Image Credits:-

All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. Busy start to the week, the spring flowers continue to come up, but still no sign of proper spring weather yet. Lady continues to enjoy the mud! She has got used to the clock change in the UK quicker than I have!

Facebook – General

Posting a bit earlier tonight (and again tomorrow) as I’ve got a couple of busy evenings coming up (though one of them is for the Flash Fiction Group I lead for the Association of Christian Writers. Always fun, always good writing produced from it. Can’t wait to see the usual members there tomorrow. Zoom is fantastic for this kind of thing).

Writing tip: I know I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating. When time is short, just do what you can. I am in that situation at the moment and will be for a while.

What matters is getting some writing done and I get to my desk relieved and happy to get on with some writing even if, right now, it is not quite as much as I would like to do. There will be time to make up for that later on hopefully.

Ironically this is where I find deadlines especially helpful. They give me something to work to and ensure I focus.

Hope you’ve had a good start to your week. Not bad here and Lady got to play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback bestie today so all well there. Still feeling a bit of “jetlag” after losing an hour yesterday. The day after a clock change is always the worst for that!

Pleased to say I’ll be interviewing Gill James about a very special idea in April. A bit more on that nearer the time – am looking forward to sharing this on Chandler’s Ford Today. It is going to make an apt tie in with my Anthologies post which will be up this Friday. There are times you just can’t plan these things. Serendipity can be fabulous!

I’ll be discussing Anthologies for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Well, they do say write what you know! I’ll also share some tips on how to make the most of the theme you’re set (as so many anthologies will want you to write to one).

Talking of which, it is great to see some fabulous reviews coming in for The Best of CafeLit 11 on Amazon. The wonderful thing about writing a review for an anthology is you can help many authors in one review (!) so so write one. Doesn’t have to be long either.

Hope you have had a good day. It actually felt like spring here today. Just in time for the clocks to go forward in my part of the world tonight.

I’ve often used time in stories. Sometimes I’ve used Time as a character. Sometimes I’ve used time travelling characters. Sometimes I’ve written historical flash fiction where the setting of the story acts like a character (and again is a time frame). But time could be used as a countdown in a story too. That would be a great way of ensuing a good pace. Equally you can have an inciting incident happen at a particular time in a story and the tale takes off from there.

I use time to work out my writing week. Certain days of the week I have more time to write than others so I save my longer pieces of work for those days. I use pockets of time to jot down notes, opening lines, title ideas etc. It all mounts up and helps me to be more productive. Time is to be used!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Flash fiction can cover any mood and any genre. It’s just the word count you need to watch. But the word count for your flash story has to be appropriate for the tale you are sharing with us. Some of my stories genuinely work out better at 500 words rather than 100 and so I leave them at the upper limit.

It’s Monday and time for a story. Hope you enjoy Appearances. Be ware who you mock!

One of the toughest writing exercises I’ve tried is writing to a middle line. You’re usually told where exactly in the story, word count wise, it has to be be too. It’s not an exercise I come across often and I suspect that is because everyone finds it tough! But this is where forward planning is the writer’s friend.

What I have found useful here was having a spider diagram with the middle line slap bang in the middle and then work out, firstly, what could lead to that line from the start of the story. I then work out what could lead from it to get to a suitable ending (and I usually work out that ending too). I just jot down possibilities and then go with what I like best but the “two way” planning here has worked well for me in the past.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers’ Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom. Exercises will be set. I know. I’ll be setting them but I do make it a policy not to do the exercises myself until the night of the meeting. I love taking part in live writing exercises myself. It’s fun, a good discipline, and I get to draft some stories for later polishing and submitting somewhere. Win-win there!

Goodreads Author Blog – Reviews

R = Reading is one of the great joys of life, along with writing the stories in the first place!
E = Entertainment between the covers and can be educational too.
V = Varying between light reading, serious reading, humorous reading and all kinds of genres, is it too much to ask for a review?
I = Imagine the author hard at work – a review is of enormous help to them.
E = Easy to write too – often the best reviews are fairly short.
W = Will the review influence others to buy the book – hopefully – authors appreciate their sales!
S = Support your authors – buy the books and review them. Thanks!

ALLISON SYMES – BOOK BRUSH READER HUB

MOM’S FAVORITE READS LINK – CHECK OUT THE MAGAZINE INCLUDING MY FLASH FICTION COLUMN HERE –

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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liked Allison Symes's blog post: Reviews https://t.co/gcNT9h9bZD via @goodreads This topic is close to my heart – hope you enjoy it – and DO review! pic.twitter.com/MizZGvM7Dm

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) March 25, 2023

It’s Monday and time for a story. Hope you enjoy Appearances. Be ware who you mock!https://t.co/0nniCfljUR

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) March 27, 2023