May 19, 2013
You'd have to be a real amateur to send your work out without keeping a copy, wouldn't you? That's what I've always thought, but maybe I won't be so judgemental in future.
When I received a letter from The Letters Page magazine thanking me for responding to their call for handwritten letters about writing letters (got that?), I was really pleased that although the editors hadn't chosen it for publication, they did 'enjoy the sensitive discussion of correspondence and the strong sense of place'. I immediately wanted to check my copy to see what it was they had liked and (you guessed it), it's nowhere to be found. I know what I did, or should I say what I didn't do? Because I had handwritten the letter instead of keying it into the computer where I would automatically have hit 'save', I treated it the same way I would a letter to a friend and just put it in an envelope without making a copy, then binned the notes I had made without the act even registering.
Now, I can't check my submission to see what I got right, where I went wrong, or even being able to put it on this blog. What a fool! Be warned–don't do as I do!
Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
May 12, 2013
Today, I have good news and... good news! The latest Iyessi song is now on my
Discord's Child page, and my flash story, 'A Matching Pair', which came third in the
Bowers Gifford & North Benfleet Residents' Association competition, can be read on the association's website. It's great when your work appears somewhere new and you can feel that it's being read by people who otherwise would never come across it. Will it last generations? The odds are against it.
Even authors who write the bestsel...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Reviews
May 5, 2013
I've been reading an old book of my mother's, A Loving Spirit, by Daphne du Maurier. This edition was published in 1948. It still has spaces between quotation marks and the beginning of a sentence and the punctuation at the end, and between the end of a word and punctuation other than commas e.g. " Help ! ". I had thought that this died out in the 19th century, but it obviously survived far longer.
Even since I started writing for publication there have been changes in standard formatting. I...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
April 27, 2013
There's a saying that the more you do, the more you can do. This is why it's important to practise writing every day, if possible. You don't have to actually get words on a page, although jotting notes down will help to take your thoughts further, and give you something to come back to. Playing 'what if?' using characters you see in the street, topics that are in the news, conversations you overhear and situations you come across all serve to get your imagination moving and the ideas flowing....
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration
April 21, 2013
Yesterday, I went to see a local amateur dramatic company's production of Up Pompeii by Miles Tredinnick, which was directed by a friend. The cast rose to the challenge incredibly well. Not only did they have to contend with the notoriously difficult timing of exits and entrances on which such farce-type comedies rely, but there were risqué costumes and saucy clinches that might be embarrassing when they meet their co-stars at the next parents' evening. Added to this was the challenge of per...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Reviews
April 14, 2013
I intended this blog to be about cohesion and coherence, but what I wrote didn't have much of either. Then I tried to make it about writing about subjects that don't interest you (again) and, frankly, it was boring. While searching for a solution, I found myself doing the linguistic equivalent of doodling, and coming up with alternative definitions for linguistic terms. 'Oxymoron' could be 'stupid air', if that wouldn't be a contradiction in terms. 'Tautology' might be what a science teacher ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Linguistics
April 7, 2013
Today the sun is out and for once the wind isn't trying to saw people in half. It's enough even to tempt a fireside cat into the great outdoors to listen to the sparrows squabbling. Now the snow has finally gone, I can see just how much the garden needs tidying and for once, getting on with it instead of writing, won't be procrastinating. If anyone else has detected springlike signs in the air, get outside and breathe it in. You can sit in front of your computer tomorrow, by which time the sk...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration
April 1, 2013
I'm celebrating. Not my birthday, not even Dr. Who's birthday, but two of my stories going public. 'The Enchantress's Pets' appears in the April 2013 issue of
Writing Tomorrow. There's a short article giving the background to how and why it was written too. You can also listen to 'Salvage' on the
Beam Me Up Podcast, episode 359. I love the characters' voices and the way listening to the story has made it totally fresh. Thanks go to Paul Cole, the man behind Beam Me Up, for his hard work.
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : FantasyFiction
March 31, 2013
Pif! Paf! Which is the elephant and which is the mouse? There's no real link between the sound of most words and what they mean (with the exception of onomatopoeias such as 'buzz'), but that doesn't prevent people from making sound associations. Writers can use this tendency to advantage, especially in poetry. You can use sound association to create a mood, or to subvert it. If you've used 'm' to create associations with 'mother', 'milk' and 'mild', subsequently using 'murder', 'mayhem' or 'm...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Linguistics
March 24, 2013
How hard it must be for Olympic athletes to get all the way to the final only to be pipped at the post by less than a nose! There are no prizes for coming fourth, so all the training, self-discipline and (possibly) neglect of loved ones have been for nothing. On another day, they might have left the blocks a fraction faster or felt fresher, their competitors might not have been as focussed or have eaten one too many Shredded Wheat. Another day they might have won–they were so close. It can ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Competitions
