Even writers can get into the Christmas spirit!

I’ve taken a break from writing the full story I’m currently working on, to involve the main character in a Christmas story! This is something I always try and do whenever I’m writing a story at Christmastime – partly because it makes a nice break from writing the story and makes me want to carry on and get it finished, but also because you see people for who they really are at Christmas. You can tell a lot about a person from the way Christmas makes them feel and act. For example, you can tell my character is quite seriously lonely and depressed in the story I’ve just written – which, I think, makes the heart-warming little ending they get feel even better – and, because it’s Christmas, you can tell that something really bad must have happened to make her feel so down at this time of year.

I posted a story I wrote on Wattpad last night, I’m a little new to it so I have no idea how to do anything other than post my stories, but if you’d like to check out some of the stuff I’ll be posting on there – none of “Blue”, my current WIP, will go on there because my eventual aim is for it to be published on Kindle, and I’m concerned people might try and steal my stuff (that is a little vain of me, to assume that anything I write is actually worth stealing, but it’s still a concern). I’ll be hopefully posting some poetry if I ever get around to writing any more, and some short stories that pop into my heads now and then (the majority of them are very much pertaining to the universe of “Blue”, or at least to the wider universe of the “Terra Firma Fleet” series by Christopher Maine, so if you haven’t read those books, it may not make much sense, but I’d still love it if people could read my writing!

http://www.wattpad.com/user/MaddyMatthews

I’ll aim to get another blog up before Christmas, but I hope everyone is enjoying a warm and festive holiday season so far!

Starting to write!

I feel like I’m finally getting back into the swing of writing! I’ve just entered a writing competition with a piece of writing I’m rather proud of. I’m not sure what the rules are about posting your work elsewhere so I won’t post it here yet but if I can in the future I definitely will, but I’ll explain it – it is essentially, in 750 words (I actually struggled writing to a word limit!), a day in the life of a bench. Yes, you read that correctly, a bench. It sounds crazy but I’m actually quite pleased with how it went, and it ends on what could be described as a “cliffhanger” but it reflects real life I think.

So, it’s a good feeling to be getting back into it, but at the same time I know it’s just temporary relief from revision (relief I can’t really afford at the moment but I’m hopeful that having got the need to write something that isn’t about Freud or the working model of memory out of my system, I can get back and concentrate on revising and hopefully get the best grade possible in my exam.

Talking of exams, they have a knack of disrupting things, don’t they. Just when I feel I’m one step closer to finding out what’s wrong with me – I got the date for my scan – I’m faced with another setback, in that the date is the same day as my Psychology exam. Obviously the exam has to come first – I can’t really re-sit it – so I have to wait for another appointment which, knowing my luck, will either be the day of my English exam or when I’m on holiday. Sigh.

Hello there!

Yes, ’tis me, venturing out of my revision-induced seclusion to say hello and, once again, apologize for the lack of posts. I keep saying that normal service will resume shortly, and I assure you all that it will, but “shortly” might actually translate as June 20th, the date of my last exam. I’m going to try and keep coming in and posting, but I can’t guarantee how frequent it’ll be. In better news, my first exam is on Thursday! It’s drama, which I’m not too worried about but the way I’ve been recently, I can’t guarantee how I’ll be on the day of the exam or how it’ll affect my performance. I’ve tried to revise today but today is a painful day so I didn’t get much done.

I’ve started writing again! Not my old story, which probably isn’t a good thing because I do need to continue it, but a short story which I may even post at some point. It’s got a while until it’s finished – when I say “short”, it’s probably going to be around 20,000 words (is that a novella? Novelet? I can’t remember) but I’m quite proud of the idea so I hope it’ll be good enough for you all.

So, some exciting things that have happened/are happening at the moment.

 

– Exams are nearly upon me, which means they have nearly finished and then it’s the summer and then university!

– Christopher Maine has something very exciting coming in the next three weeks (check his blog http://www.christophermaine.wordpress.com or his twitter, @CMaine_Official for details).

– I have my face paints! So I can now paint faces. Whether I’m any good at it remains to be seen, but I now have some semblance of a face painting kit and I like it.

– I saw the Olympic torch relay! It was exciting and fun to see and something I shall tell my grandchildren one day, so that’s always a good thing.

– I have finally read the Hunger Games trilogy. I will review them at some point but I’ll give you a little taste of what you will find in my review. The word “awesome” will appear a lot, as will the phrases “up there with Harry Potter”, “Katniss is so much cooler than Bella Swan” and “if you never read another book series in your life, make sure you read this one”. I spent the day absolutely enthralled from the moment I started “The Hunger Games” to the moment I finished “Mockingjay”, and I’m convinced reading those books is what has made me feel like writing again 🙂

Busy busy busy.

