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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. Many thanks to Richard Hardie and Julia Pattison for images of me in my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week.

I hope you had a lovely Christmas and hope you go on to have a Happy New Year. It was nice having a break and catching up with family. Lady was spoiled rotten. And I have several new books to read so am very happy about that! This post is a round up one covering the Christmas period. Back to my normal twice weekly routine here from next year (but then that’s only a few days away now!).

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

29th December – CFT
Second post and it is my usual weekly one for Chandler’s Ford Today. I look at Approaching a New Year. There is a theme emerging from my posts tonight! I ask if you approach a new year with anticipation or apprehension. Well, I recall the hopes for 2020 and we all know how that turned out!

But this is a good opportunity for writers because we’re about to enter a new writing year too. This is a great chance to look at your writing goals and see where you are with them. Do they need adjusting? Sometimes they do and that’s fine but taking the time out to think about this is a good way to help propel your writing forward.

Why? Because you will make necessary tweaks and other changes to help you towards your writing goals or, if they’re not working out for whatever reason, to re-evaluate what you want to do with these. I changed direction to the shorter forms of writing as a result of one of my re-evaluations. It has proved to be a good move! Hope you find the post helpful.

Approaching A New Year

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29th December – More Than Writers
It’s double post time! First one up tonight is my post for More Than Writers, the blog spot for the Association of Christian Writers. This time I look at Reviewing Your Writing Year. I share why I think taking time out to review your writing for the past year and what you would like to do over the next twelve months is a good idea.

And I stress why it is vital to focus on the positives. There will be some. Those positives can be built on too. I also take a look at reviewing your reading too given what we read is a great source of inspiration for our own stories. Certainly in my case if I didn’t have a love of reading, would I have wanted to write? Probably not!

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Am enjoying my additions to my reading pile. Good to get back to some writing yesterday. Not doing much today as seeing family. Back to full on writing from tomorrow. Will be looking at Approaching a New Year for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Link up tomorrow. See above.

Am off for further family celebrations tomorrow so may post early or not at all but I wanted to pop by now and say (a) hello, (b) hope you had a lovely Christmas and (c) to say my Chandler’s Ford Today post on Friday will be about Approaching a New Year. Will be back to normal writing routine from Friday but must admit I have enjoyed the break and am looking forward to catching up with family tomorrow. I also hope you had lots of lovely books as presents. Have added to my TBR pile!

And last but not least, though nobody really knows what day of the week it is now (there is something odd between Christmas and New Year that does this to people I think), it is time for a story. Hope you enjoy my latest on YouTube – Down Time. It does seem apt!

NO POSTS Christmas Day or Boxing Day (I wonder why! Hope you had a fabulous time).

Have a lovely Christmas. I hope you get plenty of lovely books amongst your presents! Have ticked off The Muppet Christmas Carol from my viewing. Will be watching Hogfather later. And there’ll be other favourites to enjoy over the next couple of days – a favourite here is The Great Escape, which I remember always being on at Christmas.

I do have a soft spot for films based on true stories (though I admit The Lord of the Rings is a notable exception!). I expect I’ll be watching some of my favourite Morecambe and Wise sketches too.

Back in a few days, folks. Have a great time.

Hope you have had a good day. Lovely to have a brief chat with my great editor at Chandler’s Ford Today earlier this afternoon. Will be catching up with her more when we next go to see The Chameleon Theatre Group perform. That will be in January – for the pantomime which is always a good laugh. Oh yes, it is!

Will be discussing Approaching a New Year for Chandler’s Ford Today next Friday. I won’t be posting for a few days over Christmas and my next round up of what I write where won’t appear until the 29th too (you will still get a bumper read though!). Think I am delivering on this promise!

Hope to get plenty of reading done over the Christmas break too. I definitely put books on my wish list. Now you can’t say you’re surprised by that, eh? Hope you too get plenty of lovely books. When I’m not writing, I want to be reading.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I do hope you had a lovely Christmas. I loved catching up with favourite films, many festive, some not. All of the films had something in common though – they all had fabulous storylines and fantastic characters. Those are the two most important ingredients to any story, no matter what format it is in.

Hope to get back to submitting work to Friday Flash Fiction from next week.

And I hope having a break has inspired you with your reading and writing. I know mine has. I loved the break. I am happy to be writing again. Win-win. (And I am loving my Christmas reading!).

Naturally I hope to write more flash in the coming year. It would be nice to have a go at more competitions too.

F = Flash makes you focus.
L = Limitations on word count encourages creative thinking.
A = Always use specific details to create strong images in your readers’ minds.
S = Specific images also help you make the most of your word count.
H = Have fun with your characters as they are the stars of your flash tales.

Just to say I hope you had a lovely Christmas. Will be back to normal writing routine on Friday but wanted to say hello now and to flag up Amazon still have a good offer on my From Light to Dark and Back Again flash fiction collection on the paperback. See link below for more. Over 40 stories for under £4.00 – bargain!

In other news, my newsletter will be going out again on New Year’s Day. To sign up for that, please head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

I use my newsletter to share tips, news, story links and so on. Many thanks to all who have subscribed – it is much appreciated.

