Bookworm Time

I have decided to share my first attempt at free writing. Here it is:  Free writing is quite hard I have decided while I sit here writing my free writing or whatever you want to call it. Spewing ideas in a frenzy onto a piece of paper: your thoughts, feelings and anything else that comes to mind. The act of writing itself is not too easy either - you think in sounds that you then translate to written just for the person who is reading it to translate back into sounds either aloud or in their own head. Odd but true. I guess that's why audiobooks are so popular in our busy society. That and the convenience of being able to read and do whatever you need to do. Your demanding lists, tasks, problems to solve. That was an example of asyndetic listing - the problems of primarily analysing writing is that you analyse your own and find it never to be good enough to publish; to even show anyone. This is where free writing comes in a splurge of ideas although all I seem to be writing about is...

This is a book, I found, where some of the stories resonated with me and some did not but may do when I am older/in a different situation. The main character in each short story is not given a name so there is no distance between the reader and the character but also so more people can relate as it makes it less specific. There are different genres in this book but I liked all of the stories - some were funny but all shed light upon the struggles women as a whole face. One story even showed the struggles of a man compared to with a woman - which I did not like because in this specific case the woman had it better but this is not always true. It is a short story collection but I kind of wished I got to know the characters more but that is also the beauty of it the unspecificness that unites women together over this book. I would say it is a must read for any woman cis or trans (as it does touch on trans issues as well). 

This book gets straight to the point about writing technique, is short (took me about an hour to read), simple and easy to understand with plenty of examples. This book is targeted at beginner writers but it is a helpful reminder for those writers who are more experienced also.  I have to say with this book the most important piece of advice is in the title - don't bore readers by starting with description weave it into the story - something needs to happen first. This may seem obvious as a writer but it is a helpful reminder. This is by no means the only helpful piece of information in the book, however it is crammed with tips, advice and how tos. It is also written in such as a way that the advice is easy to remember afterwards (although there is a lot and I will be dipping in and out of it for months to come).  There are however some typos and mistakes in the book mostly between pages 48 and 51 but overall the book is very helpful and well written. 

One of my hobbies is poetry. I am more into analysing rather than writing myself but I wrote a poem for a competition (and then missed the deadline!). I am quite fond of it so decided I would broadcast it here instead. It is called 'The Set' and it is about how homelessness is given headlines in the media but there are hardly any actions from there on. The Set A raindrop rolled down the glass, Some time had passed. The boards creaked beneath the cast, More time had passed.. The garden became vast, More time had passed… Walls were bare: They would not care. The stairs groaned: They wouldn't have moaned. It smelt of must: In this house they could trust. 9,874 WERE HOMELESS IN IRELAND IN THE WEEK OF JUNE 18TH TO 24TH. 198,358 HOMES LIE EMPTY IN IRELAND. The screen faded into black.

‘The Cord’ is at the back of the collection with the autobiographical poems but it could be said to be a transition poem as, similar to the start of the collection, it has a dark, fairytale-like quality. It alludes to Rumpelstiltskin through the “golden spinning wheel” in a similar way to how ‘The Diet’ alludes to Alice in Wonderland, with the protagonist becoming “the height of a thimble” and going on an adventure. This allusion to Rumplestiltskin could relate to the mother worrying about losing her child to their obsession with the cord. This theme of allusion to fairytales runs throughout the collection, although, not necessarily to specific fairytales as in this poem and more to the genre as a whole. Another way in which ‘The Cord’ has a fairytale-like feel is through its use of accentual verse with each line having three fixed stresses. This makes the poem sound like a fairytale by using natural speech patterns of spoken English in an impressively compelling way. It is the varia...

'A Healthy Meal' questions the ethics of eating meat - a charged debate just as important now, if not more, as it was when the poem was written. It starts by setting the semantic field of food specifically the semantic field of meat. The depiction of the meat in the first two lines at first glance seems to have positive connotations which juxtaposes with the rest of the poem which has very true but negative connotations of meat. Harsh consonance is used with the letter 'c' in the second stanza with words just as "chatter", "capped" and "claret" to add emphasis on the harsh reality for those animals. The most interesting word out of these three is "claret" as it has two denotations one being blood the other being wine. This is particularly interesting as it links the idea of suffering to even to the wine which has no animal content. This may be because wine is generally paired with meat to enhance flavour. It could also have bibl...