I have a *new* message
From a “ghostwriter”
Who
Whom(?)
Will make my BOOK
look
BRILLIANT
Will this give me
A ghost of a chance?
{Image} https:/cdn.writermag.com/2017/10/shutterstock_715257643.jpg
1: Write regularly. Daily might be extreme, but try to be extreme.
2: When in doubt / take it out.
3: At the end of your writing day, do not complete the action/description/dialogue – but know what it is. Start with this known at your next writing time. 90% of the time you will slide right back into the work.
4: Eschew, Ignore and Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, the notion that there are no rules. There are rules to everything. Artistic Creation demands rules.
5: Follow your characters.
6: Follow your characters.
7: Follow your characters.
(image) https:/c1.staticflickr.com/5/4252/34743456922_7b4deab196_b.jpg
1: Write regularly. Daily might be extreme, but try to be extreme.
2: When in doubt / take it out.
3: At the end of your writing day, do not complete the action/description/dialogue – but know what it is. Start with this known at your next writing time. 90% of the time you will slide right back into the work.
4: Follow your characters.
5: Follow your characters.
6: Follow your characters.
[image] https://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/sites/default/files/writing-research-brief383109052.jpg
Since this fine Organization has appointed me Ambassador of the Word for being a finalist in their International Flash Fiction Contest, I will happily promote their good deeds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On November 23rd, the International Day of Words will be celebrating one more year as a Link of Humanity, celebrating the date on which the Museum of Words was inaugurated, and recognized by numerous countries and Institutions.
The César Egido Serrano Foundation encourages all writers to create and promote the initiatives that you consider most appropriate. For example: Gather people who feel the need of dialogue as the only tool against violence, and thus contribute to the coexistence between religions and cultures.
You can also upload a photo or video or comment on Facebook, or make a meeting with friends. In this way, we can demonstrate that a better world can be achieved through the use of words and dialogue. That day more than ever, the word must be the bond of humankind.
All those proposals received will be shared with all of you through our social media, emails and websites, you can send them to info@fundacioncesaregidoserrano.com
You can find more information about the International Day of Words here:
http://www.dayofwords.com/en/manifesto
[image] https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/220000/velka/words-have-power.jpg
I have noted some folk looking at this post from a couple of years ago. I had put it up because of the success of the television series, A Handmaid’s Tale.
Now, Ms. Atwood has produced a new novel, The Testaments, [which, by the way, has a brilliant front and back cover] with an international launch from London, England. I can humbly state that my part in her literary life remains the same.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was not my intent to piss off Margaret Atwood.
The opposite, in fact. I wanted her to know she was an inspiration.
She was giving a reading at the University of New Brunswick in my student days. I attended, but there was quite the gathering and she was whisked away at the end. However, I overheard there was a ‘gathering’ in her honour. Invitation only, of course. Academia and literati.
I crashed the party (that was the term used by the professor who clapped his sturdy hand upon my shoulder but – happily – did not thrust me into the night).
But Ms. Atwood was kept deep in many a learned conversation and I had no opportunity to converse. I did, however, overhear where she would be spending next afternoon – the historic University Observatory.
Next day I knocked upon the Observatory door.
It was not a cheerful Margaret Atwood who answered, and answered with alacrity.
She asked my name.
She asked my business.
And she asked how the hell I knew where she was. She had stolen the day to do some writing. Some ‘real’ writing, in this window-of-opportunity grudgingly offered on the book tour.
At least I was there to praise Atwood and not to bury her with some essay question.
Nor had I a manuscript to hand to her.
I might not have garnered a smile, but her curt thank you was reward enough.
For me, at least.
When In Rome!
There was:
an Abyssinian (I made her),
an Albanian,
a Bolshevik,
a Brataslzvian (he was worst),
a Brazilian,
a Canadian,
a Cannibal (uh-oh),
a Colombian (smoking hot),
a Cynic (she didn’t believe the Canadian),
a Dominican,
a Druid (he prayed for the Dominican),
a Druze,
an Eatonian,
an Estonian,
a Fool (ha ha),
a Freizen,
a Gazian,
a Graduate,
a Haligonian,
a Helgolandian (he was and gone),
an Israeli,
an Iranian,
an Iraqi (they three went into a bar),
a Jamaican,
a Japanese,
a Kazistanian,
a Kurd,
a Lithuanian,
a Lush (one in every crowd),
a Mongolian,
a Monster (them is the odds),
a Nederlander,
a Norwegian,
an Olympian (he was game),
an Opportunist (coulda been me),
a Pole (he vaulted over the rest – *joke*),
a Québécoise (I’ll never forget her / Je me souviens),
a Russian (great dancer – he had the steps),
a Scandinavian,
a Southerner (I melt when she says ‘Y’all) ,
a Stevedore,
a Transvalanian (out for blood),
an Ukrainian,
an Unitarian,
a Vulcan (he was eerie),
a Waalloon,
a Wisenheimer,
an Xanaduian (and on her dulcimer she played),
an Xaverian (he shot daggers at the Dominican),
a Yugoslavian
and
a Zarahthustain (thus he spoke a lot)
The Canadian won the first game.
