Tag: writing

Christmas Hamper Challenge

Chris Hall11 Comments

0Christmas Hamper

What’s not to like about another little gift challenge!

Originating here from Rory at A Guy called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip and gifted onwards to me here by Teresa, The Haunted Wordsmith.

This is the challenge:
Pick five items for five bloggers and put them in the hamper. Then explain what you put in and why.

0Bettys Tea Rooms

My first pick is Afternoon Tea at Betty’s Tea Rooms in York where I went to school. 

This is for Teresa, The Haunted Wordsmith, to thank her for her gifts to me this year as well as for all her wonderful posts which keep us busy reading, writing and admiring her work. And it will be another little learning experience for her about us weird Brits!

 

0the-gin-boxWhile I was in Betty’s, I noticed this rather splendid Gin Box for my second pick.

Now I’m rather partial to a nip of this stuff myself. However, I immediately though of Ellie Scott, a self-confessed gin drinker.

For all those awesomely witty short stories we’ve enjoyed throughout the year.

Cheers, Ellie!

0atlas

My third pick is an Illustrated World Atlas

This is for Foster and Panda at Nana’s Whimsical World, so they can choose where to go on their next adventure!

Have fun little guys! (I won’t tell Debra).

 

 

0map of worldSo while I was picking out the atlas, I came across this Outline World Map. This was perfect for my fourth pick.

It goes to Mickey & Yunni at Freja Travels  so they can colour in all the wonderful countries which we’ve enjoyed hearing about on their travel blog. Thanks for sharing with us!

0Roget
It really was an excellent book shop, because I also found this for my fifth and final pick.

The latest edition of Roget’s Thesaurus, I was tempted to keep this for myself as my copy is so old and battered.

However, it goes to J.I. Rogers, just in case she runs out of words for her Six Word Challenges, as if you would, Jenn!
Keep ’em coming!

 


I hope you enjoy your virtual pressies.

As ever, you can pick this up and roll with it or not!

0happy hols

 

 

 

NaNoWriMo – onward and upward

Chris Hall8 Comments

nanowrimo 2018

Week 2

This morning, having once again had a terrible Thursday – not even one paragraph completed – I was feeling discouraged. The whole day before me and I just couldn’t get going. Maybe I’d put my characters through too much in the last couple of chapters? Charred bodies? Too gruesome for a middle grade story?

Leave it. Move on. I can always tone it down later.

Then after doing a spot of ‘real work’ up they popped, ready to go. Now Chapter 10 is all finished and I’m pretty much on track for my 30,000 word target for the month – 14,290 to be precise – and they’re ‘all good’ words (I think).

So, onward and upward to fellow ‘NaNo’s next week, and to everyone else busy toiling at the keyboard!

NaNoWriMo – update

Chris Hall6 Comments

nanowrimo 2018

The first week is almost over. Well, it’s been a week and a day, strictly speaking, but since my Thursdays have been too chock-full of ‘other stuff’, I’m not counting them (or on them).

I am enjoying it. I’m having fun. Maybe not getting quite the word count… but I have (mostly) finished my first five chapters. I’ve allowed myself to miss bits out: not worry about names, or particular locations. I’ve left notes to myself to look up this and fill in that. It’s working, at least in the context of my own particular goal for a short novel for children.

Oh, and the planning has mostly gone out the window. I’ve discovered I can’t write that way. Although I do still have the end written. It might change , I’ll have to see what my characters do. And I’m loving them!

So, my writerly friends out there who are busy with this little adventure too: may your words flow fluently, your plots thicken seamlessly and your characters give you joy! (Was that too many adverbs??).

On with the journey…

NaNoWriMo

Chris Hall6 Comments

nanowrimo 2018

It’s started and not quite as I’d imagined. Of course, I must start by coming clean and admitting to those who didn’t catch my admission on Twitter the other day, that I haven’t signed up for this properly and officially.

No. I decided to be easy(ish) on myself and aim for a modest target of 20,000 – 30,000 words. A children’s story. Something I could add to later: parts two and three perhaps.

So, at the start of the week, I did a little light planning, which was good. Feeling confident!

