Archive for February, 2007

Short Fiction #33 Phillip

No Comments »18th February, 2007; Category: Short Fiction, Short Stories

Phillip pulled the old rugged coat closer to him. The howling wind whipped around the meagre shelter. Sudden gusts of air chilled his face and exposed fingers. The icy block in his feet and shins numbed any feeling. He stood up and tried to get the circulation going again.

Phillip cautiously peeped around the edge of the old tin shed. Dark clouds were scudding in his direction. A sudden blast of air brought a limb of a tree to the ground nearby. He tried in vain to hug the threadbare coat even closer. A loose sheet of iron rattled on the roof. A squall of rain drummed on the roof and walls followed by the hammering of hail.

Phillip reached into his pocket. He brought out his only box of matches. Four left. He would have to be very careful lighting a fire to keep warm tonight. He guarded his small cache of dry wood in the corner of the shed. As he crouched on the freezing ground he huddled into a ball and wrapped his coat around his legs. The pounding hail vibrated through the wall and rattled his teeth.

He tried to sleep.

Haiku #34 Red Rose

2 Comments »17th February, 2007; Category: Haiku

Blood red rose
Kissed gently by
Morning sunshine.

Rose in our garden

Poem #26 Raindrops in your heart

No Comments »16th February, 2007; Category: Poetry

Raindrops in Your Heart

You reach out your hand
To grasp at what you call love,
To have that which your tormented heart
Has longed for through many sleepless nights.

You wander down the avenue
Of wind strewn golden leaves,
And brace yourself against the bitter wind
Of mid-winter with a heavy heart of ice.

The lonely bird in the tree above
Is your only companion; he, like you,
Is in need of companionship, in need
Of a friend to share the warmth of love.

Memories there are â€“ but they only taunt
The emptiness that weighs you down
And stir the longing for a hand to hold,
For lips to kiss, for arms to be embraced.

You must wander on through restless days
And toss through tiring nights,
Until she returns â€“ or live through a life
Of endless misery and dejection.

And even the bird flies away â€“ wait!
A solitary ray of sunlight, a heart-leap of hope â€“
But no – just fleeting hopes â€“ for the rain returns
And trickles down your crying face.

Garbage Story Starters

No Comments »15th February, 2007; Category: Short Stories, Writing Hints

Today I discovered an absolutely useless web site pretending to be helpful to writers and teachers looking for writing ideas.

The site is called The Story Starter. (I hesitate to give a link to it.) It claims to have 298 million different story starters. I have better things to do than to sit here and count them. The claim could be millions out but that is irrelevant.

The sentences are blatantly computer generated to a formula. Just looking at half a dozen will show you the formula – which doesn’t work. Being automated as it is, the computer creates many sentences which are nonsense. Here are a few examples:

The sly spy wrote a poem in the skyscraper to discover the dark secret.

The boring ballet dancer produced a movie in the hidden room to create a diversion.

The clumsy hotel manager composed a song in a lonely bus stop to find the missing horse.

I could go on – but you get the point – it’s pointless. Randomly selected sentences like that are meaningless; they are utter garbage and nonsense. I’m sure it is a clever computer programme but the results are pitiful.

I would say that you would have to troll through many thousands of sentences to find one that is remotely useable, or sensible.

By way of contrast, some of the articles I have written on this blog have been very successful in attracting traffic. They rank only a few steps below “The Story Starter” on Google but are far more useable. Click on the link below to see some very useful short story starters, with links to more.

Link:

Sixteen Scintillating Short Story Starters

Stay tuned for more of these useful story starters in coming weeks.

How to run a home based business

2 Comments »14th February, 2007; Category: Blogging, The Writer's Life

Many writers and bloggers are trying to turn a dream into a successful home based business. Working at home has many attractions, many benefits and can be very cost effective. There are, of course, many pitfalls too.

As far as I am concerned I’ve only been working at home on my writing and blogging for a little under three years. I’m not expert on the topic. My limited experience has shown up a few benefits.

Benefits of working at home:

No commuting (this is a fuzzy one for me; all my working life I was never more than 10 minutes from work, 30 minutes if I rode a bike).
You don’t have to dress up (and I will admit to writing while in my pyjamas; I couldn’t sleep is my excuse).
You can work when you feel like it with no boss to check up on you (unless your wife/husband/partner/dog/goldfish give you a hard time when you are not working).
You can eat and drink when you feel like it, not according to the company clock.
You can go for a walk, feed the bird, water the garden and check the letter box anytime you want to.

Disadvantages of working at home:

You need to be very self disciplined.
You need to be very self motivated.
It can be lonely sitting at the computer all day and night.
It can be very scary trying to make a living from your writing or blogging when there is little or no money coming in.
People get to know you are at home and will think nothing of phoning or calling in when you are trying to meet a deadline or the creative juices and ideas are flowing freely.

I am sure that with a little thought I could come up with many more advantages and disadvantages. I don’t need to because Tony D. Clark has an excellent blog called Success from the nest. It’s about working from home; he’s been doing it successfully for nearly 14 years so he must know a thing or two about how to make it all work.

Success from the nest has the added bonus of being illustrated by Tony’s own cartoons. Check them out.