charles barrow's writing

 I went walking through Kipling's Garden in Rottingdean (East Sussex) recently, I'd been looking forward to going for a long while, and it proved to be both a winning and a disappointing experience. Winning, you say? Yes. The garden is quite large and sub-divided into several smaller 'rooms' with different planting, and features, in each. And I was able to wander down brick paths from one room to another, in a haphazard way, enjoying the cobblestone walls, and the peep-hole windows, and the shrubs that were still blooming in November, one with a gorgeous scent, and small pale pink flowers, that I guessed was a Daphne but I couldn't be certain. Disappointed? Yes. Although the garden did originally belong to Kipling when he lived in the nearby house, it didn't look anything like the garden that I walked through, which was transformed into it's current layout/design by a subsequent owner. Hmmm. I wanted to imagine Rudyard wandering through it, and pausing to si

Reviewing my reading list from last autumn, I see that it consisted entirely of Stephen King books, great stuff, but this year's bookshelf is far more varied genre-wise, and far more diverse author-wise. A mix of ethnicities, genders and sexualities. This selection is far more representative of who and what I've been reading this year. I often look to see which authors are being nominated for prizes, and try to read the books that win them. I also take note of what Barack Obama reads, he recommends some good stuff. I've just seen a long range weather forecast for the UK, and they are warning of a long cold winter ahead. From a curl up and read point of view that is nothing but good news. Photo is the author's own.

 Pleased to share the news that I had a drabble published yesterday at 101words.org Do please have a read, and leave a comment, or Tweet, or share. Many thanks. 'Pain lances through her chest, stealing her breath. Foolish to be exerting herself like this, but damn the doctor’s orders.'  Read More Here

Here is the first drabble I wrote. I think I might have mentioned, in an earlier post, that I wrote it to send to a website that was calling for competition entries. They set the gene as SciFi, and the theme as Inventions . I spent a lot of time on this, a new writing form for me, honing and editing until I was happy. I had a lot of fun with it, and when it was finished I emailed it off, meeting the given deadline, and was very pleased with myself for having had the discipline to complete the given task. Listen, I know some people can knock out a great drabble in five minutes flat, but that's not how I work. I write, I edit, I leave well alone for a few days, I return to write, I re-edit, then ignore for a week, then return etc etc. I'd still be working on it now if the deadline hadn't forced me to send it out. Anyway, there was no happy ending to this story. I logged on, on the day following the competition deadline, only to find that the website hadn't changed, the la

I struggle with similes, and metaphors. I mean I struggle to invent them. Whenever I'm writing a sentence, and I'm on a collision course with one or the other, when I know I'm going to need to invent one in the next 5 seconds, then I start to sweat. When I reach the point of no return, I usually drop a couple of question marks as place holders, in lieu of the magic metaphor, and then move on with the rest of the sentence, fully intending to return once I've given the problem some thought. So, no, they don't come naturally. It might take me hours, sometimes days, to think of one that I'm happy with. Often I never come up with anything, and then I'll go back and restructure a sentence so as to avoid the need. Occasionally, though, one will just pop into my head, like the simile in the header here, that I really like, and that I think is a cut above my usual standard. Unfortunately, this one occurred when I wasn't writing anything. So this is an orphan simi

  Are we still in lockdown? I know that people in some parts of the country are back in lockdown, but here in the south, where I live, we aren't (technically) though many of our freedoms are still curtailed, or re-curtailed (if that's even a word), so it certainly feels as though I'm still living in the shadow of it. Maybe I'll have to find a new word to use in my headings that better sums the up the new reality of where we are. Anyway, the thrust of this post is intended to be about the learning that I've done over the past few months as a way of reminding myself that I haven't just been resting on my laurels, or wallowing in self pity on a full-time basis. I've not been standing still, there has been forward motion, albeit at a stately pace. I've completed two on-line writing courses over the summer. The first was about memoir writing, and I did it through the DailyOm website. I have no intention of writing my memoirs, but it looked like a really inter

