Category Archives: Writing
The Imaginary Girls are coming
I mentioned this a few days back: Imaginary Girls is a fun project, halfway between writing exercise and flash fiction.
The idea: take one photo, and write a 100-words story/character sketch based on it. A “drabble”, to call it properly.
Any genre. 100 words. Not 99, not 101.
As I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and now I feel like trying, and here’s what I will do: I will publish my Imaginary Girls on Instagram.
I did a little research, and found out that Instagram allows up to 2200 characters of caption for the images that users upload. Continue reading
Imaginary Girls
Yesterday’s short bits about cities as people reminded me one of my old – very old – projects that went nowhere.
I’ve got a few of those.
The project was called Imaginary Girls, and it was partially inspired by a song by a long gone band called Danny Wilson, called – you guessed it – Imaginary Girl
He said an imaginary girl
Is so exciting
Marry an imaginary girl
And you need nothing
In writing
The idea was to write a series of drabbles, based on a series of photographs. Continue reading
Four Cities
It is all my friend Claire’s fault, of course.
She just posted about this interesting writing prompts website, and in particular she mentioned the prompt about describing your city as a person.
I did some attempt at it on Claire’s page, but then I thought I’d like to expand on that.
Leaving Castelnuovo Belbo out of the picture, if you please, because after my first attempt at Claire’s, I am sure it would be just an exercise in necrophilia.
And because it’s not my city, or town or village or hole in the ground.
I’m just living here, but I do not belong. Thank goodness!
As I mentioned in the past, I am a two-cities kind of guy.
A girl I knew once said it’s because I am a Gemini.
But I really have four cities, so maybe I’m a Gemini with Gemini ascendant, who knows. Or maybe it’s just superstitious rubbish, and I’m in fact one of those “city slickers” Joe Jackson mentioned a long time ago…
We think we’re pretty smart
Us city slickers get around
And when the going’s rough
We kill the pain and relocate
We’re never married
Never faithful not to any town
So here goes, my web-exclusive Four Cities, an exercise in impromptu urban fantasy.
Enjoy. Continue reading
Rejection slips
Got a rejection in the mail this morning.
Short pitch for a novelette – general plot and a 500 words scene.
It was a long shot.
Two hours at the keyboard, one night, a long time ago.
It happens.
Getting rejection slips is part of the game of writing and submitting to publishers.
Sometimes our stories are just not good enough.
No conspiracies, no misunderstandings of our art, no bullshit.
The submitted material was not good enough.
A writer trying to make this their work should learn to take stock, accept the rejection and move on.
And start thinking at possible ways to recycle the material.
Talking of which… Of course my Patreon supporters might get a chance at reading both outline and sample scene, for their delectation.
I suffered for my art, now it’s their turn.
1991
This is probably the worst writing job I took this year.
No, hold it.
Probably researching the connection between Nazi occultism and sexual magic for a client of RE:CON was the worst, but this one comes damn close.
I am revising a novel I wrote when I was 24.
And boy is it tiresome.
This I have to say about the myself that lived in 1991: the kid had some pretty cool ideas.
Granted, he stole most of them from Michael Moorcock, Edward Bryant, Arthur Byron Cover and Tanith Lee, but as that guy said, you gotta steal from the best.
The novel, written in Italian of course and with a title taken from a song by Toyah Wilcox – a fact that, I am sure, dates the whole business nicely – is roughly 40+ thousand words, and is built like a mystery. Continue reading
Karavansara 