oh, boy- this is fun! further droubble challenge from Liz (see previous posts here and here for explanations of drabbles and droubbles respectively, if you missed it) this time, even more source words. the list is mine. i gave her the first part, and then she asked for some more so, evil cow that i am, i trotted on over to http://www.savethewords.org/ (where you can adopt sadly neglected words and love them and use them and save them from extinction) and picked a few of the little darlings at random.
thing is, i forgot to write down what they mean, so when i came back online a couple of days later, it was to find that Liz had had a bit of a problem with some of the definitions. even the all-powerful Google couldn't find some of them. despite counting this as a sort of obscure victory over The Man (albeit a hollow one, since this means that some of those words are even more forgotten than i realized), i thought i'd better send a few explanations. first, though, i had to go find them again on the website. (if you go have a look, you'll see why this caused one or two problems for me). eventually, i did find the original words and their meanings. and so, without further ado, here is the list, and the ensuing droubble (i've included unusual word definitions at the end):
orca / furtive / seminal / lozenge / treetop / hasten / gleimous / tortiloquy / adimpleate / nidifice / ducenarious / aquabib
The furtive sucking on a lozenge did nothing to reduce his gleimous state. His head felt the size of an orca, and he stared gloomily at the ducenarious used tissues he'd managed to adimpleate with his bodily secretions over the past few days. In his semi- catatonic state, he'd been reduced to dozing in front of the television, floating in and out of consciousness whilst "Parliament Today" droned on before him. From his nidifice on the sofa, he'd observed some seminal tortiloquy and had been impressed, until he realised that this was what politicians did all day, every day.
The worst thing about all of this was not the aching joints, the phlegm, or the lack of energy. It was the fact that he'd been turned into an aquabib during the holiday drinking season. The abstinence was killing him. He wanted to be singing raucousy in the streets, or swinging from a frozen city-centre treetop. Instead, he was confined to the house, whilst his mates sent him texts and pictures of all the fun they were having. Grimacing, he drank more orange juice in an attempt to hasten his recovery so he could go and raise hell at New Year.
gleimous (full of phlegm) / tortiloquy (dishonest or immoral speech - talking around stuff) / adimpleate (to fill up) / nidifice (a nest) / ducenarious (pertaining to two hundred) / aquabib (water-drinker)
.
Wednesday 29 December 2010
Monday 27 December 2010
christmas and drabbles and droubbles
so christmas is over. all of the rushing around is done, the presents have been given and received, too much food has been consumed, and life is beginning to show signs of returning to normal.
thank the gods for that!
it was a quiet day in the end - just me and hubby at my aunty's, along with my parents and great uncle. it was slow and lovely. as was the food. *happy sigh*
the following two days (today and yesterday) have been somewhat more trying though.
i have three grown-up stepchildren (aged from 17 to 21). eldest stepson and partner have an eight-month-old. they all have very long legs. and there is only seating for five adults in our front room. given that the main activity when they come round tends to be computer games, and we have one less seat than we need, i have spent most of the last two days in the kitchen, wandering around on the internet, and doing little of use. i tried to edit Cirque Du Seul, but the kitchen chairs are not the most cofortable in the world, and i just couldn't get into it.
tonight, they left, and the peace is bliss. i think Literary Kitteh was happy to see them go, too. the minute the front door shut behind them, he was happily curled up on the settee, snoozing as only a kitteh can. and i have been writing a little.
anyone who saw the last couple of posts will perhaps have seen comments and some excellent drabbles from Liz. this evening, she asked me for some different source words so, with an evil laugh, i gave her "ennui", "squamous", and "shriven". she then announced that she was upping the word limit to 250.
now ok - i'll admit that this bothered me a little. in art, conventions and rules can be bent and broken with gay abandon by whosoever should wish to do so - that's one of the glorious things about it. sometimes it produces genius, sometimes a big steaming pile of... well, never mind. you get the idea, i'm sure. but personally? i rather like artistic conventions. i find they give me structure and purpose when i would otherwise be flailing around and in steaming territory. clear parameters are something i find i need more than i would have thought possible. still in the playpen, you see.
