May 14, 2011
It's strange how seeing your story in print can change the way you feel about it. Maybe it's the influence of the other stories around it, maybe it's something to do with how it's illustrated. You begin to see how other people might interpret it, and that might not be the way you intended. According to reader-response theory, no text is complete until it's been read, and then only for that reading, so seeing work in a different context is bound to change it.
Bearing this in mind, I read the latest issue of Sorcerous Signals, which contains my story 'The Journey of Life', with some apprehension. I needn't have worried. The illustration by Lee Kuruganti captures the atmosphere, and what I wrote still makes sense (to me, at least).
You'll find the magazine at www.sorceroussignals.com - it's a good read. Please feel free to interpret 'The Journey of Life' however you wish. As long as you enjoy it, I'm happy.
Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : FantasyFiction
May 2, 2011
I'd been trying to find ways of describing the sunny weather, struggling to find fresh metaphors and to recreate how it felt to experience spring. Then I remembered one hot summer's day last year when I kept cool by reading Ernest Shackleton's account of his ill-fated Antarctic expedition, South. He used little figurative language. He simply told the tale, and somehow that simplicity was more moving than any number of adjectives. Without endless metaphors or descriptions of how it felt - ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration
April 25, 2011
I once heard of someone who had lost a whole year's work - poetry, short stories, essays - everything. It had been in exercise books and notepads left in a rucksack in a car parked outside the writer's new house when he was moving in. Thieves broke into the car and stole the rucksack. The writing was of no value to them, and would no doubt have been dumped, but he never found it.
I can't imagine how awful such a loss would be. Rewriting everything exactly as it had been would be impo...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
April 17, 2011
When it comes to tweeting, I'm a novice. I first started looking at Twitter a few months ago, and was impressed by how many really inventive and literary tweeters there are out there - and how prolific they are! So far, I'm following Gayle Beveridge, Simon Sylvester, Nanoism, and Henry Leland (Olde Yeller Cat), and the list is growing all the time.
This week I was thrilled not only to gain a new follower, but to be retweeted for the first time. The tweet was an extract from one of the so...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Inspiration
April 11, 2011
I've been torn in several directions today. It's been beautifully sunny spring weather, and I would have loved to just lounge around outside, but I really needed at least to make a start on clearing the weeds in the garden to prove that there are actually some flowers in the borders, and then there was this blog to write. I still had two library books to read that had to be returned this week as well. Who could really blame me if I sat in the garden and read? The answer is: no one except ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
April 3, 2011
... and that I need to put a space between words. I'm going to quit now before I get anything else wrong.
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
April 3, 2011
Why is it that you can proof read something umpteen times, yet as soon as it's irrevocably published a typo jumps out at you? I do, of course know that 'i' comes before 'e'except after 'c', so why didn't I type it that way in my last blog?
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
April 3, 2011
Strange how little it can take to change your whole outlook on life. This week I'd been struggling under a pile of things that I thought I ought to do and work that I had to do, rather than what I wanted to do. The harder I tried to get everything done, the more it seemed was left. Would I ever be able to get back to writing the follow-up to Discord's Child? Was it even worth trying?
Then I recieved some news I'd been waiting about a month to hear. Nothing earth-shattering, but it mad...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
March 27, 2011
Good news! One of my poems has been selected for the Norwich Writers' Circle competition anthology, which goes to show that if you send a story or poem off to a competition and it doesn't win, it isn't the end of the world. Only one entry can win, after all, and that doesn't mean that the rest of them are rubbish.
If the judges offer any comments, go over your work again, bearing them in mind, and make any changes you feel are appropriate, then select another competition and send it out ...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley. Posted In : Competitions
March 20, 2011
To some, being a writer might seem rather dull. While they negotiate the dangers and irritations of the daily commute, battle with angry customers on the phone and struggle to resist the temptation to eat all the biscuits at the afternoon meeting, you are stuck in a chair at home with nothing more exciting to do than stare at a blank screen or chew the end of your pencil. Wrong! My work as a writer regularly takes me to foreign lands and strange cultures, where the journey alone is full of...
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Posted by K. S. Dearsley.
