'Block' for Christmas

I sometimes feel like stamping my feet and screaming ‘I want to be a writer’ as loudly and as whiny as possible, because I feel so frustrated. At the moment, I’m feeling tired and ‘blocked’ creatively. I just can’t envisage the world I’m trying to write about. I sit, staring at a blank computer screen and can’t seem to connect with what I’m doing. I’m battling two instincts – the first to have a break and try not to write anything until I feel ‘better’, and the second to just keep going, and write anything, even if it is dire, in the hope that something will eventually click into place.

I’ve been doing some research into great writers, and, of course, all of them had to do other occupations before they got their first book published. But what it doesn’t tell you in these biographies is when they found the time to write their masterpieces in between being court transcribers, ministers, journalists, shoe polishers and the like. But then, I guess Dickens et al didn’t have the distractions of television and computer games when they came home from work, and only had their own stories to escape into. I read an article about a fairly new contemporary novelist who is working on her second novel and has to get up at 4am to write for a couple of hours before commuting to her full-time ‘day’ job. I don’t think I could do that, I really couldn’t. I remember when I was in the sixth form, and I’d get home at 3pm and go straight upstairs and write for a couple of hours… I really need to stop reminiscing and work out a way to do that now without having to get up before the birds do.

On a separate note, I found this website that contains free e-books of pretty much everything that is no longer in copyright in the USA. So far I’ve downloaded a couple of Charles Dickens novels, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. So if you want to catch up with your favourite Victorian novelists, go to:

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

This will most certainly be my last blog entry before the holiday, so I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I will be back soon though, full of turkey and gluten-free minced pies!
Lucy :-)

The Festive Season

I am in good spirits right now (no, I'm not bathing in brandy), as it is almost Christmas and I have almost finished work for the holidays. I've got no plans really for the next few weeks, so I am really hoping to turn my attentions to my writing (and possibly learning my lines for Company) rather than sitting on the sofa watching endless TV.

There's a writing competition called 'Green and (un)pleasant Lands' that I am going to try hard to enter, for which I have to write a proposal of the story I want to write about English folklore for 31st December. I've been researching English myths today, and I'm trying to decide how to tackle my story - to contemporise something or to create my own myth about a place or a building. I'm still not sure, but when I start thinking about it, I start remembering Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and then start plagiarising that instead.

I keep forgetting about deadlines for competitions until the last minute. Wish I had a BlackBerry, that would be superb. I know it's still a little bit early, but one of my new year's resolutions is to be more organised and enter more stories into competitions, magazines, etc. 2007 IS going to be the year that I finish my novel too. I really need to stay motivated and keep writing. Hopefully 2007 will be a successful year.

The New 'Jazz Age'

I have decided to write a novella or short story about a stripper. I know that Seb is currently writing/has written a story about a woman who works in a strip club/is a stripper, but my story is going to be a bit different (though I thought they could possibly both work in the same club, if Seb liked the idea!).

Anyway, the plot is a little vague at the moment. I've been heavily inspired by 1920s New York and the 'Jazz Age', and I think it's not such a far stretch to imagine that we are living in the new Jazz Age - many defining features are the same, such as concern with technological advances, individualism, and hedonism. I'm going to try to take my inspiration from the writings of F. Scott and Zelda Fizgerald, and Joseph Moncure March and write a modernist account of the life of this girl in contemporary society. By modernist, I mean being more concerned about the character's 'life force' rather than a realistic representation of the world. Modernism was also a feature of the Jazz Age, so fits in nicely with the style and tone I'm aiming for.

Blogger in Beta

This is what the Blogger help page says under: "Why is Blogger switching to Google Accounts".

"Google Accounts are better protected against fraud, impersonation, and abuse. In addition, by switching your Blogger account to a Google Account, it will be easier to use other Google services like AdWords, Google Groups, Google Alerts, Froogle Shopping List, Personalized Search, your Personalized Homepage, Google Answers, and many future Google services."

What I read from this is that Blogger have come up with a load of things that normal people don't actually ever use (AdWords, Froogle shopping list anyone?) and tried to put a positive spin on it, as they don't like or don't want to disclose the real answer. Surely the simple and honest explanation would be "Google is offering us loads of money, so screw you guys, we're rich!", rather than this load of crap?

