Wordsmithing: Nationa Non-Fiction Day

Thursday, 4 November 2010

IN AT THE START: Today is National Non-Fiction Day

Today is the first ever National Non-Fiction Day! Happy Birthday!

Brain-child of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups and Scholastic Children’s Books, National Non-Fiction Day celebrates all that is brilliant about non fiction.

I’m fiction’s biggest fan but, as far as moulding understand goes, fiction has to take the back seat and let the experts lead the way. Non-fiction is an informative pleasure.

So, while I’m up to my neck in creating my fictional worlds I’d be down in the doldrums without a reference book or two. My two current best friends are The AA Great Britain Road Atlas and Sir Frank Stenton’s Anglo Saxon England (just seeing AN-SAX is enough: it is flavoured with my teenage angst -- an added bonus – I studied it when I was 17, oh bless!)

Here is to NANO-FI DAY, a change from the normal NaNo fodder ;)

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, 4 November 2010

IN AT THE START: Today is National Non-Fiction Day