Mad Iguana

Congratulations Jonathan, fascinating story – sounds like there’s a lot more to it than in the words on the virtual page. And congratulations to everybody who entered. I’m in awe of how you manage to come up with stories at the drop of a hat. Every month I read the prompts and think I’ll have a go but somehow I never do. Maybe this month….

Thanks @philippaeast @Daedalus @kazg @anna @hilary

I’m inclined to go for the finish and edit as by the time the course starts in January, I (should?) have made a start on another novel. I think not the pitching course, as I feel atm I’ve had my fill of cover letters and synopses.
Has anyone done these courses?

Oh, well done, @alanr! That’s fantastic. So which course are you going for?

That’s a fantastic achievement @alanr! Congratulations! What an exciting choice to be faced with …:-)

That’s great Alan, well done. The courses sound superb

AAARRRGGHHH! (as it used to say in my comics)

Up with the count. Resisted the temptation to count the 2500 “seed” words that I had before the start. I think I’ll have a couple of hundred more to do before I give up tonight. Remarkable difference in the way I feel about making myself write at this pace which, honestly, isn’t that high a word…[Read more]

I haven’t entered a comp for a while though lack of time but this one intrigued me and my entry is short.

I suppose it’s a form of Writer’s Block – except that I can’t stop writing. Does that make sense? Probably not. Think of it as writing your way around the surface of a Klein bottle. Yes! That’s it exactly. Thank you. I know where I am now. I…[Read more]

@kazg, thanks so much for that link.

And you’ve expressed above so beautifully my exact thoughts on story structure – including the necessity of balancing all our technical knowledge with room for the subconscious to speak.

I’m not sure what fascinates me more – the list of items you came up with or the fact you came up with them when you were caught by surprise…🤔

Thank you all for taking the time to post an entry, especially Sandra, who kicked things off (phew!), but later withdrew by reason of unavailability to set the next comp should she win.

Anyway, as most of you know, I’m rubbish at any kind of feedback so I’ll keep this short.

Sandra – strong voice. And some perfect turns of phrase – ‘Like a…[Read more]

I know @raine!! It’s just too good to be true eh? AND now you love me forever 🙂 What a very fine day this is turning out to be. Back atcha BTW (and apologies to all others for PDA. She’s Scottish and I’m Aussie so the English emotion rules don’t apply :-))

@KazG & @emmad – oooh, I like the phrase ‘thinker on paper’! That sounds a lot closer to what I do. For all my love of graphs and themes and character outlines, and more graphs, very little of the detail gets decided until I’m in the story. I think it’s a little like my old self’s data analysis process – first you gather all the plethora of…[Read more]

Last day to put in an entry for the Den monthly competition, people… 🙂

Sorry @athelstone, just saw your question – I’m Kaz Ginnane over there. I see I’m already friends with @daedalus, @jillybean and @raine 🙂

I have a title. And a reeaallly rough idea of what happens. But there are still many strands waving wildly around and I have no idea where I’m going to stuff them, let alone tie them together neatly…

I’m apparently planning it now, but here I am instead!

And now I’ve seen this and am very, VERY sorely tempted to whip out the credit card…Margaret Atwood is one of my all time lit heroes. And can I just boast that when I first started on Twitter, my first tweet was to her and she REPLIED!!

(Twitter has never lived up to that since, needless to…[Read more]