Hard, Ramblings, Writer's Block, Writing, Writing is Hard | posted in Ramblings
So here we are in October. 2012 is shrugging out of those ridiculous baggy cargo shorts and the voluminous tie-dye t-shirt she’s be wearing all summer. She’s putting on proper clothes now because it’s starting to get a bit nippy and inclement out there. It’s started to rain a lot, the sun is getting tired and sluggish; it’s getting up later and going to bed earlier. From here on out it’s all boots, sensible trousers and one of those coats with more pockets than are strictly necessary or in fact sane. There is however the distinct possibility of a decidedly silly and not entirely practical hat. Last year October’s Pictonaut Challenge was all about Halloween-esque spookiness and Lovecraftian terrors. Not wanting to repeat the same theme this year I decided to go with something a little outlandish and a bit mad. Just like that hat I mentioned. Behold, October’s Pictonaut Challenge “Hail Traveller!”
“I’m not going to lie, last night got really weird…”
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: Glow Sticks, Hail Traveller, October, Pictonaut Challenge, Short stories, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
So here we are at the end of July and as the heat wave that’s been assailing Britain comes towards its end so does July’s Pictonaut Challenge. You’d think that 10 months in I’d have gotten the hang of this short story lark. You’d think I’d be cracking this out in the space of an afternoon the day after the month’s challenge starts. You’d think I’d then spend the rest of the month in casual relaxation while spending odd hours here and there honing the text to a razor-sharp point. You would however, be quite fantastically wrong. I’m writing this blog post on the evening of the 30th of July, it’s 8:43 pm and July’s wordascope remains incomplete. I didn’t even start writing it until Saturday evening. I am a terrible sham of a man, a fraud and a man of lies and deceit. But at the end of the day nothing focuses the mind more than blind panic.
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: July, Pictonaut Challenge, Robert McCall, Sci-fi, Short stories, The Wheel in the Sky, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
I have not done a lot of writing over the last few weeks. Recently the looming spectre of computer games has sunk its claws into my being and has stubbornly refused to let go. I’ve whiled away hour after hour amidst stealthy cyber-punk infiltration and corporate espionage; I’ve lost whole afternoons to pixelated mining; I’ve lost days to simulated space violence. I don’t regret any of this, I don’t feel too guilty about it. It was jolly good fun. But a man has obligations, a man has his patterns. This post is being hastily knocked together in the scant few moments I have before bed, with a hastily prepared dinner cooking in the oven. So in lieu of anything else to say I have delved into a back catalogue of wordascopes which are yet to see the light of day.
The Hunter watches you
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: Computer Games, Mass Effect 3, Poetry, The Hunted, Writing | posted in Writing
So June has finally arrived. Despite the fact that I’ve been operating on British Summer Time since late March, June is, in my distorted world view at least, the first proper month of summer. I was all ready to launch it a vicious and scathing attack on summer. On how it’s hot, sticky and generally uncomfortable. A tirade about how as nice as a bit of sunshine is, excessive amounts cause me to wilt into and exhausted and non-functional jelly. The sort of hellish weather I had to live through over the last few days. But then, at the dawning of June, the hot weather disappeared. It was replaced with a chill and pervading overcast drizzle. This was much more to my liking, but somewhat put-paid to any plans for my original rant. It longer seemed quite so topical. Although I’ve never particularly enjoyed experiencing the heat of the oppressive British summers of recent years I have always enjoyed the aesthetics of the summer. Perhaps it’s one of those lingering relics of a childhood growing up in the rural north. Summer was a time when the grass always looked greener than it ever did at other times of the year, the sky was always bluer, every colour just seemed so much more vibrant, every hue a riot of almost neon proportions. The world always seemed so vivid. It was a world that through its existence prohibited melancholy and sadness. With these memories in mind I picked this picture for June’s Pictonaut Challenge: A Place in the Country.
Continue reading
Leave a comment | tags: A Place in the Country, June, Pictonaut Challenge, Short stories, Summer, Writing | posted in Pictonauts, Writing
The Rogue Verbumancer 