This beautiful book from real humans for illustration only!
Mother Jones: “AI Is Coming for Your Toddler’s Bedtime Story – Artificial intelligence poses an increasingly real threat to children’s literature — and children’s learning” warns Lily Meyer.
As a long-time reader of Paula Bardell-Hedley’s prodigiously interesting blog, Winding Up the Week, I came across this snippet (29/11/2025) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/11/ai-childrens-books/ and Mother Jones certainly sinks the boot into publishing houses. I let fly with the following embellished comments recorded below:
I said “That’s appalling” because Mother Jones said: “AI Is Coming for Your Toddler’s Bedtime Story.” Having read, written and attended courses on writing and illustrating picture books and stories for young children I can voucher for the fact that they come from the heart. Children’s books are not written quickly, or rubber-stamped, and many are written by a teacher or parent who has hands on experience. You cannot dumb-down a child’s story nor can it be over-embellished.
If you have read “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” by superb British author Charlie Mackesy you should also consider the consequences to children’s artists and illustrators.
Some things in life are too precious, too personal for publishers to tamper with, and I truly hope a computer generated AI will never comprehend the nuance of a child’s reading enjoyment. Better still stay away from young readers.
We need Self Before AI for our future of adaptability and mental stability. The old saying “If you don’t use it you lose it” is needed by a world of people staring too much at their screens. Read with a child, turn the human created/real pages, explain what you both see, let the child colour in some pages, nod off to sleep with the book. Make a picture book a family friend with wrinkled pages and maybe a food stain because it’s all part of the warmth of a human learning experience.
I know from personal and practical contact that children’s books are written by authors with kind hearts, then read by a trusted mature human to enhance a trusting young human’s reading journey through life. No AI need apply.
Most writers at some time or another, usually early in their literary career, enter a writing competition. It gives you a reason to write when you think you have lost the plot. There is exposure and the bonus of possibly getting a monetary reward. Occasionally there are the perks of receiving feedback from the judges and maybe your work appearing on the relevant website. Not all writing competitions do this, especially if they specify a word/theme which is only used as a one-off with no ongoing relevancy other than it being a writing exercise to aid your creative thinking.
Never put your name on the actual story, write it on the submission form. If A4 size paper is requested (e.g. Word.doc, email attachment, PDF) – if font is requested – if the line spacing is requested – if any other requirements are requested please do it for best results. Another necessary thing you must do is wordcount. Absolutely stick to the specified wordcount. This does not guarantee you will win but it will leave a good impression.
Okay, I know you may have already entered some writing competitions, and perhaps none of this is new to you, but that should not stop you from fully reading the competition rules and guidelines and sticking with them. Be aware that there may be an entry fee for some of the bigger writing challenges. Usually if you are a member of a local writers group you can enter free. Note, I have never been given money as a prize and once a story is published is cannot be used again in competitions.
If you are reading this far, I have included two of my most recent short stories (below) which were written for two key-words supplied by a writers centre prompt. ‘Fragment’ and my piece is titled ‘Rocky Horror.’ Allow me to offer a critique and say the winning entry for ‘Fragment’ was predictably sentimental. The prompt and title for my second tale is ‘One Room Story’. Anyway, my two stories are short, both are well within the 500 wordcount limit and as you can see they are different styles. Although rejected I did have a sense of achievement writing them. So don’t fall into that Well of Lost Plots. Great book title, thanks Jasper!
——ROCKY HORROR—— By Gretchen Bernet-Ward2025 The pavement fractured under her feet and fissures formed. A fragment of rock flew down from a dark sky then bounced back up. Annie fled for the house – fast. Felicia sniffed, her author brain unimpressed. “Too much alliteration,” she reasoned, and ducked a meteorite as Annie reached out for the front door handle. The molten mass smashed a jagged hole straight through the door and landed on Annie’s new carpet. It choked the air with sulphurous intent, which caused Annie to wail uncontrollably. Felicia glanced upward. “That’s not rain.” Sharp shards showered down onto the rooftop shingles. She held grave fears for their resilience under the rapid assault. “Cut it out,” she yelled in her head. It stopped. Now feeling foolish and faintly ridiculous, she quickly wrote down fragments of what had just happened as another gritty fissure crackled towards the house. It wasn’t looking good, she still had an imagination too wild for pre-school books. Annie shrieked “Help me, please!” a fraction too late as Felicia swiftly drew a thick black line across the previous paragraph. The workshop lecturer looked up and raised an elegant eyebrow. “Having trouble with this exercise?” she asked. Unnoticed by group members, a light sprinkle of insect-like shale bounced and pinged off her neatly groomed head. “No, no,” replied Felicia, “just trying to control my fractured thoughts.” She smoothed her notepaper as a resurrected Annie tipped over a metal bin, sending granite boulders rolling silently across the meeting room floor towards the unsuspecting lecturer. “Actually,” Felicia mused, “I seem to have hit a rocky patch.”
