Happy NaNoWriMo

Happy NaNoWriMo

Today is the official start of National Novel Writing Month.  My trauma counselling course ended yesterday and the wife and I are spending the weekend at our in-laws (both her parents and my dad and stepmom live in the same town, yet we met 1500km away and only after my folks had already been living there for three years), so I probably won’t get much writing done.  But today I’m sitting next to the pool with the laptop and am planning to make a decent go of it before the wife joins me here this afternoon.

In the meantime, may your NaNoWriMo not be characterised by moments such as this…

Chasing the Muse Continue reading “Happy NaNoWriMo”

Prophecy

The novel I started writing at the beginning of this year (currently on ice) is a high fantasy with mages, magic swords and creatures that only exist in ancient legends.  I’m planning to finish it still, as it’s the story that convinced me to start writing after walking around with it in my head for five years, but I got hopelessly stuck with it about seven thousand words in and I think the best approach for this NaNoWriMo is to start afresh.

In the meantime, here’s a scene I wrote about one of the characters.  It wouldn’t have formed part of the novel, but was rather an attempt to get inside one of the character’s heads along with a bit of backstory for the novel itself.

Enjoy.

Prophecy Continue reading “Prophecy”

Song Title Challenge #22: Edge of Seventeen – Stevie Nicks

It’s time for this week’s Song Title Challenge.

Write a short piece of fiction, around 300 words, using the song title as your story title but don’t listen to the song.  You can pick your own genre or use the one suggested to me.  Remember to link back to this post so I can find yours.

If you would like to suggest a song title for a future post, you can do so from the challenge page.  You can also leave a suggestion on the Facebook page.

This week’s song is Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks and the genre is Fantasy/Sci-Fi.  Thanks to bumblepuppies for the suggestion.

Edge of Seventeen

Continue reading “Song Title Challenge #22: Edge of Seventeen – Stevie Nicks”

Going off the air…

Only temporarily.  I’m doing a course in trauma counselling next week, so I won’t be here much if at all.  I’m expecting the course to be fairly draining (counselling training usually is as participants practise the new skills on each other and it can get quite intense) so I don’t expect I’ll have much energy left for blogging in the evenings.  Also, I’m staying with the wife’s relatives (the course is in Pretoria), so I can hardly spend the evenings huddled behind my computer screen.  And I don’t know whether we’ll have homework.

There will still be posts next week (they’re already written and scheduled) but if I don’t respond to your comments with my usual promptness, don’t take it personally.  It’s not you, it’s me.

By the way, this coming Monday’s Song Title Challenge will be the last title on my list of suggestions, so please head over to the page and give me some new ones.  While you’re at it, why don’t you pick a previous challenge and try writing something yourself?  The more of us are doing this, the more fun it will be.

Until next week, then.  Have a great one!

If at first you don’t succeed…

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that I started on a novel early this year.  Unfortunately I got stuck roundabout April, seven thousand words in.  By June I had decided to put that novel on ice and start over.  No writing has happened since apart from what you can see on this blog.  That is about to change. Continue reading “If at first you don’t succeed…”