Time for some good news.  I've had a (very) short story accepted for publication by 101words.org I've mentioned before that I've been focussing on writing drabbles recently. These are 100 word stories, that I find challenging but fun to write. I visit them everyday, and tinker around (add a word here, cut a word there), and I find this a really good way for me to keep writing when I'm not really in the right place to focus on my main work in progress. Earlier this year I had a drabble finished and polished, and I sent it out to a website that was running a competition, I was so pleased with myself for actually sending it out, and literally the day after I sent it the site crashed. It completely disappeared from the internet, and has never returned. Sigh. I took that as a sign that maybe the story wasn't great, I mean, it literally blew up a website. So I filed that story and started another, and found another site that accepted submissions. This one is the above men

Thirty years ago, or so, I wrote a romcom. It was a gay romcom, set in a karaoke bar, called Dolly Would. It was a musical gay romcom, all the characters sang country songs, when they fell in love, or when their man done them wrong, and broke their heart (which happened a lot). I wrote is as a film script originally, it morphed out of another script about rent boys and working girls in Brighton. That script, Fairy Tale, had a producer attached for a while, but the deal fell through, and I lost my way with it, put it a drawer for a few years and forgot about it... until I fetched it out and re-worked it into that county+western themed love story. Eventually, as in years later, it got re-written again, this time as a novel. It changed a lot in the transition, but I always felt that it lost more than it gained, so I put it back into that drawer, where it remains; the drawer where many of my favourite stories go to die. I mention it here because I made a momentous decision about it this we

I've lost my way a little recently, with my writing I mean. I finished my last writing project, John Mann - At Day's End, and published it over 18 months ago, and I've struggled to find a project to focus on since then. I've had plenty of story ideas, and that's probably the problem, I've had too many ideas. It seems like a good problem to have in many ways, too many ideas, but a problem is a problem no matter how it presents itself. I've followed each of those ideas for a distance, a period of time, be it a matter of hours, days or weeks. I've outlined the whole story of one, written a couple of chapters of another, noted detailed dialogue from a scene for a different one altogether. I'm a bit like a dog whose attention keeps getting sidetracked from the stick, to a scent, to a butterfly, to the ball. I focus intently, for a time, and then something else catches my attention and I move on. Is this a personality disorder, a form of writer's block

Lockdown continues to ease, but not all my anxieties ease along with it. Few aspects of life seem like normal life yet. I wear a mask on the bus, and on the train. I wear a mask in the supermarket. Outside the Apple store an employee wants to take my temperature before I'm allowed to enter. I ask her what will happen if I test positive for a high temperature; will I just be turned away? Will she offer me follow up advice? Counselling? She seems confused by my questions, and doesn't attempt to answer them. I feel bad that I asked her, though I think my questions are legitimate. I feel bad for her that she's out here alone on the frontline, facing people like me who ask awkward questions. I'm not happy but I allow her to take my temperature, and I pass the test, so she asks me to join a queue to get through the front door of the store. I'm vaguely relieved to learn that I'm not being turned away, and that I have no discernible sign of illness, but I don't want

I'd been giving myself a lot of grief lately, because I'd not been working on my current writing project (WIP = work in progress). I just couldn't settle down to it. The weird conundrum of lockdown is that I suddenly have acres of spare time but no drive or energy to do anything much with it. And that time has been passing, those days have been racking up into months, and my WIP hasn't gotten any fatter (unlike yours truly). But, what I'd been forgetting is that I have been working on drabbles, in a different notebook, all this time. Everyday, in fact, I work on the latest, like some people might work on the daily crossword. I do think of them as a form of puzzle to be solved...'write a story, in exactly 100 words.' They are tricky things to get right, using the exact right words (as I've said here before) and I enjoy the challenge. Anyway, what I've only just realised is that these ultra short stories I've been working on are directly related to

