Yesterday, I handed in my creative writing assignment. This was a "Folio" consisting of >1800 words of a story (I gave in about 3500 words and a synopsis of the remainder of the plot), a commentary i.e. evaluation of my work and the interactive writing exercises that we did.
Interactive writing (which is the stupidest name ever) is where we stay back for an hour (yeah, right) after our creative writing lecture, and we spend that time doing a writing exercise. The idea is to encourage us to write everyday, but what it actually achieved was to have me in a flurry on Tuesday night trying to a) find pieces I'd written that are kind-of like the exercises and b) write all of the ones I couldn't pretend to have done already.
I did manage to find bits and pieces that I'd already written. One of them actually was something that I'd done a couple of days after the interactive writing session (I never actually stayed to write during that session). One was just something totally random that I'd written that luckily fulfilled the criteria for one of the exercises.
I ended up handing in 6 interactive writing exercises. There were 7 in total and we had to provide a minimum of 5. Surprisingly enough, even though I wrote pretty much all of those in the space of about an hour & a half on Tuesday night, they actually turned out pretty nicely!
And so, you get to read them.
Here today you get exercise 1: "Special Place" and exercise 7: "Space Invaders"
For "Special Place" we had to write about a place that is special to us. Instead of just a whole lot of description (which is lame) I wrote a little story. Then, in "Space Invaders" we had to write about that space again, but this time we were required to put an invented character into that place and write about how they experience it, which should be different from how we experience it. Got it? Here are the two pieces: (PS I chose the ice arena as my place.)
“Special Place”
It’s bright. The lights are off, but the sun’s out outside and enough light comes in through the skylights. It’s cold, too, especially because I have no jumper. It was just too hot outside to bring one. I’m sitting on the blue bench, the one at the bottom of the first set of benches. They’re wooden and all of them have chipped paint; they have real character. Today, the arena may as well be empty. There are a few kids; they’re chattering, excited.
“Did you bring band-aids?” asks a little girl; she’s done this before, I can tell.
Her friend hasn’t though, and the first girl tries to be encouraging.
“It’ll be okay,” she says, “you can hold onto the edge.”
“But what if I fall over?”
“I fell over twice the first time.”
The second girl looks like she might whimper.
The mother behind them steps in at this point. “You’ll be fine if you take it slowly.”
I can’t help but smile; they’re cute. Besides, with so few people here they really have nothing to worry about. When it’s empty like this it’s easier for everyone, but especially for new skaters. They aren’t even that many stupid hockey boys, so the girls don’t really have to worry about those idiots bashing into them and then speeding away without saying sorry. That said, it’s amazing to watch the hockey skaters; it must feel amazing to go that fast. The clock - it’s slow; it always has been - hits ten o’clock. This is when the session is supposed to start during the holidays, but it takes another minute before the voice of the DJ crackles out of the dodgy speakers and permits us to get onto the ice. I leap up from the benches as the first girl unlatches the barrier gate. I open the gate, taking the time to pull it the full way around so it doesn’t get in everyone’s way. The girls step on, wobbling, before I have finished. Thump. The first one, the one who has been here before, has fallen over. I rush to help, as does the mother, but both the girls are laughing and she gets up without a complaint. She starts to skate, a little wobbly but not bad, and then goes to peel her friend away from the barrier to teach her to skate without holding on. And then it’s my turn. I pass through the gateway, step out into the cold and onto that hard, slippery surface. I push, enough to get going, to speed past the girls to do one lap, two laps, three before they’ve even completed one, getting faster and faster with each step, speeding along, streaming along, gliding... I stop pushing, feet together. It feels like flying.
“Space Invader”
“OMG Kayla, what are those?” I ask, as Mikayla rummages in her handbag (imitation Prada, but kind of cute anyway).
“Ah, socks.”
“Those are not socks. Those are, like... old people bed-socks or something.”
Honestly, it looks like two black fluffy caterpillars went to sleep in her bag.
“Mum says I’ll get blisters if I don’t wear them.”
“Whatevs Kay,” I say.
The door to the ice arena is heavy, but I pull it open and go in. The line’s not too bad. My brother went ice skating on a Saturday night once and said it was packed, but it looks like everyone has better things to do on a Sunday at one thirty. Through another set of doors, I can see a bunch of people already skating.
“Gosh Izzie, check them out.”
I look as Mikayla points through the door at a small group of girls who are doing this weird twirly things.
“Trackpants much,” I say, looking at one of them.
Her pants practically scream Target. I readjust my cute long necklace (I got it from a designer on the internet) over my linQ sweater dress (the same one that Jessica Alba wore once) and pay the $17 to get in. We go through the glass doors and get hit by a blast of cold air. I try not to shiver. Mikayla pulls on her woollen coat (I think she got it from Myers, but it has these great buttons). We go to get skates from the hire desk. The guy is a little kid, like, fourteen or something, with acne.
“Who chose the colours for these?” Mikayla asks.
We’re both disgusted, because the blue and red plastic skates are so ugly. We go to sit down on these wooden benches. They’re really uncomfortable, the paint is chipping off them all and I’m a bit worried that we might get splinters. I shiver.
“Aren’t you cold Izzie?” Mikayla asks.
I just shrug. Putting on my jacket will ruin my look. Mikayla makes me put it on, but I don’t let her know how much warmer it makes me. (It’s a woollen coat, kind of like hers, but the buttons aren’t quite as nice.) I quickly take off my long necklace and switch my earrings to a pair that I had in my handbag (Tiffany & Co.), which is disappointing because I was wearing genuine Gucci earrings, but at least I had averted the fashion crisis. It would be hard to pull off the horrible skates though, but I didn’t have much choice.
“You’re not seriously going to wear those?” I ask in shock, as Mikayla pulls the fuzzy socks out of her bag.
“Yeah I am. I can’t hurt my feet.”
When she took off her boots (mid-calf boots with buckles; they’re genuine Manolo Blahnik’s - her only birthday present this year) I noticed that her feet were covered in band-aids. She does foot modelling part-time. I roll my eyes.
“Whatevs Kay,” I say.
I slide my stocking-clad foot into the gross skates. They are so uncomfortable. Mikayla makes me do hers up tightly because she’s worried about her ankles. I do my own up. We ignore the DJ as he says the rules over really low-quality speakers. We walk down the stairs, holding onto the rail, which is freezing cold. We step onto the ice.
“Look at that Izzie,” yells Mikayla, pointing to the middle of the ice.
A girl wearing jeans (from Target by the looks of them), a T-shirt (French Kitty) and her own, white skates is spinning.
“Wow,” says Mikayla, and we both watch the girl until she comes out of the spin, with her arms held out.
Having done ballet since I was six, I know that she’s not really that good, but Mikayla’s impressed.
“At least her skates look okay,” I admit.
Mikayla starts to skate, but after a few steps she trips and falls down. She laughs.
“God Kay,” I moan, looking around.
She’s laughing like a total lunatic, but I’m just embarrassed.
“Help us up Izzie,” she says, and I do.
A really cute boy in hockey skates is laughing at us.
“Come on,” I say, rolling my eyes and starting to skate.
We’re going to spend the next two hours going around in monotonous circles. It is cold. The whole place is kind of disgusting. Mikayla and I seem to be the only ones here with any kind of fashion sense. I feel like dying.
La fine.
If you've read this far, you might notice the parallel endings that tie the two pieces together.
I'll post a couple more pieces next time I blog - I hope you like this stuff; it's a bit random.
♥Nancy♫
