Athelstone

Thanks for the comp, Ath! Another opportunity to stretch myself ☺️

And congratulations to Libby for winning, and the rest of us for giving it a go ????

Thank you, Ath! That was a lovely surprise. The standard of the other entries was so high. Thank you to Terrie, Sandra and Seagreen for such evocative and immersive stories.

A most enjoyable writing challenge for May, Ath.
Well done Libby, Sandra and Sea for creating such powerfully expressive reading.
Looking forward to Libby’s June challenge.

Thank you Ath, both for the competition and for your encouraging summing up. I certainly would’ve been hard-pressed to choose a winner, so congratulations and thanks to Libby, and also to Terrie and Seagreen.

THE GATEKEEPER  

They closed the Winter Gardens. Lack of funding or resources or some other bullshit excuse. Redundancy notices for the gardeners who’d been there for years, and redeployment to grass-cutting duties for the young apprentices who still didn’t know their aquilegia from their allium. They stored the tools in the old stable buil…[Read more]

Phototropism

Suzy and I drank white wine while we sat in stiff, square garden chairs. I hadn’t met Suzy before and admired how she leant back, legs stretched out – lounging and confident. She wasn’t just overcoming the chair’s straight edges; she showed me she knew she had glamour. Her jeans and yellow cotton shirt were years old, threads loose…[Read more]

(This may well be missing the point)

The language of flowers not always sweet

Only after finding, (months later)  photographs other than the ones taken by fourteen-year-old schoolgirl Kally Logan that caused all the trouble did Luke Darbyshere register flowers had twice been fleetingly present on his wedding day. Much of the time he’d been su…[Read more]

Plant-Song

Nepenthes, the watcher, teaches us to listen for murmurs along the grapevine because the scent of those words is strong and always carry seeds of the truth. They whisper tales of creation that began beneath woody crowns of ancient cycad trees and of cerebral vines, trailing and probing in thickly netted curls upon the loamy earth.

The…[Read more]

Thank you, Seagreen, for the competition. Great, enticing stories from Ath, Sandra and Terrie. I enjoyed them all.

Sea, thank you for the useful challenge, especially because it helped me formulate my character as well as sparking such a brilliant range of responses; I wouldn’t’ve liked to choose a winner.

I love to plan. That’s why nothing ever gets written.

Honestly, I’m sorry this has taken me so long…

All the entries left me wishing I’d given you more words to play with since each of them teased with hidden depths.

Ath – so easy to read (as ever!) Engaging, apparently effortless writing, but so many questions! Who was this man? Where did he come from and where would he end up?  More importan…[Read more]

Sorry! I haven’t forgotten, just waiting for a break in the clouds.
If I don’t have time tonight, then results will definitely be posted tomorrow when I’m off.
Thank you for your patience.

Stephen King, Ath? He’s said that he never knows what’s going to happen when he starts a novel, and he’s published nearly seventy of them.

Your method (if we can grace it with that name), Ath, sounds very much like mine: a rough idea of the story arc and the ending, and not much more. The nearest I ever got to planning was to write out the rather…[Read more]

I like the bugs analogy, Terrie.

Roughly I do something like this: I plan, though not in great detail – usually the ending and a couple of things along the way. When I start writing the plan doesn’t seem to work so I alter the order of events or cut events. After a bit I give up with the plan and hope the writing will suggest what I need to do…[Read more]

It’s a while since the 1980s

And why come back? Why, exactly, limp along these corridors after decades, and stop to look at dormitory doors and classroom doors all shut for the summer holiday. There’s no one else in this building – a giant bungalow with many arms – except the senior school secretary who has shown me old records and left me…[Read more]