Another Missive from the Madness

At the moment, I seem to write in day-long cycles. I'll have a good day, bad day, good day, bad day, and so on. But I built a skeleton plan from bone-white paper climbing my tree, and as long as that spine remains, all should be well.

The Merry_Fates (on livejournal) are among my favourite people ever at the moment. And last week (ie. two thursdays ago) they posted a writing challenge. What with the Book of Doom and anxieties that it was turning too much into an echo of their creations, it has taken me a while. Still, I think I've finally finished rewriting Snow White...

Branwyn

Bloddeuwedd:

Love makes fools of us all. Who could know it better than me?

I was made from love, sculpted from flowers. I was given a life, a name. They made me a home when the hills met the sky, and filled it with beautiful creations. I had all I might desire, save freedom. They tried to tame my wildness to fit my name. But when the man came, smelling of soil and summer, I betrayed my husband for love.

*

Snow White:

Like my mother, I was made and not born. Unlike my mother I was made from sorrow. Blood from my father's wound, raw-red with betrayal. Snow, white and cold, for the long winter he spent as an eagle. And the deep, empty black of my mother's night.

I think I was cruel, sometimes. Perhaps it was because there was not enough love in my body.

*

When my stepmother came, I thought that she was beautiful. I knew we would not be friends.
The sunlight was dancing in her eyes when we shook hands and I curtseyed as if the gesture held meaning. Then I looked up at my uncle.

'She's nothing like my mother.' I told him. I saw her back stiffen.
The next time my stepmother looked at me her eyes sharpened into gleaming knife points.

*

Aeronwy:

I married a man who gave me everything. A great man, with the strength of the midday sun. A man who could never give me love. Every night we slept alone, in separate chambers, as the owls wept outside.

During the day I clutched at whatever beauty I could. The castle was dusty with light. It had rooms overflowing with wonders and I would walk among them. There were ribbons that danced around my fingers, a comb that brushed specks of sunshine into my hair. And a mirror, a magic mirror, that watched over me. It cared for me when my husband did not. In a strange way, it became a friend.

“Tell me I am beautiful?” I would beg, every time my husband looked straight through me, “Tell me I am the fairest of all?”

Its reply was always the same. “Truly, oh Queen, you are fairest of all.” The words were as soft as silk in my ears. They soothed me to sleep each night.

*

Snow White:

As I grew older, I grew more beautiful. As black as pain and as white as grief, brushed red like blood. I outshone ever petal in my mother's rose gardens. One look from me could make men forget all about happily ever after.

Princes came to see me, to offer me crowns. I couldn't make myself care for them. Their tongues chimed with poetry and all I saw was distance.

'You are very beautiful' one told me as he left. The words sung with regret. They almost pierced my iced skin.
'But I will never be happy.' The winds carried my whisper away.

*

Aeronwy:

The mirror grew kinder as my husband grew colder. He heaped love and attention on his daughter while she shunned light, heat, warmth. She built a fortress of snow around herself. I almost pitied the princes trying to win her hand.
She could not love them, as my husband could not love me. But he loved her and that was unbearable. Only the mirror sang ballads of my beauty while my husband swept past, as restless as the daylight.

*

Bloddeuwedd:

My husband came to visit me soon after he was given a second wife. He came as a hawk, and we met in the shadowed hours between day and night. He showed me the wash of waves where his land met the sea and I told him the moon's secrets. Together we dove in low, swooping bliss.

*

Aeronwy:

The day the mirror betrayed me sliced, sharp as glass, through my life. It told me that she was fairer. Her. But I knew she wasn't even alive. She was merely a doll, sculpted from winter and distance.

I asked my hunter to cut out her frozen heart. She wouldn't miss it. She was already dead inside.

*

Snow White:

When the man came to take me away I went with him thoughtlessly. He smelt of the wild, of a world where life bit, raw. I imagined feeling and I slid my perfect hand between his calloused fingers.

The wind carried darkness beneath the trees. The man told me he would kill me, and lifted the blade. Blood-rusted leaves rustled under his feet. I didn't even flinch. I almost was ready.

Death was a feeling, in a way.

The silver sang through the night and stopped an inch from my heart. The rough, raw man lowered it, his voice shaking.

