The Week in Review

The Week in Review

What I’ve Written

What I’ve Read

Rethinking the big spring clean chuck-out frenzy: how keeping old things from landfill can “spark joy” in its own way by Ashley Jameson Eriksmoen (The Conversation) Australia has a lot of discarded furniture, but repairing and restoring it to make it last longer may not be as hard as it seems. Perhaps instead of throwing out things that no longer “spark joy”, we could just learn to live with them, and enjoy them in new ways.

Backsliding poem by Dawn Renee Miller (Dawn Renee Writes) Finding what was lost, but not making it a New Year’s resolution.

Party Time poem by J. A. Wilson (Let’s Write…) This is an adorable poem. It’s a party with the Winnie the Pooh gang. Who wants an invite?

Friendsgivingmas short story by Dawn Benedict (Rhymes, Dreams, Fantasy and Thoughts) If you read any of my work you know I am not a romantic, or sentimental in any way. I absolutely did not have a little tear reading this. (And if I did, it’s none of your business.)

I’m also back to reading through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. I’m about three and a half books into the third volume of ten books. At this stage, they all run into one, so I don’t think I can tell you individually about any book. They all just add layers on to each other. They’re fun, sometimes silly and often insightful, with some delightful characters, and I do recommend reading them.

Dolly Bloggers

I made an interesting discovery this week, or the discovery found me. Someone had commented on a couple of my posts with the single word: “Interesting.”

I wondered if it was spam, someone trying to just get a link to their site there, but I followed the link to their blog to check. This led me to the amazing world of Dolly Bloggers.

There are junior authors out there: kids who use their toys as the characters in their stories, just as A. A. Milne used Christopher Robin’s toys as characters in the Winnie the Pooh stories.

The stories are creative and well told, and they’ve even learned the art of the cliff-hanger.

I’m not going to give you links because, as well all know, there are some grown-ups on the internet who are absolutely horrible (I know my readers aren’t included in that, but things travel further than you might expect), and I’d like them to keep their little corner of the internet safe.

If you stumble across them, please give them some encouragement. These kids aren’t just the writers of the future, they’re the writers of today, just like all the grown-up authors and bloggers out there, and they’re honing their craft just as we are.

I wondered if my site was really suitable for kids to be reading, then I remembered primary school aged me, explaining to the librarian that I was in the adult section, because there were no Agatha Christie books in the kids’ section. So I guess there are always some kids who are going to read things written for adults. There’s probably a lot worse than my stories on the internet.

New WIP

My new work in progress should start next week. I know it’s been a while. First I had no ideas. Then I had two competing ideas. At that point I should have written both down (because I’ll want another one after this next one). Now, I’m back to just one idea, but it’s starting to take shape. I have enough that I can write the first couple of chapters while I refine the plan of exactly how it’s getting from the beginning I know to the end I know, through the middle that’s so far obscure to me.

Weird Random Thought

With AI encroaching on all of the creative industries, I thought perhaps I should write: “Written with a human brain, not AI” on the covers of my books from now on.

Then I realised people would read that and think, “That’s exactly what an AI would say.”

A Look at a Book

In honour of the dolly bloggers, I thought I’d feature one of my kids’ books this week.

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Everything on this site is the product of human, not artificial, intelligence.