The Write Stuff

 

POTD 16Feb11, originally uploaded by andyskelton-a Blog a day http://andrewskelton.net.

Hello again, Blog time so soon? If I seem distracted or even less verbose in the coming month, I have a bit of an excuse. One of the wildlife magazines I read is having a Nature Writer of the Year competition and I’ve decided I’m going to enter. The piece has to convey the person’s experience of wildlife and be around 800 words long.

Now one of my normal blogs is around 250-300 words long, and as such 800 words doesn’t seem very daunting, in fact, 800 words might even be a bit limiting so I will have to carefully word each sentence (if I were playing Just A Minute, I wouldn’t have lasted very long there, too much repetition of the word “word” – Paul Merton would have caught me out straight away).

The big stumbling block at the moment is what subject to choose? What wildlife subject do I know well enough to write 800 words about, words worthy of publication in a major magazine. I have a few ideas which I’ll be spending the next week dwelling upon, and possibly drawing out a rough draught or two, but the big question, will any of them be good enough to win? Well, only time will tell.

The Photo? Oh yes, I’d nearly forgotten. Usual suspect on the feeder, hoovering up all the sunflower seeds I put out, however I’ve never really seen a bird with it’s eyes closed! As I’ve said before, such close-ups have allowed me to observe things previously unseen – for example the eyelid is an exact colour match to the birds feathers. And you can tell that to the birds!

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