New Beginnings
Everything starts somewhere and this month I’m exploring the idea of new beginnings and in this word square you have a lot of opportunities to think about your own new beginnings too. In this one, simply choose one word from each column and create an introductory sentence for a short story, flash fiction or a novel using each of the words.
My effort is below.
“My gown fitted perfectly, everyone said so. It flared out at just the right point emphasising my hourglass figure. You could hardly tell a baby was growing, and if anyone noticed they didn’t comment, just murmured about how perfect I looked. I look ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - June 16, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing word square wordsquare writing prompt Source Type: news
High days and holibobs
This week is a photo prompt. You know the drill by now. Take a look at the photo and write the first sentence or paragraph that comes into your head.
High days and holibobs are the best days on the calendar in my opinion. A day to kick off the traces and do something different, unexpected, or relax from the usual routine and daily activities that usually consume our time.
This picture reminds me of a day that highlighted the end of one era in my life and the start of a new one. A journey that’s not finished yet.
What does this photo remind you of? Is it a time, place, or event? Or is it something yet to happen?
You ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - June 2, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
Short, shorter, brief
I was wandering around the web looking for inspiration for this week’s writing prompt whilst thinking about a video I’d seen yesterday of a musician who had challenged several creators to do a mashup of Beethoven’s 5th. And I wondered if something similar could be applied to poetry.
It occurred to me that I could take a poem about April and ask you to remake it, so it’s the same but different, but that seems a bit too close to being copyright infringement. As I was looking I came across Ogden Nash’s poem, Fleas. It’s just two lines and three words that also rhyme and so this week’s...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 26, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing poetry writing prompt Source Type: news
Get started with five easy techniques
Welcome to the second in the series of blog posts I’m writing during my time as the 2022 Hysteria Writer In Residence. Last month I talked about submission guidelines and why it really matters to pay attention to them when submitting to competitions and journals. For this month I promised a discussion about getting started and revising, and as I come to write this blog post the topic has really made me smile.
Some of you reading this will have read one or two things I’ve written, or at least know I write, submit, get published, or place in competitions reasonably regularly. This last month though? Phew. It has been an ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 23, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: El Rhodes Tags: Hysteria hysteria 2022 writer in residence Source Type: news
How to juxtapose a tree
The challenge is to expand our vocabulary and think about what words mean to us. The word of the month in May is ‘juxtapose’ as once again we find ourselves at various crossroads.
I’m really keen on expanding my vocabulary, not just because I’m a writer, but because I love the feel of words in my head and as I speak them. I mean, who on earth came up with the wonderful supercalifragilistic? And when you stop to consider a word, how did it come to represent the thing it does. How for instance did the thing with four legs we sit at to eat or work become ‘table‘?
According to the Cambridge ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 19, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
When Belle goes looking for Pip
I cannot imagine how cold it is in the seas off the coast of Britain at this time of year, but lots of people swim year round and my dog Belle (aka The Beeble) is no exception. Give her a beach with an easy access into the water and she’s off, ears flying as she throws herself into the waves.
This is pretty prosaic as pictures go, a dog in the water. But what could you do with it to make it more surreal or alternative? Is there anything you can’t see in the picture that suggests a bigger story?
You can see my effort here:
Belle flies out of the waves barking madly. Ears flying in all directions. She shakes all ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 12, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
Water water everywhere
There is nothing quite like being by the water. Whether your preference is for the beach, a cliff, stream, canal or even a long lazy bath, water has the power to calm and quiet us in ways that other spaces can’t really compete with.
This week’s word square challenge is loosely themed around water and various iterations of it. What could you do with one word from each column?
The word square is below, and for those of you who have never seen one, the idea is to take one word from each column and use them in the first sentence, paragraph, or stanza of a story or poem. You can of course take it all the way and con...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 5, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing word square writing prompt Source Type: news
How to avoid entrepreneurial failure
Starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur can sometimes seem like a bit of a lottery. Will you get the key deal you need? Will you be able to hang on through years one, two, three and five? There are many things you can do to mitigate any problems and to do your best to ensure success and perhaps the key is to be aware of the classic mistakes that almost all entrepreneurs make when they first start out.