'You don't even know what life is, do you?' He shook his head. 'You should have a chance to learn that, at least.'

A feeling spread, throbbing through my chest. It sounded like a harp's chord, rippling. It spoke in a foreign language. Deep and endless. I thanked the man and left him for the forest.

*

Aeronwy:

The hunter brought me a heart that was hot, red and singing with existence. When I saw it I knew that he lied.

The ribbons danced around my fingertips and I had a plan.

*

Snow White:

I was not afraid when I met the korr. They were ugly in ways I had never seen, as grey as the dead, with flat, misshapen faces. They were formed from the dark earth beneath the mountains. Their bones were cold as rocks. But they were good to me, in their way. I lived with them, shut away from the light, and felt the stone-hewn thud of absence. It left bruises beneath my icy shield.

*

Underground was dank, dark water dripping down. One day it brought a crooked woman with it. The yellow mine-lights showed me knife-points in her eyes, and I felt a blissful twist of fear. I let her lace me, of course. The caress of terror she offered was coaxing and sweet.

*

Aeronwy:
I began to think that the mirror had tricked me. It took great delight in my pain. When it laughed again and told me I had failed, I combed my hair until it outshone the glass. Then I took my comb to my stepdaughter.

*

Snow White:

Breath tore, ragged and painful from my lungs. The lights lit beneath the mountains were achingly bright. This life was fresh and new. I relished its taste. But, when the wizened lady with teeth like bones brought the comb, I allowed her to work the tangles from my curls. Each tug sung of bitter sorrows, and pulled me down.

*

Aeronwy:

The third time was the last. The apple was hard, and she seemed more alive every moment. Even in death.

When I returned I flung myself into the mirror. We shattered like ice, ebbing away.

*

Snow White:

My head throbbed with the memory of death. The ache sent a bloodbeat pulsing through me. I felt vibrations echo in my frosted heart. And when the stunted crone brought the apple I was... afraid. |Gripped by terror as grim as the korr's spindly fingers. My body clenched in anticipation.

But I took the apple, all the same. Its taste was crisp, and sweet with spring.

*

Bloddeuwedd:

I wear darkness like a gown. It fits as well as feathers. Through it, I heard death haunt my daughter's breath. I knew the importance of what came next.

She slept through the winter in a coffin carved from ice. I knew that she could sleep forever. But she could also wake. If only someone could free her frozen heart.

I flew for nights on end until I found him, as feral as the moon, and taught the story to his warming bones.

*

Snow White:

The light was brilliant, blinding with heat. My lips tingled. The air was fresh with flowers. Warmth spilled through me, thawing the ice. It shattered, splintering into shrapnel, and I sat up shivering. The man-boy standing above me looked down, and the wild glinted behind his eyes.

'I am Bleidwn, and you are no longer formed from sorrow and snow. You shall be Branwyn, the raven, and I will be the wolf.'

Unclean, unclean

Oh, I am a bad, bad blogger! I'm sorry!

In my defence, I have either been phenomenally busy, on a writing spree or both, but even so. I'm never going to earn myself eager readers if I cant even update!

So please: be updated....


Alas, I am unwell!

Over recent days I have developed insomnia. I lie awake at night, tossing and turning, running over the most mundane things in my mind. If the city is placed at point x, how long will it take to reach point y? Check on google route-planner, then add half again to the total time to factor in bad roads, traffic and rouge lycanthropes. I no longer eat proper meals – instead I find myself drinking a small oasis and snacking at odd intervals. I shun human company for the voices in my head. My arms constantly flail in delirium.

In other words, as well as generally turning into the mad woman in the attic (Why oh why did my family thwart me in this by procuring a house without said attic?) I have a serious bout of the writing bug. The evil novel which has spent the last year+ trying to eat my brain (and there aren't even any zombies in it), has, over the last two days, finally decided to co-operate. Which means that nothing else in the world is half as good. I shake like an addict when they try to pull me away. Yesterday, in the supermarket, there was a particularly disturbing moment among the cereal bars.