——ONE ROOM STORY—— By Gretchen-Bernet Ward 2025 The waiting room chair had a cracked leather seat which pressed through her summer dress like a blunt knife. She tried to move slightly, knowing mother would hiss, do not fidget. Maybe her button-up shoes could reach the floor, maybe that would ease the pressure on her insides. Heels swung, mother glared. Only two other people sat in the doctor’s waiting room, the nurse at a desk and an old man with wire-framed spectacles who breathed in and out like a faulty balloon. Why was she here? It hadn’t been said at breakfast, only that she would miss school for the morning. Like a gift given and snatched away, her stomach churned with what might be waiting for her behind that big brown polished door with its fancy gold lettering. That slow, slow rotation of the brass door knob. She hoped the old man would live long enough to go through first. The front sash window was slightly ajar but didn’t allow for an escape. An idea, perhaps she could bolt out the front door while everyone was looking at the surgery door? No, her mother was fast, even catching squawking hens. Glancing around she studied the glass fronted cabinet beside the nurse’s desk. Medicine in small bottles made of brown glass with paper labels and cork stoppers. Bill Beans Laxatives also in their family medicine chest. Saltrates, Alkia, Nitrate of Amyl and her grandmother’s stomach powder. Like medicine daddy gave her at night. Her body shivered. Time to move. She slid and jumped, the seat tore at her dress. A black and white tiled dash to the front door but the shiny door handle was unyielding. She tugged hard, memories rose, she whimpered as mother pulled her back. The nurse steered her to the uncomfortable seat, not to worry, the doctor was a nice man. She remembered daddy had whispered, be good. A special treat tonight. A quick glance, the hem of her dress torn, she felt bad as her mother quietly wept.
Now it’s your turn to start plotting! Write something wild about the Blue Geese photograph. Or follow through and blog your own prompt and short story. I promise not to critique them. Send me a link to your latest short story and I will post your link below where I have mentioned *Ekphrastic Writing. Whether it be writing or frantically editing to meet a deadline, make something great from those 26 letters of the English alphabet. You know you can! 📚 Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2025
STOP THE PRESS: This information may be of interest! AUSTRALIAN WRITERS’ RESOURCE https://www.austwriters.com/competitions A seriously long list of writing competitions around the world!
The AWR has sourced information from other websites and no assurance can be given as to its current accuracy.
*Ekphrastic writing is a literary description of a work of art such as a painting, sculpture, or performance BUT IT CAN BE USED FOR EVERYDAY ITEMS within a story.
Every so often I do a bit of housekeeping on my blog and tidy up the way I have misused a word or left a word out or rearranged a word or… well, you get the idea, it was a cold day and I had nothing better to do. Anyhow, I found this interesting bit of info in my stats folder:
All Posts (626) Published (617) Drafts (2) Private (7)
What’s that discrepancy after ‘All Posts’ and ‘Published’? I thought I had published all my blog posts! However, there is a nine-post limbo.
Drafts (2) is understandable, but Private (7)! I don’t even remember them or what they could possibly contain. Am I bold enough to check? Do I really want to know? Should I just delete them and forget about it?
Well, seeing as I am one of life’s hoarders, I am just going to ignore those mysteriously private posts and let them languish there for all eternity. Well, until I get too curious. Maybe I can use one of them next week…
Meanwhile, here is a not-so-private observation about my session at MoB (Museum of Brisbane) Ekphrastic Art Writing session at City Hall. I arrived late due to a public rally, hundreds of protesters calling for justice over the death of Aboriginal man Kuminjayi White while in custody. Fair enough. I slid open the door at MoB and joined a small group of people with pen and paper. Before undertaking the art of Ekphrasis we had visual prompts and some brief writing exercises before heading out into the beguiling gallery to find beautiful treasures old and new to write about in a lucid fashion, arty or otherwise.
Museum of Brisbane is a social history museum and art gallery in Brisbane, Queensland. Located on Level 3, City Hall, MoB brings our city’s vibrant art, culture and history to life through exhibitions, events, workshops, tours, and MoB Kids activities.
Perversely, I detoured the beautiful/historic artworks, paintings and ceramics to admire the hand-printed posters for local music gigs in Brisbane in the 1970s. Destined for shop windows, brick walls and lamp posts, these raw, colourful and imaginative posters were only glanced at or pulled down, but now are surviving icons of a once vibrant and thriving local music scene. The posters fill a wall in the Museum but my eyes were lured by the Medicine Cabinet of brown, dusty bottles, peeling labels and gruesome details of the contents. Here is what I wrote in a quick attempt to understand a different side to Ekphrastic writing:
‘The Medicine Cabinet’ Pills, potions, powders and poisons. Frowning at me from the past, the names on the small yet ominous corked brown glass bottles and rusty tins with their peeling, discoloured paper labels were enough to make me shudder. Poulticine, good for pneumonia, pleurisy, tonsillitis, abscess, etc, with side effects. ‘Stomach Powder’, ‘Opium’, Bill Beans Laxatives, Alkia, Saltrates, all aimed at curing sufferers ills and chills. Surely Nitrate of Amyl Capsules would do more harm than good? Then there’s the ominous thin brown-ribbed bottle labelled ‘Thyroid/Ovarian’ treatment. I hope patients recovered regardless of the treatment but more often than not the old saying was invoked ‘Kill or cure’ with fingers crossed. There is perhaps beauty in knowing that modern medicines are more likely to save lives.