I don't want to change. If I wanted to use those services, I would. But I don't. And one thing I've noticed that I don't like about Beta is that unless your email/account address is the name of your Blog alias, there seems no way to alter it (perhaps I'm wrong?).

So I'm not changing. Serves them right for not answering the question: "What if I don't want to switch?" properly in their help section.

Tidy House, Tidy Mind

I had a really nice weekend. For once I wasn't working, so I spent both days relaxing and doing jobs around the house. I did everything on the list I set myself, and I feel proud of my accomplishments. Yes, I only did the washing up - it wasn't like I made some sort of scientific breakthrough or solved the Middle East crisis - but I still felt satisfied that I had done something. And it got me thinking that even doing something small and managable, like the washing up, can have an impact on your life. Would it be possible to stage a play wherein someone has a life-altering experience simply because they did the washing up? Probably not (who would go to watch it?), but I think its important to note that it doesn't have to be all car-explosions and anal rape to be 'dramatic'.
Anyway, my cleaning my house - and myself - up has pulled me out of my mean blues, at least for the short-term. I had a think about my novel over the weekend, and I think it's best to progress 'NaNoWriMo' -style until I complete the first draft, meaning that I should just plough on, and if I feel blocked or bored then just skip to the bit that I want to write a little bit further on. I'm not rehearsing this week either, so I'm going to try to give myself some writing time, perhaps at lunchtimes at work. Am going to try really hard to be productive and motivated, at least until my house gets messy again...

'Inter Vivos' and Gunman story

I have been thinking about my NaNoWriMo novel, Inter Vivos. I know that the month is over, but I really liked the characters and story premise that I created, so I'm going to continue on with it, in the hope of completing a first draft by April. When writing prose, I always get stuck at the point when my characters need to travel from one place to another. I find it really hard to get them from point A to point B. I want my characters to go from the mental institution to one of my other characters' house, but I feel like I need to document the journey there. So they are now stuck, having just escaped from the asylum, and are standing there, tapping their feet impatiently at me (like Sonic the Hedgehog used to do if you made him stand still too long). I think that as I'm currently writing it in first person, I can skim all the boring details and have my narrator be retrospective on the trip so, "before we knew it we were there". It's annoying, because I know pretty much how the whole story is going to be mapped out, apart from the 'travelling' bits. Grr!

Have just written my Momentum homework, for which we had to take a news story and come up with a couple of scenes and some characters. I've taken a story about a man in Germany who went back to his old school, shot some kids and then killed himself. I've called the gun man Shaun (taken from Shaun of the Dead there folks!), and have given him a love affair with his former teacher, Jess. When things start to go wrong, he finds himself losing control and the only way he feels he can regain some control is to go into the school with a gun. When he accidentally kills one of the students, he then kills himself (leaving poor old Jess to deal with the mess). I'm not sure if I will try to develop this into a full-blown play (I actually see it in my head as a TV drama), but I quite liked my character Jess - she's a very strong woman, very moralistic, very sensible, but incredible lonely, and she does really connect with Shaun. So we'll see where it goes.

Response to article below

I really despise Desdemona and Ophelia and Juliet. They are pathetic. All of them could have taken their fates in their own hands and said 'No thank you, I think I can do better' and rode off into the sunset. Instead they die tragic deaths because, ultimately, they do what they are told. Desdemona just lies there and lets her husband strangle her (as you do), Ophelia goes insane and kills herself because Hamlet doesn't love her anymore (teen angst if ever there was some), and Juliet kills herself because she didn't have sense to run off with Romeo when he got banished. The only reason I wanted any one of those parts when I was acting at University was because those parts (thoses types of role) always go to the skinny pretty girls who don't necessarily act very well, but who look the part. So basically, being cast as 'Juliet' is like some male director going 'yeah, you're pretty', and I know a lot of girls needed that self-esteem boost (I know I did at the time).
Now, I like this article, because what it's saying is that this sort of stereotype works the other way. The only interesting strong women in theatre (or at least the main contenders for the title) are murderers. In other words, only by acting 'anti-feminine' can a female role be considered equal to a man's. I know this is an age-old feminist argument, but I think it proves the point here. You get anti-heros all the time for male actors, characters who aren't kings or soldiers but everyday Joes who go through something tragic. No one cares about Willy Loman's wife (for example), who also goes through tragedy. Sure, if she'd have killed her husband then she'd be one of the all time greatest female roles in history, but she doesn't.
I'm trying to come up with my 'point', and it's difficult because obviously being a woman, and acting on occasion, I would love to create a role (or even better several roles) for women where they weren't passive but at the same time they didn't have to pull the trigger, stab someone through the heart or poision anyone to be considered meaty roles. How to do that though seems trickier than it should be.

