Creative writing – Page 3 – Ruth Livingstone

Day 26 and Castro is dead

Or. how inspiration can come from Radio 4

the-return-gif-500 It was day 26 of NaNoWriMo and for the second day in a row I woke up with no ideas in my head for #30days30shorts.

Nothing.

Usually my subconscious brain mulls over various options during the night and pops an idea straight into the front of my conscious mind when I wake. But today, like yesterday, nothing.

As I lay there, desperately trawling my brain for ideas – any idea – the radio alarm came on. It was the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme. The lead headline was the death of Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary and dictator.

And I started thinking about revolutionaries and what they do when the war is over. And then I started thinking about their families and how they cope with returning warriors. Within a couple of hours, the first draft of the story, The Return, was finished.

Yes, short story ideas can come from anywhere, and that includes Radio 4 and the Today programme.

Day 24 and Day 25 of NaNo and I’m a winner!

NaNoWriMo 2016 is done and dusted. Or is it?

I’ve written 54,493 words and a few hours ago I pasted my text into the NaNoWriMo word count goblin, and he chewed it up, spat it out, and said ‘YES, you’re a winner!‘. Then the NaNo crew appeared, yelled their congratulations and gave me a round of applause.

This is my 6th NaNoWriMo win, and it’s still a great thrill to have finished.

But, wait, it isn’t over yet. As a NaNo rebel, my self-inflicted challenge was to write 30 short stories during the 30 days of November. One story per day. #30days30shorts

Day 24: Goodbye Cruel World

The prompt for this story was another Writing Magazine competition.

The theme? “Goodbye.”

I got the idea for this story some time ago, but it didn’t turn out exactly as I planned. That’s been happening with many of my stories this month. They’ve been running feral and tearing off in new directions. Continue reading “Day 24 and Day 25 of NaNo and I’m a winner!”

5 year writing project, Nov update

I’m taking part in Misha and Beth’s Five Year Project and my five-year goal is to write a novel and get it published.

The first part of this goal was completed long ago. Yes, my historical novel (The Reluctant Scribe) is done and dusted and, for the past 18 months, I’ve been trying to find an agent.

People tell me my central character is convincing and engaging, and the novel is set in an interesting time and place (northern China during the Tang Dynasty). But it isn’t ‘what we’re looking for’ or ‘I don’t feel passionate enough about it’.

On the plus side, I’ve had one request for a full manuscript, and one nice agent wrote a pretty detailed response, proving she’d actually read the first three chapters. Continue reading “5 year writing project, Nov update”

Time for a fairy tale?

Catching up with NaNo Day 23

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Wrote a short story yesterday. 1,700 words.

A modern-day fairy tale about a little princess who lives in a palace with no mirrors, and is blissfully happy, until… one day… she discovers the monster in the garden.

Posting an update on my 5 year goal and November progress soon, and then must get on with day 25 of NaNoWriMo and my next short story. Continue reading “Time for a fairy tale?”

NaNo Day 22, and no sci-fi, I promise.

Ahem, sorry. I lied!

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Just couldn’t resist continuing with another ‘what if’ scenario based around cryogenics.

In my first story, a group of convicts were sent to the Cryonics Facility for indefinite storage.

More centuries have passed and The United Worlds is a blissfully peaceful place. And, so, when the miners in the Kuiper Belt mount a bloody revolution, the President and her Security Chief have no idea how to deal with it.

Then they hit on a bright idea. Why not talk to people who know all about bloody violence? Why not resurrect the criminals from their frozen sleep?

As I’m sure you have already predicted, this bright idea turns out to be not-so-bright, after all.

I wrote this story a couple of days ago, but was busy yesterday with a trip to the Amazon Academy event in London. It was a day full of interesting insights into how Amazon plans to rule the world, from a pick-and-mix store of technical applications, to the local delivery of fresh food. If cryonics does become widespread in the future, I’m sure Amazon will become involved in that too… unless, of course, they already are.