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A List of Qualities in Good Friends

By Friends & Family, ThinkingNo Comments

Here is a list of Qualities I require in my friends. To me friends with these qualities are good friends and ones to treasure:

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A List of Qualities in Good Friends.

Blog soon,

Antony

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Creative Writing: Middle

By Creativity, ThinkingNo Comments
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Inkwell & Quill. (Image Copyright: Sye Watts/Antony Simpson.)

This is the second part in a blog post series, where I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve learned about creative writing over the last few years. The first blog post in the series was Creative Writing: Beginning.

1. Remember Your Aim
You should be writing something that entertains and is enjoyable to you and others. That’s all your creative work needs to do. It doesn’t need to be a work of literacy genius.

2. Your Writers Voice
Your writers voice is part of the art of creative writing. It will be influenced by Perspective, which I have wrote about here. It may change dramatically in different works.

Some writers try to emulate the voice of writers that they admire. This can be an interesting exercise and way to explore how those writers show their distinctive voice. To get the most out of this exercise, rather than passively read, you need to analyse how they crafted their voice.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert whom has written of many books, developed her writers voice by writing each of her books to friend or family member. Her writers voice in Big Magic, a book about living creatively, is warm, caring, passionate, engaging and captivating throughout.

Your unique writers voice will generally develop over time, with regular writing practice. The key point here is: practice.

Simple Writing – Writer’s Voice: What it is and how to develop yours is a good article to read, where the author writes about phrasing, tone, attitude and gives some tips on how to develop your writers voice. But nothing really beats writing lots.

3. Keep Going
Don’t let fear hold you back from starting, continuing or finishing a piece of creative writing. Even if, as your writing, you think it’s the worst thing ever written, keep going.

As author Anne Rice says in this video, ‘Just kick out the pages:’

Click here to display content from Anghami.

So keep writing, everyday if possible. Don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t manage everyday. Just write when you can. Whatever time you are managing to write, it’s better than not writing at all. Remember that if you keep going, eventually you’re going to finish. You’ll be bringing a new story into the world, which is wonderful.

4. Dialogue
Some rules generally apply:

  • Less is more.
  • Most people don’t talk to themselves. So don’t have characters do it.
  • It should be a conversation, not a monologue or full of large longwinded statements.
  • Don’t have a character explain to another character what happened in the last scene you wrote. It feels repetitive and tedious to the reader. One character can summarise to another character if absolutely necessary. But if the other character needs to know the details, then maybe he/she should have been in the last scene as a witness to events.
  • Only on rare occasions should you cut the end of dialogue, like this: . If you do it all the time, the dialogue isn’t moving the story along and the reader will get frustrated that no character ever finishes a sentence. Plus regularly cutting the end of sentences will lose its value and significance.
  • Dialogue tags such as he said and she replied are useful to identify who is talking and how they are saying what they are saying. But the overall tone of the conversation should be clear from the words in the dialogue.

To improve your dialogue listen to the conversations of strangers in every public place that you visit. The dialogue you write should sound like that. It should have hooks. During the editing process, which I will write about in the next blog post in the series, it is useful to read it aloud to yourself or someone else.

5. Tense
Generally past or present tense is used. Future tense is rarely used. Once you’ve decided which tense to use, be consistent and use it throughout your creative work. Here’s an article that explains tense simply: Creative Writing – Tense.

6. Description
General fiction set in the real world needs less description than creative works set in other worlds. If your creative work is set in the past, future or another world consider: societal structures, culture, religion/belief systems, etc. Only tell the reader what they need to know.

Avoid writing cliché opportunities to describe a character or settings. One such example of a cliché opportunity is the main character standing in front of a mirror observing and describing themselves to the reader. It’s been done so many times, that it has become a cliché.

A good tip, when it comes to description is to make references. So for example, rather than writing: Jean drove off in her red car. Write: Jean drove off in her red Nissan Micra. Be aware that over time these descriptive references might date your creative work. Some descriptive references are so embedded into society that they could never date your creative work.

In my short story A Few Amazing Moments I deliberately used descriptive references to set the time in recent history that the various scenes were set in.

Perspective alters how you describe things. You can read more about perspective here. Pacing alters the amount of description a scene has. You can read more about pacing here. But the rule is: in slower scenes more description is allowed. In action or fast-paced scenes there should be less description. To much description or to little can significantly impact on your overall pacing.