anyway, i went and had a dip in wikipedia, and found that the definition of a drabble has become somewhat more loose than i initially thought. however, i still rather like the pushing and wriggling of trying to fit into the 100 word constraint. it's an interesting challenge. but there is, apparently, such a thing as a "droubble" or a double drabble (see the end of the article). exactly 200 words. so i put this to Liz, and she agreed. she suggested, though, that since this is double the word limit, we should have double the source words. fine by me. i'd actually already started writing my droubble by this point, but that's fine - it's a further challenge to see if i can crowbar the words into what i had in mind. but she has not, as yet, got back to me with those three extra source words, so i have finished the one i was writing, and await the arrival of the new words. when they arrive, i may, indeed, try and crowbar them in, or i may just (which is also more likely) write a whole new one. here's the droubble wot i wrote, anyway - along with a couple of drabbles that also happened this evening:
droubble
ennui/squamous/shriven
He had done everything. He had swum with dolphins, playing with them in the crystalline waters of the Caribbean. He had jumped from a high bridge attached to a piece of elastic cord. He had witnessed a sunrise from space, and a sunset from the top of a mountain. He had travelled through deserts and jungles and cities and tundra, drinking in all that was on offer from the landscape around him.
And then ennui had set in. Surely his odyssey had shown him all that this shrunken planet had to offer. After all, he had flown the length and breadth of the planet more times than he could count. What could there be that he had not already seen? He returned to his vast mansion set in its endless acres and gloomily flipped through his electronic photo library, looking for details that he may have missed. And then it hit him. Staring at an accidental picture of his shoe, his squamous eyes opened, and he felt shriven of the soul- weariness plaguing him. Rushing to his vast wardrobe, he grabbed the first pair of walking boots he could find, and set off into the world.
This time, on foot.
drabbles
effortless / doubt / propensity
She envied others' art. The seemingly effortless melding of incidents and accidents that produced things of great terror and beauty filled her with longing. The propensity to doubt her own abilities led her to dismiss those who told her she had talent, and to seek darker avenues to improve her own art.
Trading with demons in dark alleys, she swapped a piece of her soul for each new ability. At last, she had what she thought she needed. Exhibiting her works to the world, she proudly waited for reviews to flood in. A tide of comments containing one word:
"Soulless."
dissolve / books / revolution
The revolution had come and gone. It left in its wake a vague feeling of "Meet the new boss - same as the old boss". And one other difference. There were no more books. The glorious republic had decided that books were antiquated, had outlived their time. But no matter. There was all the new technology that still allowed storytelling without all of that cumbersome paper getting in the way. Now there was only the sharp clarity of electrical impulses speaking to each other. But without the feel, sight and smell of books, the culture began slowly, imperceptibly, to dissolve.
still waiting for those words, Liz... ;o)
.
(edit - added after comments posted)
so as you can see in the comments, i got my three extra words, and made this:
ennui/squamous/shriven/sniffle/evocative/muse
The ennui had passed.
The slithering, squamous creatures that haunted his dreams had ceased their vile hissing whispers. He'd laboured in darkness for seeming aeons, hacking and scratching with rusty pen and clotted ink at damp, spongy paper. Not an evocative word in sight. The moist chill in the air making him sniffle interminably, he'd pushed his way through the thorny vines of writer's block, wondering if his torment would ever end. He knew he'd brought it on himself. By allowing himself to become distracted by the worst dregs of popular culture, he'd alienated his sensitive and capricious muse, and she'd left. Her punishment was harsh. Unrelenting. He'd toiled for weeks on end to make amends - eschewing television, newspaper, magazine and radio, just to create sufficient space for her. He decorated the space with strange blooms, sumptuous fabrics, elegant sweetmeats and champagne. He carried it in his head as he hacked through the stinking, half-rotted vegetation of z-list celebrity and tabloid journalism, cradling it carefully and keeping it inviolate.
Eventually, a ray of golden inspiration hit him full in the face and, as he felt her pour into the space he'd so carefully created, he knew he was shriven.