And then midweek, and I shouldn’t complain,  I got a whole bunch of ‘proper work’ to do. That, incidentally, means paid work for clients which, of course is good. But it did include reproducing a 28 page, closely worded, legal document, which took hours (it’s not something I’d normally do) and it numbed my brain, something chronic!

NaNoWriMo Day One – 7,239 words… and none of them fiction! Day Two has been better.

Good luck to everyone who’s doing this! I wish you very well. See you next month.

The Clock’s Ticking!

Chris Hall15 Comments
the clock is ticking lunasonline Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels
Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels

Just to let you know that I won’t be around quite so much for the next 6 weeks. It’s nothing bad.

I promised myself at the beginning of March that I would finish the draft of my new novel by the end of October (this year), and then do something I’ve never done before, and which I’ve wanted to do for almost 10 years: NaNoWriMo.

2018 is the year.
It’s going to be a challenge because I’m going to have to plan this properly.
Starting…now! Well, soon.

I’ll be popping up for air to see what everyone’s up to, but if I don’t interact with you much, you’ll know it’s going well. If I do start wittering on it will mean I’m prevaricating which will not be so good. You might even find me crying in a corner of Twitter.

But let’s be positive. I’m going to get it done.

Wish me luck!

For the punctuation pedant

Chris Hall2 Comments

front cover eats shoots and leaves

If, like me, you cringe at the sight of the misplaced apostrophe and other grammatical ‘nasties’, then Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a ‘must-read’ for you.

Lynne Truss offers us her ‘Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ as an antidote to ignorance and indifference in the use and application of full stops, commas, question marks and more.

Full of rich and ridiculous examples of how the meaning of the English language can be distorted by the misuse, over-use and lack of use of correct punctuation, this is a hugely entertaining read.

 

Why the title?

extract from eats shoots and leaves

panda eats shoots and leavesSo thoughtfully and wittily written, if you haven’t already come across it, I commend this book to you!

Find it on Goodreads and check out what other people have to say.

Some find it too preachy, but then I suspect that they’re not grammar gurus or punctuation pendants like me. I mean, who else kicks up a fuss in a Chinese chippy late at night at the sight of baked potatoe’s on the menu? Oh, really? You do? Good for you!

Just remember:

punctuation saves lives

 

 

How to write the perfect sentence

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Written by Joe Moran, professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and author of ‘Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the Television’. 

Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd

How to write the perfect sentence lunasonline
Extract from a page of Gustave Flaubert’s manuscript of Madame Bovary. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone’. What can we learn from celebrated authors about the art of writing well?

Every writer, of school age and older, is in the sentences game. The sentence is our writing commons, the shared ground where all writers walk. A poet writes in sentences, and so does the unsung author who came up with “Items trapped in doors cause delays”. The sentence is the Ur-unit, the core material, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right. For James Baldwin, the only goal was “to write a sentence as clean as a bone”.

What can celebrated writers teach the rest of us about the art of writing a great sentence? A common piece of writing advice is to make your sentences plain, unadorned and invisible. George Orwell gave this piece of advice its epigram: “Good prose is like a windowpane.” A reader should notice the words no more than someone looking through glass notices the glass.

Except that you do notice the glass. Picture an English window in 1946, when Orwell wrote that sentence. It would be smeared with grime from smoke and coal dust and, since houses were damp and windows single-glazed, wont to mist and ice over. The glass might still be cracked from air-raid gunfire or bombs, or covered with shatterproof coating to protect people from flying shards. An odd metaphor to use, then, for clear writing.

To continue reading this article click here

 

 

Start with the Map: David Mitchell

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David Mitchell Start with the Map from the New Yorker

I’m a huge fan of David Mitchell’s novels; I just love his writing. Then I came upon this article in The New Yorker. It fascinated me, particularly since I’ve been trying to sketch a map of the (only partly fictional) tunnels which run under the city of Liverpool to help in the process of writing my current novel.

You might enjoy his article too. Here’s the link: Start with the Map

 

 

 

 

Your Writing Needs This Pacing

Chris Hall1 Comment

300 words a day – not much, about a page. Do this! (Note to self)

theryanlanz's avatarRyan Lanz

by Richard Risemberg

There is one indispensable step to writing, and that is that you must sit down and write.

