This blog is concerned with creative writing. As well as containing links to -- and reviews of -- books and resources useful for writers, I include some of my own writing. Please browse and comment.

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Online Book Reviews

Books on Creatve writing I have found interesting -- hope you will also.

The Creative Writing Coursebook

Zen in the Art of Writing

On Writing

How to Write a Damn Good Novel:

Stein on Writing

How to Grow a Novel

The Artist's Way

The Right to Write

Walking in This World

The Vein of Gold

Thunder and Lightning

Writing Down the Bones

The Spooky Art

The Art of Dramatic Writing

From Pitch to Publication

Scrivener Word Processor for Writers

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Writers reference tools online

Write-Brain-Research

Writers Research Online

Writers write!

Writing Tools

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Bookseller.com

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Old James stands at the bottom of his garden, leaning his tall stooped body on the gate. The beam from the lighthouse intermittently reveals his face. His hair, white and fine, reaches down to his collar. His soft blue eyes, hooded by bushy eyebrows, look over the western sea to where the sun has set, leaving a faint pink afterglow. In his gnarled hand, he holds a pipe, the aromatic tobacco smoke giving some relief from the incessant attention of biting midges.

He listens to the sounds of the night. The tide is on the turn and the oyster- catchers are noisily piping, as they feed before the sea reclaims the mudflats. Overhead, a curlew whistles it's plaintive call, which echoes over the moor as the bird heads inland.

The river flowing from the mountain behind his house is in full spate. The dark peaty water rushing, roaring as it spills over the falls into the sea pool where the tang of fresh water drives the waiting fish to a frenzy in their attempt to head up to the spawning grounds high in the headwaters. He hears the whistle of the dog otter and knows that some of those fish will not make the journey tonight.While his eyes and ears absorb the sights and sounds, the nostrils on his long aquiline nose quiver as he savors the smells. The rich cloying scent of bog myrtle, the salty tang of the sea with a hint of rotten seaweed left above high water by last nights storm, and the antiseptic smell of peat smoke coming from the chimney on his whitewashed cottage. He looks up to the dark sky, a tapestry of stars unblemished by the intrusion of city lights, a new moon just rising, queen of the night; and his lips move in a blessing as his mother and her mother before her had taught.

Hail to thee, thou new moon,

Guiding jewel of gentleness!

I am bending to thee my knee,

I am offering thee my love.

I am bending to thee my knee,

I am giving thee my hand,

I am lifting to thee mine eye,

O new moon of the seasons....

James's life is full of ritual; every task has it's own mysterious, otherworldly aspect. His nature imbues even the mundane with sacredness.He stands erect; his arthritic fingers fumble with the buttons of his flies. He turns his back into the wind and starts to water the gatepost, the flow of urine bifurcated and hesitant. It is not so much an old dog marking his territory, more a libation to the old gods of his people. James looks down the bay towards the empty houses. The peninsula was once home to 1700 people, now his is the only house lived in all year, the others now dark and lifeless where once they were bright and full of life. Sometimes too full. Over 250 years of famine, war, land clearances and forced emigration have failed to quench the flame of life that kept a tenuous hold on the land. Now, the peoples need to find work elsewhere, the sale of houses as holiday homes and no children being born to replace the aging population has pushed the area into an irreversible decline.

He trudges back towards his cottage, the lamp in his window drawing him home, as it has on many nights, even when thousands of miles and an ocean away. He bends his head to enter the low doorway, and as he steps over the threshold the cottage envelops him in it's embrace.

The warmth does not come from the fire in the hearth; it is inherent in the fabric of the building. It is the warmth that is generated in the memory and combusted in the heart. The warmth that is as old as the land itself. It is the warmth of blood. James rakes the fire, causing sparks to dance up the chimney to be borne away on the sea breezes. He is drawn to a faint scratching at the window, and sees a moth fluttering against the pane, helplessly enthralled in it's Icarus-like quest to reach the light. James turns off the light and opens the window to let in the night.He eases his weary frame into the old horsehair chair by the fire, and looks around the room. 