Lockdown has forced many of us to live more insular lives. We've been confined to our homes, and been unable to socialise with others, unless it's been remotely, online. We've been unable to venture out into the wider world, and so that world, at least for me, has shrunk to the size of a laptop screen. That screen is now the window through which I look to find my entertainment, my inspiration, and my news. But a lot of that news has been very troubling and downright disturbing. The virus is still lurking and waiting to spike again, despite government reassurances. Images of police brutality against another black man fill my screen, and despite an outpouring of righteous anger in cities across the globe, our leaders don't appear to be listening to the people, or perhaps they just don't care, and think they can ride it out because anger will always burn back down to a simmer. It's hard to be saturated with this news and not roil with frustration, resentment, and f

There are blessings to be counted. Sure, there have been dark times, during these dark days of lockdown, both emotionally and psychologically, but we have been blessed with the best spring weather that I can remember. So, I've been able to spend much time out of doors, in the garden, in nature, in the sunshine. Also, on walks around the neighbourhood, and further afield. And during this time I've heard some beautiful birdsong, there is a local blackbird that is looking to break the world record for the longest and most beautiful song ever sung, and I've seen some stunning sights. Here's one. Scarlet poppies against an azure sky. Spirits lifted. Job done Mother Nature. Photo is the author's own.

It's been a sunny Sunday morning, with a chilly bite to the breeze but, still, a great day for gardening. I was out there for hours, with a break for lunch, and finally got around to doing some of the tasks that I've been meaning to do for weeks. I cut down a couple of dead shrubs, pruned the overgrown ornamental grass, re-potted the small myrtle. And I sowed carrot and beetroot seeds. And marigold, nasturtium, and dwarf sunflower seeds for a bit of colour in the summer. And I pottered around for a while, without aim. This is a vitally important part of gardening. Empty your mind, and wander around, trowel in hand but with no particular aim, other than to admire the plants. It's the emptying of the mind that is the important part. Existing in neutral for a while. I had a down day yesterday. No energy, dark thoughts, no wish to do anything, say anything, read or write anything. I probably wouldn't have eaten much either if dinner hadn't been cooked for me. I've

Back in February I wrote a post about preparing to move home, and making plans for the future. Well, what's that saying about God laughing while we make plans? As I was writing that, Covid-19 must have been in the news, albeit as a problem on a distant horizon, a problem that would surely never affect us here in England, but it clearly wasn't alarming enough for me to make mention of it, or think for one moment that it would affect the whole world to the degree that it has. I had no idea either, of course, that I'd lose my mum less than two months later. She was poorly, but she'd been poorly several times before and she'd pulled through. So circumstances change, and plans change with them. Back in Feb I was planning to find a new job, a new challenge to take my life in a different direction. Now I plan what I might have for lunch, what I could cook for dinner that would make a nice change. I plan to visit the supermarket, two days hence and remember the celery thi

One of the few silver linings of this lockdown malarky is that the pace of life has slowed down. The frenetic pace of life that we were expected to maintain, which was quite frankly exhausting, is something that I don't miss at all. Now I can move around the house and garden at my own pace. I can study the flower borders to see what's happening down there at ground level. I can study the pots in the greenhouse, where I have sown chilli, tomato, courgette, squash, basil and coriander seeds. I can check them at hourly intervals. I am learning the art of patience. I can sit on the garden bench and watch, and listen to, the song birds squabble at the feeders. I can study the buds on the apple and almond trees, and make note, every day, as more of those buds burst open, and the trees are gradually covered in pastel pink blossoms. I can also take the time, with my small fishing net, to catch and release all the flying insects that trap themselves inside the conservatory, I've got

As I type this, 99 year old Captain Tom Moore has completed 100 laps of his garden, ahead of his 100 th  birthday, and raised over £18 million for NHS charities. It’s an astounding achievement, and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by his determination, and the way people worldwide have come together and rallied behind him. There are, and will be, many more positive stories to come out of the strange times we find ourselves living in, and they are being reported daily across the news feeds, and we need to hear them; we need cheery news, and news that we can cheer. And I hope to write posts of a more positive bent, than I’m about to, in the coming weeks because my daily reality is not all gloom and doom, but today I’m going to focus on loss, because loss is also a part of my day too. We’ve all lost a lot of things recently. Intimacy is the first thing that springs to mind. I can’t remember the last time I gave someone a hug. It was such a commonplace part of g

