Plucky Writer Back on Track

Welcome to The Plucky Haggis 12^th November 2010 "Writer Back on Track". 
 

Blue tit & Coal tit

Before this blog, I tried writing about other topics; financial investment, fiction and biography (all works in progress). As many, I would love to get paid for writing, but know just how difficult it is to get noticed or published, let alone make a profession from it.  For every individual who does make a living from it, there may be 10,000 or more clambering for an opportunity.  No wonder so many writing & publishing courses exist, to meet growing demand and dreamy optimism, for many writers it probably supplements their commissions.

Roses continue to brighten the garden

Recently I changed my username on the writer's workshop, The Word Cloud, where I first intended testing my writing ability, unsurprisingly, from “wannabe’ to “ThePluckyHaggis”. The site (among many others) is a place were thousands of aspiring writers meet, exchange contributions, and critique; content, style, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so on.  Strangely it was like saying I’d arrived, quite where is less certain, but a wannabe blogging writer, I'm definitely not.

Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus): Cooked berries taste like cough medicine. Fab!

Oh, I know there’s a huge divide between writing a blog and the traditionally accepted  ‘published’ status, but we’re so easily held back by self-doubt and our historical views of success, some optimism balanced with a healthy pragmatism, can’t be a bad thing surely.

Autumnal copse; Pine & Guelder Rose among others

ThePluckyHaggis username is used now for all sorts of Countryside & Nature related accounts.  Despite briefly intending to develop my writing skill & style within the Word Cloud community, I opted to follow a trend I’ve mastered since I was a boy – jumping in at the deep end, in blind-belief I’d swim. Not highly recommended. And I ought to have learned that when some kind soul saved my drowning skinny torso from a major swimming pool aged 8 or 9.

Corsican Pinus nigra subsp. salzmannii

Even though the ThePluckyHaggis brand isn't text book appropriate for all I publish, it appears to have sufficient guts worthwhile refining further; besides it ranks number 1 in a Google search ;-)

My post about discussion behaviour; reprinted on the AutumnWatch forum, took an interesting turn when I wrote a follow-up message on the thread.  Imagine my surprise being asked if I was a professor of psychology, and had I written books on the subject.  Goodness, perhaps I should be writing more about people instead of wildlife & nature.  Then another; "TPH should be a writer. Maybe for a wildlife magazine or TV."  Well I never!!

Combined with your appreciative comments on my photography, among helpful correction, I'm greatly encouraged, thanks to all at home & away.  With this in mind, another new business idea is hatching, with intention to encompass both nature and people passions.  If successful, I aim to deliver dual annotation with informative observation in a single medium, another blog initially.  If something comes of it, be sure my plucky followers will be first to hear about it.

Raspberries in November

Last week I ate some garden strawberries and this week gathered a bowl-full of raspberries, not yet wilted by recent air frosts.  I also enjoyed over 100 starlings swirling around the garden, preparing to head south to their wintering roosts – I expect the BBC will share their hugely entertaining displays shortly.  And I found this Harvestman too, hiding in the Pampas grass, and was cute enough to miss the frosting.

Harvestman - Phalangium opilio (6 legs ergo no spider)

News Headline: New type of Carrot grown on Olive tree.  OK, it’s a mock-up to capture light, but the Corkscrew Carrot wasn’t.  It grew this way of its own accord and tasted delicious, once I finally got my tongue around it =)

Corkscrew Carrot on Olive Tree

Sparrowhawk encounters continue; hardly surprising with 40 odd house sparrows, 20 goldfinch, 10 Collard doves, half a doz. Dunnock, 4 Blue tits, couple of Coal tits, and a Partridge in a pear tree. Ho! Ho! Ho!  Actually, there was an iconic Christmas-card rocking-red-robin in it.  Back to the bird in hand; it hung round the garden investigating this and that for about 15 minutes, sadly the photos I took let me down somewhat.

Sparrowhawk (male) - nosing around my garden and water feature

Ending this week, certainly feels more like early winter than late autumn, but I'll leave you with one of my all time favourite songs; Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward from War of the Worlds.  Lyrics and pictures sum up core aspects of this melancholic time of year.  Talking of leaves, it's a chore clearing them from path, drive and garden.  Time to blow – TPH