Unfortunately, much as I would love to surrender myself completely to this sickness and never recover, I don't actually get the chance. You see, this is the weekend of festivals, and I am working at one particular one, selling water-bottles by the way-side. From Friday morning to Monday night there will be no laptop in my life. I am prepared. I will probably survive without too much scarring. I am fully loaded with notebooks and pens, but the idea still terrifies me. (Usually, I must hasten to add, I adore festivals. There is little that is better. Unfortunately, that “little” includes writing.)

In other news, I have a Deep And Meaningful question for anyone/everyone/lily. When The Indelicates play Sixteen at gigs, do the sceenagers forget themselves and sing along? And if so, is it with irony or conviction?...

The Problem with Red Pills

also translated as "why live in the world when you can live in your head?" And words to that affect. Actually, I think this post is probably a cracked out cross between meta and introspective self-obsession. Intro-self-meta? Yes, well...*

So, I have a slight problem. Not a Big Problem, true, but nonetheless something that is Not Ideal for a girl determined to be a writer. An inconvenient occurrence, perhaps.
In other words, I have mistful's voice in my head.


I was walking along the road yesterday, happily thinking about stories, when I realised I had an internal narrative running. And mentally blogging. And this was before it started talking in scripts.

Now, see, the thing is that I love Sarah. I think she's amazing, and if I was given the opportunity I would totally, completely and utterly go and live in her attic and bake her cookies. And we all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only, that doesn't give me the right to accidentally steal her voice, and its not a good idea for either of us. She is wonderful, brilliant, unique and so shiny, and I love it, but I need to be able to write as me. Because, if I cant, I'm screwed.

Well, that's one side of the issue, anyway. My other reaction (which was worryingly enough my first one) was to question the validity of my existence. A lot of the time, things happen in my life that seem to follow a story format. My eventual and blissful acquisition of a pony, stumbling towards the kilvites, my Cardiff life. In fact, a lot of it seems to follow a series format, with a season finale each summer. (The most recent, in case you wondered, was results day. Yum) So I realised I was hearing mistful's voice in my head, and my brain went wild. I quickly drew the conclusion that I was a fictional character and that, joy of joy, I was being scripted by one of my favourite writers. Unlike Sophie, I was oddly unworried by this. Then colucio came over, and we went on a mammoth quest towards Castell Coch (incidentally? Total quest format. Small mistake, bigger mistake, biggest mistake then success) during which I asked him about it.




Me: So, you know how you occasionally wonder if you're real?

colucio: Actually, I tend to speculate that I just made everyone else up, but... yes. Matrix style, right?

Me: mm... Well, I think I'm a fictional construct created by mistful.

C: wow! Thats just... cool!


We debated it for a while, flitting through the question of freewill towards the realisation that, probably, we had both just been over-exposed to Jostein Gaarder (if, of course, such a thing is possible) while we were Young and Impressionable. But I'm still not sure about it. I honestly seem to have such a charmed life sometimes that I worry. At some point the shit inevitably has to hit the fan. Its just when this will come. If I am living in a book (which I'd prefer by the way. Its the smell) then I'd assume it will leap atop me when I leave my university haven. If I am in a series, it can hit at any moment from September onwards. And if I am a bit player, which in some ways seems most likely, I'm almost certainly destined for some death or tragedy very soon. Unless
[info]mistfulis actually my narrator of course, in which case I might be lucky enough to get some girl/girl, girl/boy or girl/monster make-out scenes instead...




So what do you reckon, oh my lovelies? I very much doubt I'm existing in a matrix world, because I don't think a computer would be this involved in my day to day existence, but that doesn't mean I'm not being skilfully narrated. Which begs the question, really, of whether it is possible to contact the great creatornarrator through an internet blog. Ho hum...

xxxxxxxxxxx

*N.B. This post is probably not taken from the pen of Sarah Rees Brenan** and definitely not to be taken very seriously!
**actually, it came out sounding far more like me than expected. I think that qualifies for YAY status

A rose by any other name...

Okay my lovelies, I need help. And not just in a men-in-white-coats way. You see, recently I've been somewhat obsessed with names.