.
thank the gods for that!
it was a quiet day in the end - just me and hubby at my aunty's, along with my parents and great uncle. it was slow and lovely. as was the food. *happy sigh*
the following two days (today and yesterday) have been somewhat more trying though.
i have three grown-up stepchildren (aged from 17 to 21). eldest stepson and partner have an eight-month-old. they all have very long legs. and there is only seating for five adults in our front room. given that the main activity when they come round tends to be computer games, and we have one less seat than we need, i have spent most of the last two days in the kitchen, wandering around on the internet, and doing little of use. i tried to edit Cirque Du Seul, but the kitchen chairs are not the most cofortable in the world, and i just couldn't get into it.
tonight, they left, and the peace is bliss. i think Literary Kitteh was happy to see them go, too. the minute the front door shut behind them, he was happily curled up on the settee, snoozing as only a kitteh can. and i have been writing a little.
anyone who saw the last couple of posts will perhaps have seen comments and some excellent drabbles from Liz. this evening, she asked me for some different source words so, with an evil laugh, i gave her "ennui", "squamous", and "shriven". she then announced that she was upping the word limit to 250.
now ok - i'll admit that this bothered me a little. in art, conventions and rules can be bent and broken with gay abandon by whosoever should wish to do so - that's one of the glorious things about it. sometimes it produces genius, sometimes a big steaming pile of... well, never mind. you get the idea, i'm sure. but personally? i rather like artistic conventions. i find they give me structure and purpose when i would otherwise be flailing around and in steaming territory. clear parameters are something i find i need more than i would have thought possible. still in the playpen, you see.
anyway, i went and had a dip in wikipedia, and found that the definition of a drabble has become somewhat more loose than i initially thought. however, i still rather like the pushing and wriggling of trying to fit into the 100 word constraint. it's an interesting challenge. but there is, apparently, such a thing as a "droubble" or a double drabble (see the end of the article). exactly 200 words. so i put this to Liz, and she agreed. she suggested, though, that since this is double the word limit, we should have double the source words. fine by me. i'd actually already started writing my droubble by this point, but that's fine - it's a further challenge to see if i can crowbar the words into what i had in mind. but she has not, as yet, got back to me with those three extra source words, so i have finished the one i was writing, and await the arrival of the new words. when they arrive, i may, indeed, try and crowbar them in, or i may just (which is also more likely) write a whole new one. here's the droubble wot i wrote, anyway - along with a couple of drabbles that also happened this evening:
droubble
ennui/squamous/shriven
He had done everything. He had swum with dolphins, playing with them in the crystalline waters of the Caribbean. He had jumped from a high bridge attached to a piece of elastic cord. He had witnessed a sunrise from space, and a sunset from the top of a mountain. He had travelled through deserts and jungles and cities and tundra, drinking in all that was on offer from the landscape around him.
And then ennui had set in. Surely his odyssey had shown him all that this shrunken planet had to offer. After all, he had flown the length and breadth of the planet more times than he could count. What could there be that he had not already seen? He returned to his vast mansion set in its endless acres and gloomily flipped through his electronic photo library, looking for details that he may have missed. And then it hit him. Staring at an accidental picture of his shoe, his squamous eyes opened, and he felt shriven of the soul- weariness plaguing him. Rushing to his vast wardrobe, he grabbed the first pair of walking boots he could find, and set off into the world.
This time, on foot.
drabbles
effortless / doubt / propensity
She envied others' art. The seemingly effortless melding of incidents and accidents that produced things of great terror and beauty filled her with longing. The propensity to doubt her own abilities led her to dismiss those who told her she had talent, and to seek darker avenues to improve her own art.
Trading with demons in dark alleys, she swapped a piece of her soul for each new ability. At last, she had what she thought she needed. Exhibiting her works to the world, she proudly waited for reviews to flood in. A tide of comments containing one word:
"Soulless."
dissolve / books / revolution
The revolution had come and gone. It left in its wake a vague feeling of "Meet the new boss - same as the old boss". And one other difference. There were no more books. The glorious republic had decided that books were antiquated, had outlived their time. But no matter. There was all the new technology that still allowed storytelling without all of that cumbersome paper getting in the way. Now there was only the sharp clarity of electrical impulses speaking to each other. But without the feel, sight and smell of books, the culture began slowly, imperceptibly, to dissolve.
still waiting for those words, Liz... ;o)
.
(edit - added after comments posted)
so as you can see in the comments, i got my three extra words, and made this:
ennui/squamous/shriven/sniffle/evocative/muse
The ennui had passed.
