Poetry and charity books

Not much to say today. I didn't think poetry was my 'thing' but I seem to have done alright in the poetry part of the creative writing course, and one of my poems is now being considered for publication at Every Day Poets!

In other news... I'm getting involved in a project called (provisionally) Write for Japan, which is hoping to produce a book of short stories to sell for charity to help with the aid and rebuilding work for victims of the Japan earthquake. I'll keep you posted...

#FridayReads

I think I've said it before, but I do think one of the best ways of improving your writing is to read a lot. And then read more. And then go to the library and read some more.

One of the things I like to do is check out the #FridayReads hashtag on Twitter*. You get a huge variety of ideas from other people's suggestions. A lot of them might be things you don't fancy, but every now and then something will catch your eye that proves to be a real gem.

So what am I reading at the moment? Well I just finished a Star Trek YA book called The Edge (good read, nice plot, and easy to settle down with), I'm in the middle of an intriguing historical mystery Death of a Dancer by Caro Peacock (great descriptions of Victorian London and good characterisations), and my pile of books to read includes a fantasy, a Christian romance, local history and a diary-style how-to guide.

* On Twitter you can flag up certain subjects, talking points, ideas, etc, by using the #. Every Friday lots of people will pick a book and tweet about it, adding #FridayReads to their message. Other people can then search for the list of messages with book recommendations by searching for #FridayReads.

Entering flash fiction competitions

I am a firm believer that in order to write well you have to read a lot, and not just a lot of one type of story, but a lot of every type of story. One way I get my daily fix is from Every Day Fiction, which drops a nice piece of flash fiction into my inbox every day. Sometimes I'm not particularly impressed with what I read, and other times I can't stop thinking about the stories, but because they come from writers all over the world they're always different.

I've mentioned EDF before because I submitted a couple of stories to them last year, but this week they're running a competition to write a flash fiction of up to 250 words based on a 10 word prompt. I've just submitted my entry for the competition, entitled 'Purity', and I hope I'll be able to submit another as well before the competition closes on Sunday.

If anyone would like to have a go at the competition, the details are here.

Things I learned from Marvel...

I have a confession. I love comic books.

When I was younger I would read He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and She-Ra Princess of Power, then Thundercats, and from there I found Power Pack, which was the support strip.

From there, because the strips I was reading had Franklin Richards in them, I found the Fantastic Four, and my love affair with all things Marvel began, backed up on TV by Spider-Man and X-Men. For some reason the DC heroes never caught my attention as much. Superman and Batman just weren't as exciting.

But anyway, this week I figured out two very important things when writing a fanfic about a Marvel character - red headed girls are essential to any good story (Mary Jane/Spider Man, Jean Grey & Mystique/X-Men, Pepper Potts/Iron Man, and my personal favourite Firestar/New Warriors etc.), and you can't go wrong with a name beginning 'St' (Stark, Storm, Stane, Stern, etc.).

Happy new year?!

I am a terrible blogger, I'm sorry... I kept thinking I should write a blog, and then I never seemed to get round to it. Much like my writing so far this year. My OU course kept me busy with the first assignment due in in the second week of January, and I think with all the rushing around getting that done and in I forgot what it was like to write for fun.

I've signed up to WriYe, which is essentially like NaNoWriMo but with a more structured feel and it lasts a year. That has sort of helped get me writing again, but my total words for the year stads just shy of 10,000 at the moment, which is really pathetic when you consider I'd written that much in a week in November.

Of course it's the quality that counts and not the quantity, but even the 10,000 words I've written this month don't necessarily feel that I'm writing good fiction. In fact, the best things I've written were two made up newspaper reports about the same ficticious event written in different styles - one like a women's magazine and the other like a tabloid like The Sun. That sort of kick started my writing again, but I'm still not feeling particularly inspired.

I think I've just discovered the point where writing becomes hard work.

Top tip - Topic sentences

I subscribe to quite a lot of writing newsletters, competition updates and writing blogs, and one of my favourites is Flash Fiction Chronicles on the Every Day Fiction website.

Earlier this week I had an update from the site with some writing tips from John Arthur Miller. One of the tips he gives is about how to construct paragraphs. It's one of those tips that when you hear it you think "oh yeah, of course!", and then go back and check your own writing to make sure you're doing it!

Here's the tip:

Top every paragraph with a topic sentence. The topic sentence should explain what happens in the paragraph. Don’t make the reader guess. Everything beneath the opening topic sentence should HANG from the topic sentence. Don’t describe a room first; have your character look around the room or enter the room. This adds clarity of thought, purpose and action of the paragraph. It’s grade school, but too many times have I purchased anthologies or novels in which the author doesn’t know how to use topic sentences for the reader’s benefit.

The rest of the article is here, and I really recommend reading through it.

Tips from Children's Author Catherine Cooper

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed children's author Catherine Cooper about her novel The Golden Acorn: The Adventures of Jack Brenin. She started off as a self-published author selling 1,500 copies in a year - a tremendous achievement for any self-published author. But then she entered the Brit Writers' Award and her publishing fortunes changed.

Here are the two halves of the interview: A Self-Publishing Success Story: Award Winner Catherine Cooper and Realising a Writing Dream: Children's Author Catherine Cooper

I don't know about you, but after reading a success story like that, I'm feeling inspired!