The Window

(based off a writing prompt on @awriterslifeforme on Instagram!)

The first thing that caught their attention was the window at the end of the room. It had broken blinds and a plastic seal, but that wasn’t what made it interesting. It was the light that shined through and lit up the whole room. Everyone knew it was dark outside.

“That’s…. weird.” Joe said hesitantly, and Dylan rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Well done Sherlock, I hadn’t figured that out yet.” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm, and Joe instantly retreated back into his shell. Emily sighed. Joe had just been beginning to come out of his shell of introvert-ness but every time Dylan spoke it was like a step backwards, him retreating behind his shield to block himself for her wrath being forced upon him.

“He was just stating a fact, Dylan. It’s not like there’s much else to say, is there?” Emily came to the taller boy’s defense, knowing that if she didn’t then Dylan would start getting cocky again and think that she was the best.

“It wasn’t necessary for anything to be said at all” Dylan snapped back, but she didn’t say any more, and Emily gave a slightly smug smile, knowing that she’d taken the older girl down a peg or two.

“So what do we do now?” Gabe asked the rest of the group, having stayed silent the rest of the time. “The wisewoman told us to come here and “travel beyond”, so it has to have something to do with the window, right?” That was the kind of person Gabe was: he didn’t speak much, but when he did speak, he actually said something productive, unlike everyone else.

“I reckon we look to see what’s on the other side of the window for starters.” Dylan said, rolling her eyes again to show how stupid she thought all the others were. It was a good idea, but it was quite obvious that no-one wanted to go anywhere near the strange glowing window from the fact that they were all standing at the other end of the room, as far away as possible.

“Go on then Dylan, you do it.” Emily said, knowing full well that the older girl didn’t want to as much as the rest of them didn’t. Everyone looked at her expectantly.

“No, I’m not doing it. Why doesn’t Joe do it – he’s the one who doesn’t matter so much if something does happen.” She snapped, pushing the lanky boy forwards. Joe stumbled slightly and began to shuffle forwards obediently, but Emily grabbed his arm and pulled him back, sighing loudly. She hated it when Dylan pushed Joe around like she was the queen of the world – it really just wound her up the wrong way.

“I’ll do it.” She took a bold step forward, trying not to notice the fact that the other three took a simultaneous step back. Taking a deep breath, the mousy-haired girl strode towards the window and reached it in a few long steps, squinting through the glass with her eyes half closed because of the golden light that was pouring onto her face.

“It’s-” she began, but as her mouth opened she suddenly tumbled forwards and disappeared, almost as though she’d travelled through the glass to the other side.

Dylan, Joe and Gabe stared open mouthed at the window.

“Where did she go?” Joe asked, his voice quiet and trembling slightly. Dylan’s head whipped round to look at him, a menacing expression on her face.

“If you have nothing useful to say, then just keep your mouth shut, got it?” Joe looked down at his feet, silent. Gabe stepped forwards slightly and stood on his tiptoes to try and see out from where he was, but not daring to venture any closer to the glass.

“It’s obviously dangerous, whatever it is. I reckon we don’t get any closer until we know what it is.” He concluded, stepping back again. Joe looked up again, his expression pained.

“But we need to find out what happened to Emily!”

“Well why don’t you go have a little looksie, hey?” Dylan’s tone was fake cheery, as though she was talking to a three year old, but the boys could almost taste the venom behind her words. It was at this moment that Emily would normally step in and stick up for Joe, but Emily was gone, and so Joe realised he had to stand up for himself.

“I will do.” He announced, his chin set determinedly as he strode towards the window.

“Joe, stop-” Gabe started but before he could finish his sentence Joe too was sucked into whatever was beyond the glass. Gabe and Dylan stood in dumbfounded silence, both unsure of what to say or do. After what seemed like years to both of them but in reality was only a few moments, Dylan turned to Gabe.

“So what do we do?” She demanded, as though she expected him to know the answer.