The slithering, squamous creatures that haunted his dreams had ceased their vile hissing whispers. He'd laboured in darkness for seeming aeons, hacking and scratching with rusty pen and clotted ink at damp, spongy paper. Not an evocative word in sight. The moist chill in the air making him sniffle interminably, he'd pushed his way through the thorny vines of writer's block, wondering if his torment would ever end. He knew he'd brought it on himself. By allowing himself to become distracted by the worst dregs of popular culture, he'd alienated his sensitive and capricious muse, and she'd left. Her punishment was harsh. Unrelenting. He'd toiled for weeks on end to make amends - eschewing television, newspaper, magazine and radio, just to create sufficient space for her. He decorated the space with strange blooms, sumptuous fabrics, elegant sweetmeats and champagne. He carried it in his head as he hacked through the stinking, half-rotted vegetation of z-list celebrity and tabloid journalism, cradling it carefully and keeping it inviolate.
Eventually, a ray of golden inspiration hit him full in the face and, as he felt her pour into the space he'd so carefully created, he knew he was shriven.
.
Wednesday 22 December 2010
to challenge, or...oooh! shiny thing!
soooo... whilst fighting the cat for posession of my lap and trying to prevent him from treading all over the keyboard, i was perusing the blog of the lady who has been Drabbling so marvellously all over the comments of my previous post (hi Liz! *waves*). I saw that she was doing a thirty day blog challenge. (...uh... what happened to that, BTW - xmas get in the way...? *sympathy*), and I thought it might be a somewhat interesting exercise. i mean - i know hardly anybody ever reads this poor wittering, but perhaps i'll learn something about myself...? maybe. anyway - it's a leeeetle late in the month to start it now. 22 days of posting all at once is a bit of a tall order. and would probably be information overload., anyway. so perhaps i'll have a stab at it in january, when the times are cold and bleak and post-christmassy boring. and try and lick NaNo 2010 into shape at the same time. or maybe, as usually happens, i'll be distracted by a shiny thing and fail.
we'll see. here are the questions, anyway...
Day 01 — Your favorite song
Day 02 — Your favorite movie
Day 03 — Your favorite television program
Day 04 — Your favorite book
Day 05 — Your favorite quote
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 — A photo you took
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 — A fictional book
Day 14 — A non-fictional book
Day 15 — A fanfic
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 — A talent of yours
Day 20 — A hobby of yours
Day 21 — A recipe
Day 22 — A website
Day 23 — A YouTube video
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
Day 27 — This month, in great detail
Day 28 — This year, in great detail
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy
so, whaddya reckon? should i do it? do you care what Squeaky's favourite book / film / whatever is? come to think of it, does Squeaky even care...?
answers in the comments...
.
we'll see. here are the questions, anyway...
Day 01 — Your favorite song
Day 02 — Your favorite movie
Day 03 — Your favorite television program
Day 04 — Your favorite book
Day 05 — Your favorite quote
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 — A photo you took
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 — A fictional book
Day 14 — A non-fictional book
Day 15 — A fanfic
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 — A talent of yours
Day 20 — A hobby of yours
Day 21 — A recipe
Day 22 — A website
Day 23 — A YouTube video
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
Day 27 — This month, in great detail
Day 28 — This year, in great detail
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy
so, whaddya reckon? should i do it? do you care what Squeaky's favourite book / film / whatever is? come to think of it, does Squeaky even care...?
answers in the comments...
.
Sunday 19 December 2010
christmas and flash and drabbles.
well... it seems quite some time since i last blogged... i suppose it is, since the last time i did, it was to crow about being a NaNoWriMo winner again... nothing much has happened, since, anyway.
Max The Literary Kitteh continues to be utterly, utterly gorgeous and adorable (apart from his breath... eugh! :oP he needs his teeth cleaning, i think...) and to sit all over me and purr thunderously whenever i'm on the pooter. or even just sat down, actually. i'm better padded than hubby, you see... also, i have a fondness for hot water bottles which he, being a cat, shares completely. as we do the hot water bottles.
so... like i said, not a lot's been going on. apart from Christmas preperations, of course. i have been unbelievably crap this year. so many people are getting money or amazon vouchers, i'm just anticipating how many times i'll be repeating:
"No, we* weren't sure what to get you and we thought rather than get you something you might not need or like here's and essentially boring and unimagintive christmas present that just shows how utterly crap i am at this sort of thing apart from the odd genius flash of inspiration that happens about once every two ears and unfortunately that didn't happen for anyone this year...."
