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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 weekend. Busy one here. Family travelling about on different days for various things so it was especially nice to get to a lovely, lazy Sunday evening. Lady enjoyed her different weekend too – she had to put up with me taking her out rather than another family member. I managed to get plenty of writing done but didn’t avoid getting soaked, alas!

Facebook – General

Hope today has gone well. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler and Coco, the lovely Labradoodle, today. Managed to avoid the rain this morning but, alas, not this afternoon. So we are half wet!

Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Writing To Themes on Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I hope that will be useful. The tips I will be sharing here are ones I’ve used for years and continue to use. If you’re writing short fiction and entering competitions, you’ll come across a lot of set themes, which are all chosen because they’re timeless and writers can get so much from them. More to come with the post on Friday.

Hope the week has got off to a reasonable start. Lady had a fabulous time with her best friends, the Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hungarian Vizler, in the park today. All three saw their favourite human of all time, “Pete the Treat” as well so it was fair to say the three dogs went home having had a great time and plenty of treats! We were all pleased to see some sunshine too.

Writing wise, the next couple of days will be particularly busy so I’ll be focusing on getting various bits and pieces done. Did manage to get a fair bit done over the weekend. Am also catching up with reading. Am enjoying some great anthologies/collections of non-fiction work at the moment.

Character Tip: Think about what you can learn from how a character speaks. You should pick up something on their level of education, class, and more. How can you apply this to your own characters? The choice of words used makes such a difference here.

Hope your Sunday has been a peaceful one. Am looking forward to flash fiction Sunday, which I’ll start shortly after posting this.

The one regret I do have with my writing is not starting a lot sooner than I did. All the clues were there early on that writing was something for me. I always loved inventing stories during what was called Composition (part of English Language lessons). I did have notebooks and jotted down thoughts and ideas. Goodness knows what happened to them but the signs were there.

Sometimes on reading a story I didn’t like, I would think I would write the character this way instead, all of that kind of thing. But I didn’t get around to actually start writing seriously until I hit a milestone birthday (and in the same year had a significant life event too).

Next month I’ll hit another milestone birthday which will also tell me it will have been thirty years since I finally succumbed to the writing bug. It’s the only bug I’ve ever been really glad to catch!

Tip of the Day: If you want to write, write. It doesn’t have to be perfect. First drafts never are but make a start and see where the journey takes you and have fun with it too. You want to enjoy as much as you can of the process. You also cannot know how long it will take you to get “anywhere” (the definition of which depends on what you want to come from your writing) so the earlier you can start, the better.

Hope the weekend has got off to a good start. Not bad here. Even saw a little sunshine. Still plenty of mud around and Lady does have a talent for finding it all.

Writing wise, I’m glad to say my latest post Researching for Short Form Fiction Writers (for Writers’ Narrative) is now up on Substack. Link here. Many thanks to all who have subscribed to my Substack over the last few days.

For Chandler’s Ford Today next week, I’m looking at Writing to Themes, which is something I do for Writers’ Narrative, Chandler’s Ford Today and almost all of the story competitions I enter. Post up on Friday for that one.

As ever, am looking forward to flash fiction Sunday tomorrow. As ever, again, the weekend flies by!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I’ve got one of those days today when I may as well have a revolving door as my front door. Now here’s a story prompt thought for you, knowing we all get days like that. Why not put your character in this situation and see how they handle it? Could make this funny or tragic – whatever mood takes you here. But have fun writing your character into a busy situation and see what they do – it may even prove therapeutic to you!

Hope Monday hasn’t been too bad. The usual hectic routine for me. Definitely time for a story then. I hope you like my latest on YouTube – Not Such A Good Idea.

Swapping some dark chocolate for something very different has consequences for two friends. A joke doesn’t always work out as planned.

Every writer has their favourite themes and mine often come up in my flash fiction and short stories. But this is another reason why I love competitions where someone else has set the theme. It challenges me to write something different when the theme is not one of my tried and tested favourites (and it often isn’t).

I’ll be looking at Writing To Themes for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday and will be sharing some tips I’ve found useful here. I hope it will prove to be useful. But in general terms it pays to practice writing flash fiction and short stories to various themes given these are often repeated (and for good reason too – these themes are timeless).

Managed to dodge a lot of the rain today so Lady and I will take that as a win.

Have a flash piece I am hoping to submit to a competition either tomorrow or early next week. Am also enjoying co-judging a flash fiction competition so, as has happened with editing in the past, I am on both sides of the fence at the same time again here. A nice place to be, mind you!

As you know, I mix up how I find ideas for my flash fiction pieces. Sometimes I will use topics connected with a season, most of the different random generators, books of prompts, story cubes and so on. I’ve been inspired by part of an overheard conversation before now too. The trick, if there is one, is to be open to the idea there are ideas out there waiting for you to work them up into stories. I’ve been inspired by characters I loathe (in a reverse way – I won’t write characters like that, I will write them like this instead and that has sparked a few tales). I’ve been inspired by characters I love.

If in any doubt, read more because it will remind you of what you love in stories and that should hopefully encourage you in your own writing. I find this to be the case and see it as a wonderful bonus for writers. We get even more pleasure from reading!

Goodreads Author Blog – Supporting Anthologies

I’ve had the great pleasure of having my work published in many anthologies over the years and some of my flash fiction work has recently appeared in another one (Editor’s Choice – Friday Flash Fiction Favourites).

I love reading anthologies too because I get to explore the works of many different authors in one paperback or ebook. Nothing to dislike about that and I’ve gone on to read longer works by authors whose stories I first came across in the shorter forms.

I also “use” anthologies to whet my reading appetite in between novels. I’ve long believed it is good to have a balance of long and short form reading. There are some amazing flash fiction and short stories out there where you do feel another word couldn’t have been added without “diluting” the impact of those tales.

Reading anthologies also helps support the smaller presses who give more authors more chance to have their tales seen and read. That in turn gives us more choice in our reading material. We all win here in supporting the anthologies.

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liked Allison Symes's blog post: Supporting Anthologies https://t.co/XMoJ7QhLcq via @goodreads I celebrate short form anthologies for Goodreads this week and share why I feel they deserve supporting. We have more choice of reading material for one thing! Hope you enjoy the post. pic.twitter.com/TISeUj9f0x

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) February 7, 2026

Hope Monday has been okay but good news – it's story time. I hope you like my latest on YouTube – Not Such A Good Idea.

Swapping some dark chocolate for something very different has consequences for two friends. A joke doesn't always work out as planned.https://t.co/bRAFc1d6s2

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) February 9, 2026