Skip to content

Dermot Stripe

Just Another Writer

Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
Menu

I’ve Got to Read

Posted by Dermot in Life

I haven’t updated the blog in several months and I would love to say that it is because I’m busy writing. However that is not the case. My last post discussed the idea of writing a new story. Which I worked on sporadically and eventually decided that it just wasn’t good enough. I’m not down-hearted…

Read more

Working on A New Story

Posted by Dermot in Writing

It has been a while since I have posted. That’s because I’m working on a new story. A story that has me really excited. It’s going be to be based on emails or written entirely through the lens of emails. I’ve done a lot of work so far but even I am getting confused and…

Read more

Published Again

Posted by Dermot in Writing

I have had another story accepted for publication and I’m delighted. I put a lot of effort into it and it has paid off. It’s my second story that has been published. At one stage I was thinking that perhaps ‘Some Girls’ might be the only story that would be published. I’m glad to have…

Read more

Another Nice Dream

Posted by Dermot in Ideas

It is approaching 7.30am and I have been up for a few hours. I went to bed early and expected to wake early. I had a good sleep which was complimented by an extraordinary dream. I dreamt I was living with my ex and that we had gone out for the night. There was nothing…

Read more

Writing in Autumn

Posted by Dermot in Writing

It’s autumn, my favourite season, but it feels like summer. The sun is shining and the skies are blue. It makes me want to go out and enjoy the sunshine. Which I might do but I would much prefer to write something. Perhaps a new short story even though I already have a story in…

Read more

Only Chasing Rainbows

Posted by Dermot in Writing

I haven’t written anything in the last two weeks. Not because I have run out of ideas, on the contrary, I have a lot of ideas but haven’t seen any kind of rush to write them down. Though this is not necessarily the best policy. That I know because some of the ideas have left…

Read more

A Trigger And a Little Effort

Posted by Dermot in Writing

I appear to have a clear run at the moment. Helped I feel by writing. Long may it last though it probably won’t but at least I got most of a story complete in the last week. I didn’t intend to do any writing, my mood being so low for so long, however with a…

Read more

Tom and Charlie

Posted by Dermot in Flash

When I was a kid I had two friends, Tom and Charlie. We did everything together until one day Tom and Charlie fell out. Forty years later I still don’t know what caused the argument but I do remember that both of them told me that I had to choose one of them as my…

Read more

Silence is Golden

Posted by Dermot in Writing

When I write the only sound I like to hear is the sound of my fingers tapping away on the keyboard. I might have the TV on but it will be muted and occasionally I might look at it for a minute or two if anything interesting is happening.  In reality I cannot write when…

Read more

The Tree

Posted by Dermot in Flash

Isobel couldn’t start the morning without having a cigarette and cup of coffee. Before she got herself ready for work she would sit at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her husband, Barry, didn’t like her smoking but he knew better than trying to tell…

Read more

Writing Is a Mountain

Posted by Dermot in Writing

When I write a short story I like to have as few characters as possible. If they play no part in the plot, they’re not in the story. I also like to add a foil character if I can. Pitting them against the protagonist. Sometimes it works well, other times I have to do rewrites…

Read more

One Small Step Forward

Posted by Dermot in Writing

I may have been writing (on and off) for a long time but I only made my first submission in February and to my astonishment Leon Literary Review accepted my story Some Girls for publication. It is an old story that I wrote about seven years ago but it was too long and chronologically it…

Read more

Telling Mom

Posted by Dermot in Flash

There wasn’t much Martin could do about it but the news still saddened him. He knew that Pauline’s pregnancy meant that her life was going to change forever and that she would have to pull out of college. He had such high hopes for her. She was the first of her cousins to make it…

Read more

Mr Kelly’s Job

Posted by Dermot in Flash

When I was a kid there was an old man called Mr Kelly who used to live at the top of the street. He spent most of his time in his garage cutting large reams of paper into smaller pieces of paper, mostly A3, A4 and A5 sizes. We never knew what he did with…

Read more

As Simple as Possible

Posted by Dermot in Writing

When it comes to my writing I like to write as simply as possible. There is nothing worse than having to look up a word in a dictionary (several times) when you are reading a story. I really don’t think a dictionary is the ideal companion to reading. I like readers to be able to…

Read more
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next

Search

Facebook

Dermot Stripe

Recent Posts

  • I’ve Got to Read
  • Working on A New Story
  • Published Again

Categories

  • Flash
  • Ideas
  • Life
  • Writing
© 2025 Dermot Stripe