All Stories, Writing

Week 186 – Writer’s Block, Questions And Ohhhhh Noooooo!!!!

Here we are at Week 187.

I was wondering about writers block. Strangely enough when I thought on this I felt so many memories flooding back. Really strong, vivid memories.

I don’t know why as I’ve never suffered from writers block.

It’ll come to me.

Continue reading “Week 186 – Writer’s Block, Questions And Ohhhhh Noooooo!!!!”

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Week 183 – Milestones

At some undetermined moment between me starting this draft and it magically appearing in your inbox or news feed via the wonders of the interweb, Literally Stories will have surpassed 200,000 page views.

Yes indeedy faithful readers in four short years we have reached a level of activity that a Kardashian nipple or a Bieber tattoo can expect to log in just under 4 nanoseconds.

If Hugh was here this week he’d probably say something like “fuck those limelight seeking, dopamine craving, attention hugging social media whore-bastards and all who ride on them.”

But he isn’t.

So I did.

Continue reading “Week 183 – Milestones”

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Week 179 – Borders, gateways and tales to tell our children

In my quest to find something interesting to say in Hugh’s absence this week I did a quick Google search for the significance of the number 179.

As you can imagine the results were thrilling.

I can confirm 179 is a prime number – an Eisenstein Prime no less as it is indivisible even by complex Gaussian integers, and  Chen Prime because it is 2 less than the next prime number.

Continue reading “Week 179 – Borders, gateways and tales to tell our children”

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Week 178 – Wordplay, Stories and a Post of Two Halves

Every four years the world holds its collective breath as teams from across the globe battle it out to be crowned the champions of the world.

Skill. Power. Precision.

It’s got the lot.

Sadly the Rugby World Cup is another 15 months away and so for the next month we’ve got to put up with a bunch of overpaid whiners kicking a round ball across Russia.

Continue reading “Week 178 – Wordplay, Stories and a Post of Two Halves”

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Week 177 – Time, Jimmy Hoffa And A Cure For Tarzan’s Constipation

Week 176 has come and gone and here we are at week 177.

I’ve been working on a story this week. I’ve enjoyed thinking about it, structuring and editing and trying to spot the inevitable mistakes that are invisible to me but obvious to Nik and Diane! I’ve spent quite a bit of time and that doesn’t bother me. It’s a lot of fun.

Enjoying time is relative. I can spend hours cooking, reading, working on this site, listening to music and appreciating alcohol. Time doesn’t matter when you are doing what you enjoy. But working, getting a haircut, travelling to work, watching TV all does my head in. I resent the time that I spend. But the worst ever is gardening. Sorry folks, but those of you who enjoy this activity are masochistic perverts. To be fair, I have let my garden become fairly manic this year and yesterday was its first cut. I’m hoping for a drought from now to September, then the frost to hit. One cut a year is more than enough.

I had to borrow Death’s scythe due to the length of the grass

Continue reading “Week 177 – Time, Jimmy Hoffa And A Cure For Tarzan’s Constipation”

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Week 175 – Perspective, Invective and Uncharted Waters

Hello again one and each.

Another busy and interesting week at LS and, as always, a few unexpected twists and turns.

It goes without saying that we’ve had five more brilliant stories (more about those in a bit) but we’ve also had a whole host of wonderful submissions that have already filled up slots for the next few weeks.

That last line requires context – or perhaps perspective – in order to carry its full weight. A theme we’ll be touching on quite a bit over the next couple of hundred words I suspect.

Continue reading “Week 175 – Perspective, Invective and Uncharted Waters”

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Week 159 – Censorship, Statistics and Odd-Shaped Balls

There’s been a good deal of debate around LS towers this week about censorship. Self-censorship to be slightly less vague. The conscious and unconscious decisions made by authors to tone down content to be entirely more accurate.

Swearing is the main culprit but there are others – and in most cases what it seems to come down to is the ability (or inability) to separate author and character.

Continue reading “Week 159 – Censorship, Statistics and Odd-Shaped Balls”

All Stories, General Fiction

Everybody Drinks at Bemelmans by Adam Kluger

Nothing can come when it’s forced.

Or when distractions pile up too high.

Or when the font is too thick.

That’s what aspiring writer Fin Palworth thought to himself as he looked at his computer screen and pondered over the stubborn foolishness driving his futile attempts to become an author.

Continue reading “Everybody Drinks at Bemelmans by Adam Kluger”

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Week 154 – Second Last, Panda Steaks And The Malevolent Hartley Hare.

Here we are at Week 154.

Well this is our penultimate post.

I’ve always wondered about the word ‘penultimate’, I think it’s a bit up itself. Why would you feel the need to have a word for second to last? Does that mean it was more important to come second last than last? Some would argue that but if you were in a field of more than three, it’s still not very good.

There’s only one thing that you would want to be penultimate at and that would be at an orgy. If you were a female, you wouldn’t want to seem stand-offish and if you were male you wouldn’t want to show off, so coming second last would suffice.

Continue reading “Week 154 – Second Last, Panda Steaks And The Malevolent Hartley Hare.”