Day 14 – A song that you wish you heard on the radio

One of my favourite albums from a few years ago was Celine Dion's The Colour of my Love. The album had a lot of really good songs on it, including Refuse to Dance, which has a really interesting violin part. But I think my favourite song was Next Plane Out.

I like the melody, I like the orchestration - including the wonderful violins in the last choruses, and I like the almost poetic nature of some of the lyrics. The opening lines conjur up a wonderful picture, and the song starts with the sound of rain, bringing it even more to life.

I listen to the sound of the rain fallin' down my window
Prayin' for a gentle wind
To bring my baby back again

So today's prompt is going to be describing someone sitting by a window, watching the rain and waiting for something.

Day 13 – A song that reminds you of someone

A Whole New World from Aladdin was the first duet I ever sang, and so of course it reminds me of the person I sang the duet with.

When I googled the song name one of the first pictures that popped up that wasn't Disney-related was this one. I presume this family is at an aquarium, but what if they were in a submarine, or an underwater city?

Today's prompt is to write something about an entirely different environment to live in, whether that's on the moon, under the sea (hey, there's another Disney song!), in a sub-zero place or in a floating city in the sky.

Jazz Night on Every Day Poets

My poem was published on Every Day Poets on June 17 and it seems that people like it as it's currently in the top ten favourite poems of the year list!
If you're one of the people who rated it, thank you! If not, then please go and read it and let me know what you think.

Sounds exciting, no?

Advanced creative writing develops your writing ability by widening your generic range and developing your knowledge of style. The course works on the forms introduced in the Level 2 course Creative writing (A215) – fiction, poetry and life writing – and supplements these with dramatic writing, showing you how to write for stage, radio and film. You’ll explore how these scriptwriting skills might enhance your prose style, improve your writing across the range of forms, and further develop your individual style and voice. The course offers guidance on professional layouts for the dramatic media, and is a natural progression from A215.

More here...

In the Newspaper

As a journalist I'm used to writing the stories for the newspapers, but I'm not so used to be in them as the story myself. This was in a while ago about Write for Japan, but I've only just found the pdf to post the article up here. Quite a nice write up I thought.

A Good Six Months

Well the first six months of 2011 have been pretty good on the writing front, what with being included in Write for Japan, having Jazz Night accepted by Every Day Poets, and with the creative writing course going well.

In a non-fiction vein I've got into podcasting as well, and written two podcasts for 365 Days of Astronomy - End of an Endeavour (broadcast May 31) and The Universe in your Phone (broadcast May 28).

My goals for the second half of 2011 are:

• Edit, edit, edit...
• Start submitting the short stories I've been writing to magazines.
• Finish the OU creative writing course and sign up for the advanced course.
• Do NaNoWriMo with the story I almost started for my last assignment (provisionally entitled Flux).
  

Decisions, decisions!

The last month has been pretty hectic, which is why I've been quiet for a few weeks, sorry...

My final assignment for my OU course is due in at the start of June, so I'm working on that at the moment. I'm torn between whether to do the whole thing in fiction or whether to throw in a bit of autobiographical travel writing as well. And then I came up with an idea for a new novel, so now I'm wondering if I should use that instead. Decisions, decisions!

And some news - my poem Jazz Night, which I originally wrote as part of the OU course, will be published on Every Day Poets on June 17. I'll post the link here when it appears.