Pinkbelt

Dilemma

So, last night’s message warning that the Wimps were planning some sort of revolt had been genuine, despite the unlikelihood. As Jack had said, delivering it, something must’ve fired them into action, provided them with   a Warrior script instead of the Wimp one their biology merited.

Frey’s eyes sharpened on noting my arrival (We’d a…[Read more]

Including figurative dragons, of course ☺️

Late, Seagreen? Not really. It’s only the second of the month, and I didn’t post my judgement yesterday until the middle of the afternoon. No apology needed.

A strong field indeed.

Apologies for being late back to this.

Richard, thank you for the comp and for your kind words. I did try to steer clear of that particular subject matter but, ultimately, it was the only thing that remained front and centre when all the other ideas had scarpered.

Strong field this month and all so marvellously different!…[Read more]

Oof. Yes. Gaiman. I think a lot of people I know are particularly hurt by that one because he appeared to be a writer of such humanity. I didn’t read anything of his that I didn’t like, and connect with in some way. At first, I did allow myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for very long, and I’m not sure there’s any doubt now…[Read more]

But now the debate does (briefly?) raise its head again as I contemplate that doyen of popular, left-liberal writers, Neil Gaiman.

Why must people keep doing this? I almost completed that last sentence “to me” because it does feel personal sometimes.

Some strong writing this month. Very well done, Seagreen.

Oh, my. Four entries, all excellent, all completely different from each other. For such a small community, whar a range of talents we have.

Terrie, your gallop through the various endings we meet in life was entertaining and thought-provoking, with a nice humorous squib at the end to round things off.

Libby, I applaud your courage in essaying…[Read more]

I’ll come back tomorrow

I’ll come back tomorrow to look at the clear space between the Co-op and the Santander Bank. The fresh morning sun will light the glistening concrete and the unexpected birds taking baths in puddles where carpets have been carried off. Men in hard hats and hi-vis vests will bundle drills about and smoke their cigarettes a…[Read more]

UNTITLED – 350 words

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Lumpy pillows in torn, unidentifiable protective fabric, stuffed into too-small pillow cases. A saggy, foam mattress, plastic-coated and marinated in dilute bleach. A side-room with a window looking onto the whitewashed wall on the other side of the hospital and a door that opens d…[Read more]

I asked it about limits and it recommended breaking text into chunks, so I divided the input into blocks of chapters, but as I was about to do the final block I hit an error, which I think was the limit of my free access: there was a message about that soon afterwards. Annoyingly inconclusive! Some chapters were summarised in full, others were…[Read more]

I tried a 500 word synopsis. It was curiously like a “bad” synopsis that an inexperienced writer might try, too much detail at the outset and then broad generalisations for the middle and end. It always concludes by asking whether you want any refinements, so I asked for more detail about the conclusion and it invented a character and several plot…[Read more]

As we are in imminent peril of being swamped with things-AI if Mr Starmer and our present government are to be believed, I thought I’d bite the bullet and give ChatGPT a whirl. As an experiment, I thought I’d try for a summary of my WIP. Since that’s something I will have to wrestle with when I come to submit, I wondered whether it might be…[Read more]

Regrettably late to this – and non-participant – but what a joy to catch up with those that did make the effort- thank you @ Richard and @Terrie

Thanks, Ath. I should maybe point out that ‘the protagonist’ is in fact me. The brief didn’t say it had to be fiction, and my effort isn’t. I really am building, slowly and very carefully, a huge model car.