I heard a couple of weeks ago that a photograph I'd submitted to the Waterways Storymaking festival has been shortlisted in their photography competition. 😀 This week I took part in recording 'telling the story' behind the picture, in preparation for the virtual Storymaking festival event at the end of next month.
Below is another photograph I took the same evening, just a few minutes before the one that's been shortlisted was taken.
A weather warning with a forecast of heavy snow showers and blizzards would normally have meant our Coney Island writing get together would have been cancelled. But not this time 😀 One silver lining of Coronavirus lockdown is virtual Zoom sessions can still go ahead when the snow is falling and roads are treacherous.
While the world around us is constantly changing in ways beyond our wildest comprehension, it's good to have routine, with solid, steady life-affirming activities.
One of these activities for me is baking. And another is writing. Both are creating something new from raw ingredients and they combine together perfectly when I'm with my Coney Island writing pals. Yesterday we met up (by zoom) for our monthly writing session. While we really miss seeing each other in person, I still look forward to these meet-ups where we can catch up on each others news over a coffee and do some writing. And we got down to using raw ingredients in our writing, back to basics, thinking about our vocabulary and gramnar. Just altering the quantity and quality of each raw ingredient can improve the end result considerably.
It was good to get the creative writing juices flowing again after a break over the holidays with this supportive group. I consider I'm very blessed to be part of it. It was encouraging to look back on our writing year together - it's quite an accomplishment that we've managed to keep connected throughout 2020. And chocanana muffins were the perfect accompaniment.
Last year, when I saw a writing friend Jo Zebedee was working on a new project mapping local stories I sent a few of mine for her to consider, inspired by local landmarks and beauty spots.
I'm delighted that she's now completed this gorgeous project and released it today. You can view 'Everyday Magic' here
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Everyday_Magic_/YX9bkdl4LG
And you can read my stories set in the Goblins, Whitehead and Carrickfergus - 'The Goats and Gobbin Saor', 'An Emerald Excursion' and 'Fearless Fergus, King of the Castle', along with many other lovely local stories. Enjoy!
In previous years I've often set myself writing goals at the start of a new year. Last year I didn't for a variety of reasons and the way 2020 turned out for all of us, it was good not to have them lurking in the background not being achieved when life took over and at times writing had to take a back seat.
It's been a difficult year for most of us and just coping and surviving 2020 should be enough for all of us. At times there were several writing droughts for me during the year, but I knew there would be other times when I would write again. This bizarre year also brought different writing opportunities and perversely the most difficult year we've all had to face, has been the one in which my writing has been shared wider than previous years - I had poems and short stories broadcast on radio, featured in online journals, magazines and published in anthologies.
It's a strange coincidence this has happened in the first year in recent times that I didn't set myself writing goals. I'm a firm believer in setting goals and believe it's because of the discipline of setting goals in previous years (as some of these published projects first emerged in earlier years) and that writing provided a welcome escape from what 2020 threw at us, that I can now look back over the year knowing goals from previous years have been achieved. The next challenge will be to decide what my 2021 writing goals will be.....
I love my festive theatre trips and have really missed them this year. In other years, by now I'd have enjoyed our annual trip to the local pantomime and a Christmas dinner and theatre night out with some friends along with possibly an Andre Rieu concert.
So this year, like so many other activities my festive theatre fix has moved online. On the run up to Christmas it was lovely to tune in to the Waterside Theatre's 'Twelve Days of Christmas' each story written by a local writer and performed by local actors.
And I'm delighted my 'Four Calling Birds' story was included in this booklet produced by the Waterside theatre.
Today, the Fourth Day of Christmas, (December 28) is called ‘The Feast of Holy Innocents’, a day of remembrance thinking back to the baby boys killed in King Herod’s search for Baby Jesus.
You can read my story, along with all the others here.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18Qwy2uuuSPRg5LJnP_u9Rryv9lGvPJq_/view
Enjoy!
As we count down the final few days to Christmas, I'm looking forward to taking a break and catching up on some reading. Already I've been dipping into 'Underneath the Tree' the Christmas anthology I have a short story in and I'm looking forward to finishing it.
Last week a few of the writers featured in the book were invited to join the Causeway Coast book club. The group had chosen 'Underneath the Tree' as their December read. It was lovely to meet up with them over Zoom, hear what they liked about the book and to answer their questions about our stories.
This week my copy of 'Writing' magazine arrived in the post. I always relish time to sit down and read it cover to cover and it will be in my reading pile for the holiday period. I did have a quick glance when it arrived and was delighted to find a piece I wrote about our Coney Island writing group's virtual writing retreat featured in this month's issue.
