THE ICING ON THE CAKE.

 So you have your cake. You’ve tasted many different cakes in your life and you know what a good cake looks and tastes like.

Now say, for example, you’re baking a sponge cake and you’ve just taken it out of the oven. The colour is good; light golden brown, it’s firm yet not hard (cakes with crust are generally a no-no) and the smell is driving you crazy. Still, you don’t tear into it yet because there are just a couple more steps to go. You must let it cool and decorate the top.

Now your sponge cake will need a filling of some kind - jam, lemon flavoured icing - and need only a light dusting or a drizzle of icing sugar for decoration before you’re ready to share and eat. Other cakes, Christmas, birthday, Black Forest Gateau, need icing and fancy decoration before they are finished.

            

            Now, you might ask why has this blog about writing turned into a food journal? But today’s blog is about analogies. My Oxford Dictionary defines analogy as a partial likeness between two things which are compared and we use comparisons in the form of similes, metaphors and personifications to decorate our language.

           

   Figures of speech take something, hair for example, and compare it to another item. The difference between a simile and a metaphor is that a simile uses like or as (her hair was like gold) but a metaphor doesn’t (her hair was gold). The picture we now have of the hair is something bright and shining and, as gold is wealth, we now have an image of a woman with at least one desirable asset.

          

         Our language is peppered with metaphors and similes – you can look up lists of common ones – so when we read that a woman’s hair is like, or has somehow turned into, a block of hard yellow metal hanging off her head – we accept the comparison and create the mental image without any difficulty whatsoever.

        Make the wrong comparison and you jar the reader’s flow, for example: her temper was like a cooled volcano.

         

        A personification is when an inanimate object is compared to/given a human characteristic. Eg: The tree stood guard outside the house. Actually, no, it was simply growing there but again an image is created in the reader’s mind. This tree isn’t a weak sapling, it’s tall and imposing with a solid presence.

           On the positive side, a figure of speech enhances your writing and enlivens the experience of reading by describing perceptions in fresh, imaginative and significant ways. We often use metaphors and similes to describe our sensory awareness of touch, sight, sound, taste and smell although character and narrative provide the context which make these work. Generally figures of speech don’t function in isolation.

             

           A basic rule for similes, metaphors and personifications is - less is more. Just like icing, too much will make the cake indigestible. 

            I have four chapters left in strand A to finish and am trying to squeeze in time to investigate  social media. More of that when, and if, I ever make any progress. 

            Haiku Galore is progressing although it feels like I’m married to my novel while having an affair with haiku. I’m slowly approaching a publication date – please watch this space.

Today’s haiku:

SPRING

the river races

a path of shining ripples –

snow melt has arrived

ROADS TAKEN by M. Joaquim, sold as an ebook at the Amazon Kindle Store, is only available as a free download til tomorrow, Wednesday 17th April. It’s a great first collection of short stories – my advice – download it and give it a read. What have you got to lose? Here's the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/

 

 For all story lovers out there, I wish you good reading and for those of you who write, good writing.

 

ON ANTIHISTAMINES AND HAIKUS.

         In the two months I’ve been blogging (and I still consider myself a newbie) I’ve kept to my  schedule of posting twice a week,  except this week when I’m only managing it the once. Strangely enough I feel as if I’ve let myself down, but when I’m in doubt I do my best to take the advice I give to others, which is – don’t ever give up. You absolutely have to keep trying, because even if you don’t accomplish everything you aim for, by making an effort you’re closer to your goal than you were, and, most important – if you don’t try, then for sure you’ll never achieve that goal. 

            My posts are usually about writing but today I’m deviating which reflects what’s been happening to some extent with me this week. 

As antihistamine is first in the title, I’ll start there.

I didn’t develop any hay fever symptoms until I was an adult when one year, while in France, I found my eyelids swollen to the size of small melons and my nose had become a permanently leaking tap that experienced volcanic eruptions at unbelievable frequencies. Apparently the culprits were the marigolds from the garden where we were staying, which I’d picked and put in cute little vases everywhere. A homeopathic remedy sorted me out and I was free from hay-fever until three years ago when it started up again – and not a marigold in sight.

            So last week I bought some allopathic medicine, which apart from treating the hay fever also induced a coma like trance that left me without the ability to think. So after a couple of days of drug induced dementia I changed brands and am beginning to feel like myself again. 

Last weekend, having completed four chapters of the second edit of my novel, I took a break to work on my haiku. Feedback had been good but I was getting jittery about putting Haiku Galore out there. I went online and found a wonderful site about writing haiku which, while educational, left me more confused about the rules than before. For example: rule 49. All words in lower case; rule 50. All words in upper case. But let me clarify, this list is called ‘Haiku Rules That Have Come And Gone. Take Your Pick.’ Deciding which rules I’m going to adopt – or throw out - knotted me up and I'm now bewildered as well as despondent. But for the moment I’ve left this issue stewing away on the back boiler.