7. Back-up Your Creative Work – Regularly
We’ve all heard nightmare stories about writers whom have lots their entire work because of a computer crash or computer dying on them. They either didn’t hit the save button or didn’t back-up their computer or both. I’ve lost large chunks of scenes in the past because I didn’t hit the save button often enought. I’ve also lost entire creative projects because a computer decided to die on me. So here’s the advice:

  • Hit the save button at the end of every paragraph.
  • Back-Up your work regularly. Some people use the cloud. I personally use Time Machine and then do a manual copy/paste back-up on an external hard drive once a week.

8. Done Is Better Than Good
This advice comes from Author Elizabeth Gilbert. In her book Big Magic, which have reviewed here, she writes about the danger of perfectionism.

If you aim for your creative work to be perfect you will drive yourself insane. No matter how much time, energy, effort and work you put into a creative work it will never be perfect. So rather than striving for perfection, aim for completing your creative work to the best of your current ability.

So many creative people, leave work in their desk draws, unfinished, because they don’t feel it’s good enough. Because they are aiming for perfection. Just take a second to imagine the number of superb stories that never see the light of day, let alone get read, because the writer is aiming for perfection.

9. First Draft
Congratulations on completion of the first draft of your creative work. But for a good writer, it’s not even half finished yet. The manuscript now needs to be edited, which may include some re-writing.

In my next blog post of the series, I’ll be writing about editing (including an editing checklist), feedback and publishing options.

Write soon,

Antony



I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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My India Adventure (Part 3) – Shopping in Delhi

By Adventures, Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, Love & Relationships, Money / Finances, Shopping, TravelNo Comments
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My spending money in Rupees.

If you enjoy shopping for clothes as I do, Delhi is the perfect place to visit with an empty suitcase. As Indian’s like their clothes.

I exchanged my money at the airport (see photo left). ₹500 (five hundred Rupee) is currently worth about £5 (five British Pounds).

My first shopping trip was on my first full day in Delhi. Robert, Michael, Neha, Neha’s sisters and brothers-in-law and I went shopping for an wedding outfit. Robert choose an attractive gold colour, Michael choose a grey and gold colour combination and I choose a fabulous purple colour.

Below is a photo of our wedding outfits, see my last blog post for photos of us in our outfits:

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Wedding outfit shopping.

Then we headed to an outdoor market where we bought some wedding shoes. These shoes were more about style than comfort and I named them The shoes of DEATH after they shredded my feet.

Prior to travelling to Delhi, I had been talking to a lovely guy named Eddie. I needed to buy Neha’s parents a thank you gift and was in need of a guide and shopping buddy. So I hired Eddie and a taxi for the day. Eddie was gorgeous, patient, kind and caring. We quickly connected and became more than friends. During my stay in Delhi I visited at least five Malls, two Bazaars and four outdoor market places.

On my first shopping trip with Eddie (there were a few) we went to Benetton where I bought a fleeced hoodie, a smart shirt, two plain t-shirts and two t-shirts with designs all for £55. On another occasion Eddie took me to an outdoor market and I got two pairs of smart work shoes for £8. I bought two real leather belts for £1.90. Delhi could be cheap or expensive depending on where you shopped and who you shopped with.

Eddie helped me buy some small gifts for close family and some of my friends. Believe it or not is where most of my money went – on other people. When Indian’s see foreigners they triple their prices. So having Eddie who spoke Hindi helped barter the prices down. I am extremely grateful to him for his language skills, superb company and for soo much more ;).

My favourite place to shop was Connaught Place. It had a good mix of shops, a Bazaar and an outdoor market place. Plus, it has plenty of places to buy good coffee. However most importantly for me, it was where Eddie and I created some amazing memories.

After much searching, Eddie and I found the perfect gift for Neha’s parents (to thank them for taking such good care of me). We found this lovely stylish mirror in the shape of the sun, which was the perfect gift for them.

Wherever you shop in Delhi there’s plenty of roadside stalls selling drinks and ice cream. There’s copious Tuk Tuk bikes and auto Rickshaws that you can use to get around. Or there’s always the Delhi Metro. The Delhi Metro is cheaper than Tuk Tuk bikes or auto Rickshaws and is quite an experience.

