I missed a few days of creative play this week due to being so busy or just forgetting. It’s always the same when we start new things and have to make changes to our routine. However here’s some examples of my creative play for this week:
 My Drawing – Hammock |
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 Writing – Something Lost |
 My Writing – Meanest Thing |
Blog soon,
Antony
Recently I’ve been thinking about being creative, but not actually doing anything creative. Creativity should be something I do everyday, as it has so many benefits, including:
The way to be more creative, is to play, as children do inhibited. So when I was at Waterstones at the weekend and saw these books, I just had to pick them up. Here’s my opportunity to play and be creative:
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I picked up both of these books along with a pack of felt tip pens. I’m going to draw or write something in these books at least once a day. I’ve already started.
I’ll be posting my progress here by sharing a few scanned images. Don’t expect any drawing I do to be an artistic master piece (for that see my fabulous Illustrator friend Sye); or that any writing I do will be literary genius. Just take it for what it is – me playing. I’m aiming to post a progress update once a week.
Blog soon,
Antony
 The Good Teen Plot Line |
I recently self-published The Good Teen, a modern-day telling of The Good Samaritan parable, with a hint of magic. I want to tell you a bit about my writing process for this short story.
The idea came from my childhood. Being brought up as a Christian we were told the The Good Samaritan parable. It’s a story that has stayed with me and one that I wanted to retell with my own twist. So I wrote/drew out the plot on flipchart (Left: My flipchart for The Good Teen, click on image for full size). |
I like to develop my ideas, plots, sub-plots, settings, characters, pacing and description on flipchart as it’s faster than typing and allows me more creative freedom. The creative freedom to draw pictures, arrows and anything else I want to.
I originally decided to publish The Good Teen as a christmas story for my readers. Hoping to start an annual tradition. But then I saw a call for submission on the BBC Writers Room website for the BBC Radio4 Opening Lines programme and decided to write, edit and submit The Good Teen.
I had already written a To Do List for The Good Teen (below) and changed the timescales to meet the submission deadline.
The Good Teen To Do List
The editing process, as always, was maddening. I had to cut to the word count limit, which meant some scenes were either cut, not written or combined.
Unfortunately, The Good Teen was not long listed by the BBC. So I decided to self-publish it online. You can download The Good Teen on it’s page. It’s a free download, with a Twitter Tweet or Facebook Like in exchange for the download link.
Write soon,
Antony
The Boy in The Wood – Flash Fiction First Draft
At College we were asked to choose a pair of footwear and a hat. Then we were asked to write them into a piece of flash fiction (no more than 200 words). Here is my flash fiction first draft, entitled The Boy in the Wood, hope you enjoy:
The Boy in the Wood
Music pumped into my ears from my headphones as I ran along the dirt track, taking my usual route on that early spring morning. My Nike trainers hit the ground as I looked ahead, following the outline of the wood on my left-hand side. I had nearly completed my three-mile target, when up ahead, I noticed a small, brightly coloured hat that had two large embroidered rabbits on it. As I got closer, I saw droplets of red scattered on the leafs and bark of a nearby tree. I stopped as I reached the hat. My heart beat faster. I picked up the hat and removed one of my headphones. To my left, I heard a movement. I stepped into the trees and saw the back of the child’s head. He could only have been seven or eight years old.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
He turned. He was smiling. His eyes were pools of black, matching the colour of his hair. Then I saw the doe, laid on the ground. My eyes widened, looking like those of the doe. In the boy’s hand, a stick covered in deep congealed red, its tip touching the doe.
Write soon,
Antony
Antony Simpson - Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.
Author of eight books.
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