Sad goodbyes but much to look forward too and much more!

Firstly, my apologies for not posting on here for over a week, I have been somewhat otherwise engaged!

As some of you will have been aware, since August last year, I have been working for the NHS as a Health and Social Care team coordinator. This was first as an agency worker and latterly for the RD&E Admin Staff Bank here in Exeter.

From the start I have loved this job and role; I have worked with some very committed and diligent workers who give their all for their client caseloads. In return, they sadly get little recognition publically.

Working on the Staff Bank is rather like being on a zero-hours contract. Although I was getting a decent remuneration for the hours that I had worked, I didn’t have the safety net of holidays and sick pay. This meant that I had to work all over Christmas and New Year, only taking off the bank holidays. I realise that I’m not the only one in the country doing this. There isn’t a complaint from me.

 I was appreciative of my Line Manager and colleagues as they didn’t really want to let me go, although they were not able to take me on full time, they were attempting to increase the budget to do so. Fortunately, I spotted an advert for a similar role, full time at Exmouth Hospital which I applied for and was successful in getting. I started last Monday.

I loved working with Health and Social Teams at Whipton Hospital. I have not felt so happy in a job for many years and it was with great sadness I had to leave. I was honoured with a lunch with the teams, where they presented with a wonderful card and amazing gifts. I was humbled and emotional in spades.

The piece or rather pieces that I would like to share with you this week are the very first exercises and assignments that I completed for my creative writing course.

We had to describe somewhere we had visited using all the five senses, but first there was an exercise to describe the scene using our sense of sight only:

My favourite place is the wood where I take our dog for a walk. It is a dark little wood where the sunlight on a day like today shines through the evergreening canopy. The dappled light shines down revealing a wondrously blue woodland floor and the pathway where our little brown bundle of fun runs after his much loved yellow tennis ball which contrasts well with the hundreds of bluebells that this wood is well known renowned for at this time of year. The path stretches up the middle of the wood, in the distance, you can see that it veers to the right and then the left before coming to the end of the wood where it opens out onto verdant green farmland.

Next, thinking about the same place, describing it using the other four senses: smell, taste, sound and touch:

Walking into my favourite wood you can smell the fresh perfume of the bluebells scattered in their hundreds over the woodland floor. Lit by the dappled light from the spring green canopy of beech and oak trees, it gives off an air of serenity and that strange taste of spring. Except all is not quiet, all-round songbirds can be heard and the occasional thump, thump of a woodpecker or nuthatch. Squirrels scratch around in the undergrowth before they sense the presence of little Murphy and scoot off up the nearest tree. The utopia is somewhat spoilt, however, by the distant sound of the A30 with the busy East Devon evening commuter traffic.

Except that now reviewing it, I didn’t use touch in this one!

The last exercise was to merge the two descriptions together in a piece of around 150 words, (this one is 170) thereby using all five senses together:

Walking into my favourite wood to walk our little Murphy, I am struck by the beautiful smell of the trees bursting into spring growth and the perfumed bluebells that cover the woodland floor in their hundreds. Everything is warm to the touch in the early evening spring sun. The dappled light makes for a peaceful atmosphere. The squirrels scratch around in the undergrowth only disturbed by Murphy chasing after his yellow tennis ball. In the trees, you can hear songbirds sing as they settle down to roost for the evening. The central path takes you eastwards away from the sun and to where it had risen this morning to commence its daily journey. The path leads towards the open green farmland beyond where sheep and cattle graze. It’s about now that you become aware of the noisy roar of the distant A30. Calm is soon restored to this little piece of East Devon as you are led back up to the woods and the advancing sunset. 

Finally, the assignment asked for a piece of between 300 to 500 words describing a special place that we had visited. After a couple of goes, I returned to the same place that we take Murphy for a walk, Black Aller Woods on the Escott Estate:

Taking an early morning walk with Murphy, the three-year-old WestiePoo, in our favourite wood  I climb over the stile. I am immediately struck by a wall of fragrant aroma from the perfumed bluebells that are covering the woodland floor. Above, the sun is bursting through the beautiful spring green canopy of oak, ash and cherry trees. This is Black Aller Wood on the Escott Estate in East Devon.