1. Ignore Your Detractors
We all have nay-sayers amongst us, those that say ‘you should do this not that’ or ‘you should do that not this’ – the classic line being ‘if you wanted to get to there I wouldnâ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - May 3, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Writing Business Source Type: news
Synonyms and other interesting words about peace
This year’s Hysteria Writing Competition has a theme of peace and it would be easy to fall into familiar tropes and themes. Whilst a retelling in a fresh way can excite a reader, it’s rare to get something truly different so in the spirit of helping everyone along I thought I’d trawl the web’s best dictionaries and thesauri to come up with a definitive list of words/topics you could use in any writing competition that has a theme of peace.
Remember, you don’t need to use the word itself, just that the entry has to reflect the theme.
peace, peacful, peacefulness
accord
hush
quiet, quietude, qu...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 28, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing hysteria 2022 hysteria 9 Source Type: news
How to be a rockstar blogger – part 3
Create content for your audience, not yourself
Even though you are on a mission to become a Rock Star Blogger your blog is not, and never will be, about you. You may have your photo up there somewhere and possibly an ‘About Me’ page, you may even write posts about your life and experiences in the context of your subject matter, but writing only about yourself or your business is not going to win you any friends or influence people unless you are already a rock star of course.
Remember what I said in part one? Primarily people are only interested in themselves. By tapping into this mindset you can work on creating the r...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 22, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Writing Business blogging Source Type: news
Playing with vermillion
Over the last few weeks I’ve been offering up a weekly writing prompt and this week is no different. The challenge is to expand our vocabulary and think about what words mean to us. The one I’ve chosen this month is ‘vermillion‘ because it seems to symbolise the state the world has found itself in.
Merriam Webster tells us it is a vivid reddish-orange and a bright red pigment consisting of mercuric sulfide broadly any of various red pigments
I could use it to describe everything from the colour of a sunrise or sunset brilliantly reflecting the sun against the clouds and the atmosphere. I could als...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 21, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
Easter word square
Did you know that pretzels were originally eaten at Easter because they symbolise the cross or that dancing is illegal on Good Friday in Germany?
While I was creating this week’s Easter-themed word square I happened across all sorts of weird and wonderful traditions. I wonder what you might find if you went digging online?
The word square is below, and for those of you who have never seen one, the idea is to take one word from each column and use them in the first sentence, paragraph or stanza of a story or poem. You can of course take it all the way and construct a whole piece of flash fiction if you had the time an...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 14, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
Ice pool
As you already know I love strange and unusual photos and I will often carry a camera or my phone to capture something that intrigues me. Ice is one element that always has the power to surprise me as this little pool shows which had formed in a puddle on my favourite dog walk.
What does the picture invoke in you? How might you craft a story or a poem that uses this as your muse? Write quickly and without self-editing as you go along, see just how far you can get without stopping to think over what you’ve written.
You can see my effort here:
It looks like a portal to another world. Layers built on layers with a dark ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 7, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Creative Writing writing prompt Source Type: news
Life and death on the social web
Benjamin Franklin certainly made a point when he said “‘In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” With the help of a good accountant, tax can certainly be mitigated. But death, now that’s a different matter altogether.
The reason I got to thinking such gloomy thoughts was an article I was writing about LinkedIn which referenced the number of UK professionals who had an account on the network. Did you know there are over 15 million of us, that’s a quarter of the entire population of the whole country.
I realised as I was writing that it’s certainly within ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 5, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: Linda Parkinson-Hardman Tags: Technology death social media Source Type: news
5 things to think about when submitting to a writing competition
Warm greetings to you from the slightly chilly dressing table I write at in our flat. Not quite a room of one’s own, but it does the trick. If you saw the interview Linda did with me a month or so ago you’ll know who I am. If not, I’m El Rhodes, I’m an archaeologist and writer of both long and short prose and occasional bits of poetry. Â
Over the last two years, my work has been published in a lot of journals and anthologies and I’ve now placed in seventy competitions (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, micro, flash, short story, full-length manuscripts) and won twelve. Â
This year I’m teaching nature writing and ...
Source: The Hysterectomy Association - April 4, 2022 Category: OBGYN Authors: El Rhodes Tags: Hysteria hysteria 2022 writer in residence Source Type: news
