Trevor's Writing

Happy 10th Birthday to Trevor’s Writing

No Comments »6th March, 2016; Category: Blogging, The Writer's Life

CONGRATULATIONS.

Goodness, me.

Is it really ten years today since I started this site about writing, reading and books?

Today is the tenth anniversary of Trevor’s Writing. Originally, I started blogging because family members wanted to keep up with what we were doing. This very quickly changed as I saw the potential of such a site very early.

Around the same time I started two other sites, Trevor’s Birding and Trevor’s Travels. I bit off a little too much, but over the intervening years, I have written over a thousand articles on these sites as well. More recently I have maintained and written many articles on our church site here.

I decided that I would use this site as a platform to share my writing, share my ideas about writing, sharing insights from the books I was reading and bringing to my writing my extensive experiences as a primary school teacher. I had retired only a few months earlier. In retirement, I planned to write as close to full-time as I could manage. It had been a dream of mine throughout my life. Now I had the time.

Over the last ten years I have included the following on this site:

Poetry, including many haiku
Short stories – mainly flash fiction up to about 500 words
Reviews of books and films
Writing ideas and hints
Short story starters to help my readers who are writers
Writing prompts to start the ideas rolling for writers
Reflections on the writer’s life
Personal reflections on attempting and achieving my Master of Arts Creative Writing degree
Outlining the process of writing my novel which was the main component of my MA degree. I actually quoted portions of this site in my thesis paper.

How to access articles on this site

Readers of this site can access the articles in a variety of ways:

Use the search facility at the top of each page
Use the cloud of topics in the sidebar
Click on the Archives button at the top of the page and scan through all the articles (now over 1000 of them)
Click on one of the items under Contents on the sidebar
I also post quite a bit on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – click on the buttons near the top of each page to follow me.

The Future

What am I planning on this site in the months and years to come? Basically, more of the same. I am also planning to publish a range of eBooks. Stay tuned.

Good writing.

Trevor

Short story starters

No Comments »19th January, 2016; Category: Fiction, Short Fiction, Short Stories, Short Story Starters, Writing prompts

Over the last few years I have written many posts similar to this one. Many of them have proved to be very popular with my readers and consistently draw many readers. I have also had good feedback from readers who have used them.

The idea behind these lists is to start your thinking off on a certain track – and then to let your imagination run wild. Use any of these ideas as you like, adapt the ideas to suit your thinking and away you go.

Each one could be used as an opening line, or a finishing line, or a sentence somewhere in your story.

Story starters

‘How on earth could you think that about me?’ shouted Nancy.
Olivia hesitated as she came into the room. Her handbag was not where she had left it.
‘Now where have I put my glasses?’ muttered Peter.
It was strange how Queenie always found a way out of her frequent moments of embarrassment. Like yesterday.
As Robert closed his front door, he drew his coat tighter against the bitter wind. ‘What a night.’
Sam raced to the letter box, flung it open and grabbed the only letter. “Yes! This must be it!’
‘How can you be so sure it was me?’ demanded Tina. ‘I wasn’t anywhere near you when it happened.’
‘If that is how you feel,’ said Ursula, ‘this is the final straw.’
Vince was completely flummoxed. How was he going to get out of this toxic relationship?
‘That will do!’ yelled William. ‘That is the perfect spot for my pride and joy.’

You can access many more short story starters here.

Conditions of use:

Feel free to use any of the story starters listed above. Change anything to suit your needs.

Give it your best shot.

Edit your work carefully before sending it off to a publisher or posting it on your blog.

Let me know in the comments section how it went.

If you publish your story on your web site or on your blog let me know so I can make a link to it for others to read.

Happy New Year and some plans for 2016

No Comments »15th January, 2016; Category: Events, Goal setting, The Writer's Life

Yes, yes – I know.

Wishing my readers a happy new year over two weeks into the year is a little belated. Never mind.

In reality, I have been a little distracted lately. And not just with the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Over the last three weeks we have had a constant stream of visitors. These include our daughter home for a few weeks after teaching all year in Clare in the mid-north of South Australia. Then we have also had our son and his family over from Sydney, including our two grand children, ages 7 and 4. They are lively children and a challenge to keep occupied. Our swimming pool has had a good workout and in that context it is good that the weather has been very warm.

Included in our busy schedule in recent weeks have been two family gatherings. The first was on the farm where I grew up which is now operated by my nephew and his three sons. It was a time of reminiscing and catching up; those present included my niece over from Perth in Western Australia and my son and family from Sydney. More recently we had a few days staying with my sister-in-law and family in Peterborough in the mid-north of the state. Once again, it was planned as a family gathering. Despite the oppressive heat – around 44C (111F) – we had a great time with plenty of great food.

Now it is time for life to get back to a little bit of normality – I hope.

2015 in review

At this time of year it is normal to review the year just gone, and to look at the year ahead. So what were the highlights for me of the year 2015?

