Raven's View

Yes, I know, it's been several weeks since I wandered in here. Last time, I was thinking of doing summaries of my five novel drafts, to help me pick one for my focus. Still thinking of it, but next round I have to actually do this and get feedback from some people. 

I've spent many hours playing my trucking games, streaming online as I drive my Scania around Russia, ICBM missile in tow, chatting with viewers. And some time spent on reading, wandering my hood, and visiting with family and friends. 

But, I also went to an inspiring presentation on world building, and took part in some interesting Facebook discussions on editing and self-publishing. The presentation discussed not only the physical attributes of a world, but the culture, politics,  beliefs and taboos, economy, etc. And how you can use this all to focus on and explore a particular moral issue. In addition, he talked about honing your craft, and how to explore other's short stories when the time is limited. More on that below. As for the FB discussion, in the end I decided to just walk away from it. These were authors that were dismissive of any need to learn rules of grammar, plotting, etc. Claiming you couldn't learn to be a writer, some people just were that way, writing courses were a waste of money. They were happy with what they were writing, as were their fans, and didn't think they really had to work at improving their level - any constructive criticism would come from online reviews. Which is fine, just not my thing. part of the good news/bad news of the self-publishing world, I guess.   

I did this a few weeks ago in response to a ROW80 blog prompt. 

The challenge - Today let’s play with some poetry.  Free verse, sonnets, haikus…  the form doesn’t matter, but you will need to add in a sense of stillness (without using the words “stillness” or “still”), and a playful puppy.

My haiku:

My hyper puppy.

Collapsed in sleep in my lap.

Not even a twitch. 

My writing group, ROW80, posted a challenge a while ago to do a 100 word story. These are fun to write, as little fragments of description or dialogue. Maybe something you'd open a novel with, or slip in between two chapters, or just leave as is. 

The challenge - 

This time, I’d like to draw your attention to the lovely photo that Elizabeth Mitchell posted to her blog for the First Friday Photo bloghop I’d mentioned last week here: Lapidary Prose and write a drabble (a little 100 word story) with the picture and the cycle of endings and beginnings as integral parts of the piece.

The photo seemed very peaceful to me, a nice place to rest.