Tag: writing

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The Wild West of WordPress Badges

Four weeks ago, I received a notification from WordPress that I’d been awarded an Achievement called Palindrome Post. I’d never heard of such a thing, so I took a closer look.

This is given for a post with at least 100 words where the word count reads the same backwards as forwards. This could be 121, 1,221, 12,321 or a similar pattern. It was credited to the post A Fully-Booked Weekend.

And yet WordPress itself tells me that post is 267 words long. This doesn’t include the title nor tags, and the words in hyperlinks are also counted individually, so I’m not sure of the methodology used. That said, I was only vaguely aware of the achievements system before this, so it’s prompted me to look down the list.

The first two badges were all achieved within the first month of the blog’s life: 200 follows and 1337 Likes. But the wonky maths returned in January 2014 because I don’t understand how this – a weekly blog – could have earned the 500 posts badge.

And then more than a decade passed with nothing.

The next time I heard about the badges was on the 12th Anniversary of the blog in October 2025. I then received two awards on 26 May 2026: Globe Trotter for receiving views from 50+ different countries, and The Headliner for changing a post’s title five or more times before publishing. I’m surprised I took so long to achieve that last one, since the title often goes through a few drafts.

But what about the badges I haven’t yet achieved?

With my predictable Tuesday night update schedule, I know I won’t achieve some of them, including Night Owl for posting between midnight and 5am, nor Early Bird for posting between 5am and 8am. I’m also unlikely to be a Marathon Blogger, publishing for 30 days in a row, and definitely no Dear Diary for posting every day for a whole year.

But there are some within my grasp. I’ll win the Daily Reader badge if I visit the Reader page for 30 days in a row, or Ship It! if I publish a post very quickly with no overthinking allowed; again, I’m surprised this hasn’t yet happened, considering the number of last-minute entries. I’m also in danger of triggering Necromancer for publishing a draft that’s been gathering dust for over a year.

Looking into the future, I won’t achieve Novelist unless I wait a long while or seriously increase the length of my entries. Unbelievably, I’ve written less than 4,000 words across all my entries out of the required 50,000. I also won’t see Leap of Faith until 2028, as I hope to be posting on Tuesday 29 February.

Peppered in between the visible achievements are a list of secret achievements. I’m not opposed to surprises per se, but I think it’s unfair to hide these rather than encourage users to work towards them.

Fortunately, one user has listed a few more that I didn’t know about, so I can use that as a starting point. Perhaps the real achievement is simply remembering this little system still quietly exists in the background..

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On a Writing Kick

Last Tuesday, just as my scheduled post was ready to go, I received an email saying that someone had recommended my blog. So a big shout-out to to The Threaded Shillelaugeh for doing so.

I must confess that I rarely venture onto my Reading feed, although I do receive email notifications when certain accounts create a new post. I’ve now saved my Reading and Subscriptions pages prominently on my Favourites bar. I first need to weed out the inactive profiles, and I”ve already jettisoned an overactive account that posted every few hours and dominated the feed.

But there’s another reason I haven’t been reading as much lately, and that’s because I’m currently going through the most productive period of writing I’ve experienced in a long time. I’ve reached the point where I’ve been writing deep into the night, which is highly unusual for me. Thursday was my longest session; I was up until 3am, and I only canned it because I was exhausted and needed to work the following morning. I was nowhere near finished the text.

To find the last time the words flowed so freely, I need to go back to my earlier attempts at the now-defunct National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, where the challenge was to write 50,000 words in a month. That said, I’ve discovered I write best when I do it episodically because my natural concluding point is in the region of 2,000 words.

I was already penning my fourth story in a nine-part series, and then an idea struck for an extra chapter of an existing 25-part series. The first in the series was intended as a one-off, then I thought it wouldn’t have more than four parts, and then I declared it would wrap up around 20 parts, and I’ve shot past that.

