So need to vote for me, but I still recommend reading the top five.
The link was unwieldy but googling "NZ Writers' College short story competition" brings it up pretty easily.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
No News Yet - And How do you Join?
No news on the short story competition yet.
And - those who successfully have - how did you become a follower? Did you have to have a google account? Many can't get to the blog, or once in, can't become a follower. Any ideas? especially Brian, Jasmine, Nick?
Cheers,
Teufel
And - those who successfully have - how did you become a follower? Did you have to have a google account? Many can't get to the blog, or once in, can't become a follower. Any ideas? especially Brian, Jasmine, Nick?
Cheers,
Teufel
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Link worked
Just to say the I successfully followed the link from this blog to the list of finalists - some had trouble from my email as it was such a long name.
Teufel
Teufel
I am a Finalist in a Short-Story Competition!
In haste: I am one of 25 Finalists in the NZ Writers' College Short-Story Competion! You can see my name "in no particular order" on their web page now, and tomorrow you can see if I've made it to the top five. Winners are being decided by five "real" writers, including Charlotte Randall, and there is also a "People's Choice" vote tomorrow, so if I make it to the final five, please have a look, read my (and any others') efforts and vote accordingly. Please also feel free to circulate to anyone who might be interested, and/or vote.
Most of you probably already have an email on this subject, sorry for the triplicate in some cases. But it's so exciting! I haven't been Mentioned in a National writing competition since 1997. I should enter more often!
I tried to insert the link to the website here, but it was too long for the blog format, so I might post this without it then try again with it.
Hasta manana!
Teufel
Most of you probably already have an email on this subject, sorry for the triplicate in some cases. But it's so exciting! I haven't been Mentioned in a National writing competition since 1997. I should enter more often!
I tried to insert the link to the website here, but it was too long for the blog format, so I might post this without it then try again with it.
Hasta manana!
Teufel
Friday, October 26, 2012
Douglas Adams Quote
The QI Elves@qikipedia
A common mistake people make when designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools DOUGLAS ADAMS
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Pity-following
Quote from my latest follower:
"Signed up as a follower. Partly because I liked it, partly because the last follower seemed to please you so much."
Both excellent reasons! Follow Nick's lead and be one of the early-adopters who can look back smugly when I'm famous and say you were in at the beginning.
It does make me so pathetically happy.
Teufel
"Signed up as a follower. Partly because I liked it, partly because the last follower seemed to please you so much."
Both excellent reasons! Follow Nick's lead and be one of the early-adopters who can look back smugly when I'm famous and say you were in at the beginning.
It does make me so pathetically happy.
Teufel
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Flaws, Heroes & Pillars of the Earth
Today's topic was to have been something along the lines of:
A flaw in a hero doesn’t bring the hero down : rather it
demonstrates that flaws do not spoil a person. We are all flawed. We can be
great despite them and with them and even if we never manage to rid ourselves
of them. Give Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth a quick read and muse upon the intertwining of good and evil, including one character doing something dreadful without which much of the action would never have occurred; Philip supporting various political
intrigues, including some which bring about the very situation that is to make his life and the good he is working so hard to create so very nearly impossible.
I have read a couple of headlines over the last week or so (but not yet taken the time to read the articles, sadly) suggesting that - gasp - flaws may have been discovered in the character and / or life of Sir Edmund Hillary. See above.
Mervyn Thompson had some whopping great flaws. Yet he was one of the greatest creative types and one of the most sincerely loving people I have ever come across. Despite everything.
Stephen Fry had the whole running-off-with-his-family-friend's-credit-card thing, after years of underachieving (for him) at school and stealing lollies and money from the boys and masters.
Plenty of characters in Pillars of the Earth (to briefly get back to the point) could have thrown their hands up in horror at either their own terrible shortcomings or their latest disaster - yet when they didn't, when they kept putting one foot in front of the other, after the style of the Large Woman Walking With Shopping Bags near Totton, or Dori and Nemo (just keep swimming ...), there always came a moment where life rushed in again and they were once more in the flow.
Even when character A (not to spoil the story for those who haven't read it yet) learnt what character B had once done, s/he didn't go and tell on her/him, he/she had the good sense to keep it in the past and keep going.
Yet with all this sturdy fortitude and gumption in the face of sometimes the most appalling adversity, those who deliberately use foul means in the quest for fair ends are not approved. Those who make the best of whatever has already been, morally questionable or otherwise, have life turn out the best for. To turn a cliché round inelegantly.
But the phone beeps, so I must away in an attempt to complete the most essential of three-days-ago's petty work before the close of e'en. Does God exact day-labour, light denied? Only if the bed's been stripped but not yet made.
Still foolishly holding to the hope of future regularity,
Teufel
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