Monday, April 04, 2005
The Sun Is Shining
A glorious day has befallen Scotland. The sun is shining, the weather is sweet, make you want to move your dancing feet (to paraphrase the Great Man).
Reading through April's edition of Writing Magazine and I saw the winners of last summer's ghost story competition have been announced. The Blind Man of Cathkin Street didn't make the shortlist so I now have a tale of terror to try and sell. With it being written specifically for a competition, the horror market was never something I deliberately have written for and so this could be an interesting search. Horror isn't one of my genres either in writing or reading, but creating atmosphere and building tension is, so it's a case of finding the right place for it.
I tried to submit In The New Town Mist to theharrow.com but their site is technically unable to accept online submissions. It's a very long and complicated process for submitting, which I eventually gave up on when it wouldn't accept it.
Dinner was a flop. It was supposed to be one of those unhealthy-sounding-but-made-in-a-healthy-kind-of-way type meals. Chicken in spicy batter with chips. Sounds easy enough, but the chips came out floppy and the chicken tasted - poor. Time to face facts; I'm better cooking healthy complicated meals. Ahem.
I wrote over 1600 words for the February short story competition in Writing Magazine. The remit is for it to involve a dictionary and must be between 1600 and 1800 words, which is harder to do than it sounds. Creating believable characters and stories in that amount of words is a true test of craft above all else.
I'm being drawn more and more towards taking more and better photographs. Most of the pictures I have taken are stills from a digital video camera so can be vastly improved upon. I believe taking better photographs will aid my writing, particularly non-fiction, and it's an interesting form of art I want to expore as a support to my fiction and poetry.
When writing, whether a short story, poem or longer piece, I always have specific images in my mind. It would be good to be able to capture these. I like the idea of making a collection of photographs which relate the story of Jackie McCann in image-form. A project worth thinking more about.
Speaking of photgraphs, click here for pics of me and Laura on our wee trip to Edinburgh Castle last week.
Reading through April's edition of Writing Magazine and I saw the winners of last summer's ghost story competition have been announced. The Blind Man of Cathkin Street didn't make the shortlist so I now have a tale of terror to try and sell. With it being written specifically for a competition, the horror market was never something I deliberately have written for and so this could be an interesting search. Horror isn't one of my genres either in writing or reading, but creating atmosphere and building tension is, so it's a case of finding the right place for it.
I tried to submit In The New Town Mist to theharrow.com but their site is technically unable to accept online submissions. It's a very long and complicated process for submitting, which I eventually gave up on when it wouldn't accept it.
Dinner was a flop. It was supposed to be one of those unhealthy-sounding-but-made-in-a-healthy-kind-of-way type meals. Chicken in spicy batter with chips. Sounds easy enough, but the chips came out floppy and the chicken tasted - poor. Time to face facts; I'm better cooking healthy complicated meals. Ahem.
I wrote over 1600 words for the February short story competition in Writing Magazine. The remit is for it to involve a dictionary and must be between 1600 and 1800 words, which is harder to do than it sounds. Creating believable characters and stories in that amount of words is a true test of craft above all else.
I'm being drawn more and more towards taking more and better photographs. Most of the pictures I have taken are stills from a digital video camera so can be vastly improved upon. I believe taking better photographs will aid my writing, particularly non-fiction, and it's an interesting form of art I want to expore as a support to my fiction and poetry.
When writing, whether a short story, poem or longer piece, I always have specific images in my mind. It would be good to be able to capture these. I like the idea of making a collection of photographs which relate the story of Jackie McCann in image-form. A project worth thinking more about.
Speaking of photgraphs, click here for pics of me and Laura on our wee trip to Edinburgh Castle last week.
Colin 11:22 am
2 Comments:
Your pictures are wonderful. You are so lucky to live in such a beautiful city with a rich history. It looks a bit damp though.
I suppose the U.S. will get there - in another 1000 years!
Brenda
I suppose the U.S. will get there - in another 1000 years!
Brenda
Colin, you live in the COOLEST place. I wish they had castles where *I* live!