*(n.b for "we" in this contex, read "me" - hubby doesn't really do the getting of presents in our house - no pressure at all... :-/)
would anyone care to open a sweepstake on it...?
hmph. bah bloody humbug. oh, well - at least we'll get to see friends we don't see nearly often enough.
although, to be fair to myself, i *did* in fact manage to aquire, wrap and post presents for my brother, sister-in-law and niece in astonishingly good time this year. was actually quite proud of this achievement (despite the fact that the parcel also contained sis-in-law's birthday present which should have reached her by the 5th of november... *facepalm*) and continuing the theme of being fair to myself, there were, in fact, lot of things that we (I) thought of that would make perfect presents. but not being a Rothschild heiress or willing to go deeply into debt, i set a £20 limit on each person's gift. i do not wish to start 2011 in hock, TVM...
in other (though related) news, last thursday evening, i was home alone for the one night a year that hubby sleeps elsewhere. it was his christmas do at work and the tradition is that the boss takes everyone out for a meal, and then gets them all rat-arsed. he hires rooms for those who do not live within walking distance, and they all get about four hours sleep and raging hangovers to go to work on the following day. since he works about 20 miles away, hubby is one of those put up in a B&B for the night. so it was just me and teh kitteh. having watched BBC4's adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (excellent, by the way - genius casting of Stephen Mangan as Dirk), at about 10:30, i got the urge to write a bit of flash fiction. but having absolutely no idea of what to write, i turned to Twitter for a bit of inspiration. asking for some random words, @eroticnotebook and @cha0tic obliged me very nicely (thanks, chaps!! :o) here are the results, with the words that inspired them:
Stripes gloss tangle (via @eroticnotebook)
Is it the gloss of her oh-so-kissable lips? The sun-born stripes in her artful tangle of hair? Or is it the sparkle in her eyes behind those cute black-framed glasses? Haven't a clue. Nor do I know when it was I first looked at her and knew I had a crush. But I do.
Every day, I see her. She walks the halls looking so fey, as if she'd just stepped out of Tir-Na-Nog for a delighted wander through the heaviness of the mortal world The clothes she wears are of the fashion, but on her they somehow become... other. Nothing really floats, nothing is really rich, or diaphanous, or... or... well, anything, really. But - and yes, I know it's a cliché - somehow, the way she wears them... it makes me sigh. She inhabits the space around her as if the world was perfectly formed to fit her, and she moves through it on the lightest of feet encased in the most damnably sensible and masculine shoes I ever saw on such a creature of faerie. She sits in a throne and lights the people around her to a soft, golden glow. We've barely ever spoken but, even from a distance, she makes the day a somehow softer and more artistic space in time.
~ fin ~
Brick, Bandage, Pins, Backstage Pass, Pipe, Lighter fuel, Charger, Strobe, Watch (via @cha0tic)
The brick walls seep moisture. It's dank in here. It smells of clothes that have been left in the washing machine for a week, at the height of summer. A lone, miserable backstage pass lies in a corner, abandoned; still tangled in the lanyard that, in more energetic times, proudly displayed it around some young and fiery guitarist's neck. No energy left, now. Only lethargic inertia and decay. Congealed dust decorates every surface, clumping into weird shapes that tell the future more surely than any entrailed augury. They spell out the message, "The end is nigh." Rusted pins hold fragments of rotted paper to the oozing baize surface of a once-busy noticeboard. Random objects lie forgotten on odd surfaces. A smashed watch. A strobe that stopped working on the same long-distant night the club closed for the last time. An upended and useless tin of lighter fuel. A small plastic soldier, mounted on a white charger with only three legs. A length of bandage displaying brown smears on its wrinkled and greying surface.
The dripping of a cracked pipe on the sodden and sucking carpet is silenced forever as the wrecking ball obliterates the ghosts of glory days long gone.
