Sepia

Sepia either means a dark, reddish brown colour, or the lighter and less red tone which was once the only option in photography, but which I was unable to recreate with my digital camera and computer. It's also the fluid secreted by a cuttlefish, the pigment prepared from that, or a drawing created using it.















Don't know about you, but I'd rather have colour at the press of a button, than squeeze a cuttlefish in the hope of monochrome.

Destination

A destination is a place to which a person, or thing, is going.













You already knew that, didn't you? I expect you also realised, as soon as you spotted it, that I'd only picked the word in order to provide an excuse to post more of my travel pictures.










Is the destination of your novel somewhere on the bestseller list? If you think it has that potential, you've already got a lot of it done and it happens to have a theme of new beginnings, you might like to enter it into this competition.


Do you recognise any of these destinations?

Sustain

To sustain is to support, bear the weight of, strengthen, encourage or nourish.

It can also mean to endure or suffer, to decide in favour of something, substantiate, corroborate or maintain.

One who sustains is a sustainer. Do you qualify for that description?

Sustainability is a topical issue, meaning as it does 'avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance'. That's very important of course, but I suspect we're doing even more damage by what we're adding to the planet than what we're removing – plastic, greenhouse gasses and other pollution, nuclear and chemical weapons ... but this is a writing blog, so I won't continue in this theme sustainedly.

Sustaining interest in our writing can be something which makes many writers feel insecure. For some it can seem like they're enduring the writing process rather than being supported and encouraged by it.

For others, the worry is how to sustain a reader's interest, either as they're reading one piece, or in their writing as a whole. 

If any of those, or anything else is making you feel like an insecure writer, then you might like to consider joining the Insecure Writer's Support Group.


For me, the issue making me feel most insecure at the moment is how to achieve a sustainment of sales for my lovely books. I probably need to do some form of marketing, perhaps even make a sustained effort in that direction? 

This free to enter short story competition has the theme of sustainability. The first prize is £200 – if you don't want it, feel free to send it over and I'll recycle it for you!