Category: writing and writers

variation on a theme

I’ve been a writer for a long time and I’ve written in a lot of different genres and styles. At the end of the day, though, I think my strengths lie in poetry and non-fiction. The latter includes memoir, creative non-fiction, essays and opinion pieces.

When it comes to fiction, I’ve never really done more than dabble. Certainly I’ve never been tempted by long-form fiction and can’t imagine writing a full-length novel. In my files there are a handful of short romances, fantasy, twist-in-the-tale magazine-style pieces and not much more, other than a few children’s stories.
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moons and Junes and fairy tales

I’ve left it late again before writing this blog post. And I was wondering what on earth to post. Then I realised it’s the first blog post of June. And June, of course, rhymes with moon.

Last night there was an eclipse of the strawberry moon, but that’s not where my thoughts went: as soon as I thought “moon” and “June”, I didn’t start thinking of eclipses, but of the words of the Joni Mitchell song “Both sides now”:

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

Of course, I misremembered it and skipped over the Ferris wheels, heading straight for the fairy tales.
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gratitude rainbow

Yesterday, for reasons that I won’t go into here, I was thinking about things I am grateful for. It turns out I am grateful for many many things. Including the fact that I have a tendency towards optimism and gratitude.

Indeed, there are so many things I should give thanks for that it’s hard to know where to begin. So I decided that I’d skim through the colours of the rainbow and see what were the first things that came to mind.
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bug-eyed monsters

I wonder if schools and other organisations still give books to children as prizes if they do well in exams. Certainly it was common when I was a little girl. Somewhere among my books, I think I’d find ones awarded to my mother, as well, so it’s a practice that goes back a long way here in the UK.

The reason I am wondering is because I’ve been wishing I could find my Observer’s Book of Common Insects and Spiders, which was the book I claimed as my prize after doing well in a Scripture exam I must have taken through the Sunday School or Girls’ Brigade.
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the same but different

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK, which means that – by my own rules- I should have written a blog post today. Sadly, though, I haven’t been feeling very inspired.

Rather than let myself down completely, I decided to look for a photograph to post.

Although, of course one photo isn’t enough, as I also need a header image. So, having found a rather lovely flame-coloured rose in full bloom, I had to find another picture to accompany it. The distant cousin – probably a dog rose though perhaps a sweet briar – seemed a reasonable choice, particularly as both pictures were taken within the last week.
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