charles barrow's writing

Isle of Wight Pride today #iownmydestiny photo is the author's own

I recently watched actors Aidan Turner and Toni Collette on the Graham Norton show, and they both mentioned how often they checked the time to see it was 11:11. They both said that it happened more often than would seem likely, and had no explanation as to why it should happen with this combination of numbers more than any other. It was fascinating to hear other people talk about this so publicly, on television, because the same thing has been happening to me for years. It happened again this morning, which prompted me to post this. I have puzzled in the past, why and how it should be that I so often glance at my watch or a clock at this exact time but I've never figured out why. After watching the Norton show, I decided to Google 11:11 and quickly wished I hadn't - Global Shopping Festival, Uri Geller's theory of 11 parallel universes, a message from the angels, and many more bizarre theories. I've decided that from now on, when it happens again, I will just accept...

I was out walking and the sight of this beautifully elegant stand of foxgloves stopped me dead in my tracks. Not literally, luckily, but it could have done. Every part of the foxglove plant is poisonous. A fatal dose would stop your heart in, well, a heartbeat. Handy to know if you want to bump someone off, in a story of course. Look no further for evidence than crime queen Agatha Christie who used this method to kill victims in several of her stories. Elegant but deadly, then. The foxgloves too. Photo is the author's own

I've got reservations. Not the type that'll get me into a swanky hotel, but reservations about my story, as a trilogy, and more specifically the endings of each story. And it's daft, but I worry that neither Parts 1 nor 2 have a proper ending - and don't even ask about my fears for the ending that I've crafted for Part 3. With a cool head, I realise that endings in parts 1 and 2 of trilogies are, by their very nature, open, otherwise how would the story continue? So, I suppose, my worries are more about whether the endings, though open, are satisfying. I believe that I've ended each one in a good place, plot wise. Something has been achieved, the task that has occupied the characters has been completed (a monster slain, if you like), while another path has opened up before them. And this is how it should be, isn't it? An ending, of sorts, and then a continuation. It's not an easy line to walk in a satisfactory way, but I think I've done it well eno...

I'm still editing my story. It's been a long road, littered with many perils - too many characters? Not enough action? No tension? Unsatisfactory ending? I've wrestled with them all. But chief amongst my headaches at the moment are capital letters. City, city, Government, government, Abbey, abbey, Sergeant, sergeant. I thought I knew these rules but suddenly I've become unsure and have lost my way. I can't tell you how many times I've changed some of these examples from lower, to upper, and then back to lower again. I've googled and feel none the wiser, I bought a book on punctuation, I've studied other novels, but I never seem to find the exact right example in the exact right context. I've almost decided to use lower case in every single instance, figuring that there will still be mistakes, but fewer on average. After all, this system never hurt k.d. lang or ee cummings. I could do worse than follow their example.

I just spent an hour in my local library. I usually read novels but I went in to find a short story to read. Any short story. I want to study short story writing, good and bad. Finding time, making time, to sit in a library and read is a surprisingly hard thing to do for some reason. I could of course take books out to read at home but this exercise is about sitting in my local library and reading whichever story I pick out from the rather small selection of volumes that my local library stocks. Perhaps short stories aren't very popular amongst borrowers so the library doesn't stock many titles or, conversely, maybe they are incredibly popular and all out on loan. It's an enjoyable project. I have read a Dickensian whodunnit (Edward Marston), a pulp fiction mystery (Micky Spillane), a sci-fi classic (Ray Bradbury) and a couple of dreadful horror stories - as in horror stories that were dreadfully bad and so I will leave the authors anonymous. There have al...

Eleven months away. There were personal reasons, and big events. A change of heart, and then staying true. A lot of hard work and an easing back. Questioning if I was still on the right track, and very many rail journeys. A year in a life in the blink of an eye. Now, where were we? Photo is the author's own.