Blog - 15/09/12

Hello there! So you may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything in a while. I seem to be having problems with my internet connection at the start and end of the month so in future I’m going to start posting these blogs mid-monthly.

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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