A little more...

I feel very uninspired lately. I should do some word spiders then a few freewrites or something, but having started uni again, daily housework, wanting to knit (though my project is driving me insane!), needing to work on the house and the basic caring for the animals, I feel like I just want to do nothing. One thing at a time though.

So really, I am not going to write anything today. I have to watch a programme for uni and feel like doing a little xping on the mud, so that's what I'll do instead.

Switch it

Okay, so it's always a good idea to change the viewpoint, whether it be an omniscient narrator to first person, or one character to another and vice versa. So I thought today I'd write the same scene from Aunt Beth's point of view. So here goes...

Looking around me at the students walking into the lecture, I could see I was over dressed. I knew I should've worn trousers instead of a skirt and all this jewellery... well it'll not be hard to spot the mature student. I stand out like a sore thumb against the denim and black clad teenagers. I breathed in and walked towards the doors. A surly looking girl held the door for me. I thanked her but she ignored me and followed her friends to some seats.
I looked up and around, trying to find somewhere to sit that had someone else my age, or on their own when I saw Lizzy. I think I shouted out of pure relief as I heard myself yell her name. A boy next to me jumped in fright. Something in me made me laugh at that and I rushed up to sit next to Lizzy. Maybe I wouldn't be alone after all.
I shuffled past the massive line of people who were already seated and slid into the seat next to Lizzy.
"First day here, can you believe we're in the same lecture?" I searched in my bag for that blasted pen I put in.
"No," she replied. "But you have taken the same class as me."
Found the pen! Thank goodness for that, I was worried I'd have to borrow one and from the look on Lizzy's face, it would be a black mark on my 'cool aunt' status. Mind you, I doubt she's thought of me as a cool aunt for a while now. She used to tell me things about boyfriends and friends. Now she will do anything to avoid being seen in public with me. Maybe it's the way I dress, or my age, but it's like she's grown away from me as all children do. I was going to say all this to her, but I chickened out and instead said "Are you okay, Lizzy? You look a bit upset."
Weak, I know, but I'm not going to have a heart to heart with her first thing on a Monday morning in a lecture hall.
"I'm fine." she said, but I knew she wasn't.
I didn't see him enter, but I heard the giggles then. For some reason the dull hum of conversation had turned to giggles and whispers. I turned to face the stage at the front of the hall and there he was. Michael. Oh dear. This was not good at all. Lizzy prodded my arm with her pen and I turned to face her.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Fine!" I had to say that. I couldn't tell her I was having an affair with him. He was 15 years younger than me, not that much older than Lizzy. "Just thought I knew him from somewhere."
I turned back as he clapped his hands and introduced himself. I heard Lizzy giggle next to me. I couldn't stop myself telling her off. He was mine and I didn't want her eyeing him up.

This is pretty lame but buggerit! I've done some writing today and some is always better than none. I'm now starving, so am going to grab some lunch.

Log for quick viewing...

This post is gone now. :P

Snow snow snow!

Well we're snowed in. I could drive if I wanted to risk smashing into someone or them smashing into me, but I think I'll not push my luck. The Lady is never very kind to me.
So I guess it gives me more time to write. I have been writing a bit of Belmonte. I need to change his name really. The only reason he became Detective Belmonte was because Béa's surname was the first that came to me when I tried to think of a French surname. I could call him Beaumont or something but then I'd think of my friend Neil. Hmmm something to think about. He will remain Belmonte for the moment. I'll need to write out the plot at some point. It gets jumbled in my head with everything else.
I sent off 'Spiders' to a flash fiction competition. I don't hold out much hope but I may as well try. It was £3 to enter. All of these competition entries cost money so I need to find work to sustain it, pity no-one will employ me.
Hmmm let's go back to Aunt Beth. I think we got to 'She was just being Aunt Beth.'.

