Making the Most of Your Writing Time

 

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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.
Hope you have had a good few days. Lady has been catching up with her pals and I’ve been catching up with my writing. Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom next week too. Smashing author interview coming up on Chandler’s Ford Today next week as well – looking forward to sharing that.

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Delighted to share Making the Most of Your Writing Time for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. It’s always a useful topic!

I look at the positives of planning out your writing time and discuss the negative side to it. I share what one piece of advice P.G. Wodehouse gave to a writer (which has a considerable impact on my way of thinking here) and look at mixing things up to make the best use of the writing time available.

Hope you find the post useful.

Making the Most of Your Writing Time

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Hope today has been okay for you. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler friend today. Lady has had a good week in catching up with her pals.

Looking forward to sharing Making the Most of Your Writing Time on Chandler’s Ford Today – link up tomorrow. Hope it will prove useful. See above.

Planning, over the weekend, to have a look at the two short story competition entries I drafted a few days ago and see what needs to be done to make them better. There will be something, there always is, but I love this stage of writing. To see what needs to be fixed and then to do it and know your work has taken a good step forward – well, all of that pleases me a lot. Also increases my chances a lot too!

I’ve always taken some consolation from the knowledge I can’t think of any writer who has ever written a first draft. It’s okay I don’t do so either then but what matters is seeing it for what it is – a first draft only I’m ever going to see.

 

Hope Wednesday has been a good day for you. Lady got to see her Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hungarian Vizler pals today – a lovely time was had by all in the park.

Now I hope you received lots of lovely book presents for Christmas. Am working my way through mine but I thought this would be a good point to say a lovely present for any author would be to receive reviews on Amazon etc. Other than buying the books themselves, leaving thoughtful reviews is the next best thing you an do to support authors.

Reviews don’t have to be long. One of mine for From Light to Dark and Back Again is a sentence long – An eclectic mix of flash fiction, from an author with a great imagination.

Many thanks to the author of that review. Much appreciated by me, obviously. Reviews like this can be useful for marketing purposes but also the feedback is so useful for writers.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

It’s lovely to be back on Friday Flash Fiction once again after a fabulous and enjoyable Christmas break. Hope you enjoy my A Different New Year though I know for sure one of my characters in this one certainly won’t.

Flash fiction is, of course, short, but you still need to give yourself plenty of time to edit and to polish your stories. It doesn’t matter what word count you write to, the editing does take time, but it is so worth it when you have a polished as good as you can make it piece of work to send out.

Crafting your work to make it as good as you can does make all the difference to whether a piece is published or not, or gets a placing (or a win) in a competition or not.

Some of you will know I discovered flash fiction by accident. It remains the happiest writing accident I’ve had. CafeLit issued a 100 word challenge and I went for it. Haven’t looked back since.

But I mention this as I think it shows the importance of being open to writing possibilities and not to be afraid to try something new.

I’d been writing the longer short stories prior to that (and still do but flash has given me another string to my bow and a way into having books with my name on the front covers. Really love that).

It has pleased me a lot to see increasing opportunities for flash with online story markets and flash being added to competition categories. All good, that!

Fairytales with Bite – Pantomimes

In the UK pantomimes are along standing tradition and usually run from December through to about February. They are often the first introduction to theatre for many and most of the stories for them do come from the traditional fairytales. I will be off to see a production of Cinderella later this month which will be staged by my excellent local amateur theatre company.

Pantomimes are funny, colourful, and jokes are aimed at all levels. It is deliberate adults will get some jokes when the children will not. You have the pantomime Dame, always played by a man, wearing the most garish costume and makeup. The Principal Boy is always played by a girl. Certain phrases are always used (he/she is behind you etc) and the audience is always encouraged to join in. There is often music too.

Another tradition here is some of the jokes will poke fun at those in authority while other gags will refer to local issues/events/places. All great fun. Chaos is expected.

Fairytales work brilliantly for this as they have a good three act structure which translates well to the stage. There are obvious baddies and goodies too and magic is involved somewhere. It helps the audience know the story because they know when they can join in.

But it led me to wonder for this post what kind of theatre or pantomime would your setting have? Would they have anything like the pantomime? What fairytales do they have they might base their own version on? Could you invent something here for your stories?

This World and Others – Behind The Scenes

Linking with Fairytales with Bite, I know my excellent local amateur theatre company create their own sets and what they come up with here is amazing. They have, I’m sure, great fun with the pantomime sets they create – lots of bright colours etc. But without this, there is no show. Without their lighting and sound crews, the shows wouldn’t be so good. It’s amazing how the well placed light or sound effect makes a difference to the impact on the audience of the story being acted out.

Naturally it won’t just be in the entertainment industry, there will be those elsewhere whose work behind the scenes (a) makes things happen at all and (b) without whom what does get done isn’t as good.

So for your stories whose work behind the scenes is crucial to the success of what your lead characters are doing/plan to do? Equally who could unintentionally or otherwise scupper your characters’ plans by their work behind the scenes which has an impact later on?

You could also have characters who are behind the scenes but don’t want to be and what impact any resentful attitude on their part plays in your story.

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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