Congratulations and Happy Anniversary
This site, Trevor’s Writing, is celebrating its 11th Anniversary today.
It hardly seems like eleven years, but time flies when you are having fun. The start of this blog was soon after I retired from 35 years of teaching. (You can read more about me here and here)
Loyal readers – I salute you
Over the years I have been adding various articles here about writing, reading, publishing and many other things along the way. Sometimes I have posted regularly every few days; at other times I have gone weeks and sometimes months between posts. To anyone who has remained a regular reader – I salute you. Such patience and loyalty should be rewarded, but sadly, all I have to offer you are promises.
Works in progress
Over recent days and weeks, I have been working on a short novel for children. I hope to publish this soon, first as an eBook and then as a print book. Stay tuned. I have many more plans to self- publish many of my works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. As a side project, I am also adding occasional entries to my memoirs. At this point, I am not sure if this will be a limited publication for family and friends only, or more widely available. We will see how it turns out.
Works still to come
I have plans for many more posts here on this site, as well as plenty of self-published eBooks and print on demand books. I can see an exciting future ahead, so stay with me. Over the last 25 years, I have written well over three million words, a good proportion of those words are on my blog sites. In addition to blogging, however, I have many unpublished works – novels, short stories, poems, articles and plays. Many of these I plan to polish, edit and publish, with a little rewriting as needed. I also have a half dozen picture book texts waiting to be sent off to traditional publishers.
Imagination
On top of all of the above writing, rewriting, editing, proofreading and so on, my fertile imagination won’t just stop. It keeps on coming up with great ideas to write about. Several ideas for novels have been bubbling away in my subconscious for months – some even years. Somehow, they must get written and out there for the world to enjoy.
Meanwhile…
I will keep the posts coming on a wide variety of topics, from publishing and writing hints, story ideas, writing prompts, poems, short fiction, book and film reviews and more.
Newsletter
Go to the sidebar or below the comments to sign up for my regular newsletter. It has been so regular, in fact, that issue #1 still hasn’t been written. (Sigh – that’s another thing I plan to write.)
Why not stop by and leave a comment or two?
Good reading, Good writing,
Trevor
Further reading:
- Archives – over a thousand articles on this site – and counting.
- Short story starters – these are always very popular with my readers; they are designed to start you off with your stories.
- Poetry – read samples of my poetry
- Short fiction – read some of my short fiction
- Trevor’s Birding – my blog about Australian birds
- Trevor’s Travels – my blog about our travels in Australia, Thailand, Nepal, Ethiopia, Morocco and Spain.
Writing prompts – who is this woman?
No Comments »9th March, 2016; Category: Writing prompts, Fiction, Short Fiction, Short Story Starters
Who is this woman?
That is the main question I am posing for this series of writing prompts. I should add that I know who she is, and what she was doing in this photo, but I will keep that to myself. I don’t want the ‘truth’ to influence your creativity in any way.
Possible writing ideas
Below is a list of possible ideas or prompts for your writing. You can follow any one of them in your writing endeavours, or you can take an entirely different tack to any I have suggested.
Over to you:
- Who is the woman in the photo? Describe her and imagine her background, writing a fictional biography of her.
- What is she doing? Write a descriptive piece about what she is doing, or has just done, or is about to do.
- Why is she smiling? Write a short story – even a flash fiction piece – giving the back story of what has caused her to be so happy.
- What the significance of the way she is dressed? Do some research on the different ways of dressing in different cultures, and write a report on your findings. Or use this information to give colour to a story you are writing set in that culture.
- Write a poem about this woman – perhaps an ode, or a sonnet of admiration.
- Write a short story in the first person starting with the words: “I thought I would never see the day when I…”
- Incorporate in a short story a significant event in the life of this imagined woman, making sure that the date palms in the background play an important role in the story.
- Write a personal account of a time when you visited an exotic destination. What did you see and experience, how did you feel, and why do you want to return?
- Write about a time when you saw a person dressed in an unusual or a memorable way. Describe your reaction. How did your encounter change you, or make you feel?
- Write about a time when you dressed in a special way for a party, and how you felt. Imagine that you were the only one dressed in a costume, and how that made you feel. Craft these feelings into a short story, or even the opening section of a novel.
More writing prompts
You can access many more prompts for writing here.
And you can find many hundreds of short story starters here.
Good writing.
Trevor
Happy 10th Birthday to Trevor’s Writing
CONGRATULATIONS.
Goodness, me.
Is it really ten years today since I started this site about writing, reading and books?
Today is the tenth anniversary of Trevor’s Writing. Originally, I started blogging because family members wanted to keep up with what we were doing. This very quickly changed as I saw the potential of such a site very early.
Around the same time I started two other sites, Trevor’s Birding and Trevor’s Travels. I bit off a little too much, but over the intervening years, I have written over a thousand articles on these sites as well. More recently I have maintained and written many articles on our church site here.
I decided that I would use this site as a platform to share my writing, share my ideas about writing, sharing insights from the books I was reading and bringing to my writing my extensive experiences as a primary school teacher. I had retired only a few months earlier. In retirement, I planned to write as close to full-time as I could manage. It had been a dream of mine throughout my life. Now I had the time.
Over the last ten years I have included the following on this site:
- Poetry, including many haiku
- Short stories – mainly flash fiction up to about 500 words
- Reviews of books and films
- Writing ideas and hints
- Short story starters to help my readers who are writers
- Writing prompts to start the ideas rolling for writers
- Reflections on the writer’s life
- Personal reflections on attempting and achieving my Master of Arts Creative Writing degree
- Outlining the process of writing my novel which was the main component of my MA degree. I actually quoted portions of this site in my thesis paper.
How to access articles on this site
Readers of this site can access the articles in a variety of ways:
- Use the search facility at the top of each page
- Use the cloud of topics in the sidebar
- Click on the Archives button at the top of the page and scan through all the articles (now over 1000 of them)
- Click on one of the items under Contents on the sidebar
- I also post quite a bit on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – click on the buttons near the top of each page to follow me.
The Future
What am I planning on this site in the months and years to come? Basically, more of the same. I am also planning to publish a range of eBooks. Stay tuned.
Good writing.
Trevor