~ fin ~
i was quite pleased that the results were at least readable. i tweeted them (with apologies for how depressing the second one was), and got some generous replies from some very nice people (if you're reading this, thank you all!). also an injunction never to apologise for having created something. which was lovely, and made me smile.
i enjoyed the exercise so much that, last night, i decided i'd like to repeat it. i asked for more words, and was deluged by my Twitterfriends. here's what they gave me this time:
oblige /dedication / label /sliced /sticky / marmalade and orange jam / herring / candle snuffers / Aliona Vilani's arse / stationary / propensity /constipation / germination / soft / effortless / heartache / dissolve / revolution /epiphany / revelation / exile / flood / depression / inquisition / debut / doubt / reason / tamales / books
all of these from @skypethis_24601, @DangerousSweets, @EbonyHampl, @thextraman, @TehAntiBubble, @DylynnDeSaint and @monkeystreehous. an embarrassment of riches! i decided i'd write some drabbles (for those who don't know, a drabble is a sort fiction of exactly 100 words - no easy task, but a delightful if, at times, frustrting thing to write). i took all of the words and mixed them up as best i could, producing several groups of three (getting hubby to provide one more to make it all even - he gave me "honey"), and proceeded to drabble. i only managed two last night, viz:
Label / sticky / marmalade
She never watched the show as a kid but, somehow, one episode stuck in her memory. The end of the world was coming, and there were these funny little creatures on a quest to save it. There was no rushing around, no panic - just a quiet dignity, and determination to get things done that stuck in her head; along with the sinister orange glow of a sun too large, old and swollen to care. She looked down, to where her ravaged fingernails picked at the label on a jar of marmalade. Outside, the sky was the same heavy, sticky colour.
and
germination / depression / herring
A depression in the soil may cradle a seed. The rain may fall, and the sun may shine. These, and countless other factors may, in time, lead to the germination of that seed, along with thousands of its siblings.
Likewise, a depression in life may cradle a seed, an idea. Into this life, the rain may fall, the sun may shine, and myriad other circumstances may lead to sprouting, flowering, the bearing of fruit. The cliché of the suffering artist is not so very far from the nature of the physical world. Or it could all be a red herring...
i'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the rest, though, the next time i fancy a delicious writerly snack. :o)
here are the other trios i made - why don't you have a go yourself and send me the results?
effortless / doubt / propensity
dissolve / books / revolution
epiphany / sliced / inquisition
exile / constipation / dedication
reason / debut / tamales
candle snuffers / stationary / heartache
oblige / revelation / flood
soft / arse / honey
.
added edit: this post did have a tag for the "general uselessness of me", but i was ordered to remove it by the delightful @TehAntiBubble - and you do not mess with Teh Bubbles. ma'am, yes ma'am! *salutes* XXX
.
Max The Literary Kitteh continues to be utterly, utterly gorgeous and adorable (apart from his breath... eugh! :oP he needs his teeth cleaning, i think...) and to sit all over me and purr thunderously whenever i'm on the pooter. or even just sat down, actually. i'm better padded than hubby, you see... also, i have a fondness for hot water bottles which he, being a cat, shares completely. as we do the hot water bottles.
so... like i said, not a lot's been going on. apart from Christmas preperations, of course. i have been unbelievably crap this year. so many people are getting money or amazon vouchers, i'm just anticipating how many times i'll be repeating:
"No, we* weren't sure what to get you and we thought rather than get you something you might not need or like here's and essentially boring and unimagintive christmas present that just shows how utterly crap i am at this sort of thing apart from the odd genius flash of inspiration that happens about once every two ears and unfortunately that didn't happen for anyone this year...."
*(n.b for "we" in this contex, read "me" - hubby doesn't really do the getting of presents in our house - no pressure at all... :-/)
would anyone care to open a sweepstake on it...?
hmph. bah bloody humbug. oh, well - at least we'll get to see friends we don't see nearly often enough.
although, to be fair to myself, i *did* in fact manage to aquire, wrap and post presents for my brother, sister-in-law and niece in astonishingly good time this year. was actually quite proud of this achievement (despite the fact that the parcel also contained sis-in-law's birthday present which should have reached her by the 5th of november... *facepalm*) and continuing the theme of being fair to myself, there were, in fact, lot of things that we (I) thought of that would make perfect presents. but not being a Rothschild heiress or willing to go deeply into debt, i set a £20 limit on each person's gift. i do not wish to start 2011 in hock, TVM...
