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If slow and steady won the race, I’d have a trophy room full by now.

I’m about to tell you a dark, shameful secret that may leave you stunned and speechless: I’m lazy.

It’s one of the hardest things for me to admit. Even when I do one not-lazy thing in a day, I’ll exaggerate it and then go on talking about all the necessary things I did like eating and walking to school. Maybe I’ll say “Oh, I didn’t do much” instead, but I always have make it sound like I did something, for fear of people losing interest in me.

I could say since the last time I posted I’ve had birthday parties to go to and a show (Derren Brown @ The Bristol Hippodrome, absolutely fantastic) but they’re no excuse for neglecting this blog. The truth is, I’m just horridly lazy.

I haven’t re-finished the first chapter of the Spider Network yet because I’m so great at procrastinating, but I have got about half of it now, and I’ll be working on it today and probably tomorrow too. It’ll be up sometime in the week, I pinky swear! Keep checking back for it!

I’d like to thank the small handful of people who’ve been checking this blog every now and then over the past few weeks. The internet won’t let me see who you are, but I can see on my stats that there have been people looking at this blog, either from the link on my Twitter or without a “referrer” so thanks!

–

P.S. I’ll be making a new banner for the blog later in the week.

P.P.S. I now have a new email address – OlympicKnitter@googlemail.com

Quick update on the Spider Network

So I wrote the first chapter, and then I lost it. The file is nowhere to be found. I’ve been trying to rewrite it for the past couple of days, but the internet has too many distractions. So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I’m going to turn my laptop off in a minute, and I’m going to forget what I’ve already written, and start again, on paper.
• Later today, or early tomorrow, I’m going to type it all out, making a few changes as I go.
• I promise you, dearest blog readers, that Chapter 1 will be up by Tuesday, and Chapter 2 will be up by Friday, and then I will follow my every-Thursday schedule.

First character’s name: Cordelia.

Typical

The following is this weeks entry to the 100 word challenge from Velvet Verbosity. I don’t like it that much, but it was a tricky word this week: Overall.

–

“I was late for work, I spilled coffee all over my brand new skirt and spent the whole day smelling like an espresso, my boss kept hitting on me and gave me tonnes of paperwork when he realized I’m really not into him.”

That earned a chuckle.

“Aw, Babe, don’t get stressed.”

“You! Don’t even get me started on you.” she tried to keep quiet but failed inevitably. “I asked you to do one thing. ONE thing, Danny. You can’t even make toast without starting a fire! … Oh. And Jessie wants a pony.”

“So, uh … not a bad day, overall?”

My Sister (a poem by my brother)

I asked my 8 year old brother to write me a poem to put in my room. When he finished he said “That’s the first poem I ever wrote” and he’s been grinning since.

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There once was a girl called Chloe

She hated it being snowy

–

She likes to sing in the bath

While we all have a laugh

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She never shuts up

She always shouts at us

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But she is very clever

And she is a nerd.

Not in Shadow

What follows is my entry to Velvet Verbosity‘s 100 word challenge. This week the prompt word was Darkness. Enjoy!

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She sat at the table furthest from the front. Her classmates came in at once, shouting and pushing their way through the door, laughing about some joke that had gone on far too long. He was the last to enter, taking the seat next to her as the teacher asked for volunteers to read the poetry they’d been working on. She was proud of her piece. It was meaningful and had its own humour, but she sat silently, looking down.

“You can’t hide in shadows forever.” He whispered. “The sun’ll get to them eventually.”

She smirked. “I hide in darkness.”

The Spider Network: plans.

There’s a piece of A4, plain paper lying around here somewhere with a very brief and very messy plan for a novel called The Spider Network. The idea came after the rush of NaNoWriMo, in the weeks after when you frantically search for ideas for the next year. As I have 2 more plans lying around that I’m positive can give me enough passion, inspiration and plot to win this year, I’ve decided to start writing the Spider Network as my very own  online novel. If everything goes to plan, a new chapter will be added every Thursday (this is because it sounded right) and there will be 25 chapters, not including the prologue and epilogue that I might not write.

I still haven’t got everything (or really, anything) perfected or even organized in my head, but here’s what I’m planning:

The story will be about a telepathic connection between 24 seemingly unconnected people, all from different parts of the world. They will eventually meet (or maybe not). They will try to find out why and how they can communicate this way and more importantly, how they can stop it.

Each chapter will follow a new character, and the final chapter will follow all of them.

–

So Chloe, when’s this thing going to start?

I’m working on the planning as you read this, most likely, and I’m hoping to bring you the first slice by February the 11th. The whole thing should be finished in mid-July, and after that it’ll probably go through a load of editing and maybe if I can get a bit more knowledge of  technology I’ll put it all on one of those PDF thingamajigs.

😀

Thirty Green Bottles

This is my entry to this week’s 100 Word Challenge from Velvet Verbosity. The prompt this week is Thirty.

There were bottles on the windowsill; dusty, all green and organized into rows of ten. There were three rows, almost. Almost. Each one contained a rolled up piece of paper, golden by age. She took the last sip from her Heineken bottle and peeled off the label – slowly, carefully, reluctantly. Then she took her notepad, newly bought but made to look worn.

It’s never too late she wrote, before tearing out the page and curling it.

“There were thirty green bottles…” she started to sing under her breath as she walked towards the window.

She remembered when there were ten.

–

(Just in case you don’t know or have forgotten the song I drove my mother insane with as a child, click here.)

Kids having kids.

