Telling My Tale

July in a nutshell

I was very pleased to be tagged by Tree Langdon ♾️ when she asked writers to review their efforts for July.

This is a challenge that Timothy Key initiated, and many thanks to him for that.

Although July has a way to go I’m sitting here with a cup of tea and some toast and listening to Van Morrison’s wonderful Tupelo Honey, and so it seems the ideal time to have a go at this.

I was surprised to discover I’d published 24 pieces so far this month, and so I’ve selected just a few.

As I’d just joined Illumination I began the month with an introduction to myself.

I then had a birthday and I wrote a piece considering the ageing process, and I wound it around some verses from A Rainy Night In Soho by The Pogues.

For years I had been fascinated with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and finally I got to Florence to see it and I wrote about the excitement of walking into the Uffizi.

My natural style is for humour and satire and I wrote a thing about how all the husbands and wives and partners of Medium writers were overjoyed when Medium first appeared as it took the pressure off them from having to listen to all our mad outpourings.

I followed this with a look at Cambridge University in 1928 with Virginia Woolf discussing, among other things, the importance of a good dinner.

I discovered Imposter Syndrome and wrote about how it seems to be a problem for women more than men.

I’m fairly new to Microfiction and I’ve discovered how much fun it is to write to a specific word target — here are a couple of 100 word pieces.

The first is a sad tale of the demise of a successful man and the second is about a short career in crime and how it abruptly come to an end.

And finally, here’s a thing about the inspirational PG Wodehouse and how his humour can help us cope with the mire the world is in, and it’s also poking fun at modern art.

I’ve really enjoyed this chance to review my output for the month and, if you’ve got this far, many thanks for reading.