Well – not exactly busy. I’ve been keeping busy, but it’s hardly been anything exciting – lots and lots of revision and writing essays ready for my exams which start in a couple of weeks, and not much else. On the health front, there’s still not an awful lot of improvement, I’d hoped it would have all cleared up (to be honest, it should have cleared up within 24 hours of starting the the first course of antibiotics, but of course it didn’t and we went through that whole palaver that has now lasted nearly two months), but now I’m waiting for more scans and stuff which is fun, fun, fun right in the middle of exams season. I haven’t been to college for a while but I’m making sure that I keep going with work and essays – I’m not jeopardizing my chances of university for anything, especially not stubborn pain that won’t go away.

As you can imagine, writing is still on hiatus, as it has been for about two months now. It’s not that I can’t think of what to write – I know what I want to write, but I can’t translate it from thoughts to actual words. My new laptop should make it a bit easier once I’m back in the groove of writing, because I thrive when I’m listening to music and writing at the same time, and with my old one it kept freezing so I couldn’t really do much! I think, to get myself back in the swing, when I’ve got the two week break from exams after my first exam on the 31st, I’ll write the short story I’ve had the idea for – it’s only a really short one, but it’s related to the series of novels so it might help me to get back in the swing of things.

Anyway, I won’t keep you all reading any longer – I’m sure you all have something more important to be doing, just as I need to be getting on with more essays (I’m determined to get an A in Psychology!), as much as I wish I could just write blogs all day.

Ah well.

Well, I kept my word…

I said I wouldn’t start on Book Three straight away, and that I’d give it a minimum of the Easter holidays until I started. At the time, I never thought I’d stick to it – I was fairly sure I’d have given into temptation and started. I may have used slightly unorthodox (and out of my control) means, but I haven’t started writing the third book, and it might still be a while before I get around to writing it!

I’d pictured having a peaceful Easter holidays, going for walks, maybe going a couple of places, doing a fair bit of revision for my A Levels. That all went to pot when I managed to wind up ill – and since then, most of the time I’ve been so dosed up on co-codamol that I’ve been either asleep, going crazy or falling downstairs (that happened on Wednesday, and it bloody hurt – managed to fall onto my kidneys because I’m an absolute frickin’ genius!), so revision has gone out of the window. I suppose a lot of it has been peaceful – apart from the hospital, and the castle on Saturday and Sunday when I watched my boyfriend and his family and friends beat each other up with swords, flails and axes – but not in the way I expected it to be.

It hasn’t been all bad – I didn’t have to spend my whole Easter holidays in hospital, and I’ve got a weekend left to enjoy, and I got to spend time with the people I care about, which is always good. But my writing has seriously stalled, and I just hope that this isn’t the beginning of a massive writers’ block (it’s happened in the past, a couple of weeks off writing and I never finished that story), because I am proud of my progress so far and it would be a shame to lose it! I keep trying to write little things to keep my head going, just poems and stories, but I can’t even manage those – blog posts are the best writing I’m producing at the moment.

Oh well, onwards and upwards, time to enjoy the weekend and not think about writing fiction for a while. I suppose every writer needs a break – even if mine was forced!

I’m Sorry.

I apologize for not blogging yesterday. I realized that I have been lying to you all since this blog began, and I had to do a lot of soul searching. It took me a whole day, but I came to a decision, and realized that I have to confess this, or it will drive me crazy.

I am not a writer. I have never written a book, nor even a short story. I don’t like writing – I don’t even like reading. I thought that if I pretended I was a writer, you’d all like me, and maybe I could convince myself to stay away from my true love – but I cannot hide who I am anymore. I’ve been hiding it from you, from my family, from my boyfriend and from myself, and all I can say is that I am truly sorry.

You have all been so lovely with your comments, and following my blog and reading it, and liking my posts, and I only wish that it was all true. I can only hope that you will understand why I pretended for so long, and accept my sincerest apologies, and perhaps, in time, support me in my new venture, the real reason I started this blog. You see, for a long time, I have been a llama enthusiast. I don’t just mean that I like the fluffy little buggers – I’m obsessed with them. My bedroom is covered in pictures of llamas. I sleep with a llama soft toy I’ve named Rodney, and I can honestly say he is my best friend. I’ve never felt the close connection that I feel to llamas with another human – it is as though, and I say this in all seriousness and plead that you will understand, and accept me.

I used to think that I had a problem. That I needed to be cured of this curse that has plagued me – but I am coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t a problem with me. I love llamas more than words can say, as simple as that, and if people can’t come to terms with that, it’s their problem and I can’t change that. I don’t have a problem – I am strong and confident, and I am proud to say that I have an obsession with llamas.

Maybe one day, I will become a writer. I have tried for years to convey my love for llamas through poetry, and for six years, I have failed – but there is still hope. One day, I will build a hostel, for my fellow llama lovers, and we will have a field full of llamas and a writing class, so that we can combine our love of our furry, long-necked friends with our desire to convey our adoration through words. Maybe.

But for now, I hope you will accept my apology. I hope you can forgive me, and accept me for who I am – a Llama Lover, and always will be.