I may be gone some while...

It's enrollment week next week at the University where I work, and then after that I'm starring in 'Titanic the musical' (I play 'Caroline' for anyone familiar with the show), so not only am I not going to have time to write, but I may not even have time to shower. Enrollment means I'll be running around like a blue-arsed fly, telling students they can or can't have scholarships, and being in 'Titanic' means travelling approx. 15 miles to the theatre from work and back every day, where I have to sing many top Cs at the top of my lungs and try not to drown for a couple of hours. This may be my last blog entry for a while! Smell you later! ;-)

My Own Gothic Princess & A Writing Update

Her name is Nox. As a child, she was the first patient of a new procedure of inter vivos heart donation – basically transplanting a heart from a living person into another living person without the donor dying. As she grows up, the heart becomes a burden, and she begins to act irrational, experiencing mood swings and patterns of erratic behaviour (and basically becoming more and more fucked up). Her parents ship her off to a mental asylum, where she mets an old man, who as a prisoner had his eyes forcefully removed in the first experiments for the inter vivos procedure, and now suffers from visions of the sights his ‘eyes’ are seeing, even though they are no longer attached to his body. That’s all I’m giving away so far about my new story, but I’m really enjoying creating this dark world. I think Nox looks a little something like Angelina Jolie in this picture, but younger (except Nox doesn’t spend all her time sitting on a toilet).

So I’m writing this at the moment (well, doing some character work anyhow), along with finally making a start with the World War One story, which is a completely different genre, and finishing off a couple of plays. It’s really refreshing to be writing properly again. I do sometimes feel I’m a little spoilt for choice with what to work on next, but at least boredom/monotony is not going to be an issue (fingers crossed!!).

Having no friends pays...

After struggling to write 200 words last night on a new idea, I procrastinated to the 'Writing' folder on my computer, where I store everything I've ever written since obtaining a pc for my 16th birthday. I rediscovered a half completed novel that I was working on when I had no friends and hadn't discovered boys (or they hadn't discovered me yet!). I had managed to write just over 40,000 words of it! Life was hard during those teen years, but in terms of writing, I'm now scared I was at my creative peak. It was before NTL and their one million channels, before the internet (well, for me anyway), before I stereotyped myself into some peppy cheerleader to try to become popular. I obviously had a lot more free time back then - come home from school, hang out with my brother, have tea, then write from about 6 - 11pm. Anyway, on a quick perusal of this document, I found that I had left my heroines in the middle of a field, eating oranges. Now I'm thinking perhaps I should go back and actually get them to where they were going again.
Oh, and my new idea? Well, I now have my own Gothic princess to play with... :-)

Imperial War Museum London

Friday saw my first visit to the Imperial War Museum in London, to research my novel set during the First World War. The museum was relatively easy to find, and the staff were extremely helpful; not only were they courteous and polite but they had also set out a pile of relevant books for me to use in preparation for my visit. I got there much later than I had anticipated (after checking out of my hotel), so didn't get nearly half as much done as I would have liked. In fact, I only managed to read and take notes from two books. Both were very useful however, but I do plan to go back at some point, whenever I am next in London. Just a note to anyone planning on going - take your own pencil and pencil sharpener, as you are forbidden to use pen in the Reading Room, and their pencil sharpeners do not work!!

So, what have I discovered? Well, the First World War was pretty much like the Second World War, in terms of price increases, air raids, rationing, Women's Land Army and Munitions work. What I have discovered is that there was a great deal of mistrust in foreigners at the time, in case they were spies, with German shopkeepers living in the UK being targetted violently by local gangs. There were lots of 'War Babies' as Victorian sensibilites went out of the window and people adopted a 'live for today' attitude. There was a great pressure on men to enlist in the army, and those that didn't were punished, not just by the government, but by the general public too. Working class women had money for the first time and spent it on cosmetics and other luxury items. Women served in the police force, as tram and bus drivers, blacksmiths and in other jobs that had traditionally been classed as 'male'.

So what now? Well, I think it's high time I started actually writing the bloody thing! I think I have enough to start with, so I need to collect my story together, based on the information I have collected here, and make a start on it. I'll keep you posted...

Lucy :-)

Wicked!!!

Wicked, Wicked, Wicked. How remarkable was this show?! I went to the first preview on Thursday, and the atmosphere was electrifying. There were 2,500 people all eagerly anticipating the start of the show. After a few minor hiccups at the beginning (“Look there’s Glinda”, followed by silence), the show went incredibly smoothly; Leicester lad Joseph Connor did the city proud as various ensemble parts. The real star of the show was Idina Menzel, as the vulnerable yet passionate wicked witch of the west. Even with the flu, she still sounded amazing and was on another level from the rest of the cast. Miriam Margoyles and Nigel Planer were also fantastic. I’m hoping to go see it again before Idina flies back to Oz…I mean, New York.

Research, Research, Research!

I'm really excited at the minute. Not only am I going to see 'Wicked' (the musical tale of the two witches of Oz) tomorrow, but I'm also going to spend Friday at the Imperial War Museum, trying to find as much information on the role of women during the Great War, the Suffragette movement, and munitions factories as humanly possible!The people at the museum whom I have already spoken to seem really nice and helpful, so I'm planning on having a very productive day. I'm looking forward to reading the diaries by women of the period to try and see what everyday life was like for them during this period of conflict. I've also been informed about the Genesis website, which is run by the Women's Library (which I also plan to visit at some point). This website is a database of all the literature around the country relating to women's experiences throughout history. For anyone who is interested, the website address is: http://www.genesis.ac.uk/.