Arvon!

Yes. It is finally in the works. I think it has been more than 9 long years now that I have been dreaming of an Arvon week. Why has it taken so long, you ask? Let me tell you in a poem:

illusions of grandeur

I’m glad not to have pursued those dreams
Sometimes the failure to do, it seems,
Can be all that remains if you are to speak
To yourself of all that you could have been.

Yes, indeedy. There is cowardice at the heart of it. But I did tell myself 2012 would be the year to take this bull by the horns and put pen to paper at last – and what better way to brush off and breathe new life into an old dream than a week of wonder at The Hurst.

Due to a mix of troubles, financial and logistical, I was unable to stick to the original plan of attending a Fiction course with the beautiful and talented Sarah Hall and equally beautiful and talented Owen Shears this September. Being a fan of their very lyrical prose, I was quite thrilled to have gotten a space in their workshop and was hoping to have a modest body of work done over the summer to show. But the best laid plans…you know how it goes. So since I have to spend the summer trying to earn the money for my little adventure and don’t expect to have to much writing time, I have moved myself along the calendar to November, when Kate Long (a lovely lady who, curiously enough, seems to share my love of prickly rodents) and Simon Thirsk (of Bloodaxe Books, eeeeeeee!!!) will be running a course designed specially for those of us who need permission to write. And you never know, maybe after I get my ‘permission’, my toehold on an intangible goal, I may scrimp and save my way on to another one of Arvon’s offerings in due time.

Three months to go!

Tell Me A Story

I love stories. I believe we are all storytellers and that is what separates humanity from the rest of the natural world. Imagination. To be grossly reductionist, I would maintain that we are all beholden to narratives, those we create, those we believe – and without them we get lost. And that in itself as a feature of (wo)mankind is fascinating.

And just today I came upon a website that’s just perfect for all us story-tellers and story-lovers – it’s called Cowbird, and in their own words:

Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web.

 

Click through and either pick a picture or type in a key word and be transported to a land of a million little stories, the kind we’re all made up of! I’ve a feeling I’ll be wandering through these for a while.