I’ve been reading a lot of ‘ how-to ’ books on writing novels recently, the majority of them talk about creating an outline even before writing the first draft. For those of us who have attempted this sort of thing it does make sense. Step 1: Create and outline of your story, know where and when everything will happen. Step 2: Write your first draft, don’t worry about spelling mistakes or typo’s just let your creative voice have free reign so you can get the story out there. As Joanna Penn says ‘ splurge on words and ideas ’ in this first draft. Step 3: Spent time editing. That is using your critical voice, correcting the spelling mistakes and typo’s, rewriting and polishing the story. The problem is that we spend a lot of time on step 1 and never seem to be able to finish.

The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. This is the first line of The Gunslinger and is an excellent summary of everything that happened in this book.

This book is part of the Christian Encounters series. A series of biographies that highlight well known people from all ages and areas of the Christian Church. Some are familiar faces, like our friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Others are unexpected guests. This is the first book I've read in this series and I found it to be an approachable biography, mainly due to the fact that it's a short and quick read (about 130 pages), unlike some of the other biographical tomes out there. So while it's not too in-depth we still get a comprehensive overview of J.R.R Tolkien's life and I was left with a more intimate idea of who he was. My favourite part was the final section which looked at Tolkien's influence and legacy. It was really concise and, if anything, I would have loved to spend more time exploring that area. I would recommend this as a starting point for those wanting to read a biography on J.R.R. Tolkien. In a sense, the history of Middle-earth was his own version o...

How Can A Snail Be Linked To An Unsolved Mystery? Over the time that I have been collecting interesting web articles I've come across several posts about the prevalence of snails fighting knights in the margins of illustrated medieval manuscripts.   What's that all about?  I hear you ask...  Well the simple answer is 'We don't know, it's a mystery' Leaveth mine own cabbages beyou foul beast from hell. Apparently it's very common to see images of armed knights fighting snails, especially in hand drawn margins.  Just because these doodles  can be found everywhere it doesn't mean that the experts have any idea what they mean.  Most of these images show the snails generally on the winning side and the knights who are facing them bewildered or scared. Those who comment on these images believe that it's some sort of private joke that has been lost over time.