A man entered the room and stepped up onto the low stage at the front of the theatre. A flutter of giggles went around the room.
"He is hot hot hot!" Katherine who was sitting next to me whispered.
I nodded in agreement. "What do you think, Aunt Beth?" I asked and turned towards her.
She didn't reply. She was staring at the man as if she'd seen a ghost (kill this cliche! - ignore when I do this, it means I want to change the sentence later... which obviously I can't really do as you're reading as I'm writing it).
"Aunt Beth?" I prodded her arm with my pen.
"Hmm?" she turned towards me. "Sorry?"
"Are you okay?"
"Fine!" she said quickly. "Just thought I knew him from somewhere."
The man on the stage clapped his hands and Aunt Beth snapped back to watch him (Change!).
"Right, ladies and gents." he grinned round at the room, looking at little bemused at all the giggling. "I'm Michael O'Neil and I'm your tutor this year."
"Oh my God, he's Irish," Katherine murmured, mock fanning her face with her notebook. I giggled and Aunt Beth shot me a dirty look.
"Listen to the man, Elizabeth!" she hissed.
I grinned at her and rolled my eyes then settled back into my seat to listen. Katherine had scribbled his name on her notebook and drawn a huge love heart round it. She sniggered and winked when she saw me looking at it. That was typical of Katherine. She'd only seen the man for a minute and already she was planning a way to get him.

Right, that'll do for that story for today as I'm running out of steam with it. Perhaps it'll grow a nice pair of legs and run away with itself, but maybe not.
I should write for a few hours at least a day, but I'm finding it hard to do that. So many distractions and things I need/want to do stop me. I should write at night when my brain is most active really. During the day, I always need to do things like feeding/cleaning the rabbits, cleaning the house, walking the dogs, etc. I've started walking the dogs in the afternoon it's too cold for Dan to walk them at night. Plus I figure the last thing he wants is to come home then go out for a walk in the cold again.
Any way, I'll get on with things.

Or not page a day...

I totally forgot about this blog. I'm terrible at blogging.

I got bored with the other story and have been working on Belmonte. Always Belmonte is there, nagging me to be written. I got to thinking though, about an ex friend of mine, Avril, who'd just split up with her boyfriend. One day in the car she said to me 'I wish that something happened to me, like I hurt myself seriously or that, so that he'd realise how much I mean to him.' Obviously, most women don't admit to thinking such mental things, but it got me thinking... I can see her point. It was irrational and needy but sometimes you think the only way to get through to someone is to disappear/get hurt/etc. So I ended up writing...

I'd hurt myself
if it hurt you

I kill myself
if it killed you

I'd cry
if I knew you'd cry too

But you wouldn't notice
You wouldn't care

Prick

So, okay crap, I know that. It was a simple freewrite with no feeling. That's sometimes what you get with a freewrite. If you keep going with it sometimes something good comes out, mostly not though.

I then thought more and changed it. Another one of my poems, Watching http://angelicbooks.blogspot.com/2008/06/watching.html , surrounds a woman who is stalking a man. I used this as inspiration to spur on the above.

Having still not worked on it properly, I have got the following half freewrite...

I'd hurt myself to hurt you

I'd kill myself if it made you cry

But you wouldn't notice
The shadow in your peripheral vision
Blazing at you

I'd inflame myself to burn you.

This needs a lot of work... maybe even a full rewrite. But, at least I've written *something* and at this moment in time, writing is the last thing I want to do. The idea is there. It will swim for a while, along with Belmonte, then either be consigned to the bin like the story I started here, or will develop. Who knows!

Now, off for Christmas and all that lark.

New blog...

Okay so, I'm fed up of not writing or doing ANYTHING at all. I'm doing this as a result.
A page a day. Fiction. It won't be good. It won't be anything that is worthy of a Booker prize and it certainly won't be anything that I'd want to show to a publisher.
But, it will get me writing and it'll stop me sitting round feeling useless and generally hating myself for doing nothing.

I have no idea what to call this but I started today.


When Aunt Beth turned up at the front of the lecture theatre, I couldn’t speak. Surely she didn’t think this was a good idea. Scanning the tiers of students, she spotted me.
“Lizzy!” she yelled, waving wildly up at me.
I slid down my seat and half waved at her. I couldn’t ignore her.
Bouncing up the stairs two at a time, lace scarves and dangly earrings flying, she drew attention. Amused glances from my classmates told me I’d be explaining Aunt Beth later that evening.
“I’ll come and sit with you.” She shouted across the remaining dozen seats she had to pass to get to me.
I tried to look happy to see her. The vision of purple and green apologised and shuffled past the already seated students and finally thumped herself down in the seat next to me.
“First day here, can you believe we’re in the same lecture?” she exclaimed digging in her bag.
“No,” I replied. “But you have taken the same class as me.”
Finding a pen, she triumphantly brandished it at me like a prized lucky dip item. “Are you okay, Lizzy? You look a bit upset.”
“I’m fine,” I felt bad for showing how I felt. It wasn’t her fault. She was just being Aunt Beth.