Wishing you a healthy life and insightful Ekphrasis!
When did you last jot down a limerick? Perhaps at primary school, maybe a rude one at high school, a clever one at work or in a writing class? Chances are you have never heard or read a limerick (depending on your age or location) and if this is the case, you are missing out on centuries of tireless amusement.
In my opinion limericks are not classy nor really poetic, and can be risqué, but they are a fun five-lines with a specific rhyme scheme (AABBA) and a nice sing-song beat ending with a great punch line. Let me show you two examples with classic endings: (A) “I sat next to the Duchess at tea, Distressed as a person could be. Her rumblings abdominal Were simply phenomenal – And everyone thought it was me!” (Anonymous) (B) There was an old man of Nantucket Who kept all his cash in a bucket; But his daughter, named Nan, Ran away with a man, And as for the bucket, Nantucket. (Anonymous)
Now I will show you four of my own attempts at limerick writing and notice the rhyming format: (1) There was an old lady from Wolfbane, Day after day she had pain. She cursed the cold weather, And her shoes made of leather, But really she suffered chilblain. (2) Brisbane city is deemed arcane, Said to have sunshine never rain. Such a fable the locals dictate, To keep a high tourism rate, And increase their monetary gain. (3) There was a young man from Bugbane, Who suffered from bad stomach pain. He ate onions on the job, His boss said ‘you’re fired Bob’. So he went home on the early train. (4) Wild wind on the beach today, No children or dogs out to play. I zipped up my jacket, Trussed up like a packet, Then my hat flew into the bay!
Question One: Has an Australian author won the Booker Prize? Answer: Yes.
New York Review of Books described Richard Flanagan as “among the most versatile writers in the English language.” The Guardian wrote about ‘Question 7‘ “Blending memoir and history and auto-fiction, this brilliantly unique book by the Booker winner is a treatise on the immeasurability of life.”
Question Two: Do you know this author? Answer: Richard Miller Flanagan (born 1961) is an Australian writer who won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for his novel ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ (several reviews here) and the 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for ‘Question 7’ which makes him the first writer in history to win both Britain’s major fiction and non-fiction prizes.
Question Three: Have you read one or many of Flanagan’s books?
Question Four: If you have read a Flanagan novel do you call yourself a good reader or a stalwart reader?
Question Five: Do you think you are missing out on a literary experience if you have not read these books?
Question Six: Of the three books (pictured above and below) are you likely to purchase at least one?
Question Seven (wink): Do you know how many other books this Aussie author has written? Not a quiz but, hey!
Richard Flanagan has written: 1994 – 2020 Eight novels 1985 – 2023 Nine non-fiction books 1998 – Film ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’ (director and screenwriter) 2008 – Film ‘Australia’ (co-writer) 2008 – ‘Wanting’ a complex 19th-century tale set in Tasmania and England involving an Aboriginal girl and novelist Charles Dickens. 2024 – Baillie Gifford Prize for ‘Question 7’
Inspired? Keen to read something different? Challenge yourself or your book club. My reviews are on the way but meanwhile you can read Aussie WordPress blogger ‘Whispering Gums’ excellent review here.
That flash sale I was telling you about, well, Jen says it’s on it’s way! Here are her details:
Cart opens this Friday, 10 January 2025. For three days only.
•Instant access! Jen says no faffing about waiting for module deliveries. You can hop in and get busy straight away.
•Full access for lifetime of the course. No more to pay. EVER! Once you have it, it’s YOURS.
•Eleven jam-packed video lessons including revelations, insights and innovative exercises. (Plus Jen’s support videos to motivate you and keep you on track).
The Character Creation Intensive looks at:
*Romancing the Story (A brilliant exercise to get you writing and keep you writing).
*Show Don’t Tell (Jen goes hard with this one! TWO sessions).
*Ghosts (Not the paranormal kind but the kind every main character needs!).
*Symbols and Props.
*Secondary Characters (Again, Jen goes hard here. TWO sessions with Beware slapped on them! That’s how important secondary characters are. She sees countless emerging authors slip on this banana).
*Alternative, fun and powerful approaches to character creation and story writing (‘Tried and true, Jen says, I use these methods myself’).
*Downloadable PDF course notes (always handy for a printout).
Aim to start the New Year 2025 with a spring in your step. Learn to create characters (and stories) your readers will NOT forget! Click Jen’s Character Creation Intensive Flash Sale
PS: Writers of adult fiction are warmly invited by Jen to grab this intensive, too. It’s for all creative writers not only kidlit authors! 💗 Gretchen Bernet-Ward2025
Thoughts Become Words 