15 Jan 2012
Spoken Sunday #50
Spoken Sunday Submission #50 for 15th January, 2012 For full details check the page. How To Play: 1. After you have submitted to [Fiction] Friday – or written a passage of around 600 words, record it. 2. On your blog, or audioboo site, post an explanation of your piece (if its a passage from a larger work) or ask readers for specific feedback about it – as well as a link to your recording. 3.... read more
14 Jan 2012
What Is It about Cats?
For most of my forty-plus years on this planet (and for about a year before I arrived), I never really thought much about cats. Cats were simply a bunch of claws and teeth with four legs and a bunch of hair (hair which was always magnetically attracted to my pants, it seems). Cats would see me from across the room and hiss loudly, the hair on their backs standing up, tails straight in the air. As... read more
14 Jan 2012
2012: Proclaiming A Desperate and Barbaric YAWP
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (“Economy”) I want to spend a little time talking about three writers: Whitman, Thoreau, and VanWestervelt. Bold of me, isn’t it? You might think it even egoistic, pompous, or overly self-righteous. Who am I to argue? Go right ahead. And to be honest, I hope you have the courage to say it out loud. Shout it for the world to... read more
13 Jan 2012
[Fiction] Friday Challenge #242
[Fiction] Friday Challenge #242 for January 13th, 2012 Martin Luthur King Jnr was born this week in 1929. Use the first four words of his most famous speech to begin your story (of any genre) with “I have a dream”. [fiction] Friday Participants 1. Paul 2. Sam Perkins 3. Storm Dweller 4. Kari... read more
12 Jan 2012
I’ll Never Learn
Many of you may already know me. For the first not-quite-five years of Write Anything (née Write Stuff) I was the Tuesday columnist. Then about a year ago, I just didn’t feel like I had anything left to say. So I stepped behind the scenes and took over a portion of the editing duties. A year ago, this seemed to make sense. The weekly deadline, instead of spurring me to the page, felt more like a... read more
12 Jan 2012
Selling my Soul to the Devil
I was twenty-four, it was my first day working for a top London law firm, and I already knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life. I blame Tenerife. Two years prior, my housemate and I had flown to the Canary Islands for a long weekend. It was a long way to go just for a weekend and it felt decadent. So decadent, I wanted more. But how would an editorial assistant afford such decadence on a regular... read more
11 Jan 2012
Why Writing Should Never Be A Chore
We’re a couple of weeks into January and I’m betting that all of those resolutions about writing more this year are starting to feel more like grudging obligations than well-meant intentions. I never fail to be astounded how many tweets I see from people who claim they “should be writing”. Should? Should is one of those words that means things you must do, not things you want to do.... read more
11 Jan 2012
What if I’d never…?
It wasn’t exactly an inspiring beginning. Here I was in a new country, a new town and speaking a new language, wondering what I could do to get to know new people. A few weeks before I had started a new job as pastor in the local protestant church and was determined to find some kind of activity outside the church. I’d seen too many of my colleagues go to ground because their whole lives... read more
