Green

Green is of course the colour made by combining blue and yellow pigments. A green is an area of grass, often used for sports or recreation (putting green, village green). Greens are vegetables of any colour (eat your greens if you want to stay healthy).






Green can be used negatively to mean unripe or unseasoned (green apples are sour and green wood is unsuitable for most carpentry) naive or envious.







More positively being green is to attempt to care for our environment in numerous ways including adopting sustainable practises, limiting waste, planting trees, collecting litter and avoiding plastics,.

The University of Southampton are running a variety of free to enter writing competitions with the theme of sustainable societies. They're looking for novels, film, stage and radio plays, interactive fiction and a TV series.



I'll be green with envy if you wn this playwriting competition from Papatango – the prize is £6,000! UK and Irish residents only. There's an option to get feedback on your work, which I'm sure would be very useful.

Are you green in any way?

True

The word true has several meanings – in accordance with fact, genuine (as opposed to counterfeit), conforming to a standard, loyal, accurate, correctly balanced, honest and without variation (a true-bred Hereford cow always has a white face). It's truly a valuable word!

If you're truing something, you'll bring it into the correct form required e.g. aligning a wheel, so it runs true. One who does this trues, and afterwards they can be said to have trued. If this is done incorrectly, the result will be out of true.

Something which comes true actually happens, true ribs are attached to the breast bone (floating ribs are not) true north is determined by the earth's axis and magnetic north is somewhere else (I may travel a lot, but that hasn't improved my navigation skills! Those aren't even trueish.)

This competition from Spread the Word is for life writing – meaning it should be true. Write something full of trueness and you could win £1,500, an Arvon course and support with your writing. That's a truly great prize package!

No truth is required for this competition (except when complying with the rules). There's £1,000 on offer for writers and illustrators of children's books.

Want to read about true love? You can do that with my latest short story collection.

Cockatrice

A cockatrice (or basilisk) is a mythical reptile whose breath and look can kill. It's also a fabulous heraldic animal composed of a cock with a serpent's tail.

Unfortunately, although I've photographed may heraldic creatures I'm yet to capture a cockatrice. I'll be looking out for one on this year's trips, mostly so I can inform innocent bystanders what it is, but also to take a picture.

Thanks to Bea Charles for telling me about a free competition in Prima magazine. They're looking for 800 word stories and offering a Writer's Bureau course for the winner. You have until the end of March to enter. I couldn't find details online, but you should be able to get the magazine in most UK newsagents. It's also often held in libraries.




Another free to enter competition offereing help and support to writers is this one from Spotlight Books. They're looking for fiction and poetry from authors from underepresented backgrounds (as defined on the entry form). Winning entrants will get help with editing and polishing and recieve a publishing contract.




If you can work the word cockatrice into entries for either of these I'll be very impressed.

Do you think you'll be using today's Wednesday word of the week in any way at all?

Cat

I'm sure you're already aware that a cat is a grown up kitten, or any other member of the Felis family, such as a lion or tiger (often referred to as big cats). The term cat can also be applied to members of other species which have a catlike appearance.



If a person is described as a cat they'll almost certainly be female and definitely malicious or spiteful. To be catty is to behave as this kind of cat, not the furry four-legged version.

At one time I had a day job in which I used a cat. A cat-o'-nine-tails that is. This was a rope whip, used historically to punish sailors. It got its name from the nine knotted tails and the belief that cats have nine lives. I was gentle when I demonstrated. Well gentle-ish! (These cats were carried in bags – you didn't want to be around when the cat was let out of the bag.)

If you're a cat's paw then you're someone who is used by another, a cat burglar enters a building by climbing up to a window, balcony or roof and a cat and dog relationship is an argumentative one.

A person or thing described as the cat's whiskers or cat's pyjamas will be excellent in some way.

Here's a free to enter competition to win a three book deal with Choc Lit Publishing. The entry must feature a cat in some way. The snag is you only have until the end of next month to enter – now that's put the cat among the pigeons!