The dappled sunlight creates a peaceful atmosphere. Squirrels can be seen scratching around in the undergrowth undisturbed even by our little dog scampering after his yellow tennis ball.

 The pathway cuts through the middle of the wood. Blackbirds can be heard warning others of intruders disturbing their peace. Above the fields, adjacent to the wood, a buzzard screeches as it circles on the thermals searching for food.  Fox and badger trails criss-cross among the bluebells. The white tails of Rabbits disappear down into their burrows; they are out and about in numbers this morning. Segways and quad bikes are the only occasional disturbance during the daytime to this peaceful haven.

 Turning the corner at the bottom of this L-shaped wood the tree line narrows into a path. A little shrew shuffles from one side to the other or is it escaping from the circling buzzard?

The bluebell undergrowth now gives way to intermittent primroses from earlier in the spring also holly bushes and straggling ivy. The pervading fragrance of the spring wildflowers now starts to give way to the more pungent aroma of the fields where the farmer has spread contents of several tanks of liquid manure.

 The walk continues along the rubble-filled pathway until it meets with a gateway which opens out on a wide expansive vista looking out across the East Devon countryside and down to Escot House, a large house rebuilt in 1837 after a fire.  It has an eerie Georgian appearance rising out of the early morning mist and you can imagine visitors arriving in horse-drawn carriages. Further behind the house, Scandinavian timber wolves, lynx, wildcats and red squirrels live as part of a study towards future reintroduction back into the countryside. An otter is rumoured to reside in the stretch of the River Tale below. Much to Murphy’s surprise a pheasant squawks and flies into the air from the long grass alongside the pathway, its blue, green and red plumage shining in the morning sun. The brightly coloured feathers of the male bird are in contrast to grey plumage of the trio of guinea fowl wandering across the field in their never-ending search for food.  We continue along a concrete road which runs through the flat green fields at the top of the rise until we come to a gate with an old stone water trough with smelly, stagnant green water inside. Contemplating a day of work, you can only be thankful to be able to live in this wonderful part of the country. (494)

So there we have it, my first assignment. This weekend for my latest assignment I have finally fleshed out an article from the outline I worked on earlier. I will need to have a look through it again as part of the editing and proofreading process, but, I hope to be able to have that ready to go off to my tutor in the next week or so.

Looking forward I also now have another piece for the Blue Band magazine to write and of course, I have the next assignment to work on as well.

A fruitful weeks writing with an interesting week ahead

This photograph is a much-copied one from my first trip to Washington DC with Flag Officer Plymouth’s  Band under the direction of then Lt David Cole RM. We stayed out at Andrew’s AFB, where Airforce One is based. We were hosted by The Presidents Own Band of the US Marine Corps. They looked after us very well, in fact, this was the first time that I had had the pleasure of a team of roadies who set up all our equipment and it was an amazing experience. Our host, one of the Presidents Own officers, took us around several sites including this visit to the White House. The President at the time was Ronald Regan and he was on an Easter visit to Hawaii. We were afforded a complete tour around the White House and the RN Photographer with us came up with this shot. I seem to remember that I somewhere up on the right side.

It has been a bit of a fruitful week for my writing this week and on the whole, I have been keeping up with most of my goals. To coin a well-worn phrase from my days in the Royal Marines, I’m well chuffed.

Today, Saturday, I have written the outline for an article for the latest assignment of my Creative Writing course. I have to outline and writing articles for two very different magazines. I have one almost complete but I have been struggling to find an idea and magazine to place it. Initially, I had come up with two ideas which required a bit of research. I sent out emails and unfortunately, I have heard nothing back from anyone. This is just one of those things that you have to come to expect as a writer sadly, so I have put those ideas back on the shelf for another time. It is sad really as one was going to be aimed at a local, to Exeter, magazine. I had an event in mine and I wanted to take the reader around some of the City’s excellent venues. This would have been an excellent publishing opportunity for me with some advertising for those that I was trying to contact.