Because it features an ensemble cast, it’s proving easy to think of new plot points related to the central premise. So easy, in fact, that I’ve around 3,500 words, which is already double my normal stopping point – and there’s much more to follow. Fortunately, there’s a natural cliffhanger in the plot to keep readers gripped until the 27th chapter, which I fully expect to contain another 3,500 words.

With that series, I’ve had to make up a retrospective notes document to keep the main action consistent.

A few days ago, for instance, I thought one character was four years older than another, when she’s actually six years older. In another case, I forgot whether two other characters had been given a surname. This is published on a writing website, so I’ve now asked my fellow writers whether they recall one being given.

With the newer series, I’ve made a point of creating that notes document early, which has been a terrific move.

I don’t know exactly how I’ll feel once this writing kick is over, but I expect I’ll start going to bed at a reasonable hour again.

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A French Revelation

Back in February, I explored the possibility of learning a second language, posing the question of whether to choose French, German or Spanish. On account of its widespread use across Europe, I was already leaning towards French, and then I saw a part-time university course to learn it: five classes of two hours per week, beginning on the last Thursday of May.

Once I signed up, I discovered I knew one of the other attendees. If I believed in omens, this was a good one.

Although the course was aimed at beginners, I wanted to make a head start with some groundwork. I initially turned to Clozemaster, which I’d used to grasp Swedish and later Dutch. This displays a sentence in the target language with one word missing; below that is a complete English translation. As the name suggests, the challenge is to cloze the gap by selecting or typing the correct word.

The main problem is that the eye latches onto the English phrase, rather than allowing you the opportunity to infer the meaning from the context. After a while, you’ll learn by rote that a sentence is correct without being able to identify the underlying pattern. Additionally, there are no oral practice activities, so learning is limited to written exercises only.

As such, I closed my Clozemaster account and instead began listening to Le Français Facile, which is updated every day with world news in simple French. It’s presented by real reporters, and there’s a transcript in the target language to follow along like a karaoke track, which can be translated by the Firefox browser. This is great for teaching pleasantries, set phrases, and up-to-date terminology.

Along with other support and resources, I thought this would give me a good enough basis, and that the first week would be spent going over similar ground. However, the advertised class for beginners had attracted more of a mixed-ability crowd, with 16 registered students.

I received a feedback form yesterday, and I won’t hesitate to give this a mixed review, as below.

One couple, for instance, had previously lived in the country for years, while another had moved back from Canada, although I never established whether this was Quebec. The tutor also seemed surprised when I mentioned this was my first foray into the language.

It felt for much of the time that she was trying to teach two classes simultaneously. For instance, the formal tone of Do you read books? (Est-ce que vous lisez des livres ?) was most useful for beginners, while the informal (Lisez-vous des livres ?) was aimed at the experienced learners.

This disparity was only properly addressed in the fifth and final week when she split the class into two and guided the folks like me. We asked and answered questions as a round robin, which helped enormously.

That’s not to say I picked up nothing useful from the other four weeks. The tutor clearly knew her subject, talking us through matters of etiquette in shops and cafés, and slang we might use with friends. It was useful to know the English and French words that look similar but don’t map onto each other, such as l’addition referring to a restaurant bill rather than a mathematical operation.

At the suggestion of one classmate, I’ve now purchased a BBC Active Languages set with three books and four audio CDs, though I’ve yet to start these. I’ve also followed relevant creators on YouTube, as suggested by another classmate, one of whom uses a lot of gestures. Gestures are such an underrated way of learning.

Furthermore, I follow a few poets on Instagram who regularly post short updates in French. They’re from Quebec, so their sentences may occasionally feature distinctive grammar. I’m led to believe while that the differences may be a little jarring, they’re not difficult to decipher.

Now the classes are over, I will continue with my learning. I still make a point of choosing and saying out loud at least one sentence per day from La Françis Facile, or another relevant source, then writing it down in a dedicated notebook with a translation.

