short story
Michael had promised Thomas an Easter egg, but where was he?
Thomas stood at the garden gate and glanced one last time along the road before dashing in for his tea. Meal times were so much nicer now since they’d moved house. He couldn’t remember the last time his mummy had looked as happy as she did these days. She’d started to cook his favourite meals from scratch again, instead of making do with boring, plastic supermarket food.
Yes, life was so much better now, but he did miss Michael.
Michael was Thomas’s best friend, his only friend in fact. Whenever Thomas felt sad or scared or very lonely, Michael would…
WRITING PROMPTS
Ideas to start thinking about now, with plenty of time to research, query and write for when they’re topical.
First wireless telegraph
One hundred and twenty-five years ago next year, on 14 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever communication by wireless telegraph.
What do we know about Marconi? Where was he born? Where did he live? When did he die? What else did he do? How did he get into communications?
How have tele-communications progressed since then? Can you compare sending instant messages today with sending a telegraph in those days?
You can research and write a topical article, using this date as your hook. Or you can set a story, long or short, within the world of communications.
Or you…
Freelancing
When it comes to working out an hourly rate, it helps to know where to start
When someone offers me $25 to edit their 10,000-word document I can feel myself going cross-eyed.
Apart from being topics of no interest to me when an interest in the topic is a requirement (cosmetics, poetry, ninja kids…), and apart from being quite busy already, thank you very much, $25 per 10,000 words is not really a ‘good’ editing wage.
Think about it, people. It might look good on the outside. But how long does it take you to even read 10,000 words?
It takes me 2 hours. Or 10,000 good words, at least.
And that’s before I start editing…
short story
Who was stealing things from Katie’s bonfire? And, more importantly, why?
“It looks worse now than when we bought the place,” complained Katie.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” replied Simon. “We’ll soon get it cleared.”
“Yes, but what’ll we do with all the rubbish?”
That one stumped her husband for a moment, and the two gazed sadly out at their wilderness of a garden. It had looked neat when they viewed the property. But the cottage was empty and the estate agents had obviously kept the grass mown while they showed around prospective buyers, and let it grow wild once they’d received a firm offer. …
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writer at work
The tags for this cover picture today included the word ‘breakfast’.
I’ve been looking at the ‘breakfast’, and I think it’s a slice of bread (or toast), with sliced banana on and topped off with chocolate flakes. Dark chocolate flakes. 🤢
Who has that for breakfast? 🤔
The weekend
I worked very hard on Friday to get the last part of ghostwriting (1) Book 6 in, and I actually managed it during the day, and while it was still daylight. I didn’t do anything else, mind. But at least I did do that.
The plan then was to have the weekend off…
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writer at work
Yesterday’s morning faff was cover work again.
I’ve wanted to rebrand my short stories for a while because I thought the old ones were a bit wishy washy.
With three short stories appearing in the magazine in October, and with me wanting to release them after the magazine’s been published, yesterday I think I finally did it.
These are the short, complete stories that will be appearing in the magazine. Two of them are brand-new, one is from the archives, and the first one is the cover story…
… now I just need to write the two new ones…
Here…
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finance for freelance writers
My rates for editing and proofreading have been static for a lot of years now. And when I started the ghostwriting a year ago, I went in low but towards the top of what I already knew the client paid. After all, I was learning the trade rather than an expert in it.
Since then he’s given me a pay rise.
With all other prices going through the roof now, the time has come for me to also raise my rates. So one of the jobs I’ve done this week is update the price list. …
blog
writer at work
Another thing I faffed at over the weekend was creating images on Canva to make wallpapers and Instagram posts.
(You can follow me on Instagram too, by the way…)
I’d seen these writing rules in several places and wanted to paste them everywhere to remind me of them, I think they’re so good.
Apparently, they’re known as Heinlein’s writing rules:
Writing rules
- You must write
- You must finish what you start
- You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order
- You must put it on the market
- You must keep it on the market until sold
So I made a wallpaper for…
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writer at work
I ended up working at the weekend again. I’d like to say that once I knew the poet was going fishing, then I saved my work for then.
However, it was almost the other way around. I asked him if he was fishing, and when he said yes I thought Phew! Because I already had a lot of work in.
Saturday 11 September 2021
I’ve been trying to do some work every day on the magazine. Saturday’s task was go in and format all of the pages for consistency. …
