RWords #2 and #1

While I'm on the subject of random-word freewrite responses, here's April's first 2 ...

{Rest assured, I'm not turning this into a RandomWordBlog, it's only for April while I've been the chooser :-)}

Fi
xx

#2

Outdoor café

She was always confusing Minmutia with Rissia. They were both market towns, they were both exactly 9 miles away from where she lived, and they were both dominated by a long high street. So yes, that was understandable. But they were really very different as to the sort of independent shops that they contained.

What was so similar, she supposed, were the terrace cafes that had sprung up in both towns recently. Probably since the smoking ban inside public places, she thought.

Boring.

Once upon a time there was a terrace café overlooking a small harbour. The terrace was cut into the Cliffside, not as high as the Minnack theatre in Cornwall, not as low as the Marsden Grotto in Tyne and Wear, sort of middle-heightish.

You gained access to the harbour café from two directions, from inside the cafe itself or from the beach up a flight of narrow stone steps.

The steps were old, old, old. And had started to crumble a little on their sea-ward side.

Susannah had been a fisherwoman for sixty years, but was retired now and living in a beach hut at the end of the beaches where the harbour café overlooked.

Every day for ten years, she had climbed the narrow stone steps up to the terrace and had ordered bacon and black pudding baps and a pot of earl grey tea for her brunch.

One day, half way up she stopped at one of the steps that was crumbling. What was that buried inside the stone, starting now to peek out from where it had been buried, maybe for hundreds of years? Something green and shiny.

Susannah leant down and picked away at the stone.



#1

Blue notes

They were everywhere. In all shapes and sizes, from post-it notes to pages ripped from various exercise and jotting books to the massive mural on the west-facing wall. On all media, because they were carved into the bookshelves, painted on the lampshades of two standing lamps, dyed into a blue shirt nailed to one of the wooden panels that lined most of the room.

A thousand shades of blue, either in the ink or paint that was used to write with, or on the papers themselves.

The floor was carpeted with them. No wonder she'd had trouble pushing the door open.

Delize was still standing in the entrance to Victoria's library. The light in the room shifted, the day growing older outside of the open curtains catching her attention. She didn't know how long she'd been standing there, first shocked by the sight of the room, then not wanting to go inside, start seeing more and more of the words written on the notes, fearing all of the unknown that was just about to happen, not wanting to disturb for ever the state of this room … the state that Victoria had left it in … looking to be the last communication between Victoria and the rest of her world …

A fluttering in one corner of the room startled Delize out of her suspended state. A blue butterfly flew around the library, alighting here, alighting there, almost casually.

It was enough to break the spell on Delize. She took off her shoes and stepped into the room, into her dangerous adventure.

Film editing

I spent a delicious couple of hours yesterday editing a 15-minute-when-I-started piece of footage that I took in July 07, wandering around the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail.

The Sculpture Trail arrived in the forest in the summer of 86, as did I. I walked parts of the trail for a while before I realised what it was, quite magical. It has continued to be magical for me, and the only week that goes by without my walking on some part of it is a week when I'm away from the Forest. I love it.

Anyways, a couple of summers ago I started collecting footage for personal archives and for Some Future Use. And now I've started playing with it (both the footage and the Use).

So, I've titled & split, hidden and narrated, added a bit of original live music with the aid of my guitar-strumming girlfriend. And now it's in complete chaos. I look forward to returning to it with-a-plan

:-)

Fi
x

Random words

Hi blog-readers

I seem to have a bad-case of the hyphens, so you'll have to forgive me. I'm sure it's a temporary condition and will soon pass-over. Try to ignore it if you can, I'm not sure whether it's contagious ...

Anyways, this morning I've just posted the double-word random-word #4 for April, on my writers' group site, for any member who wishes to pick it up and freewrite with it for 10 minutes.

This morning's random-word is below, and my freewriting response is belower ...

Fi
x

Scattered light

Resonates, light waves washing over a shore of darkness.
I am back to the sea and purple moonlight falls like a veil over the water.
The salt waves chopping the veil into pieces, slitting it into two and three slivers, only to be reunited with each other and sealed back, seamlessly, as if they'd never drifted apart.