Until this month, I would have said the strangest thing I have researched – and written about – for one of my novels, was the chapter in my first Onion novel, where my characters built a bridge over a river in 3rd Century Italy.
Alison Alexandra seems destined to edge me even further.
In There Was A Time, Oh Pilgrim, When The Stones Were Not So Smooth, I currently find myself writing about a wedding ceremony where the bride is dressed in a tuxedo, as are all her attendants. She is a fashion designer, and has created a line of female tuxedos. She is unveiling them at her own wedding.
Peaked vs. shawl lapels – to say nothing of all the colours.
One aspect of Alison Alexandra – rarely alluded to – is that in her teens and early twenties, she was a fashion model in Europe. She left the job from boredom after five years, but it is from this enterprise she gained enough sustainable income (via investments) to be left alone, and live the life she lives.
However, her mentor – the fashion designer, Bellissima Isobella – has called her back to do a favour. Bellissima Isobella is getting married, and has created a line of tuxedos for herself and all her attendants. What better way to promote them?
There is the aspect of the tail wagging the dog in this research. And, let me tell you, the Interent is awash with photos of ladies in tuxedos.
Oh – yes.
Alison Alexandra will be in red.
An Icy Moon Of Jupiter. Turned into 100 words
AS IS:
He is not a man for grand gestures. The gift came as a surprise, the kiss a shock. He was embarrassed by the first and aroused by the second. Time, always a constant worry – not the futile minutes, hours, days, the whirlwind passage of months, but the disappearance of the now into the past -had again taken a bite out of his life before he had realized it was gone.
“I thought you would like it.” she said, a gift somehow made more important because it was not planned, an obvious display of spontaneity. A chance meeting in a store on a Saturday afternoon. “I’m leaving soon, in two weeks I’ll be in France.” Eyes taking in his every reaction, her voice tinged with reproach. “Do you like it?”
And of course he did, but there were too many memories laced with half smiles jamming into his head, not painful in themselves but adding now to finality. The party where he met her, surely that was just last week, at the most a month ago. Surely it did not stretch back to soft Autumn nights.
“well, here,” she writes something. “It’s for you, you know.” A look of puzzlement crosses her face as the gift changes hands, the too brief touch of her fingers. he clutches it carefully, looks back to her eyes and imagines he sees a twinge of that nonexistent past. or does she only reflect what is in his own face?
And then the kiss.
So unexpected that he almost jumps back.
The touch of lips and warm breath, the smell of fresh, soft hair against his cheek. His own mouth open in surprise, her farewell brush of lips turned partially into passion. And then she is out the door, onto the street, and he is standing by a counter feeling very old, his heart an icy moon of Jupiter.
Ah, Christiane. Salut.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDIT:
The gift comes as a surprise, the kiss a shock.
He is embarrassed by the first and aroused by the second.
“Do you like it?”
A gift made more important because of it’s spontaneity. A chance meeting in a store on a Saturday afternoon.
“I’m leaving soon. In two weeks I’ll be in France.”
Eyes take in his every reaction.
That party they met, surely it was just last week, Surely it did not stretch back to soft Autumn nights.
Then she is out the door.
He becomes very old, his heart an icy moon of Jupiter.
Ah, Christiane. Salut!
So, it’s like this.
Alison Alexandra is going to meet her mentor for the first time in ten years. Her mentor, Bellissima Isabella, is the couturier who started, and managed, Alison Alexandra’s modelling career when she was a teen.
They are going to meet in front of the Gucci Museum in Florence. Alison Alexandra assumes they are going to go in and look around but, oh no. Belissima Isabella has nothing but disdain for any other couturier.
I knew that when entering the Gucci Museum was going to be suggested, Belissima Isabella was going to decline, saying it was full of “Gorgeous Gucci Garbage”. But, what was missing, was an oath of derision, which she might say a few more times as she struts across my stage in There Was A Time, Oh Pilgrim, When the Stones Were Not So Smooth.
So, I am right at the moment of writing the oath, not a thing in mind, and she comes out with “Emanuel God Cunt”. A philosophic twist. I can live with it.
I finish my writing, come down to the computer, look at odds and ends, one of which is Linkedin. There is a request from a chap for me to add him to my Linkedin Network. His first name is Emanuel.
Might I suppose God is chuckling along with me?
