UKC

As per the title, I don't have a job currently, so thought I'd have a go at this writing malarky! feedback welcome

Cheers.

http://grahaminchamonix.blogspot.fr/

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Punctuation.

Sentence length (over long first one).

I agree that failures can be much more entertaining and informative than successes.

Will read more later,have just looked at the first couple of paragraphs.

In reply to Ginger McGrath: Don't give up your day job. Oh. You don't have one. Nothing to worry about, then, until the cash runs out. I like the raw, uneducated style of your writing. A bit like Jim Perrin before he got a 'propa' job at a Uniperversity. But it's got nothing to do with climbing, has it? Carrying slats of wood up a hill so you can slide back down? F*ck that shit. Petty bourgeois shit, that is.

Live the dream, though. Even though it's a f*cking motorpsychonitemare.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I liked it

In reply to Ginger McGrath: Usually i can't be arsed reading blogs, yours was quite good, and it conveyed your thoughts well into pictures in my mind.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:
I too only read the first few sections but thought it was good and very well written .
I guess if youre going to continue in your writing career though there are only so many of your personal experiences you can write about so what do you write about when you have exhausted this ?
and tbh no disrespect but unless youre a well known adventurer or someone who knows you well no one is probably that interested in your experisnces and probably wouldn't buy your book! (and that goes for everyone on here.)
you certainly have put together a good well put together story ,I guess the challenge ahead for your literary career is to find something that everyone can relate too.
well done I enjoyed it .keep it up.

In reply to Ginger McGrath: I thought it was pretty good for a first effort.

In reply to Ginger McGrath: A good read. Keep going. cheers

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I enjoyed that, the only mistake you made was retreating in a sensible manner when your time ran out. All good authors know that what you should have done is ploughed on until one of you sustained some sort of life threatening injury, "survived" for a few days in a grim, near death bivouac before finally crawling back down to the publishers office for tea and medals.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I really enjoyed reading that. Thank you

In reply to Ginger McGrath: Sorry, you need to go back to school to learn basic grammar. But the account does have a sense of immediacy and you don't seem to be tempted into the purple passages that are typical of many new writers. (before you ask, I did at one time work as a writer/creative director in advertising so my comment is based on experience) Very few people make a living solely from writing.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I had a look last night but the terrible punctuation in the first paragraph put me off, not just because I'm a pedant, but because it ruins the flow of the reading which affects the flow of the story.

Had another look just now and the rest of it is better.

But you say posts will be infrequent? It seems one of the most attractive and successful things about blogs is frequent and regular postings - it's just the way of the internet. Long gaps between posting loses your readers and you're not famous enough to either a) have fans hanging on your every word, or b) have other media (sponsors, UKC/BMC/Alpinist etc news) directing traffic toward your site. If you suddenly solo Coracrazion and get well-famous, please ignore that last one.

My eyesight is good and I read a lot of stuff on the net but I found the long blocks of dense text in a small(ish) font to be hard to read *easily*. Some images earlier on up in the story would maybe grab a reader better, too. Convenient reading and interesting images are the basics of good blogs.

People shots are always more interesting than mountain shots, and that's coming from someone who spends hours and hours looking at mountain shots. Snippets of info in the text *about* the people are interesting too, especially if you combine them with dialogue from the person that reinforces your description of them.

Les Courtes would be better than "the Courtes" because the former is the actual name of the mountain, but then again British climber blogs stuffing up French names has become de rigeur and maybe you don't want to look too fancy by speaking and writing the local language too well.

I no longer have a blog, so I no longer do any of the above, mostly because I couldn't be arsed, especially writing with such frequency, particularly about myself. That's what Facebook is for

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

If Ginger McGrath is going to be yur pen name then perhas you ned to start writing romantic novels.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Cheers everyone. Mabey I should have made it more obvious that this is just for a bit of fun, I have no aspirations to actually be a writer, and this post was just a cheeky way of getting a few hits on it! I Do appreciate any pointers though

In reply to Ginger McGrath: Not bad, but a bit too long and the 2 trips should have been split into separate blog posts. The secret of writing in a way that is interesting for those not involved is to get the feel of a route/trip across, the pitfall is to give too much technical detail, which can get a bit tedious even for a climbing audience.

I think you need a few more subheadings to show what you are trying to bring out in each section, also a few less adjectives. So really it needs tighter editing to flow better.

Having said that, I really like your obvious honesty and enthusiasm for the mountains, also willingness to admit your mistakes. As George Bernard Shaw said :

"In order to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing"

An aphorism worth bearing in mind on all the "how do we make things safer?" threads - answer, don't go mountaineering, cos it is dangerous and sometimes nasty things happen to people.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Good read.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Excellent read - agree with the comment above that the stories should be split. More character development would be nice - the two anonymous frenchmen - what might they have been thinking - what might their stories be?

I found my palms sweating when you were clipped to the rusty peg!

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

I enjoyed it. Agree that for a blog the two trips would have been better split or even the first one dropped completely.

In reply to Ginger McGrath:

Perhaps shortening it a little or using fewer words to say the same thing is a good idea. In any case I do like the blog.