Archives for writing - Page 6
Poetry Pointers
This is a post I wrote for Castlegreen Publishing and was first published on Poetry Pointers Given that we're looking for poetry at the moment we thought that folk might find it useful to give you some insight into what we're expecting and perhaps also some pointers on writing poetry that works for us. This is especially intended to help anyone struggling with their inner editor over whether or not their work is good enough to submit. Guidelines for the wise Poetry is a process, just like prose poems don't spring onto the page fully formed expect to polish poetry through several drafts to get it just right first drafts are always unpublishable, don't be discouraged by this, it gives you material that you can craft Poetry works best when read aloud From the second or third draft record yourself reading aloud and…
Geek Poetry – An Anthology for the Inner Geek
Geek Poetry in fridge magnets (photo: James Kemp) The more observant and regular visitors among you will have noticed that I've not posted much for a couple of weeks. Well there's a very good reason for that. I've been busy setting up Castlegreen Publishing, and sorting out its first proper project. This is a poetry anthology titled Geek Poetry. {That's not a typo, I haven't missed an R.} What is Geek Poetry? Poetry is really an oral form, and it works best when it speaks to real people and avoids disappearing up its own fundament. So Geek Poetry is the sort of hyper modern stuff that lives in the 21st century and speaks to the inner geek about all the stuff we love, whether it's computing, role-playing, Doctor ho, Lego, Science Fiction, movies or whatever else gets us excited. I'd class…
Hunting Nazis – Commentary on writing the story
I've written a short story titled Hunting Nazis for the End of Module Assessment (EMA) for A215 Creative Writing. The target word count was 2,500 with an upper limit of +10%. The first draft weighed in at 5k words, double the target length. However some of this was because although I plotted it I needed to tell myself the story in the first draft. Once I got to the end it was much easier to re-edit and take out some of it. Hunting Nazis The central premise is that Reggie and Dot (from the earlier story Planting the Past) have been hunting down nazis guilty of war crimes against the members of the French resistance and SOE agents supporting the network that they were both part of during World War Two. The story takes place in Berlin in 1953 when they are tying…
Geek Poetry – New Poetry Genre?
So for TMA5 of A215 I've chosen the poetry option and written a three poem sequence provisionally titled 'Castles in the Cloud' which is some very geeky poetry about cyber security. This is fine and it works for me, even if the other folk on the course are pretty much English Lit folk who aren't geeks. That makes getting feedback hard, but not impossible. What I am struggling with is the other part of the assignment which is to research suitable publications that I could potentially submit the poetry too. There is a fair list of general poetry magazines at which is good enough for the purpose of the assignment. However I wanted to find the sort of place that would appreciate both the language and the underlying geekery of the work. My Google fu has deserted me on this,…
A215 – TMA3 Poetry – Chaos Monkeys
This is one of two poems submitted as part of the poetry assignment for A215 Creative Writing. Chaos Monkeys No typewriters for these monkeys, pressing random buttons on keyboards and boxen. There goes the power, the server’s down. Chaos monkeys cannot read, instead they watch Netflix, that set them free in the darkness of the internet. Where did they lurk before? Did they hide in the telephone exchanges, or with gremlins somewhere mechanical and unloved? Down dusty corridors behind doors marked 'no entry to unauthorised personnel'. All they want is somewhere warm, with food. Perhaps they are refugees from a lab where they spent time solving puzzles for treats, until they finally opened the door. At night they wandered corridors, climbed ladders looking for more. Like Pavlov's dog, they explore for food. Pressed into service they explore the world wide…