A girl in my neighbourhood gave birth about a week ago. She’s 12 years old. There are 15 people living in her 3 bedroom house. It’s filthy and there are now 3 young children there. Today the 12 year old mother’s mother got arrested for possession of drugs. There are still a lot of addicts living in that house.

For a reason I don’t know, Social Services haven’t got involved. It’s ridiculous. There is a twelve year old trying to look after baby amongst a houseful of drug addicts, alcoholics and lazy, unemployed adults who aren’t much more capable of looking after children themselves. To be quite honest, it makes me hate the way things are run around here. There was a gun scare at my school on Friday, and an old friend has apparently committed suicide.

–

It’s all a little surreal. Just-turned-teens having kids, guns, suicide. They’re all things I thought I would never come across. You see things on the news and hear stories, but there’s a little part that says “don’t listen, it’s the media” and you go on with your life thinking these things are just anomalies. Shocking, yes, but rare and unlikely. It’s starting to dawn on me that whilst there are still trees that look beautiful at sunset and fields that haven’t been cut for decades and all manner of beautiful things, the world can be dark. It can be scary, and there are a great many things in it that contain no beauty at all, no matter how hard you search for something good in a bad situation.

–

This also leads me on to saying that I’ve been fifteen years of age for well over a month now. I’ve seen more unpleasant things in the last few weeks than I can remember, and it makes me wonder if they were always there and I just never noticed because I was lost in my own childish world. I can’t stop myself from growing up, but I won’t forget how to have fun. I won’t forget that when making an outfit for a child’s art project you can put the sheet over yourself and run around making ghost noises for a good ten minutes. I’ll keep myself aware of war and poverty and terrible things like the Haitian earthquake, but twenty years from now I’ll still be able to look at a tree without thinking of a table.

–

I won’t forget fun.

Exhibit

(This is a creative writing piece for my English class. The brief just said that someone was to be stuck in a cuboid, and I did the first thing that came to mind. It’s not great, but I like it quite a bit.)

“One word: Two syllables – rhymes with lazy.” Was he insistent on ruining my day? I turned, sure the sound was coming from my left. Not there. “Guess again.” I turned to my right, then completely round in a circle. Nowhere.

“Gee, this sure is fun.” I said, trying to match his tone. The truth was, I missed seeing the psychotic figment of my imagination that had got me here in the first place. All I saw now was mirrors. I couldn’t see out, but they could see in.

–

Code wasn’t real, by anyone’s standards. I knew that, but he was the closest I had to something real in that stupid box. I could see myself going insane. Day by day my hair got greasier and further back on my forehead from running my hands through it a million times. Day by day the bags under my eyes grew from the effects of insomnia. Day by day my caring lessened for the outside world and those who actually loved me. The ones who fought for me when it was decided I would go here. They weren’t here now.

–

One of the horrid effects of knowing you’re crazy is not being sure what’s real and what isn’t. Sometimes I thought this was all in my head. Sometimes I closed my eyes really tightly and told myself over and over that when I opened them I’d be back home with a loving family and a dog curled up at my feet. I must’ve looked even more insane to the people watching, but at least they were getting their moneys worth. Hypocrites.

–

“Code, quit it. Let me see you.” I really was that desperate to see some form of humanity besides myself.

“Look in the mirror idiot. What part of imaginary can’t you understand?”

“Well I’m certainly not getting the image part.” I tried smirking, but failed miserably, a little more hurt than I was letting anyone see. “You’re not bothered by any of this are you? You’re not bothered by this stupid place with its stupid boxes and its stupid mirrors.” My face carved itself into a snarl without my permission.

“If you’re bothered, I’m bothered.” I heard a chuckle under his breath. There were many times in my life, and in fact, in a day, that I wanted to punch Code. If it hadn’t been for his not being real and not being visible, I would’ve tried.

“I’m off for a while. Business stuff. Think you can survive without me?” he said.

–

“I’ll try.” I had to be careful of my words around Code. It was kind of welcome when he left (I could tell because the constant sneering and laughing stopped), although I could not for the life of me figure out what business part of a schizophrenic boys mind had to deal with, although if I was to guess on Code, it wouldn’t be anything legal.

–

I gradually stood up and started feeling my way around the box, focusing my attention on my hands rather than my own reflection. I must’ve looked like a mime artist to the people watching. I wonder if they all laughed as they watched, taking pictures with their fancy Nikon cameras as they sat to eat the sandwiches they’d brought along. That was another thing: it must have been coming up to 3 o’clock, feeding time at the zoo would be long over by now on any normal day, but I hadn’t got anything. Had they forgot me today?

–

That was the only way to describe the place. It was a human zoo. All the freaks on display for the public to see. Trapped behind glass because they’re too dangerous to lead a normal life. At least I wasn’t claustrophobic – although I was slowly beginning to feel that way. There’s really only so much any human being can take when trapped in a box barely big enough to stand in with nothing real to cling to. At first there’s panic; terror; irrational behaviour like spinning around for hours in despair or throwing your entire body at one of the mirrors. I’d tried both. Next you wait to be rescued, you give yourself false hope. Maybe you start hearing things at that stage, or perhaps it’s just me. After that, when you know that there’s no way out and no one is coming to your rescue, a kind of numbing fear sets in. Disbelief. Despair. Once they’re there, they can’t escape either.

–

That’s what they want, the people who made this place. They want the craziest of the crazies. You have to be mad as a hatter to find yourself on one of these steel podiums, above the rest of the world, sitting broken and hopeless in a way that somehow makes people want to see you.