Sympathy for the She-devils

Thought this article was really interesting about women characters in theatre. I've cut and paste the article as often links don't work once the article has been archived (I've found).

"Sympathy for the she-devils
From Lady Macbeth to Thérèse Raquin, the stage has always adored a brutal murderess. So what do these parts tell us about women? Not much, writes Lyn Gardner - but they speak volumes about the male writers who created them.

Wednesday November 8, 2006The Guardian

Everyone loves a bad girl, particularly in the theatre. Our stages are littered with the corpses of deadly women, from Medea to Lady Macbeth, from Vittoria in the White Devil, to Oscar Wilde's sexy Salome. These are women who pass through men's lives like a curse, leaving only death and destruction behind. Even in pantomime, Snow White's wicked stepmother looms large, another example of the age-old appeal of female villains.
A couple of thousand years before the movies got in on the act with their smoky femmes fatales, and deadly women such as Catherine Trammell in Basic Instinct, theatre regularly offered up images of women who were allowed to take centre stage because their murderous actions meant they were no longer seen to be behaving like women, but more like men.
In drama, these unnatural creatures had to be caught, tamed and punished as a lesson to other women. That is, if they did not have the decency to go mad and kill themselves, like Lady Macbeth and Thérèse Raquin, the latter now showing in a new stage version at the National. Raquin, in Emile Zola's famous 19th-century novel, succumbs to the madness of love and murder, and is then driven mad by guilt.
When Euripides flouted theatrical tradition by allowing Medea, the child-killer, to escape unpunished, the playwright Aristophanes rebuked him in verse. The idea that women who kill do not behave like ideal women, but more like men is summed up not only by Lady Macbeth's line "unsex me here", but also by Dame Edith Evans' observation on being offered the role of the Scottish murderess: "It's absolutely out of the question. I could never impersonate a woman who had such a peculiar notion of hospitality." Lady Macbeth's sins, it seems, were not confined to regicide but extended to womanly failures of housekeeping and etiquette.
Goneril and Regan in King Lear, too, often seem shocking not for how they wage war and encourage torture, but for the fact they have so little patience - very much a female virtue - with quarrelsome old people. Similarly, the wicked queen in Snow White must be punished not just for her ingenious, if frankly unwholesome, way with apples, but for failing to play her assigned role as a substitute mother to the vapid Snow White, a young woman whose tedious obsession with housework sets her up as an icon of perfect femininity.
In theatre, it sometimes seems that the only way women can escape their gender roles and the terrible burden of femininity is by plunging a knife into a male breast or taking aim with a gun and making damn sure they don't miss. There's the avenging Clytemnestra, who takes a lover and kills her husband, in the Oresteia; Alice Arden, in the 1599 play Arden of Faversham, demonstrates a determination to dispatch her husband that outstrips the ludicrous attempts of her bungling male accomplices; and the lithe Beatrice-Joanna, in the 1622 revenge tragedy The Changeling, commits adultery and murder - and pays the price not just for killing but also for having found sexual satisfaction.
Like the later Victorian stories of villainous women and today's made-for-TV movie plots, many of these early plays were based on true-life crime stories. Arden of Faversham came from a circulating story about a brutal murder that struck horror into the Elizabethan breast, with its suggestion that death can lurk at home in the shape of an apparently dutiful wife.
The Changeling, too, had its roots not just in the exotic tales of faraway crimes, but also in the high-society scandal of Lady Frances Howard. Married in 1606, at the age 13, to the Earl of Essex, she became the mistress of the Earl of Somerset, with whom she eventually stood trial for murder.
Like their late 20th and 21st century movie counterparts, these women exert an allure that has little to do with the reasons why the majority of women kill - self-defence, domestic violence, mental abuse - and a great deal to do with an erotic fascination with female violence; these killers are depicted as lithe and lethal babes.
Not for nothing does the stage musical Chicago regularly advertise itself with teasing images of pouting, sexy young women dubbed as "natural blonde killers". One of these early advertisements even bore a passing resemblance to the infamous portrait of Myra Hindley, herself the subject of numerous TV dramas and stage plays - and a slew of one-woman shows without which no Edinburgh Fringe would be complete.
What these stage depictions of women as murderers conveniently forget is that, in real life, women are more likely to be the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence. The gory Theatre du Grand Guignol, founded in Paris in 1897, was undoubtedly lurid and sensational with its decapitations, blood and eyeballs rolling all over the stage. But it may have actually portrayed a more truthful reflection of the female experience of violence than our stages sometimes offer even today. One Guignol actress, Maxa, kept a tally of her demises there: she was murdered 10,000 times in more than 60 different ways. Whether or not female violence is on the rise, the reality is that women killers are still massively outnumbered by men.
Unsurprisingly, you'll find more actors queuing up to play Medea and Lady Macbeth than their more balanced sisters; both roles represent two of the peaks in any classical actress's career. Who wouldn't prefer playing a Salome or a Goneril over all those invisible good girls - a veritable army of Ophelias and Desdemonas, who, in plays written largely by men, stalk the stage like ghosts and dissolve before the play is done? These disappearances often pass virtually without comment, because these women were barely there in the first place - walk-on players in the dramas of men's lives.
The female killer, the passive woman turned predator, is a far more dazzling dramatic spectacle. Unlike the good girls who are so easily shoved into the wings and out of theatre history, the bad girls have been allowed to take their place centre stage and revel in it. In the theatre, if you're female, crime really does pay ..."

