A Distraction at the Bus Stop

It’s been ages since I did a journal post on either DW or LJ but I'm going to try and make the effort to post more regularly.

So, it was my birthday on the 6th, and I received some lovely fics from friends:

Three Little Maids by smallhobbit

A Year in a Life by mafief

First Birthday (An Inky Quill 221B) by stonepicnicking_okapi


And in July I took part in Flash Fiction Month on DA. I hadn’t really written for months beforehand, and I was starting to think perhaps that was it. My enthusiasm and the ability to come up with ideas seemed to have gone completely. But I’d also been watching a few writing events going past on DW that I usually took part in, and feeling a bit of a pang that I wasn’t involved. And FFM had been such an important event for me… In the end I decided to have a go and see what happened, without putting any terribly high expectations on myself.

You will be pleased/happy/horrified to know that the puns still live! I found I was able to come up with ideas for the prompts and challenges when I really set my mind to it. And I found I was still able to entertain others and entertain myself. As always I concentrated on humour but there were a couple of goes at psychological realism as well. I don’t expect anyone to wade through all 31 stories at this point but here’s a selection to give you an idea of what I got up to:

something serious (CW: contains (supernatural) bullying and one very strong swear word)

something humorous with puns

something humorous without puns

I didn’t win a prize but I did get an honourable mention for the month (there were four winners and four honourable mentions). Which I was very happy about because I hadn’t even been expecting that this time. It was just exhilarating to know I could still write and it was lovely to have people admiring my work and, well, admiring me. (I’m sure Small Hobbit will be pleased to know that my partner for the collaborative challenge described me as ‘hyper-competent’...)

But now the month and all the excitement is over, I rather feel I’m back to where I started. And I’m starting to wonder if I need to get out of a rut and stretch myself more as a writer. As a writer of silly comedy I do sometimes feel like a clever child being tolerated by the adults who are doing the real work. A DA friend whose writing I really admire was so enthusiastic about one of my stories 'The Flatmate' (the ‘something serious’ option above), which was by far the one which dealt the most with real human emotions. I think maybe I need to start concentrating more on what goes on inside my characters. It doesn’t mean I have to give up the comedy, just add to it.


The other thing that’s been going on is that I’ve been learning Dutch with Duolingo for the last six months. I’ve just ‘completed’ the course and received my virtual golden owl trophy. But I don’t really see this as the end—it just means I’ve now unlocked all the sections and so have access to them all. I’m planning on spending another six months on the course, earning all the crowns that are awarded for revising each section.

But I shall burble on more about my adventures in Dutch in the next post!