General Chat

Hi Ann, I don't mean every week forever, just over subsequent weeks, I thought it would be interesting to see how the characters might develop by themselves, as it were.

Just polishing off this week's endeavour...

LOL Ann, they do say that...and as you will see when i send out my piece tomorrow,I say it too :)

16 years to make gardens out of a waste land...and 18 months for them to turn it back into one...I just wish i had dug everything up before I sold to them, so many lovely plants.


xx

Ah that is the answer then Rose.

Sorry to hear about your old home, don't they say never go back?

Just got back home, so thanks to those whose work is already in my inbox :)) will read later or tomorrow if I fall asleep soon as might well be the case lol.

Been visiting my former neighbour/home in Wales...lovely to see the first , not so to see the latter as all my trees, plants, even the grass has been destroyed , nothing but tarmac and rubble :(

Anyway....

Coleridge said
" Prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order "

xx

I will send this week's offering out tomorrow, because its still infirst draft and I'm not happy with it.

I am pleased you are pleased. I have just sent out one of this weeks offerings, had to re-send yours Daff because I missed the _ in your addy!!!!

Lol.... yes, that is why I joined, I feel safe with you all. I had a couple of very harsh critics when I was a child, and teenager, and it only takes one, lol!!

Never mind, that was then, and this is now... I am pleased I joined, really pleased.

Love

Daff xxx

Well, there has to be an element of trust, I suppose. After all, they are our babies:) BC XX

Awww Daff, we all were at first.

*blushes* thank you... and I didn't join before because I was nervous about people seeing my stuff!

Love

Daff xxx

i enjoyed it too Daff, would never have guessed it was your first piece

xx

please leave me on your list..

That's just what I said in my PM, Ann! Well done Daffy! XX

Very good daff, why didn't you join before?

Got it, well done Daff, the first one is always the hardest to send out, though I really don't know what you're worrying about having read it. lol

Well, I have sent my very first one.... Stella and Jane, sorry I didn't know how to get you off my category without deleting you.... hubby will show me later... I have never done a multiple e-mail from a category before, lo lots of firsts!

I decided to let it flow, so that is almost draftless... just altered the format of a couple of sentences, as they didn't feel right. So it is a *baseline* for me.

Ann, thanks for the guidelines... thought I'd keep it a bit shorter for a first.

Love

Daff xxxx

OK I stand corrected, I will do whatever you say of course.

Good to hear from you again Stella.

I will say again, these exercises are only a bit of fun, and you really don't have to do them at all if you don't want to, it's just for the sake of a little group activity to keep the creative flow going.

Helen, I like that idea, I will look around and see what we can do from that.

Ann, character building is a big part of good writing. You need to have some idea of the type of person your characters are, warts and all, and they should have faults or they will be too one-dimensional. Then your characters...er....character, will dictate their reaction to the situations you throw them into.

Not so important in the short story, we only need to know an element of a character, but for the longer story, we need to know background, looks, habits, foibles, temperament and so on to make a believable character, and place them in the world we create for them. Its worth thinking about.

Thats why I put the exercise here the other day. To play with three different characters viewpoint of the same situation. We knew the weather was fine, or the girl wouldn't be sitting under a tree, we know the guy was an outdoor type, hence hiking. We knew the farmer was working and the girls father. All three clues gave us elements of their character, and that dictated their thoughts and views on the same situation.

i spoke to Maggie the other day about it, and yes we both have a problem with prose and we both like our poetry to just flow from our hearts...


xxx

For those who procrastinate, from my book.

If you know what you could do, should do and want to do…why don’t you do it?”

Thank you Stella, I think it is mostly the same for Maggie too. I definitely think the inspiration for poetry comes from a different part of the brain than that of prose. (otherwise we would all be able to write it.