Woollen Picnic Rug

Hi everyone!!

I apologise for the long time between blog posts! (Although of course it's way less than the huge break-from-blogging I've been having all year, but anyway...)

I meant to post this last week because I wrote it last Thursday during my Creative Writing workshop, but obviously I never got around to blogging.

For those of you (and I think *maybe* I have at least one...?) anyway, for those of you who are doing the Theory and Practice of Creative Writing workshop, you'll have read the story in the Artifice chapter of the course reader that's about a girl who kills herself at a dinner party.

Our writing task was to write something that's based on any of the pieces in the course reader and that's the piece I chose. Some people chose that piece and then wrote something with similar subject matter, but I chose to change (significantly change, you'll see) the subject. The inspiration that I took from the original piece was the levels of description and the factual tone of the writing. If you comment, I'd be interested to know if you feel I've achieved this, even if you haven't read the original piece.

Anyway, here it is, I hope you enjoy it and please consider commenting to make me feel good about myself (or even perhaps because you love the piece)!

♥Nancy♬

On a woollen picnic rug, two teenagers relaxed under the hot sun. A wicker picnic basket lay beside them with the remains of sandwiches and chocolate cake dumped  carelessly into its bowels. The teenager, the boy, stroked his girlfriend’s hair. She smiled and sat up and kissed him.

On a leisurely stroll with Delilah the Corgi, Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane entered the park. It was a lovely sunny day. She’d made sure to cover up and wear sunblock and a hat. The grass smelt dirty and was uncut. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane shortened the leash on Delilah the Corgi so that she could keep a closer eye on where her precious puppy was walking. As she passed by a patch of soft grass, she saw the young couple on their woollen picnic rug. The boy lay down and pulled his girlfriend to lay next to him. And there they were, legs entwined and mouths locked in the middle of the park. Mrs. Peters would tell her friends later that she’d nearly had a heart attack at the indecency of it all. She coughed loudly. And coughed loudly again. The teenagers did not stop their kissing. Muttering about the state of society, Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane walked Delilah the Corgi right back out of the park. She was going home to write a letter to the council.

Two little girls in bright pink dresses held hands and skipped barefoot around the park. One was blonde and the other was brunette, but they were sisters, you could see it clearly in their faces. They skipped across the expanse of grass where people often sat for lunch. A woollen picnic rug felt cuddly warm against the blonde girls feet. She stopped and then her sister stopped. They both looked down at the rug. Both girls made a noise of distaste and disgust. Then they held hands again and ran all the way to the playground, to slide down the slide. The teenagers on the woollen picnic rug looked up from their kiss. They smiled and made comments about how cute the little kids were. He kissed her again.

The chains of the swing creaked as the swing swung back and forth. The child on the swing was oblivious to this fact, concentrating pointedly on his goal of swinging his feet high into the clear blue sky, above the treetops beyond. His mother stood behind him. She was slumped to the side with all her weight on one hip. A mobile phone in her hand beeped obnoxiously with every key she pressed. She was texting her friend. Her other hand occasionally pushed the child, but he knew how to swing without someone pushing and was getting higher without her help anyway. They were both entirely ignorant of the kissing teenagers.

The old man on the bench waited until Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane had left the park before getting his binoculars out of his satchel. She’d had more than one good rant at him because bird-watching wasn’t an appropriate sport for an old man. She thought he ought to take up reading newspapers and writing to the council. His only response to that was that his lovely wife Milly would find it awfully boring, and if she were watching him from Heaven like he thought she was then he ought to do things that she’d find interesting. In a scan around the park through his binoculars, he saw two young teenagers laying on what looked to be a woollen picnic rug. They were kissing. He smiled first because he knew that would have outraged Mrs. Peters if she’d seen it. He smiled again when he remembered kissing his lovely wife Milly on a woollen picnic rug one day when they’d been as young as those teenagers.

All of a sudden all the heads turned. A tan-coloured canine raced across the park, bouncing across the long soft grass. It ran under a grove of trees, sniffing everything in its path. An old man who sat on the park bench put down his binoculars and laughed, greeting Delilah the Corgi by name. Delilah the Corgi barked as loudly as she could and then turned and raced off again.

