Waste Not, Want Lots

Last week the Eat Cambridge food festival brought us a fortnight of tasty treats from food vendors such as Norfolk Street Bakery and UrbanLarder. At the highlighted main event, however, I found myself drawn through the bustle of hungry shoppers to a stall with a difference.

RE: In Develpment

In Development has never been more appropriate.

A quick update on the blank page I had been sat with in Starbucks that cold January day is that it is not blank anymore! I actually finished the original draft at the end of February, and am on the start of a new first draft for the second story of the set. For now I am not looking at that first piece because I want to get all first writes out of the way by the end of this month. April will be the month of the scissors as I chop and slash my way to writerly refinement.

However, here are the first paragraphs as a quick taster:

Blurs of light streak by in slicks of yellow, green, red, and white, in the distance I hear the blue flashes of sirens rise and fall. Ma, as always, wears a cool expression on her face as a cigarette hangs loosely between her lips like prey.

From this position I cannot see her but I know this to be true. Instead my view is filled with the dull grey skies of midnight opening themselves to me. It’s that same dullness that filled the windows of all the hospital rooms, an artificially lit skyline of smog and office blocks remaining the same through day and night. More often than not the ceilings had been more interesting than the city views; at least there the lights occasionally flickered out into deep and blank darkness. It was during these obsidian times that I would paint with my mind pictures of home into the abyss. I’d take those vivid colour memories with me wherever I would go, the neon green floors, and the blue florescence of Pa’s aquarium tank. In these portraits I’d find myself free to walk in and out. Most often I’d walk myself into the kitchen, sit myself down across from Ma and her cool expression and she’d tell me all about her childhood in the countryside. Of course the lights would soon interrupt and I’d be flickered back into white rooms and grey cityscapes.

Writing this major project is a bit of a pain, however, it will be worth it when I'm holding my degree in October.

This Creature Moves Past Us (Draft 1)

 

Anger came

Striped with fierce

When you ripped

Dark clawed charcoal

Across

A tapestry of our shared history.

 

Locked away in the

Steely fortress of my eyes

I did not allow

For that ravenous beast

To escape me.

 

Rather I water her

Forgiveness daily

And feed her on my happiest

Memories,

For if I left her alone to starve

I fear she’d break the cage

Starving,

To eat me into

Isolations.

Notes to Self

If my story is going to be convincing I absolutely must do my research. Therefore I'm leaving all of my links here for future reference. Who knew I'd get so active with this dissertation malarkey so quickly?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8378262.stm

In Development

It's mid-January and I'm once again sitting in Starbucks with a blank page staring ahead of me. Well, the page is not completely blank but it's just as tyrannical because yesterday I realised that the next paragraph to my major project for university contradicts something I'd said earlier. Currently I don't want to give away too much of the story to any who may be reading this, but I am starting to realise that what I thought I was writing has transformed into something else entirely. This both excites and unnerves me. Back to the drawing board I go, tea and pen in hand.