It is amazing though where and when an idea for an article will strike though. This morning Kathy and I took our little Murphy to the groomer. It was a new location and whilst Murphy was having his monthly spruce up, I sat in the car with my laptop to do a bit of writing. When I finished what I was doing I went back into the groomer and started chatting and low and behold another idea for an article popped up. Thankfully I had my notebook with me so I have the notes for future work.

On Monday evening at Ottery Writers, I read my article that is going to be published in the forthcoming edition of the Royal Marines Band Service Journal ‘The Blue Band’.

I’m honoured to say that the excellent and talented writers gathered for our first meeting of 2020 greeted it with great acclamation. It then brought about much conversation around the subject matter which was most pleasing.

It also confirmed to me that this was a subject that I can market elsewhere without too much further research.

I have also come up with an idea for a follow-up article, which, I have briefly discussed this with the editor and will be planning a pitch very soon.

So those of you who receive ‘The Blue Band’, I hope you will enjoy the piece and for those of you who don’t, I will endeavour to get permission to post it over on my blog in due course.

And in other news, a visit to ‘The Nog Inn’ here in Feniton last Saturday has led to a cracking idea for a short story. I have blasted out an initial few hundred words and I will work on further in the coming days ahead.  Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Eddie the Spray is proving quite humorous!

As I said at the beginning of this blog, it has been a fruitful week for writing. I have a number of articles to work on, a couple of short stories to round off and if you live in East Devon I will be featured in next month’s Ottery Writers piece in the Ottery Gazette.

Let’s see what the week ahead brings!

It's 2020 - We're Still Here - The World hasn't Ended!!

Well, we made it! The world hasn’t come to a fiery end although it must feel like it in Australia at the moment sadly. We are able to keep smiling here, but only just!

Happy New Year to you all! 2019 was the year that I finally revealed myself as a writer and 2020 is the year in which I am determined to make my name as a professional writer!

Over on my Facebook page (yes, there is a link to it on here) a couple of weeks ago I published a piece about the vision and goals for my writing over the next few years.  I thought I might share them on here as the first post for 2020.

I subscribe to two monthly writing publications, Writers Magazine and Writers Forum. In the January edition (out in December 2019) of Writers Magazine, there were two excellent pieces about setting out a vision covering the next five years and another on setting goals for the next year or so. After reading these a couple of times, I sat down before Christmas and scribbled down a few pages of where I want my writing to take me and here is the outcome.

To write non-fiction and fiction every day, to market myself as a professional writer and to add to my income to enable my wife and me to have a better and more relaxed way of life.

That seems a fairly simple and clear vision. I think if I can achieve that then I will have generated a body of work that I will be able to pitch to Editors and Publishers on a regular basis earning an income at the same time.

From that vision, I was then able to think about my writing goals for the next year or so and here they are:

Short term - in the next 12 to 18 months for my writing to pay fully for a holiday by:

·          Enjoying writing.

·         Completing my writing course.

·         Continually examining worldwide markets for nonfiction opportunities of any kind and grow my submissions to at least one a week.

·         Write at least three letters/fillers to magazines each week.

·         Update Social Media and Blog every week.

·         Compile a collection of short story ideas for competitions.

·         To get myself recognised as a reliable writer via Social Media boosts and Blog updates and any other channels that become available.

·         To keep going with book ideas in the background.

Long Term – 5 years

·         To have my writing to fully support our income.

I think that my vision and goals are very achievable and now that 2020 is here I am excited to get stuck into them. I know it is a bit of a cliché but I want 2020 to give everybody a clear vision of where they will see me as a writer. For writing to become more and more part of my everyday life and when we get to this time next year, I want to be known as a professional writer.

No doubt over on the Social Media pages we will be seeing a lot of clichéd New Year’s resolutions over the next few days, which is why I sat down a couple of weeks ago and thought about these.  I have exciting new challenges coming up in the next few months which I will talk about in future posts. I hope that you will have thought about where you want to be in the future and that the goals that you have set yourselves are as equally achievable as mine are.

To finish this Blog post, may I wish you a very Happy New Year and I hope that 2020 will bring you all that you wish for with happiness and success. Best wishes everybody.