Tappa-tappa-tappa

Company rehearsals are well underway, and I've been tap-dancing my heart out and I think I'm getting it right - we're using hats and canes and everything! All very exciting and energetic. I just need to learn the words and harmony to the song we're singing at the same time as doing the dance and then I'll be sorted! Should be a good show.
Well, it's the last day of NaNoWriMo today and I've written 12,560 words (or something to that effect). I know I could have done better, and I'm a little disappointed with myself for not pulling my finger out and for playing the Sims 2 way too much (devil game), but at the same time, I'm now 12000 words into the beginnings of what will hopefully be my first novel, so it's all positive. And it inspired me to write and motivated me, so I think I did well. I'm going to try and do it properly next year, and maybe I'll reach that 50,000 word target!
I really want to work more on my 'youths' play, so I am going to start that again next week. I think I've worked out the different storylines for all of my teens, so it should be a case of just writing it now. My friend is having a play he wrote performed by the university theatre society, and this has got me thinking - perhaps that would be the perfect place to perform in my 'youths' play too? I mean, the actors there are over the age of 18, so no one will pass out if they say f*** on stage, but they're not 'adults pretending to be children' either (a la Dawsons Creek). So it might work.
I'm still not sure what to write for Momentum. I'd ideally like to write about my Shilton posse, but not sure I'll be 'allowed'. Perhaps I'll be inspired by tonight's workshop session.
Lucy :-)

Umbrella and Spam

Well, my short story is up on Umbrella now: http://www.umbrellastories.com/frameset.html
To find it (it's very maze-like), click on 'Flash fiction', then in the box click on '800 words', and then in the new window, in tiny letters at the bottom right hand corner, click on 'by author', and then my name will come up in a list! This story has gone through several redrafts and titles, but it is still essentially the story I wrote when I was sixteen.

I am now twenty-six years old (it pains me to write that!). And although I didn't greet my 26th year with a newly-penned 50,000 word NaNoWriMo novel (yes, I suck!), I did get to see Tim Curry in Spamalot, the Monty Python musical. Is it just me, or is there something extremely sexy about him, even though he must be over 60? Think I'm going to have to rewatch 'The Worst Witch' later.

I'm trying to get my story finished for the 'Tripod' competition, but I'm now having an anxiety attack and think it's crap. Need to post it off tomorrow if it's going to get there on time. Gulp! I'm really hoping to pull myself out of the anti-creativity crater I seem to have fallen into very soon!