in other (though related) news, last thursday evening, i was home alone for the one night a year that hubby sleeps elsewhere. it was his christmas do at work and the tradition is that the boss takes everyone out for a meal, and then gets them all rat-arsed. he hires rooms for those who do not live within walking distance, and they all get about four hours sleep and raging hangovers to go to work on the following day. since he works about 20 miles away, hubby is one of those put up in a B&B for the night. so it was just me and teh kitteh. having watched BBC4's adaptation of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (excellent, by the way - genius casting of Stephen Mangan as Dirk), at about 10:30, i got the urge to write a bit of flash fiction. but having absolutely no idea of what to write, i turned to Twitter for a bit of inspiration. asking for some random words, @eroticnotebook and @cha0tic obliged me very nicely (thanks, chaps!! :o) here are the results, with the words that inspired them:
Stripes gloss tangle (via @eroticnotebook)
Is it the gloss of her oh-so-kissable lips? The sun-born stripes in her artful tangle of hair? Or is it the sparkle in her eyes behind those cute black-framed glasses? Haven't a clue. Nor do I know when it was I first looked at her and knew I had a crush. But I do.
Every day, I see her. She walks the halls looking so fey, as if she'd just stepped out of Tir-Na-Nog for a delighted wander through the heaviness of the mortal world The clothes she wears are of the fashion, but on her they somehow become... other. Nothing really floats, nothing is really rich, or diaphanous, or... or... well, anything, really. But - and yes, I know it's a cliché - somehow, the way she wears them... it makes me sigh. She inhabits the space around her as if the world was perfectly formed to fit her, and she moves through it on the lightest of feet encased in the most damnably sensible and masculine shoes I ever saw on such a creature of faerie. She sits in a throne and lights the people around her to a soft, golden glow. We've barely ever spoken but, even from a distance, she makes the day a somehow softer and more artistic space in time.
~ fin ~
Brick, Bandage, Pins, Backstage Pass, Pipe, Lighter fuel, Charger, Strobe, Watch (via @cha0tic)
The brick walls seep moisture. It's dank in here. It smells of clothes that have been left in the washing machine for a week, at the height of summer. A lone, miserable backstage pass lies in a corner, abandoned; still tangled in the lanyard that, in more energetic times, proudly displayed it around some young and fiery guitarist's neck. No energy left, now. Only lethargic inertia and decay. Congealed dust decorates every surface, clumping into weird shapes that tell the future more surely than any entrailed augury. They spell out the message, "The end is nigh." Rusted pins hold fragments of rotted paper to the oozing baize surface of a once-busy noticeboard. Random objects lie forgotten on odd surfaces. A smashed watch. A strobe that stopped working on the same long-distant night the club closed for the last time. An upended and useless tin of lighter fuel. A small plastic soldier, mounted on a white charger with only three legs. A length of bandage displaying brown smears on its wrinkled and greying surface.
The dripping of a cracked pipe on the sodden and sucking carpet is silenced forever as the wrecking ball obliterates the ghosts of glory days long gone.
~ fin ~
i was quite pleased that the results were at least readable. i tweeted them (with apologies for how depressing the second one was), and got some generous replies from some very nice people (if you're reading this, thank you all!). also an injunction never to apologise for having created something. which was lovely, and made me smile.
i enjoyed the exercise so much that, last night, i decided i'd like to repeat it. i asked for more words, and was deluged by my Twitterfriends. here's what they gave me this time:
oblige /dedication / label /sliced /sticky / marmalade and orange jam / herring / candle snuffers / Aliona Vilani's arse / stationary / propensity /constipation / germination / soft / effortless / heartache / dissolve / revolution /epiphany / revelation / exile / flood / depression / inquisition / debut / doubt / reason / tamales / books
all of these from @skypethis_24601, @DangerousSweets, @EbonyHampl, @thextraman, @TehAntiBubble, @DylynnDeSaint and @monkeystreehous. an embarrassment of riches! i decided i'd write some drabbles (for those who don't know, a drabble is a sort fiction of exactly 100 words - no easy task, but a delightful if, at times, frustrting thing to write). i took all of the words and mixed them up as best i could, producing several groups of three (getting hubby to provide one more to make it all even - he gave me "honey"), and proceeded to drabble. i only managed two last night, viz:
Label / sticky / marmalade
She never watched the show as a kid but, somehow, one episode stuck in her memory. The end of the world was coming, and there were these funny little creatures on a quest to save it. There was no rushing around, no panic - just a quiet dignity, and determination to get things done that stuck in her head; along with the sinister orange glow of a sun too large, old and swollen to care. She looked down, to where her ravaged fingernails picked at the label on a jar of marmalade. Outside, the sky was the same heavy, sticky colour.
