The Boy on the Beach

The Boy on the Beach

He lies like a beached seal, washed up like human driftwood on the unforgiving sand.

He came from a war; fleeing towards peace, chasing freedom, safety and security.

His parents wanted all the things we have

Like a decent education for the children and a job that pays more than a pittance.

But most of all they wanted their children to be safe.

The boy thought he was going to a better place.

How right he was.

 

What has turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard?

A place where the unwanted die as the uncaring look on.

Right wingers beat the nationalist drum and raise panic in their wake.

The threatened become the threat as they mill around trying to reach safety.

When did fleeing persecution become a crime?

 

A policeman carries the boy’s body away

To a peace that he never knew in life.

 

ROW80 Check – In 09/07/2014

Okay, I admit it; I’ve been in the doldrums for a while. I haven’t written a word in ages because first I told myself I was going away to Ireland and I’d start again when I got back. Then I told myself that I’d start at the beginning of July, but I missed that date. I realise that I was just making excuses so yesterday I bit the bullet and just wrote another chapter of my work in progress. I must say that I felt a lot better for doing it. Yesterday I also managed to sort out the favourites on my computer, which was a job I’d been meaning to do for ages and kept putting off. I practised my guitar, figured out how to listen to an audio book on my Kindle Fire and did 750 words.

Today I chopped all the weeds back in our front garden, wrote another chapter of my work in progress, practised my guitar and had another guitar lesson, did this blog post and plan to do another 750 words later. So after a long pause it’s back to full speed ahead!

Worries about my Work In Progress

Wrote a first draft of my current novel for NaNoWriMo and it went okay except for the fact that it was way too short! Finished at about 25,000 words which is only half of what I should have. Left it until after Christmas to start the editing process and decided to re-write from the beginning hoping that each time I wrote it, it would come out longer. The first edition was actually only the bare bones of the plot with very little of what the characters were thinking and the action practically took place in a vacuum.

So for this version I’m writing now I’m trying to add a lot more interiors, if you understand what I mean, to the characters and do a lot more description. I thought that one way to add more interior thinking for my main character would be to switch from the third person that I’d written the original in to the first person and then she’d be able to think out loud. Also started writing in the present tense which I wasn’t sure about but decided to go with for now.

Well I got about twelve pages in and lost the present tense which I think is probably a good thing. But I also found myself shifting back to the third person. I did think that the first person wasn’t working out as well as I’d expected. So now I’m back in the past tense and the third person but still ploughing on. I’m full of all the usual worries like “Is this a load of crap?”, “Does this story work?”, “Should I abandon this and switch to another project?” etc, etc, etc.

The good news is that I am keeping up with the page a day challenge that I set myself on the first of January so I have seventeen pages of version two of The Bear In The Woods so far!

ROW80 Check-In 12/01/2014

Not such a good week as last week I’m afraid. Did my 750 words and worked on my novel The Bear In The Woods every day but I only blogged once and that’s today. Didn’t fit in as much reading as I wanted to nor did I do as much cleaning/de-cluttering as I wanted. Didn’t practise my guitar for two days but I did over forty five minutes of practise today to try and make up for that.

My guitar teacher really likes my new guitar so that was good and he was impressed with the progress I’ve made and joy of joys, he said I have the strumming pattern that I’ve been practising for the last six weeks to the point where it was driving me insane! I can’t play it at the right speed but he said I do play it right and I figure that playing it right is more important than playing it fast. I can learn fast later but better to get it right to begin with.

Bought five new books at Glastonbury on Saturday so they’ve all been added to the To-Be-Read list. And I got another book out of the library! Ordered two more books from the Oldfield Park Bookshop and have to pick them up tomorrow as well!

ROW80 Check-In 05/01/2014

Another year, another round of ROW. So I have a list of seven daily goals and my goal is to try to do all of them every day but not to hate myself if I don’t manage that. Then every week I shall assess how I’ve done and report back on that.