This time she ran until there was a big metal pole in the way and she found that the ground under her feet was no longer soft grass but was now brown wood-chips and she looked up to see a child flying through the sky! He made a long creaking noise as he did so. Delilah the Corgi barked as the child began to plummet back towards the earth and then barked again as the child flew back up in the other direction. A grumpy voice behind the child shooed Delilah the Corgi away from her son. The child managed to swing so high that his feet were above the trees.

As Delilah the Corgi sped across the park again, she saw a blur of pink and blonde and brunette and ran back to turn circles around it. The two little girls yelled and giggled as Delilah the Corgi raced around their legs and jumped up at their knees and licked their ankles. They both fell to the ground in hysterics so the little dog could slobber all over their faces.

A scream wailed across the park as skinny old Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane also raced across the park, in pursuit of Delilah the Corgi. She couldn’t run half as fast as her dog but she certainly tried. Her purple handbag flapped around comically. Delilah the Corgi heard the infuriated scream of her master and raced off again across the park.

She revelled in the feel of soft warm grass beneath her doggy feet. All of a sudden there wasn’t soft warm grass but a hot-from-the-sun woollen picnic rug. Surprised, Delilah the Corgi leapt into the air, intending to jump over the unfamiliar feeling beneath her feet. Being a Corgi, however, she couldn’t jump very high, and found herself tumbling down a hill made of teenage boy to land in between two teenagers. The teenagers stopped kissing to laugh and pat Delilah the Corgi.

Purple shoes belonging to Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane appeared at the edge of the woollen picnic rug. Delilah the Corgi stopped licking the face of the teenage girl to look up at her owner and bark. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane faced a conundrum. Here was her precious Corgi Delilah in the middle of a picnic rug of debauchery. But out of the corner of her eye, she could see the old man watching her through his binoculars, the young mother looking up from her mobile phone and the two little girls in pink dresses staring at her. Mrs. Peters from number 4 Snickety Lane bent down stiffly and picked up Delilah the Corgi. With her nose in the air, and the dogs nose still sniffing all about in excitement, she walked out of the park. This time she kept a fierce hold on her mischievous dog. The teenagers laughed, and started kissing again.

The Morning Show

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS ARE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS

I did some writing. And you get to read it. Trufax, guys. :D

So here is a story that I wrote during a writing exercise in my creative writing workshop today:

(P.S. can has constructive comments plz?) ♥Nancy♬

The rain is ice cold on his face as he walks through the city. With a shrug, he snuggles deeper into his not-warm-enough overcoat. He steadfastly ignores the crowd of people cheering, yelling, waving signs despite the weather, all for the chance to get a sliver of themselves filmed on the show being filmed behind the window. It is morning, bright and early, but the sun is nowhere to be seen behind the clouds. He hurries on, wishing and hoping for that daytime star to appear and warm the world.

She twirls in the street, rainbow skirts flying up and out. She feels like a rhythmic gymnast (even though she knows that those flipping twisting twirling dancers would never perform their art out here in the street). She doesn’t notice that the crowd draws aside. She doesn’t realise that they have decided, an unspoken, unanimous decision, that she should be the one to be filmed on the show. Perfectly made-up D-grade celebrities turn in their comfy couch to look out the window behind them. She cannot hear them behind the window, but they are almost certainly talking about her.

Perhaps one immaculately dressed presenter might say, “looks like someone’s enjoying this rainy weather, anyway.”

And then the other one would say, “she’s our ray of sunshine under all this cloud cover.”

Then the other, “and on that note, let’s go to the weather.”

His wet black nose wiggles as he sniffs at the overflowing trash can in the street. He doesn’t hide from the rain like the cold man in his overcoat. He doesn’t dance or twirl like the rain-dancer in her rainbow skirt. Instead, he eats a piece of stale bread (it’s hiding place under a brown paper bag is the only reason the birds haven’t reached it first) and then runs over to the crowd of people outside the window to see if some kind soul will pat him.

 “Oh, look at that dog!”

The presenters look out the window at him, both smiling, then turn back to the cameras.

The weatherman has just finished telling the world that the weather is rainy.

