Tag: Thoughts

Thoughts on Yule Be Sorry and plans for 2020!

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Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

 

So, here we are: 2020! A new decade. It doesn’t seem quite right, does it? Where did the years go? Well, here we are, nonetheless! I hope you all had lovely holidays, and that you aren’t feeling the January blues too much!

I hope you all enjoyed my little poem series, Yule Be Sorry: A Very Bite-Sized Xmas. You can now read the poem in its entirety right here. I had a lot of fun with this piece, even though I don’t really consider myself to be a poet. I was really pleased with how it turned out, and, judging by the responses, you guys liked it too! I thought I struck quite a nice balance between horror and comedy with it. Back when I finished my Bite-Sized Halloween series, I said I’d plan any future holiday-themed series in advance… that didn’t really work out. If I do it again in the future, I’d like to have it sketched out ahead, as it’s quite stressful working on the fly, but it appears that it’s just not in my nature! 😛 I guess we’ll just see what happens…

Okay, so, on to 2020! What’s first for the new decade? Well, you might have noticed that I haven’t uploaded any new stories lately — for Reedsy or for the #BlogBattle. This isn’t because I haven’t been writing (because I have!), it’s simply because I did a lot of travelling over the holidays, to see family, friends, and loved ones — so I didn’t have an awful lot of time to keep this blog updated. Many apologies for that! Therefore, my first thing to do is post my short stories that I’ve written over December and early January. Some are pretty good (or so I think!), and some are quite clearly thrown together at the last minute. I’m proud of all of them, however, even if I’d have liked more time to work on them. So, you can expect to see a lot of posts regarding new stories over the next week or so!

What next? Well, I guess the next iteration of Bite-Sized Horror! I’d quite like to return to my original posts — new, two-sentence chills every day! However, I am also in the process of trying to write a book (the one that I started back in November for NaNoWriMo). So, I think I’ll go back to the ‘old’ format, but I won’t try and post a new piece every day, as that would require time and creative juices that are (as of this moment) being channeled into my main WIP. I hope you don’t mind — there’s only so much I can do in one day!

Other than that, it’s same old, same old! Here’s to a year and a new decade, and the stories that we will tell!

And Now, Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming. Sort Of.

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Fair warning: this is going to be a bit of long, rambling post. Reflections on the past and plans for the future. 

 

Bite-Sized Halloween 2019 Thoughts

And that’s a wrap, folks! Halloween 2019 is officially over and November is here. That means that my Bite-Sized Halloween story has drawn to a close! If you’d like to re-read all of the parts, I’ve consolidated all of the posts into one short story — you can find it here!

I hope you guys enjoyed Charlie’s little Halloween tale. Considering that I mostly winged the story, I am actually quite happy with the end result! When I made the very first Bite-Sized Halloween post, I didn’t actually know where the story was going to go… I kinda made it up on the fly.

I think if I do this Bite-Sized Halloween again, I’ll definitely plan out the story ahead — so that I’m not just making up rubbish as I go along. I mean, I think Charlie’s story turned out pretty good, all things considered, but there are bits that I’m not too enamoured with. I’d have liked to have spent more time with Marion, to build on him as a character. I also felt that the ending was a tad rushed, as I realised I only had a few days to finish the story arc before Halloween… But it was an experiment, and I had a blast with it, so I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much. And based on the response, I think some of you guys enjoyed the daily snapshots of a larger story — so I definitely think I’ll do this sort of thing again in the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll do A Very Bite-Sized Christmas? We’ll have to wait and see what Santa/Satan brings.

And of course I’m a little sad that Halloween is over. It’s my absolute favourite time of year, and my partner and I dressed up and had a great time — we went out and partied a little bit, binged a fair few horror movies. It was lovely. Here’s an obligatory snap:

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Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the album that I wrote, recorded and released in the space of 30 days, which I think is a pretty good achievement. So, if you’d like to revisit Charlie, Marion, and the world they inhabit — but in the form of music — please be sure to have a listen. You can find Children as Ghosts on YouTube and SoundCloud:

 

 

 

If you like the tunes, head on over to my music-focused Facebook page and give me a like!

 

November, NaNoWriMo, and the Unfortunate Limitations of Being A Frail Human

And now, on to future plans! Following the conclusion of my Bite-Sized Halloween tale, I’d like to return to the previous rhythm of posting a new Bite-Sized Horror post every day… However, this November I am participating in National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo! If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s an annual creative writing project — participants attempt to write 50,000 words between the Nov 1st and Nov 30th. And if that sounds like a lot… that’s because it is. (It’s ~1,667 words a day.)

As I’ve got a large commitment, I think maintaining my previous standard of one Bite-Sized post a day is unrealistic. If I try to do both, I fear that I’ll crash and burn. Damn this frail human form, with limited energy! So, for November, I’ll be posting Bite-Sized Horror stories as and when I find the time to do so — my focus will be on my NaNoWriMo story.

Don’t worry, come Dec 1st I aim to return to the daily stories (and as mentioned, maybe it’ll be a Bite-Sized Christmas story arc). But until then, this blog may go a bit quiet.

And that’s pretty much all I wanted to say. So, if you made it to the end of this post, congrats and thank you for sticking with it! I hope you all had a lovely Halloween. To my fellow NaNoWriMo participants: good luck! I’m right there with you! If you want to buddy up on the NaNo site, here’s my profile: https://www.nanowrimo.org/participants/joshuainsole. And to everyone who comments/likes/gives me general support and encouragement — thank you so much!

Until next time… Have a good one!