All of which is to ask two basic, but opposite, questions. It’s aimed at any of my followers who have learnt a foreign language, whether that’s French, English or otherwise:

What's the one activity, exercise, drill, &c, that you believe (a) helped your learning the most and/or (b) simply wasted your time?

Merci d’avance !

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A Fully-Booked Weekend

This weekend just gone, I made a point of going to the Dundee Book Festival.

It would have been easy to take in a lot of events. The festival ran from Friday to Sunday, inclusive, and its three venues were all close together. The Steps Theatre acted as the base location, with a few events at the adjoining Central Library, and a few more at the nearby McManus Galleries.

I was selective about my attendance, however, as I’ve previously found it’s easy to be carried away and tie up the whole day. I settled on four events, even if I ended up only seeing three. There was a misprint on the new writing showcase that the end time was 10:30am. This led me to miss the 10:30am start to the next event, about how to submit to My Weekly magazine. However, I’m pleased to report I saw the other two unhindered.

This particular festival is relatively new. It was first organised by Leisure & Culture Dundee in 2025. It also serves as the spiritual successor to the Dundee Literary Festival, which ran from 2006 to 2017 and was an initiative of the University of Dundee.

The literary festival enjoyed a close affiliation with the now-defunct Dundee International Book Prize, which was awarded from 2000 to 2016. As it stands, the university is in no financial position to bring back either the festival nor the prize.

It remains to be seen whether this book festival will match the longevity of its predecessor. However, I can see a lot of potential, so I look forward to its return next year.

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A Good Day for Goals

In honour of our team reaching the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, Monday 15 June was designated as a public holiday across Scotland. In practice, it wasn’t mandatory, although my employer observed it.

The holiday was motivated in part by the timing of their first match against Haiti. Kick-off was at 9pm in Boston on Saturday 13 June, which equated to 2am on Sunday morning in the UK. I don’t care much for football, and I’ve long been opposed to public holidays, but even I must grudgingly admit it was a nice gesture.

I decided early on to use the day for catching up with my writing, dividing my time three ways: editing existing text, writing further narrative, and worldbuilding. By the evening, the project was on firmer ground than in the morning.

As I explored on the blog three years ago, I’ve tried many times to write outdoors and it rarely works out well. So despite the brilliant weather on Monday, most of the day was spent inside at the computer, except for a couple of walks with the official Taskmaster podcast.

Although I’m a fan of the TV show, this companion piece had somehow bypassed me. So every time I go for a long enough walk, I catch up with one more past episode, which has helped me to make a decent dent in the archive.

In my experience, consistent and steady sessions are the key to making progress on a large project.

For around a decade, I’ve owned a copy of War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I’ve been going back to it intermittently during this time, and I’d reached page 767 of 1296 pages by October 2024 – although much of the latter section is given over to endnotes and other explanatory details. Despite its length, most of the chapters can be read in ten minutes; there are simply a lot of them.

On 22 May 2026, I set some time aside to read one chapter before bed and another after waking up. While I don’t always manage, I’m now rapidly approaching 900 pages, so I’m on track to finish by the end of summer.

The public holiday was a massive boon for that writing project, but without also tackling it on a regular basis, it could take a long time to finish what is expected to be a series of nine stories. At least the groundwork is firmly in place, and when I find that regular time to work on it, I’ll have a stronger idea of its future direction.

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Back In the Room

A number of factors came together yesterweek, including scheduling problems and technical problems, which meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry. In the short explanatory note, I mentioned there were three possible topics I could cover. During the intervening period, however, I’ve added another one to this list, and it’s that I’m covering today.

The horror film Backrooms was released into cinemas at the tail end of May, and I had a chance to see it on Wednesday of last week. The director Kane Parsons didn’t come up with the central idea, but used the existing concept from popular culture. He’s previously expanded upon it with a series of short films available on YouTube.