Resonates, with Marge de Piercey's collection of poems, Available Light, and her I am salt as the salt marsh, ripe as mature brie, and her Eat Fruit, and the other observations that I loved to read when I found her book.

Resonates with the Young Connections play about the pharoah's wife and concubines sealed in the pyramid when the pharaoh died, and the army of soldiers that were also entombed, and the still-has-me-spellbound mix of cannabalism and fragile paper birds that the women created while indulging in their cannibalistic acts.


There was once an old farming woman who found herself sat on a neat little lawn beside a neat little house on an estate down a neat little country lane.
Come in, they said, you're going to catch a chill.
She wouldn't of course, because the view inside would impose itself on her, and out here she had a much better panorama spread out in front of her, in front of her mind's eye, that is.
Eventually, they all retired for the night, as did everyone in the houses around, until she was alone on the lawn, the only person awake for miles.
The night-sky was intermittently clear then dull, for there was a breeze blowing before it a largely unenthusiastic smattering of clouds.
When the night-sky cleared, it left spaces for the stars to shine through.
The scattered light shone down on the old farming woman.
Get up, get up.
The scattered light shone down on the path that the old farming woman trod, away from the neat little lawn beside the neat little house, across the hills and far away, to find herself a small-holding to hold once again.

The Shooters

Hi Chris,

thanks for your reply.

How come no Shooting People for you now? I'm thinking that if it proved as successful as it was in effecting your Ten Dead Men movie, you'd be keen to keep the membership.

This is not a marketing promo for the Shooters btw, I'm just a nosy lass LOL!

Will you re-incarnate any of your early scripts (or characters or settings etc from them) or are they very definitely for you left-as-part-of-the-apprenticeship?

Fi
x

Greetings, Chris Regan

Hi Chris,

I see you're following my blog.

I've visited your Midnight Writer site, like the concept.

Congratulations on the release of your film.

I'm just about to start pitching my full-feature screenplay 'Vorland' - 'when fairy tales grow up, they turn into tales like this'

A slice of gothic horror, modern fairy tale told in the classic dark-and-dangerous style.

How long have you been writing film-scripts?
Vorland is my first full feature.

Do you belong to shooting-people (the film-makers as opposed to 'hands up')?

Fi
xx

Scenic Route

Okie dokie.

Clearly not quite awake this morning when I started playing with the blogs.

Please could I now direct you to http://thecelticyear.blogspot.com where you'll find 2 postings - one about me returning from Monmouth, the other about a random-wording process in which I occasionally indulge ...

I managed to post both to the Celtic Year rather than here.

Darn, and double darn

Fi
xx

Born of the Butterfly

Hi

long time no postie (blog-relatively).

This is due to

i) my determination to focus on and finish specific writing-taskings without distracting myself with either class A- or class B-distractions {see example list below} and

ii) my lack of commitment to i) above


So, current class A-distractions include -

skimmy-dipping into ... Falconer by Alice Thompson because she wrote Pharos which I read recently and loved it's about a haunted lighthouse, & Pleasures & Regrets by Proust translated from the French when the title of the book was Les Plaisirs et Les Jours so I wanted to know how come what should literally be 'Pleasures and Days' was suddenly supposed to be filled with regrets, & The Essential Gore Vidal because I was attracted by its cover (I am attracted by covers) and was next-level attracted by the titles in the contents list (I am attracted by titles) which included Early Fiction, et The Ladies in the Library; Theater Writings; Inventions; Religion; Essays; because I really wanted to see what inventions were in comparison to everything else in the book {I still haven't worked that out yet, I'll post when I have}

These are class-A distractions because something in them or about them might conceivably be useful or valuable to my literary aspirations some time in the who knows future.

Current class-B distractions include -

aimless wanderings up and down Monmouth High Street, because to do this makes me feel like I'm taking some sort of coffee break

It is useful, I may add, that such aimless wanderings can look from the outside as though they're purposeful, because I just happen to be a really fast and strident walker preternaturally. This has been most helpful in less creative jobs than 'writer' let me tell you :-)

Class-B distractions are those distractions where the only purpose or value attached to them could be 'leaving myself open to random chance and co-incidence'.

I am quite addicted to the class-B actually.

Still, I am managing to focus on some proper projects. I'll tell you about them when I come back from Monmouth.

Fi
xx