Literature

Lock-Down. How to Self Isolate…

~ Purpleanais ~ 7 Comments

Self-isolating is no joke, people – but it doesn’t need to be miserable either. I loved this by Tom – we’re in desperate need of humour right now. Please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.”  S. Kelley Harrell

*do not follow this advice. Or indeed any in this blog, other than the swimming bit.

Be careful what you wish for. Here we all are. All working from home due to Coronavirus, which my spellcheck already recognises. We are housebound like we’d prayed for every Monday morning since we started working; all those prayers for an extra day in bed have been answered. But, how will we survive? It’s all very well wanting time at home because you’re too hungover to pick up the post from the doormat, but sober? What do we do with all this time?

For most writers this is sort of self-isolation comes naturally, although having government-sanctioned marksmen on rooftops with L115A3 rifles trained on front doors to prevent you from leaving probably puts a different slant on staying at home to nail…

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Never Give Up on Creativity.

~ Purpleanais ~ 1 Comment

Most creative people are plagued by self-doubt, the trick is to be aware of it and keep at it when a draft is not going well. It is equally as important to – understand and accept – when your doubts are more than just the usual crisis of self-confidence – when you feel deep in your bones that what you’re working on is going nowhere. Good blog by Tom on this – please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“Always stop with a victory.”

Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

What is it with starting things? We are constantly told how we should be doing more. And advice in leading fuller, more enriched lives invariably concerns starting something. Apart from cars. If they’re not starting you may as well buy a new one, they’re like kettles these days. The pressure to start something far outnumbers how to finish something 10 to, well, I’m not sure actually, I started that statistic with no idea how to complete it.

Every journey starts with a single step – before going back for your phone charger – but when should we stop? A journey might start on the London Underground’s Circle Line, but if we don’t get off we’re just going around in circles. Well, in fact we’re not because it isn’t really a circle, it’s more the shape of a small…

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How Important is it to be well-read?

~ Purpleanais ~ 4 Comments

This is a really fab blog by Tom about being well-read – I adored it! Go read & like the original post, folks 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

My mother is probably the wisest person I’ve ever known. She’s not schooled, she’s not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons. –  Gene Simmons

How well-read you are has been a standard measure of intelligence, social kudos and pulling power since the written word was invented. In fact, it’s hard to resist conjecture that it was invented simply to impress other people. And this lingers, despite a digital age of commuters watching TV box sets on public transport, or publicly declaring how moronic they are by playing pointlessly additive games such as the ubiquitous Candy Crush. These activities are for unplugging the mind, not engaging it. Of course in some circles to have concluded the Eggsteroids level in Angry Birds is greatly admired, but it isn’t quite the same as being well-read. Not yet.

Being well-read is a…

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How important is Writing Blog Posts to Novel Writing…?

~ Purpleanais ~ 3 Comments

Please go and like the original post, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“It is named the “Web” for good reason.”
― David Foster Wallace

I can’t believe I’ve now been desperately thinking of things to blog about for four years. When I started I had little idea what blogging was really about, and now I truly have no idea. I think blogs exist mainly so you can get annoyed, and then say rather pointedly to yourself that you’re going to bloody blog about it, because there’s clearly a readership out there for articles on drivers’ inability to park without taking up two bays. Of course unless you do blog about it within 2 minutes you’ll have forgotten all about it and probably driven off anyway. Blogs are the modern equivalent of writing to the Times.

It’s like all those notes in your phone that were Pullitzer prize winning novels, but now read more like a free-associating dead-head in 1960s San Francisco mumbling…

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No rhyme, no reason

~ Purpleanais ~ 38 Comments

Bikini body in the sun, half-cocked gun, a summer weapon, a sassy siren sensing and inviting desire, it was a wave rushing towards me, I was riding the crest, eyes closed beneath my shades, heat spreading between my legs, 

but suddenly it all changed, no rhyme, no reason, what the actual fuck was going on, my crazy brain switched moods randomly, I’ve always been my own worst enemy – it was

a senseless dream starting with a less than vague promise of sex and ending with

Van Gogh penniless and in despair trying to drown himself in the deep sunflower fields—which had long haunted him—their colours and shapes having intensified his misery.