Lazy and Poor

I've had a pretty unproductive weekend yet again. I wasn't scheduled in to work, so had the whole two days off. On Saturday I slept til 3pm, and was still ready for bed again by half 10!
I have come to the conclusion that I'm never going to 'win' NaNoWriMo. There's little hope of me writing just under 40,000 words in two weeks. And it's all my own fault. I'm not sure whether it's just plain laziness or 'mental exhaustion', but either way, my brain would rather veg out in the evenings than create a novel (even a poorly written one). My stringent budgeting this month (£5 a week food budget - oh yes!) has meant that I still have cash at the end of the month, but it's exhausting and depressing living on the poverty line, especially when I have friends four - five years older than me who can afford houses and posh cars and brand named food products, and vegetables and things like that. I could do with a holiday, but obviously I can't afford one. I'll be working til I drop, I guess.
I've figured out how Nox (my NaNoWriMo heroine) is going to escape the mental institution, which had me stumped for a while, but actually getting down to writing it is hard. I'm going to keep writing the story after NaNo has finished, and hopefully turn it into something worthwhile. There's just not enough hours in the day. And poisoning myself wth caffeine and staying up later and later to try to get things done is making me ill (physically and mentally). Sometimes I wish I was passionate about accounting or something else practical, and then at least I'd be well off, in a secure job, with proper employment structure and progression, rather than scribbling away at a quarter past midnight each night with the vague notion that one day someone will read my scribblings and offer me some money for it. Sigh. This post is turning into a bit of a rant, and it wasn't meant to be. Think I'll go and make a cup of tea, and hopefully I'll feel better afterwards.

Tuesday's child is full of grace...

...Well, supposedly, but I was born on a Tuesday and I fall over and bump into things a lot. I wonder who came up with that rhyme?

Anyway, it's Tuesday, and it's my night off from working/singing/rehearsing/Momentum-ing, so I'm in a pretty good mood, except that I have a property inspection tomorrow so have to give the place a once-over with a duster (and do all the washing up...). Never mind, I'm sure I'll find time to write this evening.

I have achieved something marvellous - I have broken the 10,000 barrier in my NaNoWriMo. OK, it's true that I'm behind in my targets and should be nearer to 20,000 at this point, but I still think it's a tremendous achievement for someone who is as lazy and as easily distracted as I have discovered I am.

I'm still trying to come up with an idea for Momentum this year, but can't think of anything that involves three or less people. Maybe if I talk sweetly enough they'll change the rules to 4 people this year instead (I won't hold my breath though!).

I'm also working on my Tripod submission (the story about 'Mouse' my silent Shilton chav). Does anyone know how many words they are expecting it to be?

Momentum Sessions

Well, the momentum playwriting sessions have started up again, and because they don't want to lose us, they have extended the age limit of the group, so I can still go! I'm going to try and give it a really good go this year, as I'm not counting on them upping the age limit again next September. But now I'm thinking, what shall I write? I'm obviously working on a couple of projects at the moment, but none of those fit in with the Momentum guidelines (unless those get changed this year too). Our exercise for this week is to find a newspaper story that you could dramatise (yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have homework) so perhaps that might give me some ideas. Got quite drunk actually after the session was over! Spent a good portion of the time at the pub spouting on about Christopher Marlowe to some unsuspecting BA English final year student. Hope I've not scared him off coming to Momentum now! Could have been worse though, I could have been drinking rose...

Word on my work PC is being stupid and keeps crashing; I was going to do a bit more towards my NaNoWriMo this lunch time, but now I'm not sure that I want to in case the whole thing crashes and my words gets lost somewhere in cyberland. Tonight I'm having a dedicated writing night, as I'm hoping to get through another couple of thousand words for NaNoWriMo, and also to start my story submission for Tripod. This may be a bit over-ambitious, as I may end up doing all the washing up and playing the Sims 2 instead, but you never know! An ode to the Sims 2 - now that would be easy to write.

Umbrella

NaNoWriMo update: 5775 words so far. I'm below my word target by about 4000, mainly because I didn't feel very well on Sunday so spent the day not doing anything. Stupid sick body!

