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Quiz Night
On Friday I co-hosted a quiz night in the local village hall. This was the first time I’ve ever had to do this and came about because our team won the previous month’s competition. It’s quite hard trying to be competitive in a competition that you don’t want to win, and last month we misjudged… Continue reading
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Dalbeattie Writers’ Group
I attended my second ever Dalbeattie Writers’ Group at the wonderful Nail Factory on Tuesday night. This is a lovely venue, and came complete with coffee and cake, so I’m definitely won over. There were only five of us at the seesion, including the Chair, Mary, and we had a wonderful chat that wandered between… Continue reading
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Writing Tools
I’m reading Writing Tools – 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark, at the moment. What a great book! I reckon my paperback will quickly become dog-eared through re-use.(ISBN: 978-0-316-01499-1) I’d highly recommend it. Continue reading
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Feb 16 Birds
February brings all the birds to our yard, so to speak. It’s a good month for spotting some more unusual visitors to our back garden, as well as noting our regular visitors. This month we have spotted (excluding our neighbour’s hens who had found their way into our driveway!): Chaffinch House sparrow Robin Red kite… Continue reading
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Trains
At least the trains have started to run again. Storm Frank has a lot to answer for. When it made the viaduct at Lammington unsafe, it also made my commute to the Big City that bit longer, which meant earlier starts in the morning, and later finishes in the evening. It also curtailed my writing… Continue reading
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A Writing Game Through the Post
Following on from the last post about a writing game I thought I’d post another example of a fun way to get writing. There are a number of variations of this game but the one I’m going to describe involves envelopes. Also this is slightly hard to set up by yourself so like a would… Continue reading
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A Writing Game
I’m not sure where this came from originally (though I know we played with it in our Writers Group) but it’s a fun creative writing exercise… You need two characters. Put the name of the first character down on a piece of paper. Then spend five minutes listing what that person would be carrying. For… Continue reading
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Writer’s Group – Lessons Learned
Well, my first foray into the world of Writers Groups is now over, with Dumfries Writers adjourning their fortnightly meetings until the autumn. That’s understandable; people have so many other things to do during the summer months and holidays and other fun things get in the way of writing. It’s a shame though, as I’ve… Continue reading
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Story Time Lines and Plots
There was an interesting talk at our recent Writer’s Group meeting on time lines for stories, and plots, and when to ‘start’ a story. The example given was that of Harry Potter where the opening sequence begins with the baby Harry being left on the Dursley’s doorstep. There is an awful lot of ‘story’ that… Continue reading
