@athelstone
Active 12 hours, 16 minutes ago-
Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly comp – June 2024 in the forum Monthly Competition 1 year, 10 months ago
Energy and shame
Understanding is a difficult word sometimes. We say, ‘I understand her,’ meaning that we know her reasons for doing something or other. It was as expected. Electricity feels rather different. Do I understand it? I mean, what is it? I was taught a load of rubbish at school about the movement of charged electrons. That isn’t elect…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 1 year, 11 months ago
Great news, Kate. I’ve watched your magical duo for some time now. I’m certain the Shadow Deception will be a winner.
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Thanks, Athelstone. Fingers crossed. 😊
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 1 year, 11 months ago
OK, quicker than I thought. We should have users online and a member list back in place.
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Athelstone posted an update 1 year, 11 months ago
Sorry for any oddities and issues with the site. I had a bumper crop of major updates to install and although I did my best to slip these in seemlessly, there are one or two niggles. In particular, Buddypress, which gives the site many of its social networking features had a complete rewrite. I did check all the prerequisites and tried it out on…[Read more]
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OK, quicker than I thought. We should have users online and a member list back in place.
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Thank you, Ath.
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That’s working. Thank you!
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 1 year, 11 months ago
That’s me borrowing Admin’s hat by the way.
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🙂 yes, that’s what is happening.
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Try now.
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That’s working. Thank you!
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So, when you go to the forum, you’re presented with an original post (topic) plus any replies on that page, but you can’t proceed, i.e. if you pick page 2 or the arrow, nothing happens apart from the screen refreshing. I think it may be a problem with other forums as well.
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I think I’ve got a fix.
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 1 year, 11 months ago
Hi Kate, sorry , I’ve not been online much today. Can you give me some more detail on the issue you’ve got? What forum? What posts? Anything else you think might be helpful.
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Thanks, Ath. It’s in our SE course group. A forum has multiple pages but we can’t move beyond the first page to look at later posts.
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Hmm. OK, no idea at the moment.
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So, when you go to the forum, you’re presented with an original post (topic) plus any replies on that page, but you can’t proceed, i.e. if you pick page 2 or the arrow, nothing happens apart from the screen refreshing. I think it may be a problem with other forums as well.
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I think I’ve got a fix.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly Competition – May 2024 in the forum Monthly Competition 1 year, 11 months ago
Why do you always insist on making this difficult?
Terrie’s Plant Song is almost a poem to the language of flowers. Rich and ancient with a deadly heart. The melody, she writes, is intoxicating, and I can’t think of a better word for the whole piece. I said “anything floral” and it’s hard to imagine something more floral than this. A wonderfully…[Read more]
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Athelstone started the topic Monthly Competition – May 2024 in the forum Monthly Competition 2 years ago
April showers bring May flowers. they say. But when is a flower a flower and when is it a weed? Anything floral in less than 501 words.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly Comp April 2024 in the forum Monthly Competition 2 years ago
Seagreen, thanks so much. A brilliant prompt for April. Thanks also to my co-authors. There were some great pieces of writing.
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Athelstone replied to the topic How I Cope With My Box of Bugs. in the forum The Writers' Lifeboat 2 years ago
To be fare, sometimes I don’t know the ending – or the story.
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Athelstone replied to the topic How I Cope With My Box of Bugs. in the forum The Writers' Lifeboat 2 years ago
I’ve written three full length novels and two shorter ones, plus numerous short stories. I’ve never been able to bring any planning tools to bear on the process, either widely advocated or self-invented. Yes, it is extraordinarily difficult and a constant worry as the story progresses, since I am an inveterate seat-of-the-pants writer. Yes, I…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 2 years ago
@purplewitch absolutely. I don’t think it will be an issue because the writer in question is quite sharp. Anyway, if it gets to the point where a 3rd party is giving it a professional read, it isn’t going to last.
@richardb yep, that analogy is about right. In this instance I wouldn’t say the author has cloth ears (although the others might, I…[Read more]
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Adding a bit of nonsense to the conversation –
To write a pithy sentence and not use well-worn phrases
Comes with all the thinking and headache that it raises.
So, me, I play with words and, using inconsistent skill,
I hammer, pull, and twist them and bend them to my will.
I make them mine – reformed, unique, and, sometimes packed with w…[Read more]-
Very nice too.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Where Does Your Writing Inspiration Come From? in the forum Blogs 2 years ago
@sandradavies, yes indeed – transfer of information. The number of times I’ve come across a note I’ve scrawled down when all that’s left is an incomprehensible collection of words and a vague memory of myself thinking that I must find a way of using this brilliant insight. the very embodiment of having all the nuance but none of the original…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 2 years ago
I think the importance for writers is that we need to demonstrate that we can follow the generally accepted grammatical conventions so that our work is publishable. There’s an awful lot of correct grammar that simply reflects how the posh mates of C19th lexicographers spoke and wrote and sets out that other ways are wrong.
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More often than not , i find if something you write or read stops you from moving forward then it probably could benefit from revision. depending on the surrounding context of the piece i would have probably written something like … As my eyes adjusted I negotiated the dark shadows with growing ease.
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Late to this, but maybe I’ll make up for that by the pungency of my comments. Even before your careful explanation six posts back, that phrase just sounded plain wrong to me, like a bum note in music. Just because you were in a minority of one doesn’t mean the others were right. To extend the musical analogy, it’s as if you’d been in a group of…[Read more]
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@purplewitch absolutely. I don’t think it will be an issue because the writer in question is quite sharp. Anyway, if it gets to the point where a 3rd party is giving it a professional read, it isn’t going to last.
@richardb yep, that analogy is about right. In this instance I wouldn’t say the author has cloth ears (although the others might, I…[Read more]
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Adding a bit of nonsense to the conversation –
To write a pithy sentence and not use well-worn phrases
Comes with all the thinking and headache that it raises.
So, me, I play with words and, using inconsistent skill,
I hammer, pull, and twist them and bend them to my will.
I make them mine – reformed, unique, and, sometimes packed with w…[Read more]-
Very nice too.
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 2 years ago
Which is to supply an object to the verb and make it grammatically correct.
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Thank you for sorting this out, Ath. It has made me think more carefully about verbs 🙂
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 2 years ago
Why I’m wasting my time puzzling and researching this, I don’t know. Actually I do. I’m about to start editing and at the same time I’m at a difficult point in the rewrite of a short story that’s insisting on growing towards novella length. In other words, prevarication.
Anyway, I think I have it:
1) Accustom is a transitive verb. It requires an…[Read more]-
No good asking me about grammar, so I can’t give a reason for it but while I had no hiccup over “My eyes accustomed to the darkness” I mentally inserted ‘themselves’ after accustomed.
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Which is to supply an object to the verb and make it grammatically correct.
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Thank you for sorting this out, Ath. It has made me think more carefully about verbs 🙂
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Athelstone posted a new activity comment 2 years ago
I think that’s what bothered me the most. It’s far away from a commonplace way of speaking. I’ve had quite a few conversations over the last three score years and (well not quite) ten, and read a fair bit, and I’m pretty certain that this is the first time I’ve seen “accustomed” used in this way.
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