The lovely people at Monkey Kettle have published my story, “Only Whores can be Heroes”, as part of their book of western short stories entitled A Fistful of Monkeys. “Only Whores can be Heroes” is about ruthless bounty hunter called Charlotte Coal, and evil banker, and a terrible secret under the town of Liberty station, and it is packed in with almost 200 hundred pages of six-shooters, action and excitement that can be bought via Lulu here. Exciting stuff.
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How long should your story be? The usual answers (‘how long is a piece of string?’ or ‘however long it needs to be’) are not always helpful. Sure, a story should be the size it needs to be, but by what magical instinct are we to tell what size that is?
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“All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of Beggars’ Teeth.”*
Is the mark of a great artist that they walk a fine line between genius and insanity? While the rest of us mere mortals toil in our mediocrity, does the visionary merely summon their muse in bursts of creativity that produce great works in days? Does their innate, inborn talent supplant the need for hard graft?
I found myself thinking about these questions when I recently visited the Musée d’Orsay’s wonderful exhibition “Van Gogh/Artaud: The Man Suicided by Society.”
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My flash-fiction, “Tony’s Phone”, reached the shortlist for the Words for the Wounded competition and was commended by the judges. That’s not quite getting published but I’m still pretty chuffed. I still haven’t decided whether it counts as a point on my rejections score board or not!*
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This is something every writer experiences. It has certainly been my problem in the last month. I’ve been productive, to be sure. I’ve got a little stack of blog articles, two or three almost finished short stories, even a book chapter that just needs another 400 words. But, for whatever reason, nothing gets finished.
This blog article will lay out some techniques that can help when you are having trouble finishing. They are all things that have worked for me in the past. This is for when you have bits of work that just needs that last push, but every time you boot up the computer you find yourself scribbling notes for another project or starting off that short story idea you had in the shower and BAM – the day is over and nothing is finished.
I’m hoping writing about these ideas will help break my block. With a bit of luck it will help you as well.
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The lovely people at Monkey Kettle have published my story, “Only Whores can be Heroes”, as part of their book of western short stories entitled A Fistful of Monkeys. “Only Whores can be Heroes” is about ruthless bounty hunter called Charlotte Coal, and evil banker, and a terrible secret under the town of Liberty station, and it is packed in with almost 200 hundred pages of six-shooters, action and excitement that can be bought via Lulu here. Exciting stuff.