The large oblong table where generations of women folk had worked their cloth. Sat around the table waulking the urine-soaked weave. Thumping it, pulling it, passing it around. And all the time chanting the eerie waulking song. The metre of the words, the beat of the rhythm and the thumps of their hands all synchronised. A woman's ritual. Like so many women's rituals, as old as time and alien to men. Childbirth, death, pain and sorrow. Joy and breast milk. Female things. Like the moth and the light. Attractive; yet with a destructive element. The weaver's loom --the treadles and wires broken -- is now silent. Though the memory of the rattling as his father and grandfather worked it were still strong in his ears. As a child he fell asleep to and woke up to the noise. It was as sure as the rising of the sun, and as crucial to their survival. The weft and waft of life's tapestry. The spinning wheel over by the south-facing window. The only things it spins now are cobwebs and memories.The violin on the wall is now silent. His arthritic fingers no match for the memories of once youthful dexterity. Oh the dances that fiddle has seen. The laments it has cried. It was once full of airs -- and graces.

It is a reminder to James of decay. The decay of the land and his people. Their mores and art. Their language and lore, and his own failing body. He looks at the photographs on the mantle. Hugh, his son, in the uniform of a soldier. Like so many ancestors, now buried on a foreign field, having died fighting for a country that was not his. Then there is Mary. His darling Mary, sixty years by his side. First at school, with her hair the colour of corn and skin burnished brown. His nut-brown maiden. Then as his wife, mother to his children, confessor to his soul and bringer of light, his Anam cara. The light of her soul and the exuberance of her spirit have shone through James's darkest nights, guiding him to the right path.He gets up and taking the photo of Mary in his hand he holds it up and compares the likeness with Mary's face as it now is. She still has beauty he sees. Her hair has lost its colour but the white adds to her dignity. She still has the high brow, and her cheekbones though sharper still give her face distinction. Her nose is perfectly shaped and her lips have lost their fullness, but still kissable for all that. He places a gentle kiss on her lips.

James settles back in front of the fire, staring at the blue-green flames dancing in the hearth. Like the fairy dancers in the northern sky, first one colour, then another. As if they are daring you to chase them. To follow them up the chimney and away across the sea. He is so very weary, and falls asleep.

One hour before dawn, the birds start to sing. The sun is sending tentacles of light over the eastern horizon, as if testing the air, undecided whether to rise this morning.A tall handsome man, and a beautiful young woman with golden tresses walk arm in arm from the cottage and go towards the western shore. There is a lightness to their step and there is something ephemeral in their look.

In the cottage the fire has burnt out. The dancers borne away on the wind. The one that was Old James is still in his seat, and the one that was his Anam cara, Mary, lies in the coffin resting on the trestles.

Now all the houses in the peninsula are empty. But the stories and sounds, the memories and joy, the sorrow and pain and the souls of the people are still there. Waiting.

I heard the sound again tonight. The sound that is not only sound.

It woke me at 3 am. Although I am lying here half asleep, I am aware. Aware that something had disturbed me. But I know. It was that sound. The one that has been haunting me for twenty years

I first heard it when I was 33 years old. It comes in cycles. I can hear it every night for a couple of weeks, then not for a year or more.

The first few times I heard it I tried to follow it to its source. But... but I got scared by what I saw. What I felt. I lost courage and gave up the search. I have tried many times since then to track that sound to it's lair. Sometimes, I knew I was close. But the nearer I got, the further it slipped away. Like a gossamer spider web, borne on a summers breeze. It was if it was something that you could not look at, nor listen to, directly. You had to come upon it obliquely, out of the corner of your eye. To be seen or heard only through a mist of not-quite-awakedness.

I know others hear it. They have told me so. And some -- like I -- have tried to find it. I have found their tracks. Vague footprints in the shadows. Some have left scraps of written information and maps. I have seen where they have given up the chase, or discovered where they have come to grief. Like shipwrecks washed up on a skeleton coast. Stripped of all flesh. Staring, empty eye sockets and bleached, dismembered bones.

Some have found it. Of that I'm sure. There have been rumours. Some - a few - have returned and told their stories. Fantastic stories. Their tales were of unbelievable things -- riches beyond gold and great treasures. But people said they were mad.

I have heard the sound in many places. All over the world. But this last ten years it has been here. It lives here. In the middle of the great, dark, ancient forest, which waits, just beyond my garden wall.

What is this sound that is not only a sound? It is a cry on the wind. A wail. Keening in the night. It has the resonance of a church-bell -- with harmonics -- heard through rain. Or the rhythmic clanging of a halyard as a boat rides the waves, gently at anchor. It is numinous. It engenders in me a portent of danger, as does a foghorn heard over a dark and reef-ridden sea. Yet sometimes, it is the sigh of a woman soft in my ears. Whispered after -- or promising -- lovemaking. It is the cry of an infant heard in half-sleep, pulling me by the heart from slumber.

The sound comes again. Rising quickly, I go to the window, looking at the night sky. The moon is on its back. Horned. A pale and cream thighed goddess, traipsing over the tree-tops.

