Real World Intrudes

Posted: January 31, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Thoughts, Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’ve been quiet for a week now, no posts, no thoughts, no words.

Two main reasons…

  1. It’s that time of the year again and I had really let my accounts go to pot, didn’t have anything in order or in the correct location. It’s taken me the best part of the week to collect everything in together and file my tax returns before I had to start paying fines, but it is done now and out the way. Rejoice!
  2. The second T.M.A. for my Open University course, AA315, is due on Thursday coming. So whilst panicking about my tax return I was also catching up with reading and making notes for the assignment. This gave me an excuse to fire up Scrivener and use it as a note taking machine, holding my references and any images I was going to refer to. I have also set it up to write the assignments. Now just to finish them.

I’ve also decided that the main thing I’m going to take from the Zero to Hero challenge is that I should schedule at least one post a week. This post will be a Sunday Roundup, a look at the week past, what I’ve been reading, writing and doing.

So more writing and a better round up on Sunday.

Being there

Posted: January 13, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Photography, Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

As I was commenting on another post for yesterday’s Zero to Hero task, it developed into a bit of a conversation.

The post I initially commented on was Weekly Photo Challenge: One on Preeti’s blog LenzExperiments.

It was an example of a reflection of a duck on water, the reflection was well captured, with a lovely stillness to the water and the exposure was perfect and any post-processing was light and unobtrusive.

My initial comment was along the lines of ‘love the clarity of the reflection, well captured’, and as all photographers (myself included) are wont to do Preeti’s reply was quite self-depricating and modest and went on to describe the external circumstance that lead to her ‘lucky’ shot.

Like a lot of photographers, especially non-professional photographers, I also had a habit of talking myself down, but the more people said that I had a great camera and that I was lucky in getting that shot, the more I actually thought about the creative process. Like all skills creative skills are learned, the more you practice a skill the better that skill gets, until it is an unconscious activity and you forget that you are using a learned skill.

I had to reply to Preeti with something far more positive than her accepting her luck and said ‘But some of the biggest things is actually being there, having a camera with you and then having the skill to take advantage of the circumstances that present themselves – again well done’

As Thomas Jefferson said, ‘I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it’.

William Gibson on the Past, Present and Future of Sci-Fi

Posted: January 7, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Video, Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

As part of the assignment for the Zero to Hero 30 day blogging challenge we were asked to add an element new to your blogging. I’ve never added video to a post anywhere before and this was a nice little exercise showing how easy it is.

This is an interview from my favourite author, William Gibson, on Sci-Fi and as always he had me riveted throughout.

If you have time look at his other interviews on YouTube, all are worth listening to.

Edit: As for yesterdays task I did look through several themes and though it was a nice exercise I had spent ages choosing the theme that I use and still didn’t find anything that I wanted to use that portrayed the image I wanted to put across. Though this doesn’t mean that I will always use this them but that for the moment this is the best theme for the task.

Explore the Neighbourhood

Posted: January 5, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Today’s assignment: follow five new topics in the Reader, and begin finding blogs (and bloggers) you love.

Todays task was to explore the Reader and the blogging community on WordPress.com.

I had been doing this to a certain extent since joining the network as I’ve found a lot of interesting writing blogs through the daily practice tags alone. This time I was going to strike out and see how diverse the community could get and if there were blogs to keep some of my other interests informed.

First interest was to look to see if there were some Warhammer people out there and The Lost and the Damned was there with their wonderful modelling skills, and it seems to be reasonably frequently updated.

The next idea was to follow a tag, and I chose Panasonic GX1 as that is my main camera for daily work and I always like to see how others are getting on with it.

I also followed the zerotohero tag to see how all the other fresh-faced bloggers were doing and how each of us approached the tasks in a different way.

I also thought the cooking tag should have a lot of good ideas and recipes in it. I wasn’t disappointed as I found CasualFoodie which really does describe me and food.It was well set out with a ton of good recipes in it to explore.

I already really knew that searching through Reader would give me a lot of blogs to read as I follow quite a few already, mainly writing blogs to help with my own writing and because they were interesting in their own right, but it is always nice to look outside the immediate area of interest to keep other interests going.

What’s on your mind?

Posted: January 4, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

When you thought about starting a blog, you had some idea for a post: something you wanted to say to the world, a photo you wanted to share, a short story on the tip of your brain. Maybe you just wanted a place of your own on the web or had broader goals about writing regularly — but you probably had an idea for a post too, no matter how nascent. Today, you’ll write it.

Today’s assignment: write the post that was on your mind when you decided to start a blog.

I’m shy and have great difficulties in believing in myself, it has taken me about 10 years of blogging on and off, using social media and websites to get up the courage to begin a dedicated writing blog.

I have several ideas of things I would like to write or write about:

  • A book based on the mythical world of Ygdrassil, a planet left after the fall of a galactic civilisation, where the inhabitants have reverted back to a more primitive lifestyle and technology is classed as magic.
  • A play based on my work, residential child care, and the trials, hilarity, and tribulations that I’ve met through working in the same place for almost 30 years.
  • A travel book based on a walk that I’m devising between Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall along the route of Dere Street (with an extension to York where the road originated.
  • A book of poetry supported by my photography based on time and passing of phases.

This blog has started giving me the courage to believe that I can write and that the only real judge of my writing skills is me, at this period in time anyway 🙂

Exploring title, tag line and an about box

Posted: January 3, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

Day Two – Zero to Hero

Today’s assignment: edit your title and tagline, and flesh them out more in a widget.

Looking at todays assignment I was very pleased as I had spent quite a lot of time thinking about the title of the blog as I had to ensure that I could get the matching domain name (www.wickedwords.co.uk) and I wanted it to be quite descriptive of my relationship with words.

The crafting of good writing feels as though it belongs to someone else for me, so the fact that I am writing and expressing myself, developing thoughts in prose seems very wicked to me.

Another factor is that one of my favourite genres of fiction is horror and I want to craft Wicked Words, tell a good ghost story, lead people down the garden path and send shivers up their spines.

As for the tagline I thought long and hard but really didn’t see the point of one as I was without a direction for my writing, but then it felt appropriate for it to be ‘one word at a time, one day at a time’ as that was the way the blog was progressing.

The about text was slightly easier as the last couple of days I’ve spent writing about me and what I was wanting to do with the blog.

Welcome

Posted: January 2, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Zero to Hero | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments
My First Book

My First Book

This is my first real attempt at consistent blogging, though I’ve setup a few blogs over the years.

This blog will mainly about my adventure through writing as one of my main goals for 2014 is to develop a habit of writing every day and developing my different styles of writing, as the only writing I do at the moment is for work or study.

Though it is mainly a writing blog it will also feature occasional photographs for the challenges on The Daily Post to keep me in practice with photography also.

Most of, if not all, the images I will use on this site are mine, if they aren’t I will make sure there is appropriate acknowledgement with the photo.

The road I will be travelling is one of development and, hopefully, engagement. Learning how to engage an audience and write consistently.

I hope to become a Zero to Hero!