Welcome to this series of writing tips. If you would like to pen a guest post for this series, email me at ACBwrites@aol.com . How many times have you read advice which encourages you to write 1,000 words a day, every day?  The purpose of this seems logical enough - if you produce a steady flow of words bit by bit your novel or short story collection will be finished. This standard gem of advice works fine if you have the time to write 1,000 words a day.  Perhaps you sprint past this word-count regularly.  If so, good for you.  However, if you aim for the golden number of 1,000 words but find yourself regularly falling short, this post is for you. Writing 1,000 words a day might be fine for people who are at home for much of the day.  It might be fine for people who work but whose partners are happy to carry the load while the writer's evenings and weekends are focused solely on writing.  But if you have kids who need takin...

Adele in The Blue Moon Cafe, Chester.  Yesterday I celebrated my 50th birthday.  First I took our dogs for a walk round Gilroy Nature Park which is already showing signs of spring.  Buds are swelling on the trees and birds were singing their fluting songs - I saw a robin, green finches, reed buntings and a mistle thrush as well as the usual mob of mallards, coots and Canada geese.   There was a woman feeding some of the horses in the adjacent field and I commented to her about their poor condition;  "Well, it's winter," she said, "so they roll in mud."  I know little about horses but they looked to be in a shabby state to me. Their coats are matted, mud-caked and damp.  While the higher half of the field looks less muddy than by the barbed wire fence, there is no truly dry area for them to stand on.  Some of the horses are wearing coats but these are filthy and damp-looking also.  There is no shelter in the field an...

As I rapidly head towards my 50th birthday, I'm a tad bewildered by 'How To Wear ...' fashion articles (pun intended).  Are methods of wearing clothes really a mystery, when all any person need do is stick their head through the neck hole, their arms through the arms holes or sleeves, pull the garment into place around the body then use any fasteners supplied.  This season's trending item will be next season's disparaged rag - assuming a person actually cares about such stuff. Thomas Joseph Walton used to say, "When I'm out, the wardrobe is out."  He was referring to his habit of wearing same clothes year in, year out.  When something finally fell into undeniable shabbiness his wife would ensure it vanished into the bin.  I saw him wear the same trousers for seven years, and they were already old when I met him.  Yet he did have better clothes; I once saw him dressed in a very smart evening suit with matching raincoat and trilby hat, when h...