So, what have I been up to in all that time? Well the
truth is not a lot really. As I mentioned in my last post the summer schedule
of sport has been insane. How good were the Olympics? I was particularly glued
to the athletics, gymnastics and the weightlifting though I watched a lot of
the football, women’s football (which was far better) and some volleyball and
judo as well. I followed most of the BMX and caught the occasional tennis match
as too, though I didn’t watch a lot of it because I watch tennis all year round
and was giving other sports a chance. All in all it was fantastic aaaaaaand pretty
much all consuming. I didn’t do much else other than wake up, put the Olympics
on, eat occasionally between events and go to bed when it was over for the day.
But the sport has settled down now, the US Open was the last slam of the year
(Well done to Andy Murray for winning that maiden slam to go with that Olympic
gold medal!), only that small matter of the new football season now!
You may be surprised to hear that I’ve done some writing
during that time as well! Not an awful lot, but some! I’ve mainly been working
on the first paragraph short story competition but it looks like I’m going to
miss the deadline for entry. I’m still going to finish it, I’ll just post it on
here and credit the competition for the opening paragraph. I’m trying a
technique where I write my short stories without worrying about the word limit
at first and produce a ‘full’ version. Then when I’m happy with it I’ll go back
and create a shorter ‘competition’ version. I may have missed the deadline but
I’ll still going to make a competition version of it because I need the
practise.
I finished reading the ‘Black Tower’ series. It’s scary
how similar the ending turned out to my first plan for my fantasy series having
not previously read this. It was in truth a bit predictable, but it was an appropriate
ending to the story. The story practically demanded that ending. It made me
think about how one dimensional writing can be at times. Stories tend to write
themselves when you’ve planned out enough and it’s difficult to change
direction without compromising everything written so far. I think that’s why
stories change so much as you write them. They’re following their own path and
it’s the writer taking occasional left and right turns that force the story to
work out a more appropriate origin. Then when they go back to change it they
find they’re on a different path entirely.
I’ve since read ‘Prince of Thorns’ by Mark Lawrence and
was thoroughly impressed. His writing style is superb and left me green with
envy. I won’t be the only one. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series when
I can get hold of them. For now though I’ve started reading Tim Severin’s ‘Hector
Lynch’ series which I’m enjoying. The author is very knowledgeable in his
writing and it’s proving very useful for my own fantasy series which starts out
with pirates as well. It’s like reading a text book with a narrative! My only criticism
is that everybody speaks so formally and state entire big picture situations
that it’s questionable whether they, the character, would be so well informed
about. I wonder if this is where the author knows so much he can’t bear to
leave the reader in the dark about anything because of some impassive need to
educate. It’s not a problem though, you soon adapt, it was just a shock to
start with.
I’m trying to keep these posts to a single page so I’ll
end it there. Next time I’ll talk about a new thing I want to add to the blog
writing wise. I’ll code name it TfTT for now. Until then, buh-bye!
__________
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