NO POSTS Christmas Day or Boxing Day (had a great time. Hope you did too. Lots of lovely new books to read. One very happy writer here!).

Happy Christmas. Will be back online next week. Hope you get to enjoy plenty of stories and down time. There will be a Chandler’s Ford Today post on Friday where I’ll be looking at Approaching a New Year. It literally will be timely! In the meantime, have a lovely time over the festive season.

Glad to be able to share the Mixcloud link to the Three Minutes Santa show hosted by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM last weekend. One easy link to click! Do have a listen. I loved the variety of stories and music. Enjoy!

Goodreads Author Blog – Story Time!

I know it’s not quite pantomime time. For those not in the know, pantomime happens after Christmas and goes on to late January/early February. It is a fabulous way of getting people into the theatre as it is aimed at all the family with a lot of audience participation, adlibs, and much humour. The stories used for pantomime are based on the classic fairytales. Pantomime is an old tradition too). I do know it is story time though.

I love the story of the Nativity, poems such as Twas the Night Before Christmas (also known as A Visit from Saint Nicholas), and the carols. In the Bleak Midwinter is my favourite and Christina Rossetti, like Charles Dickens, have added to Christmas related literature. Not many can claim to have done that. I also love stories in film (The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Polar Express, Hogfather).

I also love to write festive flash fiction and was privileged to have one of mine, This Is The Partnership, broadcast on internet radio recently. My tale looks at how Santa deals with a dodgy salesman. Good fun to do.

But as I mentioned in a recent post here, I am looking forward to that lovely time just after Christmas where I will get to read more, the normal routines are suspended, and I get to enjoy those presents which just happened to be books. I always have a request list here. No surprises there.

I hope you have a lovely Christmas and you get to listen to/watch/read some wonderful stories.

Fairytales With Bite – A New Beginning

A new beginning is what comes after the happy ever after ending in the classic fairytales when you think about it. Cinders and Prince Charming had to get used to their new beginning of a married life. The woodcutter in Little Red Riding Hood may well have gathered extra business in terms of removing threats after what he did to the Big Bad Wolf. If so, it would have meant an entire new career.

Major events can often trigger new beginnings. Not everyone responds to these well. (Just ask the evil fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty. She didn’t welcome the christening. Okay it was because she wasn’t invited but there would have been a reason for that).

So think about what a new beginning would mean for your characters. Would they welcome or fear such things? When the new beginning has been forced on them, how do they handle that? Does something good come out of their situation? Can they see the point of the new beginning later on?

If your setting has to start again – new government, new way of ruling etc- how does that come about? Why? What are the consequences of the change? Does anyone resist the new beginning and do they have good cause? Are they successful?

Good story ideas there!

This World and Others – Time Measurement

I write this as we approach a New Year – 2024 – which is the one time everyone is focused on time. We measure our time by seconds, minutes, hours, days etc but how would your world do it? Would time be based on the rising and setting of any sun like star?

If your world has an industry, how would they measure working time? In the UK, time became standardised thanks to the coming of the railways. Time needed to be standardised for the railway system to work at all (no good having one time in one place and another time in the train’s destination, say) so does your setting face anything like that? Does anyone resist the change to timing systems?

What devices are used to measure time in your setting? Who invented these?

If you have Time as a character in a story, how are they recognised? How would “they” prefer to be measured?! (Would be good to ask Time directly, yes?).

No system for measuring anything can ever be infallible so what would be the failings with the system your world has and how would these impact on your characters? Here in the UK we have to adjust our clocks by an hour twice a year to adjust to daylight hours available. So what would your world do when “corrections” were needed?

Also give some thought to the downsides of being able to measure time? Are your characters’ lives dictated by the clock or other measuring device and how would this show in their behaviour and attitudes?

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Glad to be able to share the Mixcloud link to the Three Minutes Santa show hosted by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM last weekend. One easy link to click! Do have a listen. I loved the variety of stories and music. Enjoy!https://t.co/j3iYysQqPa

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 23, 2023

liked Allison Symes's blog post: Story Time https://t.co/2b8oK6keWO via @goodreads I celebrate stories at this time of year including carols (which tell the Nativity in song), pantomime and fairytales, as well as fab books. Hope you enjoy many wonderful tales this Christmas. pic.twitter.com/iO1BzlLoLA

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 23, 2023

Although nobody really knows what day of the week it is now (there is something odd between Christmas and New Year that does this to people I think), it is time for a story. Hope you enjoy my latest on YouTube – Down Time. It does seem apt!https://t.co/3CB3DeI66S

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 27, 2023

More than Writers: Reviewing Your Writing Year by Allison Symes https://t.co/SCtrOtmbrF I share why I think taking time out to review your writing in 2023 and what you would like to write in 2024 is a good idea. There will be positives in your review, which can be built on too. pic.twitter.com/13kO0mh0bG

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 29, 2023

Approaching A New Year https://t.co/hq1iEsA8zq Do you approach a new year with anticipation? I recall the hopes for 2020. Look at how that turned out! But this is an opportunity for writers because this will also be a new writing year, making it a good time to re-assess goals.

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) December 29, 2023