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Weekly Photo Challenge – A Day in My Life

This week’s photo challenge is to take you through a day in my life, so what follows is my Easter Sunday.  I have tried to allude to the fact that even though I didn’t write much yesterday, I though about stories and storytelling a lot – that is pretty much how I exist from day to day.  There are explanatory captions attached to these, and if you click on the first one you’ll get the pictures in an exciting slideshow.

Start the day with a strong coffee.
Watch Doctor Who on iPlayer – represented here by a small Matt Smith figurine riding an Easter Chick.
Read something culturally edifying – this is Gutter, a Scottish writing magazine.
Get in the way of other half playing FIFA.
Decide to go outside – for which I need lip balm…
… tunes…
… and shoes.
Wander through the park. Keep an eye out for talking animals and terrifying women driving sleighs as lamp posts of this sort obviously mean I am near Narnia.
Look for hilarious graffiti – this is the best I got yesterday for I was perambulating in an area of class.
Search desperately for signs of spring. Settle for these guys.
Start to formulate a Hunger Games style tale based on random tags hanging in trees.
Converse with this affronted Ent.
Wonder whether the paint is bubbling like that due to imminent alien invasion or ghosts.
DRINK ALL THE TEA.
Eat soup that I made. Over the weekend, it was Squash.
Sit down to do some writing. Faff about on the internet for about five hours.
Watch more Doctor Who. This is from Nightmare of Eden.
Retire to bed to read more – currently The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh. S’good.

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Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)

Going for a walkIt’s Thursday, it’s 7.30pm, it’s Top of the Pops Pictonaut Challenge!

This month, The Rogue Verbumancer (or Glempy, if you prefer) challenges the internet to write a thousand words on the topic of going for a walk over a bridge.  Or y’know, anything else that springs to mind on seeing this picture…  But as you will discover, my brain opted for a fairly literal interpretation.

Thus:

Continue reading “Going For A Walk (March Pictonaut Challenge)” →

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Where do you get your ideas?

Ideas never run out
© Adi Respati

As a fiction writer I tend to feel like this is a stupid question, whilst as a journalist it feels amateurish and slightly redundant to ask it.  Read their work and it’ll often become pretty apparent – Irvine Welsh didn’t come up with Trainspotting because he spent a lot of time hanging around Disneyland, for example.

Continue reading “Where do you get your ideas?” →

2

Phoneography Challenge: My Neighbourhood

The title of the post may have alerted you to the fact that this week’s photo challenge involves taking your phone and going out to take pictures of your neighbourhood.  The camera on my phone is a little bit rickety, and can only really cope with daylight (bright daylight at that) – so thank goodness it snowed this week.  It could have been a very grey-green old time without nature’s lightbox to help me out.

For an extra challenge I was told to tell you a mini story with my pictures, so without much further ado I give you the story of… me walking around a park in the snow.  I wanted to get a book in somewhere, possibly alongside a cheesy comment along the lines of ‘my favourite place in my local area is inside a story’ – but alas!  I only had a borrowed paperback on me when I went out, and I didn’t want it to get soggy.  So I didn’t.

Tree in the snow
Arthur’s Seat
Holyrood Park
Spring has sprung…
My next door neighbour

P.S. When I say this is my ‘local neighbourhood’, what I mean is I actually live in the park.  I have a secret hole in the ground, sort of like the Psammead.  Do say hello if you’re passing – although like the Psammead I may respond with insults if I haven’t had my coffee yet.

2

Terrible Picture Book Ideas

In the most recent edition of Writers’ Forum there was a feature which basically consisted of someone who thought it was easy to write a picture book for children being proven wrong.  I’ve yet to write a picture book (although it is on my To-Do List for the end of this year), but the piece got me thinking it might be fun to brainstorm some titles.  Yes, coming up with new book titles is my idea of fun – because what do you do that’s so much better?  Nothing, that’s what.  So.

  • The Blobfish At The Bottom Of The Pool – a small girl refuses to learn how to swim because her local pool is full of blobfish.  They could be literal blobfish, or some kind of metaphor for her insecurities.
  • The Repressed British Picture Book – this would basically consist of taking the British Problems twitter feed and adding pictures.  Possibly in the style of Edward Gorey.
  • Percy the Piglet Squid Has A Picnic – I was recently introduced to the WTF, Evolution? Tumblr and was really taken with the piglet squid.  I imagine his picnic would involve lots of other weird but cheery looking sea creatures and they would have a jolly time.  The blobfish probably wouldn’t get invited though.
  • Who Puked In My Boots? – a sequel to the much loved Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it was None of His Business.  It does exactly what it says on the tin.

Leave a comment if you’ve got any ideas to add…

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How to Moderate Spam

CommentsBefore yesterday I had neglected the blog for quite a while, which meant a wealth of interesting spam comments awaited moderation when I signed in to upload a picture for Silent Sunday.  I thought I would respond to a selection, thus:

Continue reading “How to Moderate Spam” →

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