Some thoughts on Plot is character. Character is plot.

I was thinking of writing about Christmas tree envy. Over the weekend I was beginning to experience it. All those beautiful trees I spied on my weekend at Sandringham, real or on the fictional side (artificial), made me wish I already had mine in place.
So today I went to Blenheim and chose a beauty. The man who was netting it saw me looking at one another customer was eyeing up and accused me of Christmas tree envy.
'How funny!', I said, ' I was just going to write about that.'

Rat catchers old and new styles

Emotion on the doormat.

Now the Christmas cards are starting to drop through the letter box. Started with a drip, then a trickle, one morning next week I'll come downstairs and find the door has caved in under the pressure of the flood!

I love the envelopes with handwritten addresses. They are the best. I feel comfortable about people who still use pens. You don't even need to open it. Leave it on the table and look at the beautiful handwriting and remember all the things you used to do with that person. Then, after unhurried breakfast mindfulness, start to prise it open. What will it reveal this year?

Some early birds ruin their efforts with the standardised printed label, drawing attention to themselves with their hyper-efficiency and leaving you to decipher the postmark and guess who. Much more difficult game and not quite so satisfying. Yesterday, I guessed the wrong Aunty. I was really miffed. I thought I had it sussed, but now the Aunties are copying eachother's modus operandi!

I'll buy some cards and stamps today. Honest. I'll write them tonight and maybe some will cause emotion on the doormat or breakfast table in time for Christmas.

Christmas Build Up

Christas cheer available on Catherine's page

Tim's story - a possible cover

Sara's quote for the Thursday people

Run your pen through every second word you have written. You have no idea what vigour it will give to your style. (Sydney Smith)

Plot is character. Character is plot. (Scott Fitzgerald)

Hailstones

My friend in Italy wants to know if it is "hailing" or "hailstoning". Could anyone provide the correct nomenclature for the dear ex pat?

Hello everyone. I am greatly looking forward to Thursday and hearing your glorious pieces of entertaining Christmas writing.

Christmas in space

God may be everywhere but Christmas is when He decided to be in one place at one time in the form of Jesus. The first Christmas is supposed to have taken place around 2000 years ago.
 
Since nothing travels faster than light then ‘Christmas’ has been travelling away from Bethlehem ever since. It reached the Moon after about a quarter of a second and the Sun after about 8 and a half minutes. If you had a sufficiently powerful telescope, say 2012 light years away, you would be able to see the whole shepherds-angels-manger thing any day now.
 
In space terms 2012 light years isn’t very far. Information about the nativity hasn’t even cleared our own arm of the Milky Way galaxy let alone reached further afield. It will not reach the easily visible Andromeda galaxy, for instance, for another 2 million years.
 
I am surprised that these facts have not been used as a motivation for invasion by space aliens – clearly most other planets must be jealous of our Christmas festivities.

Fulfilment From Fiction: Steph's Page

Fulfilment From Fiction: Steph's Page

still soooo much to do!

Better Book Titles

Better Book Titles is a fun site that publishes repurposed book covers, usually to make a satirical point. I thought we could steal the technique and come up with book covers for our stories. Here's mine - you can quess where I stole it from. 

 

Dream story

The first four chapters are up on my page.

How do I post onto my own page?

Still haven't figured out how to post thing on my page. Everything seems to end up on this page which is not quite how it's meant to be is it? Anyone got any suggestions?

HOMEWORK 

Trick Shot

50 WORD E-MAIL Past Event

That Judge had no sense of humour. Next time I’ll hire a lawyer and hang the expense. I’m still on for the tournament in February aren’t I? Practice is a bit tricky at present. The cues tend to end up chopped in half.  Or with a pointy tip. Send ciggies.

20 WORD POST Future Event

‘B’ Block’s first open challenge snooker tournament. Next Wednesday after Corrie. Entry fee: 2 ciggies.  Has anyone got any chalk?

Twitter Fiction

The Guardian is running a series of exremely short stories using the Twitter limit of 140 characters. Writers so far include Joanna Briscoe, John O'Farrell, Kate Mosse and Katie Price. The home page is here.

Homework

You can post your Facebook style comments on the Fakebook page.

Halfway to Hell

I've always wanted to write a crime novel in the style of Mickey Spillane or Raymond Chandler and I've decided that this course would be the ideal opportunity to do just that. I've followed Charlotte's lead and written the cover blurb first, followed by the first chapter. If you're interested, I'm also posting it on WATTPAD as I go along. It's an interesting site. Let me know what you think.

Dogalogue.

I've added this to my page - I had two main aims; to be mildly amusing but also to establish, early on in the narrative, the difficulty of 'escaping' from dreams - I suppose I was also trying to imagine the world from a dog's point of view.

Wonderful. Thank you, John. Sara.

Many thanks, John. From Sara.

enjoying this group and knowing the fun people in it. Am surprised that a few of the members aren't already well established and published authors!

Trick Shot

Hi Everyone

Don't know if this is going to work or not. I logged in to the FFF blog but didn't get the front page I was expecting and I can't see how to view everyone else's work! Maybe it will become clear after I publish this post. Here's hoping. On my page is the finished version of the short story we were asked to write way back in lesson one.

Self publication

According to this Guardian article 250,000 novels were self-published last year. As this blog/article in today's Guardian makes clear, critics and newspapers - let alone readers - are having a hard time adjusting to the new shape of things.

– we're not quite sure how to tackle it. Any guidance would be much appreciated, so tell us about the gems we're missing out on, and we'll see what we can do.

Hello and welcome to the blog. This typeface is helvetica and the font size is normal. Is everonyone OK with it? There are lots of jazzy templates you can use but I thought we would start with a plain one. The facebook group is here and is probably the best place for discussions of writing assignments. It is possible to set up a separate page (see mine right) for each of us where we can post our stories, works in progress etc.