I love both my parents, I really do, even if I don't like them that much very often. But, for various reasons that you may or may not know (if you don't, don't worry – if you need to know I'll tell you), I feel incredibly uncomfortable at the notion of writing under either of their names. At my birthday party in January, I approached the amazing Beth Webb to ask her if I could use her surname instead of my own. She told me that I was welcome to it, but that I might well not want it. And then she explained that, as a writer, the alphabetical position of a name is the most significant part. If you're standing staring at a great big bookshelf in a shop, your eyes are inevitably drawn to the bigger displays, to the titles by authors who are prominent in the literary market. Beth's advice was to go along to a bookshop, analyse the shelves, and see which letters are the best. So, yesterday, I went into town, visited the bookshops, and cross-referenced. Using three shops and every genre I thought I might one day write in. For several hours.
The end result of my research? The best letters for me are P, R and S. T is good, but occasionally it gets skipped and ends up in the wrong place. After this, I read through the phone book. I could hear the voices in my head, emerging like an XKCD cartoon.

1: So, what did you do on your Sunday?
2: Well, I cross-referenced three bookshops, and then read the phone book.
1: Wow... when you said you were giving up the internet to get a life, I never thought it would be so fulfilled...

Needless to say, I have not given up the internet. Nor am I planning on it. Even so, I occasionally worry about the ways I chose to pass the time. Fortunately, Babiji and I had a very fulfilling evening in compensation. Unfortunately, none of that is relevant. This post is, after all, about Names.

Eventually, I narrowed an infinity of possibilities down to five. Prior, Ruskin, Swallow, Sparrow and Stanton.

I've put a poll up on my livejournal, so please - go along and vote.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Once upon a time...

I have spent the last few days locked in tense warfare. At war, that is, with my tenses. The book I have been working on gradually for the last three/four years is taking shape slowly before my eyes, but getting the tenses sorted out has been an utter nightmare. Throughout the last few years, you see, I have been writing this in 1st person present. And I love first person present. It's immediate and personal and stops things feeling too contrived. It fits with my words, and they all flow together into prose. I'm quite tempted to give it a fetching nickname, but, since all I could think of the last time I tried was Percy, I gave up. But anyway – I love it. The only problem is that the novel is not only recounting past-events, but recounting them in varied chronologies, with different times and fragments interweaving. Its confusing enough for me trying to keep track of it, and I'm the writer. I don't want to lose readers, and I cant help thinking it'll be easier to lose them if I pretend its all happening in the present. So I tried using present and then past for flashbacks, but that felt inconsistent. I tried using present perpetually and italicising flashbacks, but that was too... italiscied. And doing everything in past tense was clearly wrong.

So for the past few days I have been running around like Goldilocks, only there was no preferable porridge. My lovely housemates of the moment, Babigi and Essy*, have got used to me flapping about with big cups of tea and dry cereal, muttering darkly under my breath. My head has not been so thoroughly massaged since I left the Thai hairdressers behind. I have written, deleted, and rewritten the same few paragraphs c.fifteen times.

Today, thankfully, Essy caught me. She practically had to tie me down in the kitchen to impart her particular brand of wisdom. Such as go away, write something else, and come back to it. I went away and ignored her... for approximately two hours. Then I wrote something else. Suddenly, everything slotted into place. If that went in there, then that went in there, and that went in there. And then this bit fitted with that bit, which meant it could be past and present for the first section, and then present for the rest, and...

Before I realised it, I was flying high on the euphoria of eureka mode. I had rearranged 5000 words and written an extra 3000. I had switched the entire order of all I had written. I could hardly speak without using excessive exclamation marks! All I can hope now is that I haven't slipped on the Snakes'n'Ladders ladder by tomorrow...

So, to distract myself from the fear, I took pictures of my wall hanging. I painted this at the end of last summer, but have only just found a wall tall enough to hang in on. I'm very pleased with the addition of The Veils' butterflies





my tree, my desk, my mess, my mirror and Bat For Lashes :)


xxxxxx


*Babigi & Essy – two examples of my housemates choices of pseudonyms. Others include Isaclue and S'bean. I do love my housemates. And, after all, I can hardly talk when mine is hattie ghandi on my mum's blog...

(cross-posted to parenthesised)

Growing Pains

Ironically, I have spent a large amount of my life obsessed with growing up. When I was younger, wrapped up in books and writing pleading letters to Peter Pan every summer, I was terrified of it. Growing up was a little like dying - an inevitable ending I was desperate to starve off and knew I couldn't. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, who was the 'type who wanted to grow up', was clearly an idiot. I couldn't imagine it. Even now, the end of Peter Pan leaves me in tears for this very reason – they have grown up. And, once you have grown up, that is it. There are no more trips to Never-Never-Land.