I received an email today from someone who runs the Umbrella Stories website to say that she liked the story I submitted, and will be putting it online shortly. The site is really cool - odd structurally at first, but I like it. It also houses Sabrina Smith's wonderful short story, so now my little piece will be there to keep her's company. I will post the link to it when it's published.

Momentum starts again tomorrow, with Amanda Whittington again this time (Emma Rosoman is living it large in London). I'm so caught up in prose right now, it's going to be interesting to see what dialogue I come out with! Well, it's all about keeping versatile, isn't it? I am looking forward to it, and to seeing who is new this year. Still haven't thought of an idea for a one-act play with only three or less people in it, though I guess there's no rush right now.

I think November is going to be a busy-crazy month, what with all the writing and rehearsals for my play. I moan, but I love it really. Just wish I had a little bit more time. I deprive my body of sleep and pump it full of crap in the bid to make each day stretch that little bit longer, but now I'm feeling rubbish. I'll get NaNoWriMo out of the way and sleep all through December I think...

NaNoWriMo 2

God, this NaNoWriMo thing is harder than I thought it would be. I've written just over 3000 words (so I'm 1000 down on my targets) and I'm only happy with about 1500 of them. I've also switched narrative voice half way through, as I had unknowingly developed this bizarre writing habit where I'd slip into the passive voice "she would..." and I got annoyed at myself for doing it.

Anyway, no one can beat me in terms of procrastination - for that I am the queen - and so after I had written my 2000-0dd words last night, I decided to see how long my favourite novels were, just so that I know, after NaNoWriMo, how many words my first novel should be. Well, Lady Oracle is approx. 152,880 words long; The Hours is approx. 62,440; and Oranges are not the only Fruit is approx. 76,608 words. So I think I'll aim for about 80,000 words, to be on the safe side.

I also rediscovered last night that writing makes me feel Happy. I know that sounds a bit stupid, but I had forgotten how contented it makes me feel to not have to think about money and my job and other stuff like that, but just to focus on another person, another world, another time and let my imagination go crazy. It's extremely therapeutic.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month kicked off at midnight last night/this morning, and I've written 509 words so far. 509 words of crap, mind you, but at least it's a start.

I think that once I get into it, it should flow a little easier, but right now my 'novel' reads like a Woman's Weekly article.

Good luck to fellow NaNoWriMo-ites!

Ghost's Story - for Hallowe'en

I’ve been trapped here for a long time. A long time. I know this because after a while I forget how to define an hour, a day, a week. It feels like I’m contained under water, and all I can hear is the waves lapping at my ears. My vision is blurred. I see objects, people, but not detail. I forget detail. Can you miss something that you have forgotten? I remember words I once used. Stair. Vase. Key. I forget to what they refer. A strange world to which I am no longer connected.
I try to break free. I scream until the water around my head almost drowns me. I try to reach out, grab something or someone, but they cannot see or feel me. I wonder if they cannot see me in the same way I cannot see them. Just moving, man-shaped haziness. I have tried to call out: ‘help me, I am trapped; I do not know the way out’, but they do not hear me, and I fight against the current in my own sphere to be heard.
The paleness goes on forever. I can see only a short distance around me. The rest is obscure. I am numb for the most part. I do not feel my body. I am transparent, weightless. Sometimes I feel prickles where my arms would be, and this brings me comfort. If I focus hard enough, I can sometimes move things on the other side, small things, like a book or a glass. This also brings me comfort. Perhaps if they see that it has moved, they will rescue me from this translucent prison. I am afraid of sleep, and yet, at times I will it. I have been here for a long time.
All is still until:
I am suddenly awakened by a powerful emotion I had thought I had forgotten. It is fear, crippling fear, and it engulfs me. I am pulled forward through the partition (I am free!), and I can look down and see my body, dressed as it once was, in brown crinoline. And I am running, running down the great staircase in my home, running and trying not to look back. He is close, I can sense him. He mustn’t catch me. I am terrified by what he might do if he reaches me. I run, knocking over a table with the edge of my dress. I hear the porcelain vase smash behind me. I look back. I know I should see him, but he is not in sight. I do not slow however; it could be a trick. I can sense that he is near, perhaps just around the corner, waiting for me to stop, catch my breath, so he can have me. I see the door to the pantry, and then I am confused. I am inside, though I do not recall opening the door. I turn to check that the door is now locked and the key within sight, that he cannot get in, that I am safe. Once I lock the door, I know that I will be safe forever. It is not locked. I reach up to the lock, try to turn the tiny key, but an invisible force snatches my wrist away from the door. He has entered through the kitchen, one step ahead. He thinks I have betrayed him, but I plead and cry to him that I have not. “I am true, I am true”, I call out, not looking at his face, although I feel his eyes burning into me as his phosphorus grip burns my skin. He has a mallet in his hand, I see that, and I know, I know that if I stay there for a second longer, he will have me. I struggle to free my arm and turn, yanking at the door and then running, running down the corridor, through the hallway, the sound of broken porcelain beneath my feet. I run up the staircase and turn into the corridor and then stop suddenly. Something is different. Where is the damp, musty scent from the drapes at the window? The soft smell of burning from invalid grandmama’s fire one floor above? And then I look around and see. This is not my house. It has changed. I see unfamiliar people –a man, sometimes a little boy, a woman – all wearing strange clothing, all looking at me. I can see the details; the way the man’s moustache curls at the ends, the boy’s freckles, the woman’s fine lines around her mouth and her eyes. I see the detail, and it is overwhelming. And they can see me. And then I remember, and I start to call out: “help me, I am trapped”, but before I can finish my sentence, I am pulled backwards once more into the blue.
The fear has gone now. The red heat of panic subsides. My prison has pulled me back in, and emotion and hope is left behind in the other world. I am numb again. The water gushes back and I am still. I’ve been trapped here for a long time. A long time.

