Elle

Awww, thanks @seagreen! I enjoyed writing this piece very much, and it is a very personal one to me. Just an anticipatory imagining of a band festival I attended quite recently, and how I wanted it to go. It went even better than what I wrote 🙂 haha

I too went on a Google search over @alex‘s piece, for the exact same reason 😄😄 It’s too funny you…[Read more]

Well done all of us, especially Knicky. A great read. And well, done Seagreen. Worth waiting for.

Sorry, Gail, but with a head full of ‘Mercy’ I’m totally out of inspiration here.

Wow! Looks interesting. Thanks Daeds.

Under the Yoke

The security guard didn’t notice the elderly woman by the checkout. She noticed him. She noticed as his arm shot out, shielding the aisle so that the distinguished visitor could walk by unimpeded. The distinguished visitor, his blond hair carefully disarranged, smirked as his eyes slid, unseeing, across her face. He had come for t…[Read more]

Fine writing. Compact and perfect!

[TW for an F-Bomb 💣]

And Your Flesh Shall Be A Wild Night and A New Road

The wild scream of the guitar ripped down his spine, surging like power in his veins. Dominion, utter and absolute electricity, was what their music held over the night.

.  . . 1984.

That was the last time he saw her, and all he could recall were a few, sparse details of…[Read more]

The trouble is, it’s easy to get used to odd phrasing or vocabulary when I’ve produced it myself.

There’s definitely something in that. It’s a similar issue to writing something which doesn’t make sense on its own because you know all the back story that your audience is missing. You know what a turn of phrase means and it’s something of a sur…[Read more]

I’m emotionally excited over this!! haha. We’ll see what I get up to 😊✨

Re the bee in your bonnet. My comments about commas were not directed at you. Commas are wonderfully useful and under-used.

No, I don’t worry too much about rules. Most of the rules are inventions of  over-educated elites designed to reinforce the idea that how the aristocracy spoke and wrote was the correct way*. That’s how we end up with such nonsense as split-infinitives and pointless debates about whether there should be a comma prior to and in a list. Seeing as…[Read more]

Crossed with your reply Kate.

Yes! It is creepy. I have been discussing it offline with another member of the circle. We thought that ‘against her hair’ was perhaps one of the worst possible adjectival phrases.

I did think of a comma and I agree that it helps. What still interests me is whether the construction actually breaches any commonly agreed grammatical rules.

I take your point about common speech tags being transitive, although several are actually ambitransitive e.g.

It was necessary to answer. John answered.

I agree that ‘against’ is a poor…[Read more]

Well done Sea. Yours put me in mind of the This might hurt book/TV series, very important pressure. And thanks Knicks for giving me the opportunity to play with plot possibilities.

Super story @seagreen. Positively inspired and a worthy winner.

Thanks for the comp @knickylaurelle. I enjoyed it in spite of it bringing back a few awful memories.