I've sort of become obsessed with my grandmother's old house - I'm even going to write to her for photos, and try and take a walk on the (no sold) farm ... it's a setting that just lends itself to a story.
New post up. click my sig!
POST! Click my sig! I have finished Malory Towers and am harping on about Anne of Green Gables' psychological issues ....
Mystic Ward
13 years ago
Mystic Ward
Twentyfamilies Gypsy
Now you leave poor Anne alone. Those books are some of my favourites. :P
Never! it's just Anne I dislike, wait until my post on Marilla! then I have to go back to some of my favourite anecdotes in the story!
Click my sig - I've finally updated. I'm not happy - way too waffly and a bit dull ...
I'm gearing up for the next enid - new format for the new series - shorter, punchier, less waffly ...
Just some stuff I'm playing with:
I had a really cool dream last night. I dreamed that my sister was a zombie killer and that I was her assistant. It was all very Shaun of the Dead with cricket bats and head hitting and all that, but it was so much fun. When they turned up she would run into the crowd and started hitting them over the head and I had to run to catch up. She was so fast. But she insisted that we keep changing our shoes, putting on clean converse every time we got zombie stuff on them. you can't kill zombies in dirty converse. She was really strict about it, and I was slow to change shoes, putting on the green, then the red, then the yellow, shiny silver ... there were so many shoes - and the zombies kept coming. Their heads went thwack and new shoes appeared in front of me.
I woke up feeling ridiculously happy. I wanted to giggle, to jump up and down with glee and hug my sister. I sat up. There were clouds in the sky again today and the filtered light turned everyone’s face grey. No one giggled, there was no one to hug. Next to me, my sister was already awake under our pink blanket, staring blankly up at the lurking mass of grey above us. She wouldn’t take a hug right now.
Click my link - my blog is back!
I'm going to start updating more regularly, with shorter posts, so watch this space ...
I need some quick feedback. Here's the situation: There's an anthology each year at my university and I'm sending a story in to try and get it published. It's only going to be 1000-1500 words, but I'm only half done and I need some feedback. Submissions are due on Friday, so I need to get on to it pretty quickly. Here's what I've got (sorry about the length):
When I woke up this morning I was surrounded by shoes again. I sighed. It was zombies. Again. I was lying on top of my covers again fully clothed (again) wearing a pair of pristine blue converse (they were different). Littered around my bed were more pairs of converse covered in dried gore of yellow-green and red-brown. I looked down at my clothes: stripes of brown and blobs of ... stuff covered my clothes. My shoulders ached, my arms felt heavy and my throat was raw. It seemed someone had had a fun night last night.
I wasn’t really surprised; this wasn’t the first time that I had woken up covered in zombie gore. I did try to avoid it; there was a book sitting on my coffee table that I was going to take great pleasure in destroying later today. It had advocated milk, or cheese, or pickles (there was that one awful night with the jar of chillies), and any other manner of fragrant food, but none of them could rid me of the zombies. I supposed it was my own fault for trying to quack myself on this issue. Bloody Amanda. She would wish zombies on me.
I rolled out of bed and waved my arms around in a vaguely stretchy motion, hoping to ease the tightness across my shoulders. In front of me, the sun shone merrily through the window, unimpeded by such a cumbersome thing as glass. The glass lay broken on the floor, huddled in small piles for protection. A greyish leg in ragged clothes hooked over the sill.
On the bedside table a pair of thick rubber gloves and garbage bag sat ready for just such an morning as this. Wearing my shiny new blue converse, I pulled on the gloves picked my way around my room, gathering up the crusted shoes as lightly as I could. Green, apricot, tiger stripe, sequinned ... she really must have been having a good night last night. At least four zombies just in my room – that she could remember.
I handled the shoes gingerly, even though I knew that whatever it was glued to its surface wouldn’t affect me. It had no odour and less weight than one might imagine looking at them.
The mess continued down the hall: two more pairs of shoes and an arm, green with decay. There was a smushed head by the front door and the body to which both of these belonged was attached lay on the path. I didn’t want to know the details of their separation. Two more dismembered bodies lay under the front window. That was a relief; one morning I had been stuck with an army of them on my doorstep. It had taken hours to clean up. But then, that was in the early days when they stayed with her; now she was pretty blasé about the whole thing, barely remembering a detail beyond 10 am.