It's 15 days since I last posted, about Covid-19, and in that time the world has been upended. On a Macro scale things have become nightmarish, with hundreds dying in every country, and society as we knew it (certainly in the West) changing out of all recognition. The Macro, informs the Micro, of course, and individually our lives and routines have had to change and adapt too. But amongst the wholesale changes, I've managed to hold on to a few familiar things. I suspect we've all latched on to certain things that are still available and familiar and make us feel more secure in uncertain times. For me, my morning exercises (after coffee) are something that I can continue with, speaking with family and friends, texting and emailing continues too (perhaps more frequently now). Listening to the radio. Gazing out of the window at trees and clouds, a simple pleasure I've always enjoyed and can continue to enjoy. And walking is still allowed to us too, in fact it's encoura

It is seems wilfully obtuse to put up a post here and not acknowledge what's happening in the world right now. I was going to write about moving home, which I will be doing in a couple of weeks time; moving county, moving from an island to the mainland. I will probably write about all these things in the coming weeks but it seems besides the point to write about them now. Having said all of that I'm not sure what I want to say about what's happening. I could get very angry and rant about how the British Government is ploughing its own dangerous furrow when it comes to responding to the emergency. It's gone full Brexit in ignoring everything other European countries are doing or, in fact, doing the opposite. If they have closed it, we have kept it open. While they are still testing people, we have stopped. It seems bloody minded, and perverse in the extreme - but then that's Boris Johnson in a nutshell. Someone suggested I should take the opportunity to promote m

The weather has been so bad over the past couple of weeks, and there is always a temptation to search for signs that things will improve, and then to load these signs with a positive outcome. A silver lining, or a rainbow, will always do the trick, bring a surge of optimism. I'm moving, packing up my life, and moving back to the mainland. I've been living on an island for 9 years and it's time to head back to where my friends, my true home, and my heart reside. It hasn't exactly been a hasty decision, but I know that it's the right one. And now that I've pulled the trigger things will move quickly, and the upcoming weeks will be filled with planning, packing, and saying my goodbyes to the friends that I've made here. I'm optimistic about the future, things are falling into place, I've been watching for signs, and the weather is set fair on the road head. The photo is the author's own.

Traditionally, a  drabble  is a piece of fiction that is exactly 100  words long . Thank you Google. I was completely unaware that a drabble was a thing, especially a fiction writing thing. I'd heard of flash-fiction, and micro-fiction to describe short pieces, but not a drabble. Until, that is, I happened upon a Blogger blog, 101fiction, entirely dedicated to the drabble. They run a monthly drabble writing competition - t he prize is publication in their download magazine. They ask for stories of 100 words, and t hey allow only a one word title, hence the 101 of 101fiction, and they set a different theme each month, this month it's Invention . The whole idea intrigued me. I've never tried writing such a short piece of fiction before, and there was something about that title of Invention that was a great writing prompt for me. So, for that past week I've been writing a drabble. I've really enjoyed the process, the constraints that such a small word limit impose

The Stolen Days of John Mann Chapter One ‘Dear Lord, thank you for the food before us, the fire in the grate, and the roof above our head. Please spare those we love and keep us safe from harm. Amen.’ John Mann opened his eyes and placed his hands in his lap as David and Helen repeated the blessing. The boy turned in his seat to face Mann. ‘You changed the words Father.’ He has his mother’s bright eyes, thought Mann. ‘David.’ This was a rebuke from his mother. ‘The boy is right.’ Said Mann. ‘Why’d you change them?’ Asked David. ‘Prayer doesn’t lose its aim because I change some words.’ ‘God still hears you?’ ‘Always. We should never be afraid of straying from familiar paths to find new ones, even when we’re told there is only one way forward.’ David looked puzzled, ‘But Mrs Ginty says…’ ‘That’s enough son, eat your supper.’ Helen levelled a firm look at Mann. ‘It’s best we don’t have talk that runs counter to David’s schooling.’ ‘Forg