             I also found two lovely books of modern haiku by Scottish poet Alan Spence and my enthusiasm for the form bounced back. Alan doesn’t follow any one particular syllabic pattern and focuses on the content.  So while the novel editing is slow at the moment - it has taken me three days to finish one chapter so there’ll be no quickies with poetry this Sunday - my peripheral thinking is taken up with haiku. Part of my brain (maybe the section not clear of chemicals) is still in a space that’s engaged with creating images and the combination/juxtaposition of those images. I'm fascinated by the transformation of visual images into a form that while exercising my powers of minimalism results in opening up and expanding the imagination.

This week's senryu 

THE SUPERMARKET

Savings! Three for two -

smorgasbord of edible

delights - but I'm broke.

I want to thank all the bloggers who’ve posted recently. You've kept my enthusiasm going during this week's brain vacation and I’m getting a lot out of them – there was even one about haikus! Yeah!

I’ve been featuring ROADS TAKEN by M. Joaquim sold as an ebook at the Amazon Kindle Store. This is now available for a free download from Saturday April 13^th to Wednesday April 17^th.  It’s a great first collection of short stories – my advice – download it and give it a read. What have you got to lose? Here's the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/

 

And the link to the course in writing haikus:

http://www.ahapoetry.com/Bare%20Bones/BBless5.html

The two books of haiku poems by Alan Spence which I’m reading are Seasons of the Heart and Clear Light, but he has published others as well as several longer pieces of work. Here’s a link to his site:

www.alanspence.co.uk/

For all book lovers out there, I wish you good reading and for those of you who write, good writing.

 

SOME POST EASTER THOUGHTS...

SOME POST EASTER THOUGHTS...

          In his book On Writing Stephen King says that ‘once he starts a project, he doesn’t stop or slow down unless he absolutely has to’. When I read that sentence it sparked something and I knew this was how I would have to write if I wanted to finish my novel. Without missing a beat, cogs silently shifted, I changed gears and I’ve managed to keep my nose to the grindstone ever since.

          I ended last week on a high after reading through the first draft of my novel and gave myself Easter Sunday off. After all, a girl has to get her priorities in the right order and chocolate is pretty high on the pecking  list at this time of year - I’m just not sure if pecking is the right word as I don’t know any chocoholic who pecks. Devour, demolish, consume, even inhale are more apt words to describe what happens when the object of one’s desire presents itself with such availability and the normal constraints are removed. 

 

          Despite the excesses of sense gratification on offer, by the end of the day, I felt out of sorts, as if I’d overlooked something. And I had. It was the writing.  Since I became more serious about making time for writing, I’ve found that if I don’t have my daily connection with the creative process, something is noticeably missing. 

           Oh, I know life isn’t that simple. Family, work, friends and many other elements make up the fabric of our reality, but for me that one percent inspiration that started me on this journey, and which I tap into when I’m writing, makes me feel very alive. It’s that one percent which keeps me going.

          Weirdly enough, straight after thinking all this, I was overcome with lethargy at the thought of the amount of work ahead of me.  Editing for me is like painting. I have the basic composition on the canvas, then I add layers of colour, putting highlights and shadows here and there and working to get the perspective right. And yes, I know modern art isn’t everyone’s preferred beverage but like every genre, it has its aficionados.

          One technique I learnt when revising for exams, is to focus on the goal – you imagine what it feels like to hold that certificate in your hand. It’s a way of tricking your mind and overcoming the obstacle of what you perceive to be the endless task of revision. In my case, I’m focussing on a finished second draft. I have a rough schedule in mind – I’d like to achieve a chapter a day but will be satisfied with four, or if possible five, chapters a week.  And I won’t beat myself up if I don’t achieve it. I’ll just keep going until I’m holding that Holy Grail of a finished novel in my hand, or if no publisher is interested, I shall be proud to see it on the screen as an ebook.  

Today’s Haiku

CHOCOLATE THOUGHTS

Coin of the Aztecs;

Mississippi mud delights

my pleasure centres.

 

My time management skills  – the novel, the blog  and life - mean that things don’t always happen as soon as I’d like but I had some good feedback recently on the haikus for Haikus Galore , so there is progress.

A really great  read is  Roads Taken by M. Joaquim at the Kindle Store.  Here's the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/  Check it out!

 

I'm going to rotate the links to other writers I find helpful. One newsletter I subscribe to, where there are plenty of good tips and information, is:

http://www.urbanwritersretreat.co.uk/ 

Another valuable book is How Fiction Works by James Wood which has lots of insights to help with your writing. 

For all book lovers out there, I wish you good reading and for those of you who write, good writing.