Bea-ing Nurseried*

In an earlier post Bea-ing Kidded I mentioned that I had entered a competition to write a book for children. More specifically the brief was to write an original ABC book for young children of nursery school age. I’m delighted to say that I won! You can read my winning entry in the December 2015 edition of Writers’ Forum, issue #170.  

  

It sounded so easy. Words beginning with the 26 letters of the alphabet are not difficult to find. The real challenge was to come up with an original concept, to ensure the text was age-appropriate and to conform to a strict 260 words and 24 page layout.

Learning to count is equally important. Keeping within strict word counts is important when writing for certain markets. Competitions are good grounding for this. As also is one of my favourite websites Paragraph Planet which every day publishes a new short story or piece of prose of exactly 75 words.

You will find my latest entry ‘Per ardua ad astra’ on Wednesday 02 December 2015 (one day only, miss it and it's gone!). It relates a fictional violent reaction to a Latin teacher. I feel guilty as the lady who taught me Latin was one of the gentlest characters I have ever met. Despite a shamefully low grade at O level, I enjoyed classical studies and credit them with my love of words.

Any Latin nerds prepared to declare themselves?

PS * nurseried is not a proper word. I made it up! What would my teachers say about that?