In short, the eponymous backrooms are an endless maze of empty rooms and partitions that resemble an office or storage space, often illuminated by harsh lighting and decorated in shades of yellow. The architecture is largely stable, so any character who goes through an entrance can typically return to the previous room, and objects can be carried in and out.

The limitability of the place also frequently reminds people of a real-life place they’ve been before. In my case, my dad used to have a hair salon in the basement of a bank, which was accessed by a long staircase. Fluorescent lighting was a necessity, since there wasn’t so much as a window at street level. I also remember an unfinished section that looked onto bare rock; I called it the dungeon.

But I’m going off the point somewhat, as this blog is about writing, not art. In the film, the setting is front and centre of the whole narrative, so I was interested to see how it was described in the script. I expected there would be a leaked copy of the screenplay going about. Instead, I can only find a minimalist rendering that strips out everything but the dialogue, making it no help at all.

Nonetheless, I liked that the sets are varied, but there are no contrived traps for the characters. They’re often free to leave at any time, provided they know which corner to turn and if they can outrun anything that’s chasing them. It also steers clear of parodying films with similar characteristics, such as The Shining, The Blair Witch Project or Being John Malkovich.

Considering the practical sets built for the occasion, it’s remarkable this was delivered with a budget of $10 million, which is low-budget in Hollywood terms. Yet there is one other film around at the moment with even tighter purse-strings.

If $10 million is low-budget, then the $750,000 to shoot Obsession is practically pocket change. There are some parallels: this is also a horror, and its writer-and-director Curry Barker also started on YouTube. From here, however, it travels in its own direction, following a more conventional path with storytelling and gore at its centre.

It may be a coincidence that these two directors have come from a similar background to release low-budget horror films in the same month.

Equally, it might also be the beginnings of a trend where we see ideas transfer more readily from the computer screen to the cinema screen. If so, we must also brace ourselves for a hundred photocopies of Backrooms, or narratives just different enough not to tread on the toes of Obsession.

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It’s Not Happening This Week

My schedule and my technology has been against me for the last few days. It’s frustrating because I have three possible topics I could cover, but I’m unable to explore any of them.

Instead, I’ll be back next week with a full entry.

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Back to Basics with Spell‑Checking

I’ve been using the free tier of Grammarly since 2017, but I’d disabled the extension in Firefox.

This was primarily because my old computer didn’t have enough RAM and couldn’t easily handle the extra work. Even once I invested in upgrading the memory, I simply didn’t think to turn it on again.

So for a long time now, I’ve been writing these entries without the aid of a spell-checker, and that’s led to a few errors that weren’t picked up manually.

Last week, I decided to switch it back on, and I was quickly reminded of the other reasons I’d disabled it.

When a suggestion box appeared underneath the text, like correcting suggesiton to suggestion, I found this useful.

But Grammarly also constantly pushed its Pro membership level through these boxes. The software was set up to reveal only a few advanced suggestions per day before blanking them out and telling the user to upgrade.

I found those few advanced suggestions would amount to little more than a find-and-replace with a thesaurus; found might be changed to discovered, or stay to remain. There appeared to be no way to switch these off or even to snooze them for a fixed period

I’ve been writing long enough to know I need a strong spell-checker but a low-level grammar checker that only looks for obvious errors like should of rather than should have.

Grammarly was already beginning to bloat with features even in 2017 and this has only continued to grow. It must be stated, however, that’s far from exclusive to this software, and there are writers who will benefit from that Pro level subscription. I’m simply not one of them.

After closing my account, it was time to take advantage of the spell-checker built into Firefox. By adding a third-party dictionary to ensure all words belonged in British English, I’ve been able to catch the majority of errors without the need for further suggestions.

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Digging into the Edinburgh Spoken-Word Scene

Continuing a recent trend, I’ve been going to more spoken-word events. This hasn’t been a conscious decision, but instead a combination of wanting to see my poetry pals in action and simply being available on the night.

