You can find the whole text, with accompanying pictures of my Year in the Forest of Dean by following this link. Enjoy!
Category: Creative Writer
Looking for the Best Word? Tip #70
Help for writers and language learners; these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. Next week’s post will occur in the New Year of 2018 and I’m intending to use that change to alter these posts slightly. I expect they’ll become slightly shorter, but only time …
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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Last week I had a total of 30,829 words. This week, in spite of the two-day celebration, a book review, a lunch at a local pub, a night spent watching a play on a local stage, and several longish walks through the forest, clearing fallen trees and branches to allow other walkers to get through, …
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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #69
Help for writers and language learners; these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. My apologies: This post should have appeared yesterday. No real excuse, except I took a rather longer walk than usual and the day was over before I realised it! This week’s words: …
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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Last week I had a total of 18,835 words; this week’s total is 30,829, an increase of 12,000. Not bad, considering the other things that have been happening in and around my life. Only today, we had an interruption in our power supply as the local company came along to update some of the equipment …
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Night and Day, by Caron Allan: #BookReview.
https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?asin=B01KOSVE3Y&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_VevnAb9AQT40C&tag=stuartaken-21 Sub-titled ‘A Dottie Manderson Mystery’, this is the first in a series, and introduces the eponymous heroin through a fascinating tale set in England in the 1930s. This ‘cosy crime’ novel, with its measure of burgeoning romance, is a good read; something to entertain and satisfy in front of a burning log fire in …
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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #68
Help for writers and language learners; these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. This week’s words: Vacant, Personification, I saw it with my own eyes, No time like the present Vacant: - Roget’s thesaurus lists the following headers for this adjective: empty, unthinking, unintelligent, unprovided, …
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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Last week I reached a total of 18,835 words; this week’s total is 25082. I’ve added 3 new chapters and completed all the character sketches. I have two of the original chapters to modify to take account of changes I made last week. Otherwise, the story is going well and I’m enjoying its creation. The …
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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #67
Help for writers and language learners; these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. This week’s words: Out; Periodic sentence; There are many who think; Let sleeping dogs lie; Ellipsism. Contronym: Out belongs to an odd category of words known as contronyms. A contronym is a …
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An Apology and the Creative #Writing #Contests Table Updated
The above is a small version of a much larger picture file you can access by clicking here. (There's a small charge for its use: photography is an expensive activity!) Here’s this month’s second reminder that the writing contest table has been updated, because, as those of you who use it will have noticed, I …
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Creative #Writing #Contests Table Updated
Here’s your monthly reminder that the writing contest table has been updated. I update it frequently, in fact; whenever I come across new contest details. I also subscribe to a few sources for information to pass on to you here. I have a new batch to explore and apply to the table, which I’ll be …
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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #66
A series of posts for lovers of words. Offering help for writers and language learners, these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. This week’s words: Rabid, Paradox, Quite, Needless to say, Tarab, Rabid - Roget’s thesaurus lists the following headers for this adjective: furious, frenzied, …
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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.
Dare I say it? Have I scaled the final barrier to creating the first draft? Last week I reported I had 11,985 words. I also noted that certain details were missing from my memory and I needed to read the first two books again to aid my failing powers of recall. I’ve now done that …
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Naked Good Reads, by Gisela Hausmann: #BookReview.
https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?asin=B075R4VPNB&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_0NalAb4XD8Z81&tag=stuartaken-21 Subtitled ‘How to Find Readers’, this is another of Hausmann’s writing books crammed with common sense and down-to-earth advice. First, I must pose a question: ‘If you’re a writer, do you belong to Goodreads?’ And, if you don’t, a supplementary question: ‘Why not?’ Goodreads may boast a membership of ‘only’ 65 million, but …
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‘Work Hard And You’ll Succeed’: The Biggest Lie?
You’ll have heard the cry: ‘Work hard and you’ll succeed.’ Almost from infancy, we’re brought up to believe this mantra. It follows us through school, often reinforced by loving and caring parents, and is ingrained in our very personas through repetition and a form of example. The successful, in the terms of our current society, …
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Stuart Aken 