and
germination / depression / herring
A depression in the soil may cradle a seed. The rain may fall, and the sun may shine. These, and countless other factors may, in time, lead to the germination of that seed, along with thousands of its siblings.
Likewise, a depression in life may cradle a seed, an idea. Into this life, the rain may fall, the sun may shine, and myriad other circumstances may lead to sprouting, flowering, the bearing of fruit. The cliché of the suffering artist is not so very far from the nature of the physical world. Or it could all be a red herring...
i'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the rest, though, the next time i fancy a delicious writerly snack. :o)
here are the other trios i made - why don't you have a go yourself and send me the results?
effortless / doubt / propensity
dissolve / books / revolution
epiphany / sliced / inquisition
exile / constipation / dedication
reason / debut / tamales
candle snuffers / stationary / heartache
oblige / revelation / flood
soft / arse / honey
.
added edit: this post did have a tag for the "general uselessness of me", but i was ordered to remove it by the delightful @TehAntiBubble - and you do not mess with Teh Bubbles. ma'am, yes ma'am! *salutes* XXX
.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
NaNoWriMo again
so there you have it. thirty days of slog, and here i am. the proud author of my THIRD NOVEL!!!
i can hardly believe it, but i've done it again, and i'm a winner again! :D
and this year, i think i might actually have written something vaguely worth reading, after last year's debacle. although to be fair, i haven't read it back yet, so time will, inevitably, tell. but i have hopes. not high ones, to be sure, as i'm quite aware it needs a damn good editorial kick in the arse to make it readable. i'm also aware that since i didn't actually know who the murderer was until about the 23rd day (and this is one of the reasons that i love NaNoWriMo), there's a lot that needs tweaking to take into account foreshadowing, and certain characters' attitudes to certain things, but that's where the rolling-in-chocolate-sauce glory of editing comes in. *happy sigh*
speaking of, since it's my first snowday since i was about twelve years old (YIPPEEE!!!!) and we have about a foot of snow outside our front door, i think i might plunge into that right about now (the editing, that is, not the snow....brrrrr!!!). but i'll leave you with the synopsis of my third novel (god, that phrase *never* gets old!!! :o):
Cirque Du Seul
i can hardly believe it, but i've done it again, and i'm a winner again! :D
and this year, i think i might actually have written something vaguely worth reading, after last year's debacle. although to be fair, i haven't read it back yet, so time will, inevitably, tell. but i have hopes. not high ones, to be sure, as i'm quite aware it needs a damn good editorial kick in the arse to make it readable. i'm also aware that since i didn't actually know who the murderer was until about the 23rd day (and this is one of the reasons that i love NaNoWriMo), there's a lot that needs tweaking to take into account foreshadowing, and certain characters' attitudes to certain things, but that's where the rolling-in-chocolate-sauce glory of editing comes in. *happy sigh*
speaking of, since it's my first snowday since i was about twelve years old (YIPPEEE!!!!) and we have about a foot of snow outside our front door, i think i might plunge into that right about now (the editing, that is, not the snow....brrrrr!!!). but i'll leave you with the synopsis of my third novel (god, that phrase *never* gets old!!! :o):
Cirque Du Seul
It's almost time for the winter season at the Roundhouse Circus, and the performers are rehearsing hard. When Seb, one of the trapeze artists has an accident and ends up in a coma, people are shocked, but they get on with their lives. The show must go on, after all. But it soon emerges that this was no accident - someone has tampered with the trapeze. It's not common knowledge, however. The incident could shut the circus down for weeks, and be a disaster for the livelihoods of many, many people. So Shona, a costumier, and Bill, a morose and misanthropic clown, set out to work out who could have wished Seb ill. And when opening night finally comes around, it becomes evident that it's not just Seb that the would-be murderer wants dead.
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