My schedule worked out in such a way that I was able to visit the Athletic Arms in Edinburgh, known locally as The Diggers, for the two-monthly Graveyard Shift event. It’s further afield than I could normally manage.

One of the headline acts, Ross McCleary, brought this to my attention. I’d originally wanted to surprise him, but it was necessary to clarify some details, particularly as the poster showed the date as Thursday 7 May, whereas the Ko-Fi page initially listed Tuesday 12 May.

So with my train booked and a rough idea of where I was going, I arrived just in time for 7pm. Cards on the table, I would typically steer clear of any pub so closely associated with a football team; in this case, Hearts of Midlothian FC.

However, I found the place nothing less than welcoming to a variety of drinkers, almost none of whom were in team colours. I was particularly impressed by the snug at the back, sectioned off by a thick door from the noise of the main bar. It even contained a makeshift cloakroom.

These are not luxuries I’ve always experienced when running my own events, not by a long chalk.

Ross was the last headliner of the night, with Annie Brechin presenting a wonderful spoken-word set in the first half. I was able to speak to both of them throughout the evening. In between, we heard Grant B Robertson playing comedy songs on guitar. It’s a purely personal view, but what a welcome break from the navel-gazing I’ve come to expect from solo musicians.

The Graveyard Shift also opens its stage to a handful of open-mic performers, who are allotted up to four minutes apiece. Not every one of them was up my street, but grassroots poetry thrives on that mix of voices from the beginners to the seasoned, from the angry to the jaded, and all in between.

The next event in July is on a Tuesday evening when I’ll be running my own group, so I know I won’t make that. If the stars align again, however, I’d be delighted to go back and perhaps grab one of those open-mic slots.

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Trying Out Urban Folklore

On Thursday of last week, I was invited to a storytelling event in Dundee run jointly by the authors behind MK Hardy and the science fiction publisher Shoreline of Infinity.

I was given around six weeks’ notice to prepare a piece around the theme of dark folklore. I needed that time because I’m the first to admit I don’t typically write folklore, unlike one of my fellow performers, Erin Farley. However, an idea did eventually hatch.

In storytelling circles, local stories tend to be well-received, especially if the details are spot-on. I realised this year marks the 70th anniversary of when the trams in Dundee were discontinued. I built my story around that event, placing myself into the position of someone who was involuntarily taken on the last tram ride, and setting the story on the same day as the event.

I approached this story in a different manner from any of my previous ones. Instead of starting with a pencil and paper to jot down ideas, I began to piece together its constituent elements while out walking. This wasn’t a concious choice, just the way the story naturally presented itself.

I found one great advantage straight away. Had the story been written down first, it would almost certainly have been more difficult to memorise, but composing it in my head produced a memory palace effect, especially as much of the action involved physical movement.

This method allowed for a lot of embellishment, as no two versions were the same in rehearsals, but this also made the timings difficult to predict. I knew the slot was eight minutes; when I first performed the piece against the clock, I initially believed I’d need to stretch it out to fit the time.

Instead, the clock reached eight minutes and I was barely halfway through. That triggered off round after round of edits, removing and simplifying details while trying to keep a sense of suspense that a longer story allows. That said, these edits helped to solve a major problem near the start: how to contrive a way to make a character from 2026 voluntarily step onto an unfamiliar tram from 1956. In the simplified version, the character instead catches a modern-day bus and is transported through time involuntarily.

Around the time I started regularly performing, I would sometimes adopt a prop. I have one particular piece, for instance, that is most effective when delivered through a megaphone. At the event on Thursday, I revived that idea, taking a last-minute decision to wear my rucksack because it lent a sense of transience to the occasion.

By all accounts, the whole Shoreline event went down a treat with the Dundee audience. This was the publisher’s first foray in the city, as they usually run their nights in Edinburgh and Glasgow, so I hope they’re persuaded to come back in the future.