A New Stone

I’ve had a new ’stone’ published today on A Handful of Stones.

Click on the link to have a look. Or, just look at the little ‘widget’ on the right. It’s there too!

Filed under: Getting Published, Internet, Poetry, Widget

A Handful of Stones: The Widget has Landed

I’ve long been an admirer of Fiona Robyn’s website A Handful of Stones.

If you don’t already know the site …

A small stone is a very short piece of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment.

A shiny new stone is published there every day.

So I thought I’d put on my geeky hat and see if I can produce a little ‘widget’ that fans of the site can put on their own blogs or websites to display that days ’stone’.

So I had a bash and came up with something.

I sent the results to Fiona who liked the idea (Phew!) and you can see the results at the side of this blog.

If you would like your very own widget you can get it from here.

Please let us know what you think, any problems and best of all (for us) if you have popped the widget onto a blog and where we might find it!

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Promotion, Word Love

Honesty – worth its weight in Salt

I first read about Salt’s financial plight on the Novel Racers blog and duly bought one of their books in support (it was Tania Hershman’s ‘The White Road’ if you’re wondering).

I felt a little guilty because I was already ordering from Amazon and just added the book to my list. I hope I won’t be castigated too severely.

It’s truly refreshing to see the honesty in which Salt have approached their crisis. Instead of saying nothing (and going to the wall) they’ve decided to fight and use the net to reach out for help.

I think this is to be commended. Honesty, as we have seen elsewhere recently, seems to be in very short supply at the moment.

And what’s great is the net has responded by trying to help out. Excuse the pun but it has become a true support net.

p.s. To atone for my Amazon sins I will be ordering another book directly from Salt.

Suggestions anyone?

Filed under: Internet, Musings, Publishers

Luck is in the eye of the beholder

Last week was a lucky week for me, so I thought this week was bound to be a bit of a let down.

Hold on, is that pessimistic or what?

I really don’t deserve nice things to happen to me if I view a week where I may not get what I want as a let down.

This all started because I won a Blog writing competition on the Strictly Writing website and also a free copy of ‘Crossed Wires’ by Rosy Thornton, from the same site.

I’ve always had this idea I wasn’t lucky and to be honest I quite liked that idea. I don’t need luck, I make the effort to do things for myself.

So I’d convinced myself I never won things and to reinforce that belief I, well you guessed it, never entered things. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, am I lucky?

Well I’m healthy (could lose a few pounds, ahem, but the weighing scales went from the house years ago so who’s counting, or weighing?)
I live with a wonderful partner. I have enough money to keep a roof over my head and I’m not starving, (see note above). I get to do the things I like. I have loving family and friends. I am safe.

It’s so easy to spend your time trying to get the next thing on your life list and forgetting about what you already have.

So who’s lucky?

I am.

Every day.

Filed under: General, Internet, Musings

Practice

Practice makes perfect they always say but at the end of the day motivation is also required before you can even begin to practice. There has to be a point to practice and submitting and maybe seeing your work on the net helps to provide the motivation to practice.

So it’s good that there’s plenty of websites out there that can fulfil that need. Two that I found useful (courtesy of links found on Niks great blog) are ‘The Pygmy Giant’ and ‘Rainy City Stories’. They help give focus, for me, to the practice of writing. They both accept stories and poetry but the latter is for stories involving Manchester. The former is shorter (less than 800 words) flash fiction type stories.

The third is ‘Six Sentences’ which does exactly what it says on the tin. A story in six sentences. If that’s not providing focus I don’t know what is!

I think this is good because I can find it difficult to know where to start. Having these preset frameworks provides that starting point. I shall be having a go at submissions for these three sites in the next few weeks.

Now I just need to find the time …

Filed under: Internet, Poetry, Short Stories, Writing

Poetry for Computers

to the bots in my life
the only things that read me
as you gobble up the net
your relentless appetites unsated
my words a momentary snack
on an endless noshing session

Bon Appétit!

Filed under: Computers, Internet, Musings, Poetry