Well what a wonderful week it's been on ABCtales, especially so because some members who have been suffering the dreaded 'block' have suddenly found a way to open the floodgates. Sid and blighters rock have both featured on the front page as picks of the day - well done you two! Poem of the week goes to Allen Johnson for a brilliant cameo of an impatient mole! http://www.abctales.com/story/allen-johnson-jr/bother-and-o-blow and the story of the...

I don’t mind admitting the concept of ‘poetry projects’ was something that I had only been vaguely aware of and up until last week I had not devoted much thought to what it might mean. I decided to investigate poetry projects and look at the process, production and the outcomes of them. So this last few days I have spent a little time looking into what it might mean. I found, predictably perhaps, that opinions on definition, benefit and worth in...

I think of my complicity in the age of choice, and my suspicion that there isn’t really any choice. There are usually only two things to choose from, two really big bands, two hefty paperbacks, two women, only one bankrupt ideology (since the others have lost) and yet the illusion persists. The man who leaves work on a warm summer evening and thinks I can do anything, embark on a wonderful love affair with a lollypop lady, retrain as a sumo...

This week's poetry pick was nominated by another ABC writer and I can't think of a better c hoice. Please do send us your nominations - we don't get enough! Congratulations to Scratch for his sparse, enigmatic Unknown Girl: http://www.abctales.com/story/scratch/unknown-girl Congratulations also to The Other Terrence Oblong, who just gets better and better, for his brilliantly witty piece The Work Problem: http://www.abctales.com/story/other-...

I've been a little weary of late. Life is hectic but, like a stormy autumn night, the sky clears occasionally and a perfect moon washes the landscape clean and calm. Its silver light is perhaps the most soothing of all. Soothing like the voice of James Joyce playing in my head as I read from "Dubliners" in the stillness of my room, wind whispering the trees outside. Hushed by the waves less than a mile beyond. Propped awkwardly against the...

The pen A half-decent Biro (like this BIC) costs a few scraps of change and yet has the power of contract, attorney, signs death-warrants, treaties, or can just record these thoughts. But its power is also revealed when it's stolen by someone you thought you knew. Confirmed when he does it again, but this time you point it out. The song A song can transport me. The right one always will. Maybe not at first hearing, but in time. Then I take that...

Nostalgia is good for you. Americans it seem love Downton Abbey and weep over the history they never had. Nostalgia sells. I should know that better than most. Writing is an act of nostalgia, an attempt to capture the past that’s never been, or to re-create the past as we remember it. This can be applied equally to fact or fiction. Downton Abbey is set on that golden past when everybody knew their place. The master was always right, even when he...

How To Become A Writer Learn to Listen Learn to Speak Learn to Read Learn to Write When people become writers they define a new reality for themselves. As long as these erstwhile ordinary people continue to write they are writers, if they stop writing, they cease to be writers. The state of not writing compared to the state of writing is the difference between paralysis and mobility. At the outset the proficiency of the writing is irrelevant; a...

This collection of nine short stories was winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2000. It gets my vote. Not that anyone asked me to vote, or even to read the long list or the short list. But if anybody had asked me which was the best of these short stories I would be flummoxed. I’d ask myself if they were all equally good. Janice Galloway, a writer I hold in the highest esteem, in comparison, wrote about the same number of stories in her collection of...

Philip Sidney wins the story honours this week for this wonderfully transporting piece 'Ghost Hunting In New England': http://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/ghost-hunting-new-england and many of you will know that I'm a sucker for nature poetry especially that's inspired by the wonder of bird life. The poetry prize goes to MJG for an almost flawless piece 'Murmuration'. http://www.abctales.com/story/mjg/murmuration finally this week's...