Here’s the thing about zombies: they be lighter than they look, but they are still pretty damn heavy. I was breathing hard by the time I had wrangled the third into the toolshed.
It never used to be like this. There had been a time before zombies attacked me in my sleep. I once had a good night rest every night. I had even dreamed.
I really needed to talk to Amanda about the zombies. She had to get help. I couldn’t spend my life picking up after her. My life was being taken over by her crazy imagination, and I just knew that one night, the zombies would finally get me. We hadn’t come to it yet, but who knew what was going on in Amanda’s head?
I kept my shiny new blue converse on as I showered, then as I dressed, then as I made breakfast. They disappeared halfway through my bowl of cereal.
Dreamweavers' Guildmistress
13 years ago
Dreamweavers' Guildmistress
Dreamscape Artist
I found it interesting Nef. I'm not very good at editing anything unless I spend a lot of time reading it, but it looks really good to me. Good luck :)
Click my sig for some belated but welcome Enid Blyton goodness!!
Huzzah!
Hey Nef, whatever happened to the story? Did you finish it and submit it? I'm a bit too late to help with any feedback but I loved reading what you posted. I also need to know how it all ends, because you've completely sucked me into the story.
I missed the deadline, so I'm going a bit more slowly (read: I got lazy and stopped when I missed the deadline). It's based on a dream my little sister had about me being a converse-obsessed zombie killer. It sounds like an awesome dream ...
Click my sig to read exactly why I love writing my blog ...
click the sig again to read about how Blyton foretold the killing of Osama ...
Anyone free to do a bit of an edit early next week? I just need some feedback about a story I'm writing (an update on what I have posted earlier)
short excerpt (Warning: some language - I toned it down a bit, but it's still there):
When I wake up this morning I’m surrounded by shoes.
Pairs and pairs of them.
Again.
Bugger.
It’s happened again. The thing behind the door across the hall has been at it in the night, and, judging by the shoes, I’ve been struck by zombies again. I bloody hate those buggers.
The dappled light, filtering through the trees outside my window, is pleasant. Dapple light -she hasn’t woken up and the zombies aren’t going to attack. And I have time to clean up before she wakes - but I don’t want to move. I just want to lie here with the sunlight of my sister’s imagination shining through the trees of her subconscious. Sleep hasn’t entirely released me and my body is heavy and sore; after what I seem to have been doing, it’s no surprise. I am lying on top of my covers fully clothed in clothes that are not mine – a pair of black shorts of mine that have been dead for years and a blue shirt I threw out a month ago. Great – I have zombie clothes too. They don’t keep me warm at all, which is understandable; they’re not really there. When I look at my feet I am wearing a pair of pristine blue converse that I have never seen before. My socks, however, are the pink checked knee highs I put on last night before sleeping. Huh, it seems she doesn’t dream of socks; what would freud think? The socks feel dry in the ephemeral shoes, so I leave them on.
Mystic Ward
12 years ago
Mystic Ward
Twentyfamilies Gypsy
I could have a look for you, but i'm no expert.
two stories on the go at the moment - this one was a flash inspiration today (prompted by a comment by Fifi on facebook a few weeks ago about making tea with a knife)
I was in trouble. Serious trouble. I searched the cupboards again, but came up with nothing. They had obviously been ransacked early on in the piece, before the invasion had turned serious. There was nothing in there but a wooden chopstick given over to mould a long time ago. I was in so much trouble.
“This is the most important skill you will ever learn, Aurelia†My instructor used to say to me. “Your name isn’t great – it’s a little to in-your-face and there’s nothing that you can do about that – but you can overcome that shortcoming by nailing this one important skill.†We had all worshipped Barbara, she had been a first rate F.S.K in her day – her actions in the invasion of 2364 were held to be decisive to the outcome of the final battle. We had all aspired to be her; she would never lose her pack when her services were so necessary; she would never let her hair get so much as a hair out of place. She would have her charges kept supplied no matter the cost to her.