Myself & The Mediocre Writing

Okay, so, I know I promised something new for whenever I next blogged but technically what I’m sharing today isn’t new.

I did a spot of room-tidying today and finally went through the rest of my notes etc. from my classes last semester. One of those classes was a creative writing unit (Myself & The Aliens). Now you’d think that creative writing classes would be really interesting but the workshops went on for 3 hours straight and oftentimes it was a little dull - especially because there was this one guy in my group who talked on and on in circles and was really annoying!!!!

So anyway, what that means for you is that there are some random and mildly amusing bits and pieces written in my book that I am now going to type out here for you to read.

Most of it’s pretty lame, sorry! Except the very last piece, it kinda rocks.

(Maybe you’ll get genuine new stuff to read next time!)

♥Nancy♬ 

A story (from the introductory lecture):

As she walked into the mouth of the cavern, she heard a dripping: drip-drop, drip-drop. But it wasn’t just a mere drip-drop. It was a drip-drop-fizzle. So she knew it was acidic. And from that, from the sound, from her location, from why she was there, she knew that it wasn’t water that she could hear dripping. It was dragon’s blood. Imarin shivered, then froze still on the spot, trying to ensure silence in her movement, her breath, the frantic beating of her heart. She counted in her head. One, two, three... eleven, twelve... twenty-seven... Surely someone would have come by now, to find her, if they’d heard her. 

Imarin took another tentative step forward, nervous and quiet. She began to make her way deeper into the cave. It seemed to be ballooning out, growing bigger, scarier and deeper as she moved through it. The dripping noise grew louder, she was moving toward it. Drip-drop-sizzle, drip-drop-fizzle. The cave grew darker; Imarin couldn’t see her feet when she looked down. Instinctively she stretched a hand out, groping for a cave wall to guide her as she continued through the thick blackness. When she found none, she left her arms outstretched to act as a blind person’s cane, or the whiskers of a cat.

[I apologise for the terrible quality of that piece.]

Apparently some guy in my class wore a shirt that said this:

“Your skill in Reading has increased by 1 point.”

Things I Would Sound Stupid If I Said

Revenge is a dish best served cold. Like ice cream. Om nom nom.

But I like babies! They can’t be evil! =(

Evil cowboy baby! Oh my!

The baby’s soul is the one in limbo yelling “GTFO my lawn!”

From Halo to Star Trek. I can’t decide if this discussion is going uphill or downhill.

Time travel really shouldn’t be this complicated. All you need is a TARDIS.

Ursula le Guin is relevant today.

Radioactive Time Travel Spider

“logistics” is a funny kind of word, don’t you think?

It was totally the snake’s fault. And snakes are a phallic symbol. Blame the men! *feminazi*

I would have made apple pie.

I are take nap now.

A story (from Workshop 6):

[Note: this is a continuation of one of the pieces I wrote when I was in Melbourne! I think...]

For three months before they conceived, everyone that Nat drew was pregnant. She drew pregnant women having a spa day, pregnant pigs snuffling for truffles, a pregnant doctor doing an ultrasound on a pregnant teenager. Her final painting, before they conceived, was of a couple making love while the baby slept peacefully in her womb. And then, pregnant at last, she stopped drawing other women pregnant.

“They’re good,” he said, “you should send them to the gallery. It’s been ages since you did an exhibition.”

“They’re not good,” she said, sadly. “They feel wrong.” She shook her head. “A real pregnant woman wouldn’t believe them.”

But she sent them to the gallery anyway, and ended up in a meeting with the director discussing an entire conception-to-birth exhibition. Reluctantly, she agreed. She needed a reason to keep painting, after all.

“You’re up late,” he said, arriving home at two a.m. and finding Nat still awake. “Painting?” he asked.

She snapped at him, “no! I don’t always have to be painting.”

Taken aback, he said, “I just wondered, Nat. Usually you’re asleep or painting at this time.”

“Well I don’t always have to be! I don’t always have to be painting or drawing or anything like that. You don’t cook all the time!”

“Don’t yell at my Nat!” He raised his voice. “At least I’m still cooking. You don’t pain anymore!”

“I don’t have to!” she yelled back.

“You have an exhibition to paint, Nat. And even if you’re not going to paint that you said you’d paint for our baby.”

