The Word Cloud

I've seen this done on other writer's forums and I thought it might be a good idea.

I'm looking for three or four individuals who might be interested in forming a 'critic group'.  I'd ideally like to find those whose genres I have a taste for:

contemporary fiction/ women's lit/ historical/ romance/ humor-comedy/ mystery/ paranormal/ thriller/ YA

And those that might have a taste for mine which is mainly a historical YA/paranormal manuscript for the time being.

The idea would be to critic pieces either set up on one another's blogs or if you prefer- correspond by email and send entire chapters or documents for critic.  We would each be looking for things like: deadwood or clumpiness, structure, description, wordiness, repetitiveness and plot indescrepencies.  

It always helps to have a fresh pair of eyes as we revise and I think this might be more useful for those that are working on or have finished their first manuscript and need help pulling it together and tightening it up.

Please sent me a private message if anyone's interested!

Thanks!
Katie


 

"I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me" H.P Lovecraft, 1890 - 1937

*Stands up*

My name is Ely, and I overwrite.

From the tiniest shimmer of the dust mote that floats elegantly down from an incandescent heaven to the overpowering maelstrom of the storm that rages with a power that defies all overhead, I overwrite. Adjectives, adverbs, overextended metaphors, overblown synonyms that have been sought desperately for in my well-thumbed thesaurus are all my friends; dear, dear friends I have spent a lifetime collecting, devising, enjoying.

But, alas, unlike my idols Lovecraft, Poe and Stoker, we do not live in a time where a love of language is de rigueur. To write because you love words is not enough. For fear of being rather melodramatic, I would describe myself as a bit of a shadow out of time  (nudge nudge, wink wink); an anachronism who needs to let go of these archaic mentors and begin to live in the literary now.

But how to cut those ties? To cut loose that which brings fire to your belly? To prune, yet feel you are not losing that which defines and inflames  you?

That, I do not know. It escapes me, cantering into the depths of the maelstrom above with a gleeful kick of its heels, defying me, challenging me: come and find me, but do it with less reliance on adverbial phrases and passive passages beginning with words that end in 'ing'.

Time to put the thesaurus back onto the shelf, methinks...

 

In my mind streaks of paint spread across the walls.  Drying quickly, messily.  Just a first coat.  Plenty of time to even it out later.  But sometimes later never comes.  Sometimes this moment is all we have.  So here’s my problem.  Should I do a really slow patient job, brushing into all the corners, even strokes, starting and ending at the same height, never wavering.  Or should I rush letting paint drip down the brush onto my hand maybe splatters on the floor like fresh graffiti.  I waz here.  But maybe I already have the perfect system.  Outlining a square on the wall carefully.  Showing me where I’ve already been and where I’ve still to go.  (White on cream isn’t easy you know.  Sometimes you’ll miss a bit.  Later it’ll glare at you accusingly.  Slapdash.  Not careful enough.)  The square gives me freedom to paint any way I want to.  Controlled border.  Any style in the middle.  Sometimes I vary the technique with adjacent squares.  Stand back and see if I can tell the difference.  I never can.  As long as I stay within the border I’m safe.  Sometimes though I really want to throw the paint at the wall any old way.  No system.  No borders.  No safety net.

I haven’t yet though.  Maybe the next wall.    

Hi folks,

I just wanted to use a little space to promote my new website, http://www.lpplmovies.blogspot.com/

It has movie reviews and well, I hope you all like it and comment, naturally, I do love trading ideas.

This is for all you movie fans out there, share the love. Also if you have tips of movies which review you´d like to see on the site, let me know.

Cheers!

Thinking about writing while painting (the walls not a work of art).  Wondering what other people do to put off actually writing.

I've now reached 48 hours as a member.

I have a novella on Authonomy posted for comments, see comments for URL.

I have a particularly awkward client at the moment. Admittedly what I have to do for them makes me slightly less welcome than a bacon sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah, but that’s no excuse for not being civilised.

What I have to do is scour their PCs for data that may be awkward, because they are being sued. Some of those so honoured seem to think they are personally being investigated (which they are not) and so become difficult. Last week, in Berkshire, I had another such encounter. This bloke and his PA (important bloke) generally slowed me down and made things difficult such that although they had a nice lunch, I was left still slogging away. Then when I was done they marched me off the premises without even a chance to grab a sandwich from their nice sandwich lady.

Huh! However, I am well placed to obtain modest revenge as I can simply charge them for this sort of thing. It so happens that I am not often in Berkshire and I had arranged to meet an old friend I hadn’t seen for over a year for coffee if the timing worked out, which it did. Upon arrival it turned out that she hadn’t had lunch either having been caught up in an overrunning meeting too.

Lunch on my client seemed in order, I thought. Being a villagy sort of place there is a pub and my friend was confident they would still be serving, although it was getting on for 2pm by now. She also seemed to be on first name terms with the bar maid (for want of a better term). In fact I gained the general impression that they went shopping together, shared cars and weeded each other’s lawns as well. But I both digress and exaggerate for dramatic effect. My friend lurks on The Cloud and may be reading this. "Hello ~~"

Lunch was pleasant and substantial, which is almost as much as I require. My only other requirement is a VAT receipt, which I gained upon request. This morning I came to scan in said scrap of paper. It’s a tribute to village life I suppose, but a receipt dated 19 April 2002 and timed at 3:21 am is of little use to me. Arrggh.

