ABCtales Newsletter: September 2015
Hi, everyone,
This last few days I became conscious of a change in the season, I didn’t notice it as such, the difference was too imperceptible for that. The morning air had taken on lightness, its feel had become sheen-like against the skin. The neutrality of its recent character eschewed for something potentially more assertive.
The seasons’ changes are the year’s punctuation marks. They aren’t full stops neither are they commas. They’re more the semi-colons in the annual chapter. It seems that the move towards autumn presents a paradox for the creative soul because just as nature starts to fall to repose human creativity is often revitalised. For us as writers vitalisation is a key part of our productivity and success. If only we could harness it at will. If we could, a difficult part of being creative writers would be solved but alas we can’t. This is why we should exploit any advantage that comes our way to promote and enhance our creative writing processes.
ABCtales author Lavadis, Laurie Avadis in real life, has fulfilled a lifelong ambition that many of us share. His absolutely brilliant debut novel Ex has made it into print. I have my copy here on my desk as I type, I’d like to offer a quote from it:
“This little boy, this perfect little person was still a blank canvas. He knew every day as their eyes met that Saul was drinking in his father’s persona, that every mannerism, every gesture was germinating the tiny shoots that would grow tall and proud into the man he would become. To uncork the bottle even for a moment would be a betrayal of the father M was determined to be. But M knew, as he felt his son’s eyes fall upon him, that occasionally one had to make a tiny exception and cause really fucking severe physical damage to another person’s body.”
The richness of the language, the crafting of the phraseology, the unpredictability of the plot and the sheer originality of the narrative arcs make this novel a must-have-addition for your shelves. A little bird tells me that Laurie’s already started work on his next book but if you haven’t got a copy of his first one I implore you to buy one today. Here’s the link:
These are exciting times for ABCtales writers. Two other members are at the copy-edit stage of the publishing journey themselves with their novels due to hit the shops in the spring of 2016 – more of that anon.
A close friend and I were discussing his recent experience of participation on a writing course. He has just completed an MA in Creative Writing and it was fascinating to learn about the approach that his course took. Modules covered such interesting and diverse topics as ‘critical approaches to creative writing’, ‘writing the voice’, ‘the contemporary writer’ and ‘how to write for specific readers and audiences’. But the question that I was most keen to ask him was to do with whether he felt that his own ability as a writer had been enhanced. His response came as a huge surprise. He told me that he thought the course had definitely improved his writing but (and this is one big but) he believed that being an active member of ABCtales had been more influential. WOW! Here was somebody saying that he’d learned as much if not more about how to become a writer by being a member of ABCtales than he had from actually doing a full-time postgraduate degree in it. Think about that for a minute.
That’s how important ABCtales is. It provides a platform for well-known, established professional authors to experiment with new work (you’d be astonished at who some of the usernames belong to but of course they have to remain anonymous) and it allows newbies to take their first tentative, often very personally exposing steps. The rest of us are somewhere in between them on that continuum. But one thing is for certain, ABCtales is a hugely important home for a vast number of people who share the common goals of becoming better writers and having their writing read by others. I’d like to offer the gentlest of reminders that ABCtales relies on the kindness of its member’s voluntary donations to contribute towards its upkeep. Donating is simplicity itself, just click the PayPal button at the bottom of the Home Page or just use this link:
It really doesn’t matter how little it might be, all donations are humbly and very gratefully received.
So I’ll sign off with this thought. My routine at the moment is to get up early, go outside and let nature’s semi-colon work its magic. Try it; it might just work for you too.
Always with the kindest regards,
Peter.
- Log in to post comments
- 238 reads