“Don’t try to guilt trip me!” Nat yelled, and then she began to cry, and suddenly he had his arms around her, kissing her and forgiving her.

“I don’t love you because you paint,” he said, quietly, and she loved him just for that.

[Further notes: #random - I have no idea where my mind was that I wrote that...]

In case you were wondering:

Trance: if you’re Eladrin then you can meditate in a trance for four hours as your extended rest.

A story (from Workshop 8, although I started it at training one night which is why one of the characters is called Marcus, although he’s not based on the real Marcus):

The crystal moon rose at midday, sparkling down at the earth and glinting its glitter-light off the copper leaves of the metal trees in the city centre. In one of the gardens, a child sat in the shade of a copper-leaf tree, sticky with juice as he ate a red-pink kerzump fruit. His mother, glowing with pregnancy once more, stood nearby in the arms of her husband.

“Don’t eat the seeds, Peter,” she warned; her little boy grinned up at her and threw the pillar-box-red, star-shaped seeds away. “That’s my boy.” His mother smiled back down at him.

“So, Esmerelda, choose a name,” the husband said.

“How about Henry, if it’s a boy?”

“We already have a boy! She’ll be a girl, I’m sure.”

“Maybe,” Esmerelda said, with a knowing smile.

Marcus leaned down to kiss Esmerelda, feeling her sigh and turn her face to the sun as he nuzzled her neck. They were warm, happy and entirely peaceful.

And then the earth trembled.

It was just a gentle shake, at first, and then the earth stood still again. Peter dropped the remains of his kerzump fruit and turned to his mother as his eyes filled with tears.

“Mam?” he whimpered.

Esmerelda pulled away from Marcus’s arms and dropped to her knees next to her son.

“Shh, it’s all right,” she comforted, but she looked up at Marcus quizzically.

Before either of them had a chance to speak, the ground trembled once more.

“Marcus what’s happening?” Esmerelda cuddled her son close.

“I don’t know,” Marcus replied, “but I think we should move.”

The earth shook, harder than before, as Marcus helped his wife to her feet and swung his song up into his arms. He was putting on a brave face, much more nervous than he looked. He’d heard enough stories about earthshakes to know what was happening but he didn’t understand why. Here in the north, the earth stood still, always, especially in the ever-peaceful Metal City.

“Let’s get home.” he said, and helped his wife to hurry across the garden and down the path that led to their house.

The next shake was harder, enough that they heard screams from the city.

“We don’t want to stay near the trees, copper is heavy.”

“Is the house safe?”

“We’ll stand in the doorframe, I’m sure that’s the safest place.” Marcus hoped he was correct about that fact.

They reached the house and stood in the doorway. Marcus worked quickly to unhinge the door and lay it flat. His mind was racing to remember how to keep his family safe. They pressed against the wooden doorframe, Peter clutching his mother’s skirts and crying.

The sound of a whistle pierced the air. It was high-pitched, trilling in their ears.

“No!” breathed Esmerelda. Marcus felt his heart sink.

She grabbed his wrist, digging in her nails so taht the couldn’t pull away.

“I have to, you know I do.”

“Please, you can’t leave us. We need you - I need you.”

He untangled his arm from her grasp and ducked through the doorway to retrieve his belt with his sheathed sword attached.

“Marcus don’t go,” Esmerelda begged one last time.

“I love you, Esmerelda. And I promise to return to you, to our son.”

He ruffled Peter’s hair and kissed Esmerelda.

“Stay in the doorway or out in the open if anything happens here. Keep him safe.”

With a last kiss goodbye, Marcus rushed off towards the city, the source of the whistle-blowing, to join the King’s Guard and face whichever threat their city was up against.

[Note: if I’d written any more of this, Esmerelda would have gone into labour in the middle of the earthquake.]

Three random stories (from Workshop 9):

“Bye!” called Becca, as the heavy front door slammed shut behind her parents. She stood silent for a moment, listening to footsteps, to the car doors, to the engine starting and the sound of her dad leaving down the street. She turned to her right, brushed her hand against a silver knob and watched and heard the music volume jump from a quiet 8 to an ear-busting 17.

“They’re gone!” she yelled back into the house.

