I love this book. Written by the handsome E.I. Wong (his words), the hopefully formerly depressed human of A Narcissist Writes Letters to Himself fame*, Poet Robot is made of exactly the kind of twisted humour I wasn’t sure other people had. It’s about the hilarious cruelty of life, the truth that we are nothing more than monkeys in shoes. The fact that most of us, in those dark corners of our minds that we don’t ever dare show anyone else, all want to kill some of the other people**. It’s human darkness warped into comedy. It also contains the world’s best lesson on the dire consequences of misplaced commas.

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It’s cold outside. The lights and glitter are gone. The novelty of my new socks has worn off. It’s January.

This is my apology for a lack of posting recently. You know how it is. You’re too busy preparing for Christmas one minute, drunk and full of cheese for about a week after the big day and then hungover and bloated for the first week of January. So here’s my New Year’s Resolution:

I promise I’ll get back to work soon!

As a gesture of good faith, I have taken most of the junk off my desk, turned on my computer, wrote seven words of my novel and posted this, so I’m making an effort. I’m just not sure I’m ready to commit to a full day’s writing. Perhaps tomorrow…

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Out of Reach.”

She would do anything to go back and change that night. She took everything from him, his family, his safety, the life he knew, all in exchange for a moment’s ‘freedom’, a ‘freedom’ no better than his imprisonment. At least in chains, he had been safe. Tucked away in that hidden corner, nobody had been able to hurt him. Until she came along.

As soon as escape beckoned to her, she had taken it. She had left him to face the dangers. Left him behind. He was out there alone. No one could help him. He was out of reach.

1. Don’t use adverbs unnecessarily
2. Avoid clichés like the plague.
3. Try not to beat around the bush by using a shed-load of really long sentences because they just clog up your writing, like a backed up drain, and make your point extremely difficult for your readers to either find, work out or even get to since the chances of them actually hacking their way through your ridiculously verbose and woolly one hundred and seventeen word sentence are unbelievably slim and they are far more likely to have simply given up or abandoned ship when they first saw how it took up four or five lines of the page when they initially opened it in their browser, so just cut to the chase — in other words, be succinct.

Tip: Writer’s Block

“Suggestions? Put it aside for a few days, or longer, do other things, try not to think about it. Then sit down and read it (printouts are best I find, but that’s just me) as if you’ve never seen it before. Start at the beginning. Scribble on the manuscript as you go if you see anything you want to change. And often, when you get to the end you’ll be both enthusiastic about it and know what the next few words are. And you do it all one word at a time.”
(Neil Gaiman)

Writer’s block will strike us all at some point. It’s annoying and frustrating. Sometimes, it feels like you’ll never get over it. Sometimes, you can’t. But that’s a last resort. Here’s my advice for overcoming that demon before you exorcise it with fire.