Quick question - I found this story and I'm working on it. It's one side of a conversation, and I need some ideas as to how to format it. See below for some of the story, and let me know what you think (both of the formatting and the story)
Go away, this is a closed ward.
Ho wonderful for you, you must have an exciting life. [censored] off.
Now? Can’t you see I’m not well? You know, fever, bronchitis, and I may even develop pneumonia. And, as you can see ...
Hurrah for me! And how do you know anything about my case?
The hospital is breaching privacy laws too! Today just keeps getting better and better.
I don’t want to be interviewed. As I said, not well – you don’t see this oxygen ma-
He said What?
new short story.
They say that the Sun and Moon met in a club down on Milky Way, a loooooooooooong time ago. Moon was hanging out with a few of her friends on the dance floor, doing the YMCA (it wasn’t playing at the time but they were having that kind of night). Sun was cruising solo, being the only wanker to be wearing sunglasses at night in a darkened room. He liked to think himself post-modern and ironic (rumours say he was originally from Melbourne).
At first they didn’t see one another. Sun checked out a few dwarf stars and cruised around a break up that was threatening to go supernova, then settled at the bar to check out the action.
Moon came over and was attracting some water for her group and felt the heat of his gaze.
Sun was all into her because he saw her pretty pale face and, well, the vampire look was hot that season. He was also impressed that she would hang out with someone as ... round as Callisto (she swore it was all just water retention). That sort of charity was totally hot to him.
I was going back through some old stories and came across this one. I'm only putting up the first couple of paragraphs, because a) it needs work and b) it's depressing.
Plus, I don't really feel that the reader can really connect to the narrator, so I'm going to work on that a bit.
Let me know what you think can be done with this:
The salient member of the group was Brooke. She just stood out. She was stunning; you could look at her all day and not find a thing wrong with her appearance. She also had a certain charisma, it was just that she seemed to project her personality 5 metres ahead of herself. I on the other hand, did not and could not be what Brooke was, and i resented her for that. She had been my friend, and ostensibly still was, yet I had consciously built a wall around myself, hoping that even when I was with Brooke, people would recognise that i was, in some way, separate from her; my own individual self. We had always been different, all our lives. Circumstance had seemed to bring us together as children, because you are expected to be friends with the children who live close by you. I had thought we were close, but as we had grown, Brooke had blossomed, whereas I had become the ugly sidekick. What closeness we had passed as Brooke had drawn followers to distance herself from me. I built the wall while she built the army.
I never knew whether Brooke noticed this fortification between us, she treated me with affection, you know, hugs and kisses all round; that was how she treated everyone. She didn’t lessen the connection between us, in that she did not leave me out of her activities, nor did she fail to respond when I contacted her. I don’t know why I kept in with her, I suppose that I was drawn in by her exuberance, her charisma. I liked, in a sado-masochistic way, the way in which I was sidelined in the group. Everyone treated me with the pitying tolerance that comes with being the satellite of so radiant a being as Brooke. They thought I adored her as much as they did. Brooke never seemed to need me recently except as an addition to her adoring fans. I envied her that independence, I still needed her, even though i had come to loathe what i had perceived her to be. I tried to emulate that independence; the more friends she gathered around her, the higher my wall grew.
I am sitting alone on the edge of a cliff. It was my fortress; i sat here and made believe that the stone beneath me was the wall of my citadel. Brooke is at the bottom of what was the castle wall. She had come to me on my fortifications, for once without the hordes of adoring people that surround her. She sat down next to me.
“Hi Emma†Her aura of charisma seemed somewhat lessened. My walls were growing.
I replied without looking at her. It was painful to have her beauty mar my fortress, I was afraid she would oust me from my castle and become its rightful queen. We sat there for a while, not saying anything.
Hello out there! If you have a few minutes, I'm putting together a story, and I want your to get an idea of how you'd play this story. This is the prologue, and I'd like to know how you would write the story when Mish comes back.
Your Feedback is appreciated:
I hated getting on the bus on Wednesdays. The entire school had sport on Wednesday afternoon, so every student would come to school with two bags, their back pack and a sports bag holding all their sports kit, an awkward rectangular shoulder bag that was always double the size of their back pack. Straps from school bags hung down from the bag racks above the seats while the unwieldy sports bags were dumped anywhere they would fit up the aisle of the bus, leaving me no room to plant my feet and gaining me nothing but insults and the odd shove if happened to step on one of them.
