In Conditional Validation I was talking about how Malcolm Bradbury saying "They're good. Keep going" was enough for Ian McEwan to - well - keep going. We tend to think that the "they're good" is the important bit of that, but I more and more think that in some ways "Keep going" - said by someone whose knowledge and judgement you trust - is just as important. The thing is, they're two sides of the real question, which is "Is this worth doing?".

Mind you, Hilary Mantel said on Front Row that having won the Booker twice is no help at all, when you sit down to work on a new book: it's like the first day you started to write. The energy doesn't come from the pleasure of doing something know you're good at or are admired for; it comes from the knowledge that it will all turn out to be worth it, when you finally get to the summit. It's that knowledge which keeps you going over the endless immediate difficulties and setbacks of the terrain. Every step, every day, every month, every novel.

I realised this all over again recently,

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Barry Charman’s haunting, image-rich story, “Dawn”, was one of three winners in the March Fiction Contest at Postcard Poems and Prose and deservedly so. Shoot across the www for 90 seconds and read his brilliant 200 word story. You can find it here. It won’t take long and you will enjoy your minute spent reading.

We spent three enjoyable days completely off the grid over the long weekend. We snowshoed into the cottage t Lac LaBelle and out onto the lake. After drilling
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'You should know these streets like the back of your hand,' I said to my companion, as we plunged into a housing estate off the north end of Camberwell new Road. To be fair, he was born and raised nearer to the Camberwell Green end, opposite the bus garage, so no wonder he was as lost as I was. As I taught at a school in the neighbourhood for eight years, I should arguably have been au fait myself. But it had all changed since the tower blocks went up. All we had to go on were the maps on hoardings that stood on corners with helpful 'You are Here' arrows. The murky street lighting didn't help much. So it was more luck than judgement that brought us to the Blue Elephant. Just as we were about to give up, I spotted the neon-lit logo next to a lamp-post, and an open doorway opposite.

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Kathleen Cassen Mickelson was one of our Fiction Contest Winners. Her entry, Red Sky At Morning, is published today at Postcard Poems and Prose. It's a wonderful story that can easily be read in 90 seconds. Her story is here or drop in to the home page gallery for more postcard fiction and poetry.

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Postcard Poems and Prose – Call for Entries

The snow is still arse deep to a tall sheep here on the shores of Lake Superior. We can’t wait for spring. To help while away the idle hours of March we are launching our Spring Poetry Contest. The window in time for entry is brief since spring is already breaking the horizon in many locales. The two art prompts at the top of the page will help start the saliva of creation flowing – so will our first prize of $24.19 (Poets are different…so are we.) We also feel...Read More Here...

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Here on Lake Superior the icepack extends out several miles into the great lake. We are still in the throes of winter. That said, we are excited about March. We have a great lineup at Postcard Poems and Prose. Our three Fiction Contest Winners and three Honorable Mention Awards will provide six pieces of wonderful flash fiction for online visitors. We also have a smattering of great poems on the schedule. Our April Poetry Contest will begin accepting entries in addition to an end of the month surprise.

As if all that weren’t enough March is the best time of year to snowshoe and ice fish. We also will put out 70 to 80 taps in our maples. That means we will be boiling sap into syrup most evenings. And of course there’s St. Paddy’s Day which, for fiddlers like me, is a big time. Whew! No wonder I...Read More Here...

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Yesterday morning our digi-thermometer screamed 4.8 below zero. (That’s -20.4 Celsius for our UK friends.) Today we’ll receive another six inches of snow…in short, just another winter day in the U.P. In March, after battling the various faces of winter, it’s nice to think of summer. Writing summery poetry helps. Looking at sunrise over the lake photos helps. The coup de gras, however, is too eat summer. Start the day with it. Embrace it in our bellies. So we did. Chokecherries picked in the blaze of July and made into jam, zuchini, parsley, thyme, and young red potatoes all combined to give us a taste of summer at breakfast.

I grew up eating potato pancakes. They were tasty, super-greasy, and slightly more dense than lead. They...Read More Here...


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When I let myself in for giving a workshop on Characterisation at Writers' Workshop's Getting Published event yesterday, I realised I haven't blogged directly about Characterisation as much as some things. It is a big subject, but for me, it's all founded in Aristotle: a character without action isn't a story, it's a portrait. In "Clothes and Food and Dropping Presents" I explored the process of creating (discovering? uncovering?) your characters can, essentially, go from the outside in, or the inside out, but here are some other ways to help you develop your characters-in-action.

And please don't forget that, as with any kind of imagining-on-paper, there's no reason to assume that you need to do this kind of thing before you start your draft. It may well be that it's more useful later, when you find you're defaulting to bland, standard-issue actions because your character isn't yet fully individual; when you just can't think what they'd do next; when you're in the 30K Doldrums.

First, as anyone who knows anything about acting (or grammar) knows, actions are expressed as verbs. So try these:

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Books can be used for a variety of different things. You can place them in your bookcase in your house to brighten up the shelves, or if you are clever, you might want to read them. A row of books can make your home more appealing and perhaps add value to it

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