So my daily goals are
1) Do one page of my W.I.P. every day. So far I’m five for five on that one.
2) Practise guitar. Haven’t done that so far today but I have for the four other days this year.
3) Do 750 words every day either on the computer or longhand. Am five for five on that one too.
4) Blog every day. I have two blogs now. This one and The Queen of Books one so I must have something to say on at least one of them every day, you’d think but this task seems to be the one I have the most trouble with. Only two out of five on that one.
5) Reading. No problem there. Five for five as I would rather read than eat.
6) Cleaning. By this I mean above and beyond what I normally do. Not just the usual cleaning up but deep cleaning and/or decluttering. Managed three out of five so far.
7) Read Mike Young’s book, Kirk’s Landing and write a review on Amazon when I’m finished. I’ve read the first seven chapters.

And finally I’ve chosen my keyword for the year and it is ‘magical’. This will be a magical year for me in every sense of the word. It’s time for me to stop dabbling and really dive into the depths of my magical powers. Look out world!

ROW80 Check-In 15/09/2013

Gosh I haven’t done one of these in ages! It’s been so long I’ve forgotten what my original goals were! Never mind, that’s a good excuse to come up with new ones. I now have a list of daily tasks which I aim to complete. So far I haven’t had a day where I do all of them but I managed to do most of them. The tasks are:

1) Exercise
2) Write at least one page of my WIP
3) Practise my guitar
4) Work on my jungle/garden
5) Do 750 words thing
6) Do one blog post for either of my blogs (I have tow now!)
7) Carry on with all my with assorted reading

Today so far I have done one, three, six and seven. So I don’t think I’m doing too badly. I know full well that I’m not going to do everything every day; as I said I haven’t managed to achieve one day yet where I have done every task but if I’m doing most of them then that must be a good thing.

If I don’t do one task then I try to prioritise that one for the next day. Yesterday I forgot to practise my guitar so I made sure that I did that today.

Hope the rest of you guys are getting on okay.

Magnetic Poetry

Thanks to the influence of OctPoWriMo http://www.octpowrimo.com/ and the wonderful Morgan Dragonwillow, I was inspired to have another go at my magnetic poetry set and here is the result.

make believe woman is a monster/almost sweet on the hot hard morning/rain goddess bring me your night.

ROW80 Check-In 21/07/2013

Well I only had one goal and the news I have to report is…epic fail! I have only typed about two pages last week when I should have done seven! Looking on the bright side, I suppose two pages is better than nothing at all.

It’s all that Mike Young’s fault because he was talking once about doing free online courses and being a (nosy cow) intellectually curious person, I looked up the site. Oh dear! What a cornucopia of treats! Here’s the link for anyone that wants it. https://www.coursera.org/courses

Anyway, I signed up for a beginner’s guitar course. I have always wanted to play the guitar and started back when I was fourteen but found it hard going and gave up, something I have always regretted. Since then I read this book called Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed. Like so many others I believed that people where born talented and so when I picked up the guitar and couldn’t play like Hendrix I thought, I’m just no good at this and gave up.

But in this book the author explains that no-one comes out of the womb doing incredible stuff. We learn things through doing them over and over again, by practising. If I had known that when I was younger then I might be the axewoman cometh by now. How annoying!

The author reckons that to get really good at something you have to spend ten thousand hours doing it. Well I’ve started my ten thousand hours on the guitar this week. It’s going to be a long road but this time I’m determined to learn to play the thing! So not much news on the writing front but more about music. My dream would be to combine my love of writing and music and learn to write my own songs! I’d be in seventh heaven if I could do that!

Rain!

This is a poem I wrote a while ago. Using it now is probably wishful thinking as the last few days have been so hot I would actually welcome a bit of cooling rain right now.

Rain

Curtain of water,
Familiar blanket of wetness,
Grey skied creator of puddles,
Stealer of the sun;
Drowning warmth in your cold dampness,
Sliding over the street and dripping from drainpipes.
Nature’s percussion
Playing on the ground.

ROW80 Check-In 14/07/2013

Well I haven’t done one of these for a while! Was going to type up a list of goals but then I realised that as far as writing was concerned, I only really had one goal. So my goal is to type one page a day. That is enough for now. On a good day I do two pages and on a really good day I do three but one page is enough. If I miss a day then I will try to catch up by doing more pages on another day.

That’s it!