Around two months ago, I rediscovered a dream journal I'd kept on another blogging website for around 2½ months in 2011. At present, all the entries are locked away, but the pinned entry suggests that mutual friends were welcome to follow it, and there's an overview of my motivation. I was inspired by a blogger friend who often experienced called WILD, or Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, and how she found it a great source of inspiration for writing.

A couple of weeks ago, I answered one of the daily prompts that WordPress provides, talking about the book Room by Emma Donoghue. Today, I remembered I had another one stored for future use, and here it is: Have you ever regretted reading a book — which one and why? If you don't want to know what happens in the novel…

At the recommendation of a few people, one of them Richard Osman, I started watching The Good Ship Murder a few weeks ago. All the episodes are available on the Channel 5 website, provided you're within the UK. As the title suggests, it's a crime drama set on a luxury Mediterranean cruise ship. This is the real-life MSC Virtuosa.

You Be The Judge is the series that sees two parties go head-to-head to fight their corner in an argument that’s being scrutinised by the court of public opinion. For three years, the Venezuelan illus...

There's nothing more intimidating to a writer than a blank page, so WordPress provides a daily question to help out. I don't often answer these, but I liked this one from a few weeks ago because I had an immediate answer. This entry will, by necessity, contain major plot points about the Emma Donoghue book Room. If you don't want to know what happens, skip over this entry.

Many years ago, I volunteered at a community radio station in Glasgow. As well as turning up for my shift, however, I made a point of showing up at their other events. At one of these, I was introduced to someone who was supposed to be some big deal in radio, even if the details of his background are now hazy.

An rare Wednesday entry, but I couldn't let this lie. You might have read yesterday's entry The Story That Went Out of Date, which includes a short story at the end. It has become apparent that the formatting only appears correctly on The first line of each paragraph was supposed to be indented like a novel; instead, anyone viewing on the…

There's a lot of talk at the moment about the challenges facing writing with the advent of generative text software. Much of the discourse has become dull and repetitive, and what I haven't seen discussed much is how new technology can quickly make an existing story obsolete or dated. Pick up any novel from the 19th century or before, and the characters will travel by horse or on a ship with sails and rigging.

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote an entry titled The Attraction of the One-Off Piece. This was all about a one-night-only show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century. My entry title has subsequently become redundant, since Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.have done it again with another one-night show – …

Rate This Bench founder Sam Wilmot says his favourite bench is in a South Gloucestershire churchyard.

Network Rail and Southern Rail said 125-tonne rail-mounted cranes would lift the carriages.

On Sunday, I went to a one-off screening of the renowned film Quadrophenia (1979), starring Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash and a number of other actors who went on to become bigger stars through the 1980s and beyond. I enjoyed it a lot, especially the sound design, but my focus today is the content rating. To give you a brief overview, any film intended for cinematic release must first be submitted to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) who give it an…

Something incredibly exciting is happening with the top 40 right now. Last week, the track Rein Me In by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean reached 19 non-consecutive weeks at number one. In doing so, it surpasses the 18-week record set by the Frankie Laine single I Believe in 1953. The last time anything threatened to come close was during the first half of the 1990s with Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet with soundtracks from popular films.

For those keeping track, I've received no further badges from WordPress at present. I'll issue updates on that story as I receive them. Meanwhile, I'm still very much on the writing kick from the start of this month. I've previously made allusions that what I'm writing is part of a fantasy series published under a pseudonym on a reasonably well-known platform.

After posting yesternight's entry about WordPress badges, I then received the one below for publishing ten consecutive posts at the same hour of the day. By telling you about this at an unusual hour, I wonder whether this will, in turn, generate further badges. I'll let you know either in a later entry, or the usual Tuesday update.

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.