The boughs of the trees at the edge of forest are gently swaying, their leaves trembling.

I dress, and with torch in hand leave the house and walk into the woods.

Following a well-trodden path I head towards the centre of the forest. I turn right at the standing stone, and left at the fallen, mistletoe-covered oak. I climb over the wall of the old ruined church and go down into the mist-shrouded valley. I hear the stream ahead and follow it's flow down into the marshy ground where the fungi glow. Treading carefully to avoid the bog, I push through the thorn-bushes. The trees are so dense here. The trunks and branches look sculptured -- by some chaotic hand  -- into grotesque sentinels. Beards and raiments made from lichen and moss. Their twigs look like grasping, arthritic fingers. Touching, leading each other in a macabre, primeval ballet. I've lost the stars and the light. It is dark and eerie here, and the air is dank and heavy. Laden with malevolence.

I stop for a rest and to gather my courage. I've managed to get farther  into the wood than before.

The wood's at it's darkest now, as is the night. I can see the beasts in the shadows. Their hungry red eyes, gloating. Fleeting shadows, shades and phantasms. They have no power over me now, and they know it. Off to the right I see a faint lightening in the shadows. I follow the light. The wood is thinning and the dawn is coming. Ahead of me, a sunbeam penetrates the canopy, and illuminates a clearing.

In the clearing is a pool, silent and deep, and at the edge of the pool is a hazel tree. The nut-laden branches are drooping to touch the water. I sit under the tree to take a drink. A nut falls and hits my head. It bounces and plops into the water, causing ripples to form, spreading through the water, and shimmering through the air. I turn to look into the pool.

It was as if I stepped out of myself and stumbled through a rent in the world. I am suddenly reeling, spinning around. The light is so bright. The scents are overwhelming. The taste of the water in my mouth is like nectar.

I can hear the sound. I can feel it vibrating through every atom of my body. It is everywhere. It is all around me. It is in the trees, the air and the sun. It is... it is, in ME! The sound is coming from me. I am the sound. I can feel it, hear it, taste it and smell it.

Suddenly, I understand it. I know what it was that was calling out to me. I have answered the call.

I look to the pool, and sitting, waiting there, I come across, me.

"Hello" the figure says.  " I have been calling to you for so long."

"Come and sit beside me, I have so much to tell you."

A Sestina. A Bright Yellow Moon.

A Sestina is a form said to have been invented in 13th Century Provence. It does not use rhyme and consists of six stanzas of six lines each (sestets) and concludes with a final 3 line ( tercet) envoie.

In the six stanzas, the end words get repeated in a certain order: in the closing tercet, all six words are used. If the six end words in the first stanza are labeled ABCDEF, the order of the words in each stanza go like this.

1. ABCDEF

2. FAEBDC

3. CFDABE

4. ECBFAD

5. DEACFB

6. BDFECA

7. The Tercet. ECA for end of lines, and BDF in the middle of each line, that is BE,DC,FA.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Harvest time under a bright yellow moon,

fishermen in boats went to sea.

Their nets full of herring cost a death,

for they did not go deasil along with the sun.

Left on the shore was a girl in love,

a child in her womb and now pain in her heart.

A fatherless child was born and gave heart,

to a girl who once danced, under the moon.

This strong healthy boy, swaddled in love,

lived in a house which looked over the sea.

With hair fair as corn, skin browned by the sun,

he helped the young widow, parley with death.

Talk of his father, and the way of his death,

brought tears to her eyes and shrivelled her heart.

She thought of the future, at the setting of the sun,

and nights when there shone a bright yellow moon.

She feared for the day, when he went off to the sea,

following after his father, her lost darling love.

She prayed that the ties of a mother's love,

would keep her son from a watery death.

She sat every night looking out to the sea,

longing once more to hold her sweet-heart.

Dancing all night under a bright yellow moon,

and falling into bed at the rising of the sun.

The boy would rise early,be up with the sun,

he'd rush to the harbour, to see his true love.

A boat that would sail under a bright yellow moon,

with men who caught fish at the cost of a death.

For it ran in his blood, and pumped through his heart,

a need to take heed of, the calling of the sea.

The day it did come, and he went off to sea,

the young widow rose at the rise of the sun.

At home all alone now with fear in her heart,

her son now a man, all that's left of a love.

Her love for a fisherman, who went to his death,

catching herring under a bright yellow moon.

The boat went to sea taking away all her love,

following the sun under the shadow of death.

With the love of her heart, a bright yellow moon.