Week 307 – RIP Ron, You Can’t Add To What’s Already Sad And Fill In The Missing Person: Fu Manchu, Dr No, Dr Evil And ???

And following last weeks, Week 306, we now have this weeks, Week 307.

We are proud of our logic and counting ability!

Both myself and Diane love to see new writers submit their work, especially youngsters. They are up against it though as the more life experience you have, the more you can write about a whole range of different topics.

However, there does seem to be a common problem with many a newster no matter what their age and that is when writing emotion.

I will admit, this is a bit steep coming from me as I’m not the most emotional person in the world. Unless you count being really pissed off. I can get a tad raging with two hundred and forty three unrelated things. I did feel emotion on Thursday 22^nd October 1992 when I dropped a litre bottle of Bacardi and it smashed. I’m filling up as we speak! My therapist told me to let it go. I punched him.

…If only I hadn’t let it go in the fucking first place!! I would have enjoyed it!! It never fulfilled its meaning of being, it was never opened, looked at, savoured and tasted. It never had the pleasure of having the union of it with a coke.

…Its life was cut short. It just became a beautiful smelling puddle in the middle of a very ordinary kitchen floor.

…OH WOE!! WHY DID IT HAVE TO HAPPEN…WHY???

OH THE GUILT! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! HONEST!!

…I’ll be fine. I’ll open a bottle of brandy. I’ve never killed one of those before.

Like my rant, the mistake so many make is trying to add to the emotion of a situation that is traumatic anyway. Let’s take having a kid for example – I’m led to believe that is a very emotional moment in peoples lives although I can’t understand that. I mean, who the fuck would want one of those smelly, selfish parasitical bastards in their lives. Well, parents, that’s who. Their reasons for having their kids are always the same and every one of them is dubious, except one.

When writing a story, you really don’t need to add to strong emotion. Death, mourning, deprivation, terminal illness, dementia, separation and spilled alcohol, with all of these, you don’t need to embellish. All you have to do is have a keen observational eye and write what you see, no more. When you add to it, it comes across as overwritten, false and leaves the reader thinking one thing:

‘In the name of fuck!’

If you are going to write in this way, see if you can find someone who can put your story to music with a honky tonk guitar and market it as a Country And Western song.

Trust the reader. When you write about these topics, they don’t really see what you are specifically writing about, they have their own thoughts and experiences which your story will draw out of them and that is real emotion. It sounds callous but that is the best way to write emotion, instigate, don’t elaborate.

Onto this week’s stories.

We had two new writers who we welcome, hope they have fun on the site and as always, we want to see more of their work.

We also had the legend, an absolute gentleman and me.

Our topics this week include, Matricide, disposal, a chopper, pride in your work and relationship.

As always our initial comments follow.

I promised at the back end of the year that I would tote up Tom Sheehan’s stories. If I have got this right, I do believe that Tom is now on story number 129!!

That is absolutely staggering.

His latest story, ‘It’s All In The Maul’ got us up and running on Monday.

‘Lyrical and a celebration of so much.’

‘Such a calming piece of writing.’

‘This celebrates the simple pleasure of physical work. Everyone should chop wood at some time in their lives!’

On Tuesday we had our first new writer, David Robinson. He was next up with, ‘Death Misspelled.’

‘Well written and amusing.’

‘Interesting and a little dark!’

‘I enjoyed reading this, it was very visible.’

We broke the back of the week with Mr Marco Etheridge, he has been a friend of the site for eight stories now.

On Wednesday we published Marco’s, ‘When The Tabloids Ate My Best Friend.’

‘Honest, well written and genuine.’

‘I enjoyed this very much and felt quite sad for him.’

‘Maybe there are a few things unadmitted.’

Todd Mercer was our next new writer.

His story, ‘The Assistant Town Drunk: Zero To Hero In Seconds.’ was our story on Thursday.

‘This was an acceptance for the last line alone!’

‘It’s refreshing when something classed as humour actually makes you smile.’

‘Well put together and it flowed effortlessly.’

And it was me who finished off the week with, ‘Uncle Andy.‘

As always, I need to thank Diane for all her help and patience.

I had some fun with this and when I thought on it, I reckon I have at least four of my stories that have been set around this stretch of river in Ayr. I’m not sure if that means I have happy memories or a few nightmares of the place!

That’s another week done and dusted.

Just the usual reminders. Keep on commenting folks, it lifts the site and keeps it alive.

I see we have a new commentator in Monica, welcome to you and thanks so much, your voice is much appreciated! Hope you become as regular as our stalwarts who we couldn’t do without.

Leila is still more or less handling the Sunday Re-Run all by herself. In a past life she held out on the west wing of The Alamo. One of her cats took exception to Davy Crockett and jumped on his head. Why not keep her company and get involved.

Simply pick an older story that you’ve enjoyed and write a spiel or introduction about it. Throw in a few questions for the author and we will publish exactly what you send us.

Just to finish:

I don’t really want to dwell on this as we have our own problems with our own fuckwits.

It’s a very true saying about fact being stranger than fiction.

I thought that Stephen King wrote the most deranged president with his character Greg Stillson played by Martin Sheen from King’s book, ‘The Dead Zone’.

However…Never in my wildest dreams did I ever consider seeing an outgoing president being referred to as an ‘Enemy of the state.’

Although democracy did win in the end!

Hurrah!!

…But was it not democracy that put him there in the first place??

Hugh

Image by Francine Sreca from Pixabay