CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Because we all love Shakespeare, right? Of course, we do, since he was the master. So, sonnets. Sonnet basics: The Shakespearean sonnet is also called the English sonnet; Each line has five pairs of syllables, and every second syllable is stressed - this is called an iambic pentameter;  The sonnet is divided into three verses of four lines; There is a rhyming scheme: abab cdcd efef (meaning the last word of the first line of each verse rhymes with the last word of the third, and the end of second line rhymes with the end of the fourth); There are two more lines at the end of the poem, after the third verse; These last two lines end with words that rhyme with each other: gg. Notes on Writing: I found this incredibly hard to write, and I'm not sure the iambic pentameter is perfect, but everyone has to start somewhere. I wish you good luck with yours. Example Sonnet: "Do not laugh at me," roared my inner ghost "Keep me secret. Keep me safe. Tell you...

The Back-on-Track Challenge and the last university semester have taught me that I have some balancing to do in order to make all the bits of my life fit. Being a full-time student, and wanting to achieve good grades is a full-time job, and that means that, during semester, my writing can’t be. This has meant that I haven’t been making regular releases and that I’ve been expecting too much of myself as a writer, so I’ve had to make a few changes. The first of these is that I had to revamp my writing schedule to take some of the pressure down. Instead of aiming at a release a week, I’m aiming at having a release every 2nd month, starting in January 2016. It also means that I can’t keep working on a ‘backlog’, but that I have to work out how to move forward with what I have, and then to keep moving forward as I keep writing. To do this, I did the following: I rescheduled all the work I’d completed, with the first release coming out in the first week of January. This gave me com...

It's late spring in Australia - the last month of spring, to be exact, so I thought I'd share a couple of butterflies that came to visit. At first glance, they don't look like much... and they're fairly well camoflauged. And then they start to open their wings, and we see a flash of promise. If we shift the angle, just a little bit... We saw more of the colour hidden inside And then a little more... Until the butterfly reveals its true colours...  ...and then it flies away.

This was the first week after university ended—a week I’d set aside for catching up with everything I knew would have to go by the wayside if I was to hit the assessments right, and went okay. I started putting in 3,000 words on my NaNo novel instead of the usual 2,000, and discovered that 2,000 was my comfort point for a day’s work on a single project, even with an outline. I caught up on housework, but there’s still a ways to go, and I kicked off my walking program… again. Honestly, who’da thunk it would be so hard to just go for a half hour walk in the morning and evening of every day? It’s like trying to write a poem and a piece of flash each day—not as easy as it sounds. I also started in on the garden, although forgot to take pictures, and I even continued with attempting to develop a sleep pattern, which is not easy when your partner is a shift-worker. All in all, a good week, and a good way to start working on that whole life-balance thing I keep hearing about. And speaki...