There are other phrases containing the word cat – can you think of any?

Soon

Happy New Year and happy Insecure Writer's Support Group posting day. 2019 and the first Wednesday of the month soon came round, didn't they?

I'm not actually feeling insecure right now. I refuse to dwell on anything which didn't go perfectly last year, instead I'm looking forward to all the good writing I might get done and the successes and sales which might result. I hope you too are starting the year with a certain amount of optimism?

The word soon means after a short interval of time. Eg if you'd like to enter this free competition from Forestry Commission England which offers unique access to the forests, support for your writing and £2,500 you should do so soon, as it closes on 14th January. Another free competition which closes fairly soon is the Nine Dots Prize, which offers $100,000 to write a short book answering the question, 'Is there still no place like home?'

There's no place like our camper van, which is home to us for several months each year. Here she is parked in the New Forest. (I can't tell you how smug I feel for finding a picture to represent both competitions at once!)

Or it can mean relatively early. Eg two minutes after submitting a piece of writing is too soon to
expect a reply.

Another use of soon is to show willingness or preference. Eg would you sooner write a poem or a story?

The phrase as soon as means at the moment of, or immediately Eg as soon as I start writing the typos appear. Sooner or later refers to a future unspecified time, as does soonish. They appear to imply something will happen soon, but generally that's not what's meant.

I'll be back with more free to enter writing competitions soon – hopefully with longer deadlines.

Cento

A cento is a composition made from the quotations of other authors. I can imagine it might be quite fun to create, but that it would be rather disjointed to read – and quite possibly in breach of copyright.

Just in case you fancy a go, here's a quote from my book Leave Nothing But Footprints that I'm giving you permission to include in any cento you may decide to create.

"The action was frozen a split second before the water found its target."

I picked that because I think it could be used in various ways. That's not the case with the paragraph I got just from opening the book at random.

"As Jess made a pot of tea, Eliot said, "I'm going to impress you even more now by showing you the advantages of HDR." As he brought up five images taken inside a church they'd photographed earlier in the week, he explained that by combining over and under exposed images he could capture all the details in the shadows without burning out highlights in the better lit areas."

It's hard to see how you could use that in anything other than a work involving photography. You'd probably be able to leave out the campervan though.

Did you know a cento was a thing? Would you like to read or create one?

Bluebell

A bluebell is a flower with a blue (except when it's white or pink, obviously) bell shaped flower. Which particular flower depends on where in the world you live. 

 These are English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) – which I photographed in Wales.

These are Scottish bluebells (Campanula rotundifolia) known as harebells in England.







These are Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica).

Which flowers do you think of as bluebells? 

Perchance

Perchance is another one of those words my dictionary claims poets are allowed to use whenever they like, but the rest of us should limit to historical works.

It means perhaps, maybe, by chance, or by any chance. For example, 'would you care to buy my book, perchance?'

Hmm, perchance my dictionary is right – it does sound very dated, doesn't it?

Schedule

This post has been scheduled as I'll be at sea when it's due to go out and won't be able to do it then. I do a lot of travelling, so it's not that uncommon for me to be without wi-fi access. Even so, I do sometimes feel a little insecure if I can't easily contact other people. Maybe that's the writer's need to communicate?

I'm sure writers are very familiar with schedules. When we make a list of things we intend to do, we're scheduling our time, we might schedule social media posts to promote a book, and the publications we write for may have a payment schedule.

Other meanings of schedule include making an inventory or table of contents, or including something, for example a rare bird, for preservation or protection and anything which runs to a published timetable. For example this ferry was exactly to schedule.

It's appropriate that my need to schedule this post is connected with an insecurity as this is the first Wednesday of the month and therefore an Insecure Writer'sSupport Group post.

Does being disconnected from the World Wide Web make you feel insecure?

Do you pronounce the first syllable of schedule as shed, or sked?

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