Well, that was what I believed then, at least. I remember howling while my mother tried desperately to tell me that this was not necessarily the case, but I never believed her. It is only now that I find myself wondering whether she was right all along. You see, on some levels, I may have, finally, grown up. But whenever I cone to think of it, I find that I'm no longer sure exactly what growing up entails. When do we, finally, grow up?

British society suggests that you have magically become a grown up by the time you reach eighteen. True, there are a few previous rites of passage to move through before this. At sixteen, after all, you can legally abandon childhood by having sex, which is (in my experience) at once anti-climatic and empowering, while at seventeen this new power in your life is taken further still, you are trusted enough to drive a vehicle, and therefore given some degree of power over the lives of other people. At eighteen, you are not only allowed to drink (although why you can have sex before you can buy alcohol is beyond me, but I think legal ages are probably a matter for another day), but also get your say in running the country. However the situation is, inevitably, more complicated. I was a very young eighteen. I was responsible enough to think very carefully about how to react to my various rites of passage (aside from the drinking one, which had clearly been happening for years), but I was by no means adult. I had not grown up. I went halfway around the world for two months, came back and went to university, and I still had not irrevocably grown up. The only answer is that growing up seems to be an individual process, dependant upon upbringing and personalities, as unique as fingerprints. And, just as when growing up occurs changes for each person, so too does the nature of the beast.

As I sat happily watching anime the other day, someone suggested that you have grown up when you no longer cause unnecessary worry for others. They can worry clearly, and indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without consummate worriers, but there is something about inspiring anxiety that does seem a uniquely childish/teenage state. I clearly remember various occasions where I was desperate to make someone worry about me. I think in some ways its almost more accurate than classing certain behaviour as a “plea for attention”. You want them to worry, because if they worry then they care. On this basis, growing up perhaps requires realising that you can be cared about without requiring constant proof, and means that the focus has mostly shifted from the self to everyone else. You are aware of them, both through analysing their opinions of you and through thinking about the affects your actions will have on others before you act. If you are actively trying not to worry them, then perhaps you have grown up, in some ways at least. And maybe it is only a maturity that can fully occur when you have children, or are in a very close relationship?

But I don't think that this can be the whole story either. The problem is that I'm really not to sure what the whole story is. You're supposed to just Know when you fall in love (although actually I disagree. I only realised I had probably been in love with one person months later, after it ended and I told him that I didn't love him) but growing up is probably different. And I was really wondering what you all thought about the issue. There doesn't seem to be any real emotional or intellectual cut off points, after all, only bureaucratic ones. I'm not too sure if I've grown up yet, or if I'm any closer to getting there. All I'm really sure of is that, at the moment, I can still visit Never-Never-Land whenever I want.

xxxx

(cross-posted to parenthesised)

Phew!!

...this isnt so much of an update as a huge sigh of relief. For the last month +, I have been completely incapable of accessing this blog. And there's been a lot to tell you, which I am currently too sleepy (dear body - four am is not getting up time and 8am is not sleeping time. Please learn), too full of self-realisations, and too relieved to recap on.

I was going to spam you with Wyrd Sisters photographs too, but blogspot refuses to uplod them. So instead, know that not only was it truly great (really) but to add to that....

MY WYRD SISTERS COSTUMES GOT THEIR OWN MENTION IN THE STUDENT PAPER!!!!!! ^_^


...and have a prologue. Would you read this? And if so why? And what would you change about it, if you could?


**

The storm clouds were swollen, heavy, waiting.

In the last gasp of sunset, moments before night fell, they stretched out; yawning across a darkening sky, their edges hemmed with light.

Ravenous, turgid. Waiting.

The humid tumescence grew heavier each moment, pressing down on the quiet Cotswold countryside below, sucking the daylight from the sky with more greed than the advancing hours. In the twilight, the bloated mass of clouds looked ugly and sinister, a dam about to burst. Lingering, threatening.

Waiting.

And then the night, and the storm, descended upon the land.


***