Little Sister Music

After the sad death of Greg Trooper earlier this year, my lovely friend Suki has set up Little Sister Music to promote Americana and Roots music in South East Wales. Tickets for their inaugural gig, Jess Klein & Mike June, are on sale for October. It's a work of passion, so please give all the support you can.

Scientifically Speaking

Tried a little experiment. Stopped reading the news for a week. Only allowed myself to read the Science & Environment sections. Wanted to see if it had an effect on how I felt about the world. I usually get my news through RT and BBC, I enjoy the juxtaposition of bias. I don't have a telly, so I just read it online.

Years ago, when it was much harder to get online, I went for long periods without any international news. I really liked that. Most of the stuff that is news here in Rwanda and East Africa never makes it into the Western-dominated media, and most of what happens over there doesn't affect life here. It had to be something either really important or interesting for someone to come up and tell you about it, like when Michael Jackson died. It gave news a sense of value, that someone had taken time out of their day to mention it.

Only reading the science articles has been interesting. Beyond the information about climate change and pollution, there's a lot more hope in the world than you expect. A lot of medical advances, space exploration and new things being found. Certainly gave me fodder for meaningful conversations.

The weird thing is, I have gone back to reading news again. Not for any reason other than I enjoyed the gossip. It really brought into contrast how much of a gossip column the BBC has become - every article is sensationalist: rape, murder, politics, but not for any useful political analysis, just who rolled their eyes at whom. Even a student stealing a traffic cone made most-read news one week. Though I wince constantly that the Beeb, in their desperation to create 24/7 rolling news, has surpassed The Grauniad's reputation for spelling errors.

It's been an interesting experiment, but I've discovered I'm not immune to tittle-tattle.

Shufflepuck

I have done no writing at all over the past few weeks - world of workly chaos. However, I did find time to play shufflepuck with Howl. He usually wins.

Tunglið

Liking these guys' style:

For Tunglið, how you publish is as important as what you publish. Named after the Icelandic word for the moon, the tiny publisher prints its books in batches of 69 on the night of a full moon. So far, so weird. But keen readers must also buy their books that same night, as the publisher burns all unsold copies.

Read the full article and find them online.

Longlisted

Aw, that's nice. Wolfish was longlisted for the Leapfrog Press award 2017. Always nice to get a mention. The longlist consisted of 31 works chosen from 410.

Make Good Art

Character Perspective

Teaching again tonight, so thought I'd share another little introductory unit on the importance of character perspective when starting your story. I've covered a bit about 1st person v. 3rd person before, but this gives you a bit more info, and there's a quick test at the end.

DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION

As with The History of Creative Writing, it's a narrated PowerPoint, so if you're using Mac, you may need Flip4Mac for the audio to play.