I picked my way gingerly up the bus, jumping for the potholes in the sports bag road and hoping that I didn’t hit the step from the aisle to the seats. The buses were always those old 60s style ones with the sunken aisle that you would forget about and twist your ankle on when getting of the bus. Brooke was saving me a seat half-way up the bus, just far enough not to be geeky, but still far enough away from the back to not quite be considered ‘cool’. She was watching with a grin my awkward progress up the bus, which culminated in me nearly sitting on a year 12’s lap as the bus took a corner. The year 12 girl ignored me as her friend snorted in derision, and I scrambled up as best I could and staggered up to where Brooke was sitting.
“Dainty as always, sweetie,†Brooke laughed as I dropped into the seat next to her, “very well done!â€
“Shut up Brooke,†I said, smiling. I swung my bag off my shoulder, deliberately hitting her with it as I tried to shove it on the ground at my feet. There was already bag down there, and my bag got trapped between my knees and the seat in front. I gave up and left it where it was.
“No, seriously Mish, all you need is a black bodysuit and you could have been cat woman.â€
“You want me to be a cat woman? Keep going on about my grace at that volume and I’ll take the more traditional route. I’ll hole myself up in my house out of embarrassment and take in stray cats who I would train to do my bidding. I would never open the door to the house again and live with only cats for company. How’s that for cat woman?â€
Brooke pouted comically. “Only cats?†she whined. “You’d cut me out too? Your one true friend who would stand by you in any embarrassment?â€
“Oh no, Brooke. You I would have killed and stuffed and put in my living room as a climbing post for the cats.â€
We both laughed. “Just so long as I’m there, Mish.â€
“Of course, mi amigo. I’ll always have you there. In fact, if there were a zombie apocalypse tomorrow, there is no one I’d rather have by my side.â€
“Geez, I think I’m gonna cry – that’s so touching ... wait a minute. You just want me there so you could throw me to the zombies while you escaped, aren’t you?â€
“Well why else? It’s every man for himself in the zombie apocalypse.â€
“Hey!â€
“But I’d really be doing you a favour. Wouldn’t you rest easier knowing that you’d helped your bestest friend survive?†I fluttered my eyelashes at her.
“When I’m a zombie, I’m coming after you FIRST.â€
“What? I’m hurt. I’d even put up a statue to you. It would be in a park and we’d call it Brooke Park and birds would land on you and cover you in crap … it’d be lovely!â€
Brooke sighed. “It’s always nice to know how much you love me Mish,†she said.
“Awwww, of course I love you, muffin.â€
“I’m totally gonna miss you while you’re gone.â€
“Me too. But I have to go with my parents. I don’t have a choice. It’s only for a year, after allâ€
“18 months, Mish. And you could be kidnapped by some random person –â€
“ – which is just as likely to happen here.â€
“Or you could become the fourth wife of some old guy - â€
“Or I could be eaten by a camel. Settle down Brooke! I’ll be fine. My dad says it’s all normal over there.â€
“But they’re all terrorists.â€
“Brooke! You can't say that! It’s the middle east, not Al quaeda head quarters. Seriously, take a chill pill.â€
“I don’t want you to go Mish. You could stay with me. I’ll hide you in my wardrobe and feed you left overs.â€
“And that’s preferable to 18 months overseas how?â€
“It’s safer,†she insisted.
I laughed. “Brooke, I’ve hidden in your wardrobe before and a) it’s not that much fun, ‘cos your shoes smell and b) it’s the first place anyone will look for me.â€
“My feet do not smell!â€
“They do too!â€
“You just want to leave me.â€
“I’m just accepting the inevitable.â€
We stopped talking as the bus went round a big roundabout and nearly unseated us. Up the back, an epic game of corners was going on and we could hear the sqeals of pain form those getting squashed.
You're quite good at dialogue ;P
Thankyou - I really like the way the characters are brewing in my head, but I don't know what to do with them ...