Stereotypical #authorselectric

My posting for this month is up on Authors Electric

“Stock images are something we are used to. Images from magazines and advertising hoardings have been presenting us with images of this and that for centuries.

The representations in art are a subject all of their own and their roots stretch back as far as the first paintings etched into a cave wall. Yet the word ‘Symbolism’ was first coined in 1886 by the writers Gustave Kahn and Jean Moréas, and is something much discussed in the arts…”

to read the rest click HERE

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Of Dog Food and Candle Wax

You know how it is – somebody mentions a particular subject on Facebook or Twitter, which sparks that domino effect of comments, which often stray off topic, interweaving with the original post but following trains of thought from a dozen, two dozen and more people.

You watch the thread build and add to the chatter but in your head the memories are sparked of things only related to the subject by tenuous fibres of thought. It is the catching those thoughts that can be essential to a writer.

Memories Are Not Always Made of This

This morning the author and editor Diana Athill was interviewed on the Today programme for her 100^th birthday. Happy Birthday to Ms Athill!

One of the things  that she mentioned was her first memory of falling into a puddle and being hauled out again. It set me musing on my own earliest memories. I can think of several, and because we moved house two weeks after my 4^th birthday I can accurately date myself as being three or even two years old at the time.

People Are Watching… #authorselectric

Today I am blogging over at Authors Electric about who notices us (in a non-conspiracy sense 🙂  )

Eyes Are Always On You by Jan Edwards

If you ask writers why they write most will say tell you it is a compulsion, or, as Terry Pratchett once said, ‘writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.’ If we manage to make a few bucks in the process all the better. If we come to be recognised as a writer of some merit, better still, but to do that the writing needs a reader.  So how do we get noticed?… To read the rest click here.

 

Displacement Therapy

House moving looms and we find that BT are unable to supply a telephone line until 14 days after the current house owner has moved out, and can’t supply us with a telephone number until then. Our internet provider cannot supply us with a connection until we have our new number – and there is a ten day wait. Well that was the first rendering. My other half spending half a day on the phone has resulted in shortening those time scales a little, with luck, but only time will tell by how much.

Weird and vivid dreams

I was woken this morning at 1.45 to the sound of someone pounding at the front door along with a dog howling in pain and/or despair.

So convinced  was I that I’d heard theses noises that I got up to look out of the front bedroom window. There was nothing and nobody there, nor had the security lights come on, meaning that nothing larger than a mouse had moved around out there for at least ten minutes.

I have to assume it was a dream, yet I find it odd that I recall nothing else. According to dream therapists seeing or hearing dogs in dreams represent your current state of mind – and given that we are trying to finalise a house move I guess a howling dog is as good a symbol as any. The pounding fists at the door could be likewise interpreted

Or perhaps it was just the neighbours (I gather the police were called to a domestic a few doors away just last week) yet there were no blue lights flashing.

Curious and vaguely disturbing – but always grist for the writing mill!

 

Authors Electric : Missing H #writing #authorselectric

My post on Authors Electric this month concerns those pesky silent letters.

A recent Facebook thread was discussing the pronunciation of A in conjunction with an invisible H at some length.  I suspect we have all come across that old chestnut of how to enunciate ‘bath’ (or ‘grass’, ‘class’, ‘pass’) and whether it/they should be pronounced with or without the unseen H as in ‘b-ah-th as opposed to b-a-th.

Though the originator of the Facebook post now lives in California he is a Brit by birth, and, his original question was to his US counterparts on how they heard those invisible  H sounds.

Read the rest on the AE site Here

http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/invisible-h-by-jan-edwards.html