Janette

  • Sea,  I well remember, a couple of years ago admiring your shorter haircut when you picked me up at Markinch station, Promise I wasn’t thinking of the competition we might meet at Craigievar! I did hope to do something more inspired for this great prompt, but ran out of mental space, so well done Ath.

  • Anyone else got ???? Supposed to be a smiley face 🙂

  • Sorry for being so late with this…

    Sandra and Ath, thanks for entering – and both with a hair-related topic! ???? Alex, no worries. I’ll catch you next time.

    Sandra – your chosen article left me gobsmacked. Clearly, I have been a victim of this. Brainwashed into keeping my hair short because my good looks are a threat to other women. I’ll be on…[Read more]

  • I’m not surprised by this. For some time there have been AI editing features available with Prowritingaid, Grammarly and so on. I have the former, and although I seldom use the AI features, some of which are behind an additional paywall, I have given them a spin in the past. What you get from one of the reports does appear to be a reasonably…[Read more]

  • Argus 26 November 2024

    Brighton man grows hair for five years for special reason.

     

    I remember the blonde hair on the windowsill. My hair’s brown, so it must have come from Taz. Her hair is, or was, I should say, long, and rich, and blonde. Curious, I ran my fingers through my hair a few times and then examined what had come loose. Not a lot,…[Read more]

  • Yes, it’s rather chilling, isn’t it?

    One doesn’t tend to think of Roald Dahl as a sci-fi writer, but he foresaw something like this. Over seventy years ago one of his early adult short stories, The Great Automatic Grammartizator, told the tale of a nerd who invents a machine that generates stories at such a prodigious rate that he takes over the…[Read more]

  • 5 days left to give me the lowdown on what really happened behind the headline!

  • Looks very promising. I shall be donning the headphones when I set about cooking dinner.

  • If it has any impact at all on the publishing world, I would be pleased. I can see that it is galling when an author with a genuine passion for writing, say for a young audience, hones their craft and achieves moderate success, and then watches a celeb waltz in like an unoriginal bargain-basement Roald Dahl, have a small fortune spent on…[Read more]

    • I wholly agree, though in a fit of madness, I thought that an increased gathering of writers might at least get our voices heard, if not have any bearing on sales. It would be a start if some regulation was brought in regards being able to blatantly claim someone else’s work is your own – but too many influential people are on the opposing side to…[Read more]

  • My view is that publishers are in it for the money, and celebrity sells more – and more reliably – than as-yet-unknown novelists (potentially supplying a profit which might enable them to take more chances on unknowns?) It might be seen as ‘not fair’, but in my view is more honest to trust readers’ appreciation of well-written novels than bombard…[Read more]

    • Sandra, it isn’t so much a bombardment campaign, rather a sharing of a meme to ask for support. I appreciate the view that regular novelists are enabled to be taken on because of the success of celebrity books, but the avalanche of them in such an unlevel playing field is instrumental in creating this huge imbalance, and I think the dishonesty is…[Read more]

      • I suspect, lacking conviction in my opinions, I’m not a campaigner.

        • I have bowed out of this. My intention was to be supportive, but the feelings stirred and opposing views given have me concluding that I should leave it to published authors and their representatives to fight the battle. Lesson learned.

  • This is not my take on the headline, but I’ve posted it here because I could not come up with anything more ludicrous.

     

    Short hair hints may be ‘sabotage” study finds.

    Publishing her research on the ’Science Direct’ website, under the heading  ‘Personality and individual Differences’  Danielle Sulikowski details how women were asked to giv…[Read more]

  • Find an item of news – online, in the local paper, or on TV – and, in no more than 500 words, write the background story.

     

  • Thanks, Knicky, for the challenge and for seeing something in my effort I wasn’t sure was there.

    Thanks also to Terrie, Libby and Alex. I would have been more than happy to say I’d written any one of yours ☺️

  • Congratulations to Seagreen, and to everyone else who supplied an entertaining and impressive piece to October’s comp. And to Knicks for setting it,

  • Heya lovelies,

    Apologies for the day-late decision making. I’ve been oout and aboout with my egg, enjoying our midterm break from work and school, and foolishly saved the reading until the final day of the month because I wanted to take in each piece at the same time, rather than read as submitted, and also to give everyone who could, a chance to…[Read more]

  • Darn it! Missed it! A fab selection though.

  • Apologies, Knicks, I’m not going to submit anything this month – torn three ways with something that will not knit.

  • Fiercely reaching yet afraid of letting go. (756 words)

     

    He wakes. Slowly. Reluctantly. To a feeling of being underground. Air heavy and thick with dust. Throat dry and aching. Eyes full of grit.

    He is pinned, lying sideways on a surface, twisted and unforgiving, one arm beneath his hip and the other across his chest. He cannot feel his feet,…[Read more]

  • Athelstone replied to the topic Chit Chat in the forum Group logo of A Different TimeA Different Time 1 year, 7 months ago

    Please don’t feel you have to emphasise the differentness. It was a throw-away comment about making me happy. The following remark that making me happy is not a condition of entry to the challenge was intended to say that. What should probably have put is that emphasis on difference will be great, but not emphasising it will also be…[Read more]

  • Daedalus replied to the topic Chit Chat in the forum Group logo of A Different TimeA Different Time 1 year, 7 months ago

    Re absence of choices and surprises. I’m not sure really. Sometimes they’ve helped me push myself to do something dramatically different, or have at least significantly shaped what I’ve written. Other times they just made slight complications to writing the story I would have written anyway. Generally it’s the overall theme I have the biggest…[Read more]

    • Gosh, I had to read that last sentence twice! I’m astounded that only one of your excellent challenge stories has been accepted. Really sorry to hear that.

      • Thanks Thea. In part I’m sure it’s my own fault for not being persistent enough. That said, I can’t help worrying that there’s something indefinably dated or just offputting in my writing. I should add that since I wrote the above, another story based on one of the Den challenge pieces was accepted for an anthology, but for various reasons that…[Read more]

        • Congratulations on having another story accepted. You say the anthology might be “up in the air”, so I really hope it all goes through alright.
          I honestly don’t think there’s anything “dated” or “off-putting” in your stories. I’ve read several in the challenges over the years and they have all been excellent. I’m sure that if you look back at the…[Read more]

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