Freedom From The Mundane

New Issue of The Scruffy Dog Review

Image: thescruffydogreview.com

I missed Groundhog Day on Tuesday. I only know about it because of the Bill Murray film of the same title. I love that film—think I’ll have to get a copy and watch it soon. As it turns out in real life, Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. I could have seen that one coming!!

The day job is calming down into a more controllable state. There’s still a lot of pressure but it’s eased, for which I’m thankful. A manager involved in the recent trouble handed me an envelope yesterday by way of thanks. I was a little embarrassed but very grateful when I opened it.

I began (albeit a little late) the article re-write for TLB. It’s already written in pretty good English so transforming it into Traditional English is proving to be harder than I thought. I once did a re-write for a Russian client who had written an article in his best, but extremely poor English. It took me ages trying to understand what he was talking about and then turning it into understandable text.

I re-read Luke Wright’s new book, High Performance. It really is a wonderful example of contemporary poetry; humorous, a subtle darkness and with a topical potency to many a young man’s life. There is much I can learn from Luke’s writing. I’ve long admired his stand-up poetry, but now he has turned to the page it really does elevate him into a new level of poet.

The new issue of The Scruffy Dog Review came out the other day. The Winter 2010 issue has lots of fiction and poetry goodies, an interview with Robert Gregory Browne, and Devon Ellington’s regular column, The Literary Athlete (part 2 of 3 in a series on writing workshops, conferences and groups). You will also find my own regular column, Scotland’s Treasure, this month with an exclusive review of the newly released A Sort of Homecoming album from Four Trak Records.

Today I really have to complete that TLB article and there is a tonne of fiction I need to turn around that has come back and not been put back out again. I’ve been kind of slack on that lately. There’s also a number of competitions on the go at the moment to where I’ll send a lot of them, but there are a couple of bigger competitions involving writing in a whole new genre entirely, that have captured my imagination. I’ll know more after this evening.

The Scruffy Dog Review – Winter Issue OUT NOW!!