Wordsmithing: Thursday

Thursday, 22 August 2013

A THOUGHT FOR THURSDAY

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
by
John Singer Sargent

A thought for Thursday... and any other day you like:

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

John Burroughs

DONALD MAASS WRITING TIPS FOR WRITERS OF THE 21^st CENTURY NOVEL:

2 What does your category of novel excel at? Embrace that…then outdo it.

#21stCenturyTuesday

PARANORMAL

My genre excels at adding the jam in the doughnut: the unexpected, the sweet, and the challenge.

WHICH CATEGORY OF NOVEL ARE YOU WRITING, AND WHAT DOES THAT CATEGORY EXCEL AT?

RETURN: YA Paranormal Romance

I was running late. But, it was nothing I couldn’t make up with a bit of effort. I shook my head. Confident and happy? I smiled. Increasing my stride, I pushed until the muscles in my legs burned. I kept up the pace even when the hill grew steeper.

Magpie Lane was hardly wider than a ribbon that edged the woods but that didn’t stop traffic using it to get to the motorway quicker. Large trucks and fast cars loved Magpie Lane. They sent vibrations running through me rising from the soles of my trainers. I felt the disturbance in the ground, even before the air pressure tried to knock me off balance. I hunched my shoulders as the cab hauling a container spat stones up at me.

Jogging on the spot, at the entrance to woodland, I ached to leave the road and go inside. My Mum was probably still asleep but I could hear her you-never-know-what might-be-in-there lecture buzzing on repeat inside my head. I should run safe. Not even I would argue that running through the woods on my own was the best definition of safe but I wanted to run-wild and the woodland offered me that. This early, I should be safe from axe murderers or perverts in the trees and besides, I was fast.

I jogged down the slope into the trees. From two paces in, I felt different. Freer. It felt so right. Running in the woods did great things for my style. Avoiding the roots and dodging branches forced my stride longer, I had to step higher. The woodland, The Weald, was only a sliver of ancient woodland that the developers forgot to build on but it felt like it could have been anywhere. Everywhere. At any time. The oaks and beech trees dominated the space and the skinny, silver-birches squeezed up beside them. I laughed. For a second, the woods reminded me of school and I needed to run a lot faster.

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Thursday, 22 August 2013

A THOUGHT FOR THURSDAY