Interestingly........

Many Writers' Advice blogs say that using too many adverbs in your novels is a bad thing.

Conflictingly...

many others say that publishers like them.

Annoyingly...

I find myself spotting every adverb in anything I read at the moment.

Incredibly...

it appears that published writers use them

regularly

but

sparingly.

Amazingly...

some make a feature of them. Like this piece from Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson.

'It is,' Maisie said, eating her soup awkwardly.

We all chose a different adverb to sup with. Philippa consumed her soup hungrily, Mrs Macbeth decided on messily, Mrs McCue on recklessly, whereas I myself opted for cautiously. Lucy Lake opted for not at all.

D H Lawrence poem

I like people quite well
at a little distance
I like to see them passing and passing
and going their own way,
especially if I see their aloneness alive in them.
Yet I don't want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.

D H Lawrence

I've been sorting through some old artworks and came across this poem, which I used as practice for calligraphy some years ago. I'd forgotten it.  But I still like it.

FFF55: A soldier's tale

Edward Moffat joined the army and went off to fight in the mud and gore of France. He miraculously survived the whole thing and came home a hero, only to be struck down by Spanish Flu in an epidemic that wiped out a great number of those who had managed to live through the fighting.

*****

Edward Moffat is a very minor character in my latest attempt at a novel. His entire tale takes little more than two paragraphs but his death is relevant to the ongoing story. 

Spanish Flu was the same strain (H1N1) as the bird flu that hit last year. Unlike most strains of flu (and other diseases) it hit the young and healthy and left the old and frail relatively untouched. In a world that had just suffered massive losses among its young generation because of the 1914-18 war, the deaths were felt particularly badly. The first cases were reported in late 1918 and the disease continued to spread around the world for two years.  In spite of the name there is no evidence to prove that it started in Spain.

FFF55 is a weekly challenge to tell a story in just 55 words.  It's hosted by the G-Man over at Mr. Knowitall Go visit and read more.

Stuck in traffic

Who are you Happy Man
In my rear-view mirror?
What is the song you sing
As you sit (more patiently than me)
In this traffic jam?
My radio is on but
The sound in my ears
Does not match
The shape of your mouth.
Vainly I search for the station
That you hear.
I fear the song is in your head.

Learning to read

There are lots of reasons why I loved my dad (and why I still miss him desperately) but perhaps one of the most important (significant, meaningful, useful....) was the way he instilled a love of books and reading into me. And how he ensured that I always remember what I have read. I borrowed the memory to use in The Wise Child.
Here's an excerpt:

Each day featured the same conversation when I would face the same questions, which I was always eager to answer. He would call me to him and lift me up onto his knee, settle me down and say: “What are you reading? Who is it by? What is it about?” I was expected to tell him the story in my own words, describe the characters and explain the plot. If it was a long book it would be told in instalments over several days. Often Dad would ask for finer details or more information and most times I could supply it. Once in a while though I was hazy on some points and tried to avoid his interrogation. Then he would suggest, kindly, that I should read the chapter again because I had missed parts of it. That way I learned to read carefully and to remember what I had read, two skills that were to prove very useful to me later. Best of all was when I had finished a book and I faced a different set of questions. “Did you enjoy it? Why?” And after that he would want to know if I thought he would enjoy it too and we would compare what we liked in books and what made us want to give up reading them. That was when I could truly talk freely to my father about the world, books, fiction, reality and everything that was important to me as a child. And he would listen.

Researching

I've started work on the next book.

So far it consists of a basic idea that will involve a family story over four generations. Seemed like a good idea until I realised that I was going to have to make all the dates fit onto a family tree.

There is a huge sheet of paper with lots of boxes on it that are linked by various lines in different directions. As usual I'm stuck for names and have got as far as working out who will share the same surname along the paternal line.

And I have a notebook with two pages dedicated to each potential character so that I can jot down ideas about their lives and how they are all linked together.

This is the most planning I have ever done for a written project. Wish me luck!

May in, coffin out.

May blossom sheds its off-white petals
casting down its smell of tombs.
Flowers the colour of a shroud
must not be brought indoors.
Mother fears its power
and forbids it in the house.
To bring it in invites Death.
Disease, decay, defeat.
Do not pick the blooms.
Their beauty is a trap
you can't escape.



My mother believed that bringing the flowers of hawthorn into the house would bring about a death in the family. I'm not sure I believe it - but I don't risk it.