The Calm before the Storm

Well, NaNoWriMo kicks off tomorrow. Is there any scarier thought on Hallowe'en than that?! I'm aiming to write 2000 words a day, but I know I'm already going to fail at that because tomorrow I have a dance rehearsal from 7pm-10pm after work, so I don't imagine I'll get alot of writing done! Suppose it just means writing 4000 words on Thursday instead... Aaaargh!

I got some good news (possibly), in that my short story 'Raising Amy' is being publised by Secret Attic (http://www.secretattic.com/index.html). I think this is kind of cool, but I don't know much about the site, so it could all be a bit of a scam. They don't publish the story online, they produce it into a book which you have to purchase. I had a few poems published when I was 16 - 17 and that was a little similar in style because you'd have to buy the book to see your work. At least this time, the book is only about a fiver, rather than £20 (or however much it was back in the day). Still, a published story is a published story, and I'll take any excuse to celebrate!

Quick Link

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2006/10/from_page_to_stage.html

Interesting article about play development schemes and the state of new writing for the theatre.

Dyslexia/Dyspraxia

I thought I'd post some information about these learning disorders, because it's quite possible that I have a mild case of both. I was talking to a woman who works for the Student Welfare office at the university where I work, and she said it seemed likely that I had them, but a proper assessment (now I am no longer in education) would cost me about £700, so stuff that! Anyway, I have problems with writing, especially if I am handwriting something and especially if I am under pressure (e.g. deadlines or exams). I tend to miss out words or letters without realising it, which does become a problem, especially when I try to read something back to myself and my brain doesn't register that those words are missing (I can usually pick up on when I've missed out letters though). I also find it difficult to find the right words when speaking, and find reading out loud difficult, unless I put 100% of my energy into it. I think I have acquired dyspraxia (if I do indeed have it) because I didn't have any problems with walking, crawling, organising my toys or anything like that, and I think I have fairly neat handwriting, so never really had any problems as a child. I am a bit ambidextrious, and get a bit clumsy hitting keys on my keyboard, and get hand-ache when I write, and I had problems learning to tie my shoe-laces, and I never really learned my times tables. I have problems working out the days of the week, and still don't know my left from my right. Sequencing numbers is always a problem (I hated those problems in maths!), and I do get easily distracted, daydream alot and have short-term memory slips. Anyone interested in finding out about dyslexia or dyspraxia can check out the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyspraxia;
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/student_services/slas/dyslexia/_Dyspraxia.jsp;
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/student_services/slas/dyslexia/find_out.jsp