I haven’t been posting much on social media this week, mainly because in between my day job in secondary education and typesetting the manuscript for White Witch’s Hat, the second of our biannual Bindweed Anthologies, I haven’t had a lot of time left over. I’ve been busy juggling creative writing projects, though not my own work.
Actually, that isn’t entirely true. White Witch’s Hat, the title of the forthcoming anthology, is another colloquial name for convolvulus arvensis (common Bindweed). Such a spooky moniker inspired me to write a seasonal horror story set at Yule, and after it was finished, I decided to open for submissions from other ghost horror authors, making it into a themed collection. My titular story, White Witch’s Hat, is in the collection, containing spooky seasonal ghost stories by 21 authors from all corners of the world.
Regarding my job teaching creative writing, my new students this year are very motivated, and generally as a group, much more extroverted than last year’s group. After the taught half of the lesson, where I go over narrative viewpoint, characterisation and so on, I give them writing prompts and they spend the second half of the class working hard on the computers in the library. At the end of every session, I ask them to either print their work, or if they have no printer credits, to email it to me. This gives me a week to go through their WIPs and give feedback.
Have I been working on any of my own projects? Not for now, but half-term break will be coming up, and the Samhain season always inspires me. I’m sure my imagination will get the better of me soon.
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Leilanie Stewart 