“Good, let’s get dressed!” yelled her best friend, from in the kitchen.

[Note: clearly there’s a lack of context there so to avoid awkward misinterpretations I’d just like to say that it was going to be a short story about two girls who get drunk and go partying in Northbridge or wherever.]

“You will not come any closer,” ordered the 18-inch tall fairy. She stretched out an arm and pointed a tiny finger at the target of her words.

He suddenly found himself unable to advance, feet glued to the woodchip-scattered path. He’d been magic-touched before and hated it just as much now as he had then.

He felt her hands running down his cheeks, nails running across his throat - it was sexy, the pressure and the danger. Then white hot pain flashed through him as those nails broke the skin of his neck. Lines of blood appeared, following the path of her nails. He tried to scream but no sound left his throat.

Possibly also from Workshop 9?:

The radar blipped, scanning the space around the ship and finally finding something, for the first time since they’d passed by the outer asteroid belt in the Second-Sun Solar System. The elderly astronaut sitting by the radar jerked awake.

“Wah?” he mumbled, looking around the room, befuddled. Then his eyes settled on the radar, saw the blinking light, and he jumped into action.

“All crew to the flight deck!” he cried into the speaker system.

The blip blipped closer.

The flight deck flooded with people in official uniforms. They fiddled with machines, twisted knobs, flicked switches and tried to figure out what the blip on the radar could be.

About an hour later, someone finally had the good sense to look out of a window, and they realised what the blip on the radar was.

“Is that... a giraffe?”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“A giraffe?”

“In space?”

GIRAFFES: IN SPACE!

Scrabble

Oh hai guys!

First off, apologies for not having blogged all year! It's been a while since I skipped an entire month I think. =S

Anyway, I've been going through some of my old writing (ugh, it sucks) and I found the piece of writing that I'm going to share with you today.

I'm not sure exactly what it is or the circumstances in which I wrote it but it seems to be some kind of plan. I think maybe it is a plan for a screen-play rather than a novel. Anyway I thought it was kinda cute so you get to read it!

It's a bit random and silly but I'd still appreciate comments or whatever, thanks!

♥Nancy♬

(P.S. I plan to write something new for whenever I next blog. Keep an eye out just in case it's good!)
EDIT: OMG you guys I just thought of the coolest idea! Once you've read this story, leave me a comment with a witty comment about Scrabble! I know no one will really do this but I thought it would be cool to ask anyway...

Scrabble

A girl (the main character) asks a guy to come and play Scrabble with her friends that weekend. He accepts.

At her house, they finish the game of Scrabble. The guy wins the game, and the others invite him to join their regular game.

They play Scrabble again and again, with a different person winning each time. The other boy and girl grow closer together.

One game they are not there, and it is just the girl and the guy playing alone. During their conversation, they say that this is because the others are on a date together.

The next game they are both there again, being all cute-couple-y and looking at each others letters.

Then the next game the girl storms in late angry with the guy because he cheated on her, forgot her birthday, dumped her or something else equally bad. He follows her in and they are both yelling at each other.

The others watch, and the girl says ‘promise me that we won’t ruin our friendship by getting romantically involved’ or something like that. The boy looks shocked and a bit disappointed because he loves her. ‘Promise me’ she says, and he agrees.

Then the next time they play Scrabble, on their own again because the other girl and guy refuse to be together, he asks her to marry him.

She gets very angry and storms off.

He comes to play Scrabble again, but on the board is spelled out ‘I HATE YOU’ in Scrabble letters.

It is her wedding and she receives a card. It is blank, but then she opens it and there is a photograph of a Scrabble board with ‘I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU’ spelled out. She rips it in half.

Then it is Christmas and her children open a package that turns out to be a game of Scrabble. ‘You got them Scrabble?’ she says to her husband. He says ‘yes, it’s a present for you as well.’

She goes to another room and opens a drawer, and there is the ripped up card from her wedding day, as well as a whole pile of ripped up Scrabble-picture cards.

She says ‘I have to go’ to her family, and leaves the house. Then she goes and finds the man and shows him all the ripped up cards and says something witty about Scrabble.

And then they are in love, live happily ever after, and play lots of Scrabble together.