Pastures New

Dear lovely people.

This post is directed at the...errrm...legions of followers I've been lucky enough to garner over the years but if anyone else stumbles across it so much the better.

I've taken the executive decision to stop updating this blog and focus on my wordpress site which you can find at www.nikeveleigh.wordpress.com. I'd be extremely grateful that if you still have an interest in, or get some enjoyment from, my writing (present clunky sentence notwithstanding) then you'll scoot along to wordpress via the extremely handy link and start following me there. My arguments to persuade you are:-

1. It's much prettier and I even update it on a fairly regular basis (head argument)

2. I have only three followers so far (heart argument)

3. The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln! (random argument unless you've seen Kentucky Fried Movie)

So come along and tell your friends while you're at it!

Cheers,
Me

A New Adventure. Literally.

On Monday a new short story website will be officially opening its doors and unleashing literary fury upon an unsuspecting world (except for those of you who already suspected) leaving only a bloodied trail of dying adverbs in its wake.

The site is called Literally Stories and I'm mentioning it mostly as excuse-fodder to explain my latest leave of absence from all things blog.

But not entirely.

Burn

It's late and I've had some red wine so I apologise in advance if I waffle.

Or if I make no sense.

Or both.

In about three minutes (at time of writing this particular sentence) it will be Heritage Day. Or if you're more of a national boerewors franchise or charcoal industry persuasion it's very nearly National Braai Day.

A quick translation section for the many thousands (ha) of my followers who are of a UK persuasion.

The discordant twanging of hamstrings

They say that distance running is 90% mental. The other 10% is in your head.

They are a bunch of liars.

Distance running is in fact 89% mental. 8.4% is in your head. The remaining 2.6% is all down to strategically placed globs of vaseline and round plasters over your nipples.

Trust me.

Fun In Small Doses

I stumbled across a site this week called Specklit which showcases stories in the speculative fiction / sci-fi / fantasy type genres. I'm sure there are tons of these sites out there but what I like about this one is that it only accepts submissions that qualify as a drabble.

I've mentioned drabbles in a previous post but just to recap for anyone who has no ideas what one is...

Speaking of speaking

I have a love/hate relationship with dialogue.

In my working life dialogue has earned its own special place in hell next to guesstimate and touch base.

Hey Steve! We really should dialogue with the MD on that one

Kill me now.

In my secret, evening life as an aspiring scribbler dialogue is what keeps me going.

Writing tip #1: Write stuff down

On a scale of 1 to earth-shattering this probably doesn’t raise a tremor at first glance. Great advice numb-nuts! How else do you propose to write anything if you don’t write stuff down?

A fair point well made internal-dialogue-person. But allow me to retort.

I’m not limiting this to actually writing a story – in fact that’s the least important part of the writing stuff down routine. I’m talking about all the weird fishes that swim into your brain in the small hours. The pithy one-liners that jump out at you just after you could have used one to win an argument. The scenic gems, the character names…write them down.