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Liebster Award!
Hey people, welcome to the middle of the week! We’re halfway there to a pjs all-day kinda day (it constantly impresses me that I don’t just wear pyjamas all day when I don’t need to leave the house. I am an adult.) But, in other news, on Monday I was nominated for the Leibster Award on Monday by the beautiful, hilarious and talented Nicole Evans over at Thoughts Stained With Ink (I’m really hoping that this will, in part, make up for the fact that I’m a non-video-game-playing loser, but it’s also all completely true). Because she’s a superlative human, she nominated me for something called the Liebster Award after she…
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A Commemoration – Three Years Post-Afghan
Today marks three years since I returned from my five-month deployment to Afghanistan. In some ways, it feels like those three years have been a lifetime; in others, like it was only yesterday that I stepped out of one world, and back into another that I couldn’t quite recognise. I left Afghanistan in mid-September with another junior officer and a number of the soldiers from our Shadow UAV contingent as part of the drawdown of Tarin Kot Multinational Base. The majority of my Troop, those soldiers under my direct command and my responsibility, remained behind. I also left behind my best friend, whom I had—unintentionally, and at that stage, completely…
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Writing, Empathy and Dealey Plaza
Empathy is a tough one. For a writer, it’s vital. Undoubtedly, somewhere in the mix there will probably have been a few great writers who weren’t overly empathetic, but the links between our capacity to empathise and our ability to create complex, interesting, relatable characters (whether they are likeable or not) seems clear. On the other hand, sometimes being empathetic can be overwhelming. Sometimes it seems that if you would let go and allow it to, the world would devour you. It can feel like a fine line between remaining sensitive to emotion, and drowning in it. We visited Dealey Plaza on Sunday morning before we left Dallas. The city…
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The Pointy End
Happy mid-week madness* everyone! [*Disclaimer: as far as I know, there is no madness here. At least nothing clinically diagnosed.] There is no doubt in my mind that I’m reaching the pointy end of this university trimester, where everything starts to get a little bit tighter and, as a first-time full-time university student, I start to feel the pinch a bit. I have two 2500 word assignments both due on the 23rd of September, a psychology exam a few days later and a political ideologies exam about a week after that. Of course, my brain is whirring with everything that I should be doing (like heaps of exam revision!) while…
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Of Human Bondage
Welcome to the middle of the week! First off, my apologies to anyone who read the title of this post and got excited about the topic: in all likelihood, you’re probably about to be subsequently disappointed. I really racked my brains over what to write for today’s post. For a while there, I strongly considered just letting it go and not doing a post: tempting. Verrrrry tempting. But then I thought about having recently (finally) finished Somerset Maugham’s ‘Of Human Bondage’, and wanted to report back on the experience. Mainly because, despite the fact that it was pretty long and sometimes a bit slow, there were a lot of…
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Writing and Learning
Sometimes, Mondays just seem to come around so quickly. Weekends tend to be consumed by chores and studying, and you manage home-made pizza and a movie on Sunday night, then it’s Monday again. What the hell, world. Anyway, on to the post! Today is all about learning. I have a confession to make: I’m a bit of a nerd [Dislciamer: obviously depending on how you define nerd]. I love to read, I love to learn new things, I love studying (some days), and I find that it constantly boggles my mind how much there is out there to learn about, and how much we can utilise the things we learn…
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Finding Your Artistic Arrogance
Hey peeps, welcome to the middle of the week! I mentioned on Monday I was going to post about this, so get excited. I’ve been thinking about artistic arrogance quite a bit recently (a recurring theme inside the restlessly churning cogs of my brain) and wanted to share it with you all. Where to start…? What do I even mean by that idea, artistic arrogance? For me, it’s about keeping your doubts hidden, even when you’re agonisingly unsure. Nothing is more painful or off-putting to other people than the classic awkward introduction of: “well, it’s not very good, but” or “everyone else’s is better than mine,” or “I’m not very…
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The Pressure Cooker of Advice Lists
Happy Monday world! Does anyone else ever feel pressured as a writer? You know what I mean: you have to do x, y and z to develop your voice. You have to use this story structure. You need a theme. You need a strong female character, but don’t push a feminist ideal; more speech tags but you should only ever use ‘said’; more diversity, more action, more intrigue, more adverbs, less adverbs… It can’t be just me. Everywhere we turn, someone is telling us how to write. Some might argue that’s just an extrapolation of all the other things that the world and its nosy people feel free to tell…
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Aussie Expats Update – Driving Reprimands, Manuscript Typing and Travel Planning
It’s Friday yet again (thank goodness!), and I’m worried that no tale will ever again live up to that of the free-spirited armadillo I introduced you all to last week. [We need to name it, I think, then freely and ignorantly apply this name to every and all armadillos seen in the future, dead (‘sleeping’) or alive.] However, I did get pulled over by an on-base cop yesterday! There you go, more drama and intrigue in the life of the Aussie expats. Having picked James up to take him to a promotion ceremony that was happening elsewhere on base (and on a tight schedule, I’d like to add), I turned…
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A Present Obsession
Guys, guys, guys.* Can someone please explain to me what is going on with what seems to be modern writing’s obsession with present tense? I don’t think I’m over exaggerating when I say that everyone is doing it (or at least almost everyone). To provide some context, most of you know that I recently entered the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge. One of the cool things that has been set up within the framework of the challenge is that once you’ve completed your story and have received confirmation of your submission, there’s an online forum where you can post your story and receive feedback. It’s completely private, so if you don’t want…