I stuck to orange juice on the flight – plus a little white wine with my chicken (sorry, Whisks) – as I’d had enough cappuccino waiting at Heathrow to last a while. (Do you pour the sugar onto the froth and then insert the spoon/stirrer very carefully so as not to break up the bubbles and stir around beneath, without disturbing the surface, as though performing keyhole surgery? Only asking.)

I always imagine going straight across the pond from London over Cardiff to the US about Washington somewhere, and on across to San Francisco, but, of course you don’t. We flew north over Manchester and Glasgow and on, just south of Iceland and over the southern tip of Greenland, touching the American continent over Newfoundland – mammoth white sheets of glistening snow with ice cliffs and crevasses running for hundreds of miles – spectacular. We came south across Hudson Bay, also still frozen, and then down through the States, climbing to 38000 feet over Oregon and Nevada before dropping down into the Bay area 11 hours and 5415 miles from London. Then it was just another hour-and-a-half’s hop over to Las Vegas.

There are two things that stand out about Vegas – and I’m not talking about the casinos and the wedding parlours – what stays with me are visual and aural. The gaudy, coloured neon lighting everywhere like something inspired by a latter-day electronic clone of Picasso, as well as the fantastic shapes of the resort hotels along The Strip. A mediaeval castle called Excalibur (I know, that was the name of the sword, but it’s America, OK?); an enormous pyramid called Luxor (right again, Luxor was where they buried the kings – the pyramids are way down the Nile from there, but, hey!); one called New York, New York looks just like – well, New York – the skyline (just one skyline, though). The Venetian, although enormous, is fairly ordinary on the outside (if you happen to be an immensely rich Doge, it would look ordinary, anyway). But inside it’s something else. Inside it’s – well, outside. On the first floor, hugely lofted ceilings are painted as a beautiful sunny blue sky with white fluffy clouds, almost indistinguishable from reality. The illusion is aided by the ‘open-air’ pavements and street cafés – and the canal, complete with gondolas, meandering for hundreds of metres under bridges to end up at ‘St. Mark’s Square’.

As I walked through this inside outdoor scene a gondolier was serenading his two passengers with a hearty rendering of “O Solé Meo”. On reaching the Square I was in time to catch the end of a group of operatic street performers. They finished with “O Solé Meo”. Their place on the podium was taken by a flawless flautist and virtuoso violinist who played together, charmingly - “O Solé Meo”. I simply had to move over to the ice-cream vendor and make a purchase – just one, of course.

The other thing about Vegas is the sounds. Wherever you go, indoors, you’re never far from a casino floor and these are a continuous cacophony of (fairly melodious) electronic sounds. Think about fifteen hundred mobile phones’ individualised ring tones going off at once and no-one answering them – ever. You’re getting close. All the slot machines – one arm bandits, as used to be – are, of course, electronic now. Many of them still have the one arm at the side but for show, only. They still have ‘spinning cylinders’ that you hope will stop at three cherries, but they’re just electronic images on a screen. And with every spin the ‘music’ plays: each melody signifying something different, no doubt, to the incessant players, but their significance is quite lost on me. The most exciting sound, of course is that of coins dropping down into the payout box; that hasn’t changed. Or has it?

Well, not on some machines, but I fear its days are numbered. The all-electronic ones look identical. Win the jackpot and you are rewarded with the rapid tink, tink, tink, tink sound of dropping coins, which might continue for quite a few seconds for a big win. When it finally finishes, though, there is not a coin in sight. Instead a payment slip slides out of a slot like an ATM receipt to let you know your new credit balance!

Wherever you are in Vegas, there’s another noise you can’t fail to here. An altogether different ‘melody’: it’s the doleful sound of the freight trains’ claxons letting out a long double blast as they approach some level-crossing. It’s a soul-rending sound that travels for miles and speaks of endless wagons (I counted 115 trucks pulled by two diesels with a third bringing up the rear) travelling endless miles through the endless desert.

So that’s Vegas: a plethora of fantastic shapes and lights in a continuous cacophony of tinkling sounds, penetrated every once in a while by the plaintive cry of a lonely freight train.

[More sometime]

I’m so frustrated at people saying they do not want to support the victims of the Haiti disaster because “Charity starts at home”. I do of course understand their point. However, there are hundreds of charities that try to raise funds for almost every problem that arises in the UK. There are charities for: the homeless, Cancer, Heart disease, Depression and Suicide, Children, Poverty…I could go on for hours! Haiti is one of the developing worlds poorest countries and the people in the country are in dire need of the things we take for granted. They have no water, food, homes and clothing. The simple things that don’t cross our minds. I have heard numerous complaints about charities who are going out of their way to help children who have been orphaned due to the earthquake say things such as “There are plenty of children here with no parents” and so on but think about it logically! Yes there are children here with no parents, i have first hand experience of that! We have a care system. The children of the western world are not left with no options! Children in Haiti are struggling to get a simple glass of water, an operation, even just a bandage for a cut! Some people may claim they don’t have the money to donate! Well then, volunteer to help at a fundraiser, organise a raffle, promote fundraisers, sell some old clothes on ebay and donate the money! There is so much people can do to help. In 2004 The Indian Ocean was hit suddenly by a Tsunami, killing over 230,000 people. I experienced the loss of someone rather close to me due to the disaster, which is perhaps why i have such a strong opinion on the Haiti Earthquake appeal. The appeal to help victims of The Indian Ocean Tsunami raised over six billion pounds sterling! So far over five hundred million pounds has been raised in aid of Haiti, lets try to exceed the total raised in 2004.