Eddie introduced me to the Metro and we used it together on about six journeys while I was in Delhi. The Metro in Delhi has been so popular that it is currently being extended. By 2020 they want 50% of people travelling on the Metro, which in the sky, and 50% of people using the roads. This will ease the current road congestion problem Delhi has, along with reducing air pollution. The Metro is exactly like the London Underground, just above ground rather than under it.

The first two Metro carriages of every Metro line are reserved for women, along with woman only seats in the other carriages. Getting on and off the Metro was a bit of a challenge at times, with a little fast-paced pushing and feet shuffling required.

I got plenty of stirs on the Metro because of my white skin. They were stirs of curiosity because most people hadn’t ever seen someone with white skin. After a while it did leave me feeling a bit awkward and unsure of how to respond. I wasn’t sure whether to stir back, smile or do a little dance. Luckily for the the other Metro users it was too cramped to allow me to do a little dance. On most journeys Eddie and I held-hands and no one stirred because of this or seemed to even notice it.

Whether you’re shopping or using the Metro there are many security check points. Where civilians in official, security, looking uniforms will ask you to walk through a metal detector and put your bags through an x-ray scanner. They then frisk you with a hand-held metal detector.

Eddie is gorgeous and looks so young. I want to reassure you that he is in fact twenty-two years old and I am twenty-nine years old. He is funny, kind, caring, intelligent and multi-talented. He has already had much success and many achievements. He seems to do well at anything he takes his hand to, which is no doubt due to lots of hard work and determination. I know that I’m a very lucky man. Here are some photos of the gorgeous Eddie and me:

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Eddie and I outside one of the many Malls we visited.

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Eddie & I on a Tuk Tuk Bike.

Can you recognise the brands photographed below?

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Starbucks Coffee :D.

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Me with a scary looking Ronald McDonald statue outside of a vegetarian McDonalds Restaurant.

Yep – Starbucks and McDonalds.

I was pleased to be able to get a decent coffee from Starbucks, but the prices where the same as in the UK making it an expensive luxury in India. Costa Coffee was much more reasonably priced. Coffee’s from both shops tasted the same as they would in the UK.

Other recognisable brands in Delhi, India included: Pizza Hut, Dominos, KFC, Burger King, Vans, Levis, Van Heusen, Nike, adidas and Marks & Spencer’s.

On the departure from London Heathrow my suitcase weighed 11KGS. On the way back home it weighed 20KGS, which just gives you an idea of how much I bought during my time in Delhi. And it didn’t cost me a fortune.

In next part blog post in the series titled My India Adventure (Part 4) – Delicious Food, I will be talking food. It will be coming soon, so don’t forget to check back for updates.

Write soon,

Antony

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Growing Up Gay: My Story

By Gay, History, Life4 Comments

Inspired by Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay by Paul Vitagliano, I’ve decided to share my own story of growing up gay.

I’m about eight or nine in this photo, it’s Christmas and I’m striking a pose in my Power Rangers pyjamas proudly showing off my new cross puppet. I remember loving to entertain others, being full of confidence and having no inhibitions. I remember being sensitive, caring and sometimes in a world of my own. My mum describes me as a child by saying I was “such a joy to have.”

If you’d have shown me this photo as a teenager I’d have cringed with embarrassment. By my teen years I’d realised that I was different to others; I became very self-conscious of what my peers thought about me and was hiding my sexuality out of fear of what they’d think, say or do. I also became extremely self-critical of seemingly everything about myself.

Today, I look at this photo and aspire to be like that younger version of myself. I am so thankful that as a child my mum instilled me with confidence to be myself and always made me feel loved. I am still learning and developing as I experience life, but there are many goals I’ve been successful in achieving and the others I’m working towards.

If there are any gay youth who are experiencing what I did in my teens I would encourage them to stay true to who they are, only listen to the opinions of people who truly love you – they will love you for who you are, seek out support (Google: lgbt support) and come out when you’re ready.

I look at this photo and think: how did my family not know I was gay? The answer is that they did! I was born gay and I wouldn’t be any other way.

Published by: The Gay UK on Friday 8th August 2014.

Blog soon,

Antony

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I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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