I wrote something!

I really did. So what? you say - you've written several things. Well, this was different.
Yesterday afternoon I was chatting on the writers site I belong to and some very helpful people went over the plot of my novel with me. The novel that I've been failing to write for some time now.
What I ended up with was a page of very untidily scrawled notes in my notebook and a much clearer idea of where I should go with the story. Which is nice. And then I sat down last night and wrote 500 words of the opening scene.
Now, that's not a great deal, but it is a start. And, just as importantly, it's a start I didn't want to immediatly throw away - something I've done a lot of.
I would have posted it since there isn't too much of it, unfortunately, I've forgotten to bring in my USB key today, so I don't have a copy with me. Maybe tomorrow I'll throw it up.

Anyway, I'm happy at the moment - maybe I realy can do this writing thing :D

New RHP Prose entry

The next prose competition at Red Hot Pawn has begun, which means I can now safely post my entry for the last one. Enjoy:

The Blank Page (491 words) It sits there, an A4 sized piece of malevolency, staring up at me. It taunts me from the desk, daring me to try and fill it up, yet I cannot. As soon as I confront that yawning emptiness, I clam up; it freezes my creativity and binds my imagination.
I reach for a pen, flick it’s lid off and hold it, poised above the paper in an attempt to complete the circuit between brain and page. Somehow, the flow of inspiration must start; surely I cannot go on like this forever?
Closing my eyes, I can see the story unfold, but then I open them again and it’s gone, retreating back into the recesses of my brain as if it too is fearful of that terrible Blank Page.
This confrontation is played out all too frequently. So many times have I come up against the Blank Page and so many times have I failed. Too often have I sat there, late into the night, desperate for some inspiration, desperate to plumb the depths of my mind and confer the results to paper.
I have had some victories, but even they have been bittersweet. On the rare occasion that I do take that first step and begin to fill the Blank Page, what I fill it with is almost exclusively awful. Something about the way the prose is put together simply doesn’t feel right. Somehow, between my mind and the page, it has been warped into something barely readable.
Some may say this is a battle I will never win, that I should give up before it drives me crazy. But I cannot simply quit. It would be akin to an asthmatic giving up breathing because it causes him too many problems.
If I quit now, I will be driven to madness anyway by the constant flow of ideas and concepts for which I would have no vent. All of that creativity floating around my mind with no outlet would tip me over the edge as surely as trying and failing.
One day I shall vanquish my nemesis, after all the pen is mightier than the sword, but it may take some time. Perhaps when life outside of writing calms down somewhat, I will be more able to devote my entire concentration the task of overcoming the beast.
Real life is the ultimate ally of the Blank Page. Relationship problems, financial problems and, of course, the dreaded Day Job - all of these things prey on my mind, stifling my creativity and slowly driving me to distraction.
But now it seems I have found a solution. How effective it will be, only time will tell. ‘Write about writing’ someone suggested to me. The fruits of that labour you are just about to finish reading. With any luck it will spur me on to new literary horizons. Like everything, practice makes perfect, and the first step is always the hardest.

Stay tuned...

...there will be some more snippets up here soon. I've had a welcome and much needed boost from a guy on the forums at Red Hot Pawn (see right for link). He started a prose competition on the forums, and I've entered a couple of pieces. My first entry is below but the second one I've entered is still being judged, so I'll wait until I get the results of the competition before I put it up.
This first one was an expansion on one of the 100 word stories you can find further down in this blog. It came third out of five. First place deserved it, but I was robbed of second place >:(

The Time Machine

At last, it was finished. As he approached the Time Machine, he pondered where to go. Or rather, when to go. Not wanting to upset time too much on his first trip, he decided to start small, just go back a few hours; there could be no harm in that surely?
He walked slowly around the Machine, admiring the product of all the hard work and dedication he had put into this project in the last few years. He could scarcely believe it was finished. So many times he had considered discarding the whole crazy idea. So often he had sat up all night working on the crucial theory that needed to be perfected before it could be put into practice.
He sat down in the worn leather seat that he had scavenged from his old Jaguar, taking comfort from it’s familiar curves. He took a few deep breaths in a vain attempt to calm the butterflies that were rioting in his stomach. Reaching out with hands clammy from nervous sweat, he began adjusting the Machine’s controls.
He finished setting the Machine up for it’s first test journey and paused, momentarily awed at the enormity of what he was doing. He was about to be the first human to travel against the flow of time, into the past. The implications were enormous, the wrongs he could set right, the money he could make. With visions of grandeur floating through his brain, he reached for the lever that would engage the Machine’s Temporal Drive and, finally, got the Machine started on it’s epic voyage to the past.
As the whir of the Drive powering up became louder, doubts began to assail him. What if it didn’t work? What if the failure was catastrophic? He wasn’t an adventurer, he was an inventor, he should have found someone braver to do the actual testing. His pulse accelerated and he took in great gulps of air to quell those rowdy butterflies. It didn’t work, and he began to shake as all sorts of possible catastrophic scenarios flicked through his mind. And then it was too late. With a brief flash of light, the Machine turned itself about in time and headed back the way it had come. A few moments of it’s own time later, the drive wound down and the Machine returned it’s temporal velocity to that which we are all more familiar with.
Inside the machine, he began to realise that something had gone wrong. When the machine had arrived in it’s new time, he had found himself greeted by a sudden rush of air and a cold like he had never experienced. The fear reached a new crescendo as he peered out of the window and looked out at the unexpected inky blackness, speckled with millions of pinpricks of light. Then, as the Machine rolled through the void, he saw the Earth, beautifully framed by the window, but horribly distant. His dying thought was the realisation that in his hurry to conquer Time, he’d neglected that other half of the famous continuum – Space.