What does it all mean? 

I woke up tangled in my sheets—

I had too much to dream 

last night

What IS it about Fashion these days..?

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PLease go and like the original post – thank you

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

Ooh fashion
We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town
Beep-beep, beep-beep

David Bowie. Fashion.

What do our clothes say about us? I don’t mean when they’re crushed together in the laundry basket wondering who’s next to be washed, and cursing the current favourite top that barely lands before being whisked off to be cleaned – although I can see that as the next Pixar movie. No, I mean what do they announce about ourselves to the world that might otherwise stay silent. I don’t just mean band tee-shirts that marked some final tour in 1978, the one that’s not had the good times rinsed out since.

You can complete character profiles based upon little more than the type of sandwich someone habitually eats, so clothes are a dead giveaway. That there’s more hashtags for yoga pants than there is for yoga itself tells you all you need…

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Daughter

~ Purpleanais ~ 26 Comments

Slowly the sun goes down

Splashing dying embers

In her mane

Of untamed hair

With regret he pulls down the shades

To keep the scented summer

Fragrant with life

Outside

A subdued light

Tinged with tiny pools of dark

Invades

Her domain

Sleep softens her features further

He – the faithful sentinel watching over

his delicate flower –

Can’t help but fret

His chest feels tight

Aware the world

Will reach out with eager fingers

She will know hurt

He will contemplate murder

But for now the princess,

Just turned seven

Dreams still intact, untouched

Rests peacefully

He kisses her sweet cheek

Pulls back the covers

One last look, lingering, tender

For now she’s safe

Her innocence preserved

*Photograph found on Pinterest, try as I might I couldn’t find anyone to credit for it*

P.S. for whatever reason, WordPress is not letting me reply to older comments so I apologise to anyone who’s left thoughts on previous posts – I didn’t mean to ignore you, honest!

The Importance of Reading Books

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Please go and like the original post, thank you.

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

Life doesn’t happen in chapters — at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn’t write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children’s books (“I’ll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep”) but I’m blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults. — Sir Terry Pratchet

I’m aware that this title appears to be advertising the bookshop of Berkshire’s leading commuter town, but it’s been drawn to my attention by no one that I’ve been so busy blogging about writing books that I’ve not looked at how to read the blasted things. Every reader knows how to buy  books – see a previous blog : https://lifeassistanceagency.com/2018/12/28/how-to-buy-books/ –  but reading them is an art form itself.  In a modern world of boxsets, bagels and Brexit it’s a wonder anyone is reading, yet the literary…

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Staring down the barrel – How To Start a New Novel

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Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” John Steinbeck

To be honest this should read how to start a new blog, as I’m sure I’ve started one like this before. Yes. All writers have been here before: the hinterland between the joy of completing a novel and the niggling sense that it’s time to start another. Life basically becomes a decision between buying a dog, or writing a new novel. Mind you a book doesn’t plead to be walked or fed, although it does rest its head on your lap and look up at you expectantly; wondering when you’re going to do something. I only ever had the ambition to write one book, I thought that would be enough, but it’s strangely addictive.

Unfinished Business was published last month as a continuation of the Life Assistance…

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How to live with Writer’s Block.

~ Purpleanais ~ 1 Comment

By Tom, about writer’s block – please go and like the original, thank you 🙂

Idle blogs of an idle fellow

“Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all”
― Charles Bukowski

What awful timing, or perhaps it’s related. My new novel UnfinishedBusiness is published and I’m struck down by what feels like something I don’t want to name, no, not a STD, but writer’s block. Despite a launch party last night that included four Spanish women without  word of english to their name arriving to buy a signed copy of the novel for one of their brothers, I’m looking at Unfinished Business with the sense it was a fluke; never to be repeated.

I can’t recall if I’ve written about writer’s block before, I must’ve blocked it out, which is exactly the sort of crap joke that suggests it’s time to step away from the keyboard and do something else. Anything. Just stop writing. Mind you writers aren’t capable of much else, unless it’s the…

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