Reading: I managed to read a significant number of books, including some quite long works. These included Richard Flanagan’s brilliant The narrow road to the deep north, Malala Yousafzai’s inspiring I am Malala (read my review here), and the confronting Rosanne Hawke novel The truth about peacock blue.
More reading: with the acquisition of my first eReader I ventured into a whole new reading experience. Books read on my Kobo device was a pleasant experience, and included The kite runner (a wonderful book) and The girl with the dragon tattoo (a gruesome and quite disappointing book – read my review here).
Writing: the last year has not been a great one for me regarding getting my writing published. I had just a handful of articles published and no success in competitions.
Blogging: With over 430 blog posts over five sites I consider the year to be reasonably successful. (You can access these posts here on this site, as well as Trevor’s Birding, Trevor’s Travels and our church site here.)
Health: Multiple health issues over the course of the year have been a major limiting factor. Thankfully, I am seeing some light at the end of the gloom in this area.
Biggest disappointment for 2015: not getting any of my books published, including some as eBooks.

Plans for 2016:

I haven’t actually had the time so far to list some goals for this year, but they are sure to include the following:

Reading: continue on my programme of reading significant works of literature. currently I am reading The people of the book by Geraldine Brooks. I recently read two other books written by her: The secret chord and Caleb’s crossing.
Blogging: at least 500 blog posts over the various sites for which I write.
Poems and stories: I plan to submit many poems and stories to competitions journals, and magazines.
Novels: I am still debating about whether to send my novels to print publishers, or to self-publish them as eBooks. I am leaning towards the latter.
Non-fiction: I have many ideas for non-fiction books to be published as eBooks. Stay tuned.
Health: I am working on improving my general health, fitness and well-being this year – with some help from my doctor and physiotherapist. I’ve already started losing weight.

Happy reading.

Good writing.

Trevor

Happy Christmas

No Comments »25th December, 2015; Category: Events, The Writer's Life

White-browed Woodswallow

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

to all of my readers.

I hope that you have a wonderful Christmas.

This year our Christmas has been very low key. Just my daughter home for a holiday, and my wife and I. Speaking of my daughter – she surprised us when she came home on Wednesday with a lovely set of three presents for us. In consultation with our son she bought us a new set of three bird baths. Many of the photos which appear on my other site Trevor’s Birding are taken of birds having a drink or a bath, including the photo above taken of a White-browed Woodswallow having a drink. This photo shows the old bird bath. It was taken on a very hot day last week.

Last night I went to the 11:30pm service at our church. This was a very moving service and a great way to see in Christmas Day. This morning we all ventured out again to our church service. Later we cooked up a storm for lunch: roast pork and vegetables on our barbecue. Despite the heat this went well. Today was the hottest Christmas Day we have had in South Australia since 1945. Thankfully our air conditioner coped well.

After our main course my wife served up the Christmas fruit pudding she made yesterday. Together with home made custard it was delicious. While none of us over-indulged, we all tried to read our books during the afternoon but sleepiness got the better of us. We all had a snooze. Thankfully, no noisy children or noisy toys in this household this Christmas. That will change next week when our son and family arrive from Sydney for three weeks.

Dinner was a repeat of lunch with a enough leftovers to go around. It was just as enjoyable as lunch.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Trevor

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

No Comments »16th December, 2015; Category: Books, Fiction, Novels, Opinion, Reading, Reviews

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Back in April I wrote about the fact that I had finally relented and procured an eReader. It was interesting adapting to a new form of technology. It was also quite a different reading experience. I found it very easy to use and quickly downloaded several books to read.

I also included my wife in this wonderful new addition to our reading regime. I was quite surprised how easily she also took to it. In fact, during the first few weeks we had to share the reader. She usually heads off to bed before me and reads for 20 – 30 minutes, and then when I arrive in bed it is lying there waiting for me. So far, we have not argued over its use at all. Not yet.

But I digress.

Well, not so much of a digression but more of an introduction to the review I want to do. The first book I bought and read on my eReader was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. When I mentioned this on Facebook many of my friends said how enjoyable this book was, as well as being totally gripping in its exciting subject matter.

I have to disagree.

Yes – I was totally absorbed by the storyline. At times I had trouble putting the reader down. I even took it out in the back yard to read – when the grandchildren allowed me this luxury. We were staying with my son and family in Sydney at the time. The utter fascination with the characters and the events in this novel had me spellbound, and about half way through the book, this began to bother me, and towards the end it concerned me greatly.

While I concede that this is a brilliantly written book – it has the reader in its grip right from the beginning – it was the subject matter which rang alarm bells in my conscience. I found the sadistic subject matter towards the end of the novel to be quite repulsive; I guess that was what the author was trying to achieve. I also found that many of the characters had no moral compasses at all. Instead, they displayed very strong ‘immoral compasses.’

Conclusion:

Certainly it is a very well written novel – no disputing that. I just found that this type of novel is not for me – especially when I have so many other books waiting to be read.

And I have resolved not to read the sequels in this series. Good thing I didn’t buy them.

Good reading.

Good writing.

Trevor