%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
|
Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| A Stylish Post Interesting occurrence this morning. But first, the tangled route I used to get to it. Had a notification that mystified me a little. It was a tag to an entry in the Blogging Bliss Newsletter - Issue One Hundred One. Not having encountered this creature before, I wondered what I'd done to deserve a mention in it. Ever intrepid, I followed the link to find out. It was, as I had begun to suspect, a newsletter about blogs and, glancing quickly down the text, I saw that my mention was a link to my blog entry, The Hill, of a few days ago. One of my brief (very) thoughts, then. But that meant that someone had been reading my blog, I realised. Who was this person who had become so lost in the jungle of WdC as to find me in it all? I checked. Some guy named Wordsmitty ✍️  - a name I'd seen before but not had any interaction with. Being nosey, I had a look at his Bio. And there, under the heading Writing Style, I found a link to a site entitled "I Write Like" (https://iwl.me/). At last we get to the point of this post!Naturally, I tried it to see what it had to say about me. Picked a short story of mine at random and entered the text in the provided rectangle. It reckoned I write like Stephen King. Mildly insulted, I pondered on that. Not being a fan of the guy, I've read very little of his stuff but have my doubts that I write anything like him. Unless the site was going by subject more than style. It was a horror story that I'd entered, after all. I picked another one, the same genre but rather a different style. This time, it seemed, I wrote like Conan Doyle. Ah, I thought, I see your game. It's all about length of sentences and word choice. And, since I write in many different styles, depending on what I'm writing about (and even who I'm mimicking at times), I was confusing the darn thing. It could have some passing interest in that I could enter those stories that I intended to be in the style of a particular author, just to see if I'd succeeded, but I doubt it would achieve a high degree of accuracy. It can only have a limited database of authors and, for instance, I'm prepared to bet it's never heard of H. Rider Haggard nor read the poems of A.A. Milne. A thing of limited use, therefore, but an amusement for an idle moment or two. And I say that in my best Conan Doyle voice. Elementary. my dear Watson! Word count: 452 |
| Just been reminded of a magnificent word that English pinched from the French - "oeuvre." Miriam-Webster defines it as "a substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer," and it should be enormously useful in the context of WdC. Here's hoping it returns to more general use because it sounds so much more impressive than just "lifework." Or am I being snobbish? |
| The Hill At my fortieth birthday party, they told me, “Might as well enjoy it, mate. It’s all downhill from here.” I’ll be seventy-three next month and I’m still heading upwards. Word count: 29 |
| Saturday Morning Musing Noticed that the Shadows and Light Poetry Contest had shot to the top of my Favorites list this morning. Thought I haven’t looked at that in a while - wonder what’s going on to have stirred the waters. So I went and looked. It’s a contest I like a great deal, partly because it’s for free form poetry, which is my favoured speciality, and because I’ve had a modicum of success in it in the past. Well, it’s nice to get the occasional encouragement, isn’t it? Anyway, I was looking down the list of entries for the current contest and I spied the name of winklett in the woods  , a recent discovery of mine, although she’s been around in WdC for much longer than I have. Naturally, I took a read of her offering.It was so good, I had to applaud it in some way. Without giving a full review, it seemed the only option was to Like the poem. So I hunted through the forum to click on the necessary. Found it and did so, but not before I’d noticed submissions by two other poets I have high regard for, fyn  and concrete_angel.Which meant I had to go read their entries too. And theirs were just as brilliant, requiring me to Like both of them, just as I’d done for Winklett. So then I’d Liked three of the entries and it struck me that, to be fair, I should read the others. I did. And (you’re not going to believe this) they were all good, way above the average in fact. If you’re looking to read a really strong field of entries, go see for yourself. Even if you don’t like poetry. Go find out just how powerful poetry can be in free form. https://www.writing.com/main/forums/item_id/1935693-Shadows-and-Light-Poetry-Con... I had been toying with the idea of throwing something at the contest myself but it seemed I had only succeeded in daunting myself. It would be cheeky to enter anything of mine amongst such company, after all. And then I had a thought. Unless I entered something entirely different, of course. Something so different that no one would even think of comparing it to the masterpieces around it. Something so brash and left field that it could only be judged purely for itself. Yes, I might just do that... Word count: 391 |
| Trinkets I have to admit that I cannot resist collecting trinkets. Don’t ask me why I do so - I really don’t know why. As far as I can see, they have no use apart from being something we can collect. And there is something in me that enforces the collection of worthless objects. Years ago, when I still served the god Nicotine, I smoked a brand that brought out a series of collector’s cards. These had the theme of important monuments in America and I kinda liked ‘em. That’s all. They weren’t astoundingly beautiful or noteworthy in any way - they just presented themselves as a target, to collect the full set. So I did exactly that. It wasn’t a huge set and the cigarette company soon stopped producing them. I found myself with several sets of the cards, neatly stacked in order and sitting on my computer desk, waiting for me to think of a use for them. I never managed that supreme effort of the imagination. In the end, they disappeared into a drawer and, in the course of some move or other, they vanished forever. Over the years the same pattern has often repeated itself. For a while I was fascinated by advertisers’ photographs of credit cards they were pushing. Something about those clever photos, gleaming in their metallic colours and taken from ever more inventive angles, attracted me and I started copying them to the hard drive. For all I know, they still abide somewhere on some computer long put out to grass in a dark and dusty cupboard (ooh, delightful mixed metaphor!). When I was very young, before the age of eleven in fact, I collected china figurines of horses. Again, I don’t know what started me on that. But they were all lost, broken in the great move from Cape Town to Zimbabwe and unmourned for even a moment. Collections have great allure while I’m amassing them, but lose their magic very quickly. And now I collect trinkets. It’s almost a forbidden pleasure, sneaking in and grabbing another one, as though it were somehow forbidden. Perhaps that’s part of the attraction. Word count: 354 |
| Tact I wanted to write something for the blog today but the only thing that occurred was too controversial for me to comment upon. It’s a bugger, being tactful. Word count: 28 |
 Log in to Leave Feedback |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
Quite good is quite a good compliment 
As someone who just reviewed an item in your port, I can't help but wonder, Did I pick an item that you'd throw out? 
