A Guest Post on a Fascinating Website

You can find the whole text, with accompanying pictures of my Year in the Forest of Dean by following this link. Enjoy!

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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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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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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Progress on the WIP: #SciFi in the Making.

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?asin=B0749NW6W8&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_qMbkAbQM8TNAS&tag=stuartaken-21 Last week I reported I had 11,985 words. As a result of the notes I made, I’ve now added another 3 characters to the cast of players (I need to add another 5 for future chapters, but I already know their names and have an idea of their natures and ambitions, so I only …

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How to be a Fantastic Writer, by Danuta Reah & Penny Grubb: #BookReview.

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?asin=B076QFZY9S&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_YHalAb3WREYPG&tag=stuartaken-21 Subtitled ‘A Handbook for Writers of Commercial Fiction’, this book is precisely what it says it is. As a reader, I’ve tended to shy away from what I saw as ‘commercial’ fiction, but, in practice, I now realise I’ve actually read a good deal of it. As a writer, my fiction veers toward the …

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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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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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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #65

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: Pace, Metaphor, Merge together, Know the ropes, Opia. Pace - Roget’s thesaurus lists the following headers: synchronise (vb), long measure …

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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #64

A series of posts for word lovers. Offering help for writers and language learners, these posts look at many different aspects of the world of words in the hope of stimulating your curiosity and enhancing your creativity. This week’s words: Go, Isocolon, Most unique, Caught with his/her pants down, Contronym: Go: belongs to an odd …

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