Writing

Context-free Friday: wish grantin’ fishes

M. J. Magee - Friday, the 8th of July, 2016
'I'm not a fisherman no more,' he grinned. 'Packing it all in, I am. I'm going to retire.'

Cuthbert had never seen anyone with so few teeth look quite so blissful.

'I can live it up large now with the money I'm going to get selling my body.'

'Ermm...'

'Found it in the lake, I did. At first I thought it was one of them wish grantin' fishes, that's secretly princes in disguise. That's the dream, that is. Only reason I got into this stinking business in the first place.'
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Context-free Friday: as huge as a huge beast

M. J. Magee - Friday, the 1st of July, 2016
Cuthbert Tattersall barely managed to stuff down a scream. His hands desperately crammed into his mouth, he stared in horror at the beast in front of him.

It was huge - as huge as… a beast. A huge beast!

And it was ugly, as ugly as it was huge.

And hairy, too. Huger, uglier, and hairier than any nightmare Cuthbert could have envisioned.

In fact, if Cuthbert’s worst nightmare had had a baby with the nightmare of someone far more imaginative, and then covered it in glue inside a wig shop…

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MVP: Myth, Very Poignant

M. J. Magee - Wednesday, the 9th of December, 2015

I was quite chuffed with myself for writing 50,000 words of Cuthbert last month; they were messy words, leaping between different scenes as I scrambled for something new to write every time I finished a scene or (as happened with a bit more frequency) got stuck and started a new one instead of wasting time staring at a blank-aside-from-all-the-finger-smudges-I-should-really-clean-my-laptop-in-fact-I-should-clean-my-whole-flat-perhaps-I-should-get-a-new-flat-perhaps-I-should-be-spending-this-time-investigating-mortgages-and-also-a-new-career-in-the-circus-that-comes-with-food-and-board-I’d-save-a-fortune-and-get-a-lot-more-exercise-and-nope-no-clowns-are-terrifying-that’s-a-terrible-idea-screen.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Four and one day left!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 29th of November, 2015

There’s officially twenty-four hours and twenty-four minutes left of this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’d feel pretty good about hitting the target if I didn’t have to work and sleep during a bit of that…

I’m more or less – probably coming down on the less side – on top of things, though.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Three and Worried

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 21st of November, 2015

Well, it’s the third week of National Novel Writing Month (or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November, as appropriate), and I have frantically scribbled a lot of words; the current count is a respectable 25,426 words out of the month’s target 50,000.…

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NaNoWriMo: Week Two and Aaaaaah!

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 15th of November, 2015

Well. I don’t know quite what happened this week. One early night seemed to snowball into no-writing-getting-done-ever, and the lack of progress seemed to snowball into quick-write-whatever-you-can-anything-anything-will-do.

That would at least explain this small busking rap:

Yeah, I get the boys together
Say, Dog, we gotsta earn.

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NaNoWriMo: Week One and On-Track. Mostly.

M. J. Magee - Sunday, the 8th of November, 2015

It’s the end of the first week of National Novel Writing Month – or Frantically Scribbling Adventure Game Nonsense November as I’ve been calling it, FranScrAdGaNoNo for short – and I have almost 14,000 words of… well, adventure game nonsense.

FranScrAdGaNoNo is a good way of keeping me honest and working on Cuthbert every day.…

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Planners vs Pantsers

M. J. Magee - Saturday, the 24th of October, 2015

When discussing the creative writing process, people often talk about writers in two different camps: ‘planners’, those who outline upfront then write to that outline, and ‘pantsers’, those who write spontaneously. Or by the seat of their pants, as you’d have to say to understand why bloomers were suddenly brought into the conversation.…

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