This is technically untrue, and was not such a hard and fast rule in the ancient days: Homer, said to be blind, would have been functionally illiterate; he worked the great epics in his head and presented them to live audiences. What we have now are versions likely written down by scribes taking dictation.

View original post 551 more words

I’ve been nominated for…

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blogger recognition award

Honoured, in fact doubly honoured, to have been nominated by firstly:

The Haunted Wordsmith back in July (OMG how time flies) – thank you Teresa!

and secondly, just last week by the The Floating Thoughts – thank you  Roy, Amrita, and Dee Kay!

Be sure to check these wonderful people out in the unlikely event you haven’t found them already…

blogger recognition award rules

You will notice that Q5 and Q7 appear less prominently. This is because they don’t always appear for the award. But well, so what, everything is optional, apart from death and taxes – to misquote Benjamin Franklin (apparently). So, 1 and 2 completed…

How ‘lunasonline’ started

I originally set the blog up in about 2010 to ‘store’ some of my stories. I was way too scared to publish. A couple of years passed during which I finished and self-published my first novel, The Silver Locket – under a pseudonym – still lacking confidence, you see.

But then, at the start of this year, having sold several handfuls of the paperback version of my novel through the art gallery where I’d been working, I decided to launch myself and my blog (all right, Luna’s blog) into the world.

In the meantime, I’d started writing my second novel and, to spur me on, I decided to post a chapter on my blog each week. Discipline! I also set my self a target to publish a short piece of writing every Friday – mostly fiction – just something for fun.

Now, eight months later, I never would have realised the wonderful community of bloggers out there. The interaction and support is wonderful! Thank you all!

 

My two pieces of advice (for what it’s worth)

Be genuine, be supportive – by this I mean that we should ‘like’ what we truly like… and read whatever it is first; interact positively, as much as we can;  and be kind, be positive!

Enjoy yourself, just get it out there – even if it’s a rant – we’ll understand! Have fun with your work, and try to be the best that you can on that day.

 

My Answers to The Floating Thoughts’ Questions:

1.If you could live a life of immortality, would you?
On balance, no. Although I would manage to read all those books out there.

2.If you had 1 billion dollars (or whatever your currency is) what would you do?
Invest a couple of million, buy houses all over the world and give the rest away to people who really need the money. And I might take a hit out on a couple of people (politicians and despots, beware).

3.If you had infinite resources to fund someone to make a piece of media for you (movie, anime, TV series, video game etc.) what would that project be?
A fantastic wildlife series involving loads of awesome places which I would co-host with Sir David Attenborough.

4.If you could have one skill you don’t currently have, what would it be?
The ability to fly.

5.How do you get over it when you feel sad? What do you do?
Write my way out. Or have a long, hot bath; but since we have a severe drought here in Cape Town and bathing is out, it has to be the writing. Wine helps too.

6.What kind of person annoys you the most?
One who promises to deliver then fails to do so.

7.What have you always wanted to be able to do but aren’t able to do?
See Q4.

8.What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t worry what other people think.

9.What is your favourite film character? and why?
Elizabeth Bennett from Jane Austin’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ (any version). She’s my all-time favourite heroine. It’s her wit. She didn’t worry about what other people thought either.

10.If you could talk to anyone again, living or dead from your life, who would it be? Why?Sorry, I’ve moved on.

 

My Nominees

This is just a handful of the lovely bloggers I’ve come across out there; my list doesn’t include people who I nominated for the Liebster Award, but you could check them out too.

Dear Nominees, what you do with the award is entirely up to you!
You should get the ‘pingback’.

https://gigisrantsandraves.wordpress.com

https://mutedmouthful.com

https://lancesheridan.com

https://jeanleesworld.com

https://shortstoryscribe.wordpress.com

https://jumbledletters15.wordpress.com

and finally (but not least)… https://daradgamer.wordpress.com  – one of my co-nominees (by The Floating Thoughts) who I’d selected earlier!

Your Questions

There aren’t any – but feel free to tell the world a bit about yourself and your work if you’d like. The floor is yours. Blog! Blag! Brag!  Did you see what I did there?

blogger recognition award