Writing Tips: Leave Well Enough Alone

There are two places where a writer needs to be able to know when to stop: editing and ending.

Season's Greetings

A very merry Christmas to you all, or merry any other festival you may be celebrating at this time of year, or else just general merriness. I hope all your days are going well.

I've not forgotten my promise, that's coming in a bit.

'Twas the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

It's Christmas Eve tomorrow, and over here we're just about ready for Christmas: tomorrow we have to collect the turkey from the butcher and cook the ham, but the decorations are up, the living room smells agreeably of tree, the cupboards are full of yummy things. All my Christmas shopping is done, presents wrapped and round the tree with most of the rest of the family's, and I've had a good feel and shake of most of them.

Pearls of Wisdom: Water Your Christmas Tree

It's almost Christmas and I expect that a fair proportion of my readers will be celebrating it as either a religious or national holiday. I suspect that a fair few of you will have a Christmas tree.
If it's a real one, water it. You can find stands that hold the tree upright in a reservoir which you can fill with water. We got one a few years ago, and as well as being a good stand - doesn't fall over - the tree seems to keep its needles better.
My other tip is to shop around. We usually get a very nice tree at a very reasonable price from a couple of blokes who bring a van full of them to Morrisons carpark.

If you have an artificial tree, it won't want watering, probably comes with a stand and you'll only have to buy one once. But it won't smell of pine.

Things I Have Written

Since this is now a writer's blog, it seems vaguely reasonable to tell you about the things I have written. Most of it is works in progress, which I don't really want to publish bits of, but I have in the past perpetrated fanfiction (Discworld), some of which is published here: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2131135/gbfpotw and which you can read if you really want to (reviews very, very welcome). Of my published fics, Damned Bloody Assassins is in progress, but more-or-less on hold for the forseeable, as is a one-shot not yet published.

Pearls of Wisdom: Just Say No

The world will not end if you tell your cat 'no'.

Pearls of Wisdom: You're never Going to be Safe

Avoiding anything that could potentially harm you causes death by explosive decompression.

I Think it Would be Funny

If you ever have cause to write one of those ridiculous internet/software terms and conditions documents ten pages long that nobody ever reads beyond maybe the first and last couple of paragraphs, wouldn't it be brilliant to hide a sentence in the middle of it to the effect of 'I own your soul'.

A Tasty Treat

My most recent food - or rather drink - experiment has turned out to be one of my most successful: spice coffee. 

It's exactly what it sounds like; coffee with spices in.

To make it, it's best to make filter or cafetiere coffee. Instant will still be ok, but not as nice because you'll have bits floating in it. Simply add ground spices to the coffee beans, then make the coffee as normal, with whatever milk/sugar combination you prefer.

As to what spices and how much, that's entirely up to you. I use about quarter of a teaspoon each of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. I feel like sweet spices are good in this, but I would have thought a bit of chilli would go well if you like it hot.

It makes a very tasty, warming, somewhat festive drink.

The Meaning of 'Union'

Next Wednesday, members of many public sector unions in the UK will go on strike. Of course there will undoubtedly be a lot of union members who will go to work as normal.
To them I say, what do you suppose the word 'union' to mean?

Procrastination, and Not Doing it

Regular readers, if there are any, may have noticed that I've not posted much in the last week or so; I've also made no progress on my novel. Problem: too many time sinks. Between Cracked, Cheezburger and Minecraft, I don't leave myself a lot of time to get things done, and that time has to go towards my degree and trying to find some work experience for next summer - in short, it's entirely my own fault and I need to pull my socks up and stop procrastinating. I shall try.
Top of my Christmas list* this year is more self-discipline and the ability to not lose track of time, but until someone wraps those up and puts them under the tree, I'll have to make do with what I've got.

A Thing I Found

a-little-inspiration-goes-a-long-way-29-photos
Some funny, most true.

Good Days Happen

Often enough you have bad days, where everything goes wrong at once and the world seems to be out to get you. Mostly, a 'good' day is where nothing goes wrong, so they go down in memory as 'days' because we somehow expect things to go right. But do not despair. You do get really good days. Days where it all just works, when you spend all day thinking 'wow, what a great day'. I had one today. I won't go through it all, but everything went right, and unexpected good things happened, and I've been smiling all day.

Change of Subject, and a few other things

As you may be able to tell, this is becoming rather a literary blog. I always intended it to be the blog of a person who happened to be an aspiring author, and I've tried not to post about writing to often. But a lot of what I've got to say is about books and writing, so I've decided that's pointless, and as of now this is a writer's blog, although I will not restrict myself to that subject. Anything I find interesting will still go on.

On that note, if any readers have something they'd like to talk about, drop me a line - you can now contact me by email from my profile, link to the right of the page - and if I like it you can guest-post. The only criteria is that it's something I find interesting.

Also, I am aware I haven't managed to update as regularly as I initially said I would, so for the convenience of any regular readers I might have, from now on I will tweet about new posts. If you have Twitter and want to keep updated, follow me - link to the right of the page.

Finally, I hardly ever get comments, even when I directly ask for them. Is this because people aren't interested, or are you embarrassed to comment when no-one else does? If the latter, someone has to be first.

The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Good Book to a Would-be Author

I've just finished Anne Rice's The Tale of the Body Thief and I would recommend it to anyone, but read the earlier Vampire Chronicles first, if you haven't already. I enjoyed it immensely. But oh, how much it hurt.

Writing Tips: Make it Fit

One of the commonest flaws I see in writing is words forced into places where they just don't fit.
Often, it's in a character's thoughts: a lot of writers seem to be able to keep speech in character, but when it comes to the character's thoughts it apparently doesn't occur to some people that you also think in words you would naturally use.
Then we come to what I dub Thesaurus syndrome and Mega-verbism.

New Fire Doors

The council recently inspected my house. Since it's a house of multiple occupancy, it has to comply with various regulations including fire doors. Some of the door closers didn't close the doors properly, so we had to have new ones. The landlord came to fit them on Friday.

I now have a door that I can turn the handle and lean my full weight against without it budging. It takes quite an effort to force it open. My housemate's door is in an awkward little angle that means she can't get very much leverage to pull on it; she's gotten stuck once already.

This is going to make us so much safer in the event of a fire.

Read this if you've ever come to blows over a religious argument

http://www.cracked.com/article_15663_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on_p3.html?wa_user1=2&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended

Rule 72

Rule 72: The phrase ALL CAPS must invariably be written in ALL CAPS.

Do a Good Deed Today

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