“I dunno… I guess we follow them, we can’t go back on our own, we have to rescue them.” The boy replied, eyeing up the window that had swallowed two of his friends.

“Okay… do you want to go first?” Dylan asked.

“Nah, I think you should go first.” Clearly neither of them wanted to be the first one.

“Please Gabe…” Dylan said, her eyes pleading and her voice quiet. “I’m scared.” She admitted in a small voice, allowing him one insight into who she really was beneath the snarky outer shell. He sighed, knowing that her showing him her real vulnerability was a very special thing and he couldn’t say no now.

“Okay then – but promise you’ll come through the straight after?” Dylan nodded and Gabe took a step forwards. He was still a metre away when the window sucked him in and he disappeared from sight, leaving Dylan alone in the room.

A malicious smile crept across her face as she turned away from the light streaming through and strode back out of the door they had entered through.

“Not likely.” Came the snarl as the door clicked closed behind her.

Blog Post #21 – Cumulative Post

Hey readers! So: a quick introduction before I properly start this post. This week I’ve decided rather than write a long blog post at the end of the week, I’m going to write a little short update each day and stick them all together to create something to post at the end of the week. So now you know what’s happening here, read on!

Wednesday:

Hello! So I am a failure, and forgot to write anything for this both yesterday and the day before. But at least I’m writing now, right?

Currently, I’m about halfway through the second book of the Medusa Project series by Sophie McKenzie. I am enjoying it (I think?) However the plot/certain characters are annoying me quite a lot (by their actions). But I suppose that’s just part of reading a book, right?

Um now I’m not really sure what to write… This is just meant to be a short little update but I feel as if it’s too short? I might just have to leave it here though, as I have nothing else to say.

Thursday:

Hello again! So it’s Thursday.. and I’ve actually remembered to log on today and write this! I’m so proud of myself… xD As I’m writing this though I’ve realised that the one problem about writing a short post every day is that I have nothing to write about. My longer posts at the end of the week don’t usually have much content, so writing with just one day to write about is going to be even worse… let’s see what I can do

I have managed to finish The Medusa Project: The Hostage today though. It’s a relatively short book so it only took me a few days to read it. I definitely enjoyed it, although like in Hidden I think the characters seemed a lot older than they actually were? Again (like in Hidden) they were 14 years old, but they seemed about 16 to me. I think that tomorrow I’m going to go and get the next book (The Rescue) out of the library and read that next.

Sunday:

I may or may not have drastically failed at this cumulative blog post thing… I’ve only remembered to write anything 3 out of the 7 days I was meant to do it for. Oh well – it’s a start, at least?

Since Thursday I’ve begun the next book in the Medusa Project series, called The Rescue. When I was at the library getting it out I saw at least 2 more books in the series: I hadn’t realised how many there were! But at least the library I normally go to has all of them (I think) so I don’t have to visit about 20 others like I normally do when looking for a book this one doesn’t have.

I’m quite close to the end of this one, only 51 pages away from the end so I think I’ll finish it in time to start the next one tomorrow (or the day after if I have lots of work to do). Then I’ll be on to Hunted, which sounds exciting.

One thing I like about this series is the fact that all the books are written from a different persons POV. I can’t remember who the first book was written from, but book 3 was Ketty, book 3 is Ed and book 4 is Dylan (so I’m assuming book 5 will be Nico?) It’s good because it gives you an insight into each characters mind and what’s really going on behind their outer façade, but without jumping all over the place from character to character and getting a bit confusing.

Anyway, I think that’s all I have for this weeks post… next week the post might come mid-week as I’m very busy at the weekend, but hopefully our thousands of readers won’t be too upset about that? (in case you can’t tell I’m being sarcastic – we get 1 view per post if we’re lucky xD)

Bye!

~ April

Blog Post #20

Hey readers!

It’s currently Saturday night as I write this, so the week is coming to an end. It’s been a fairly busy week for me, with lots of school stuff going on (mostly homework). But I have managed to get in quite a bit of reading, which means I have finished Blood Ties by Sophie McKenzie… for the third time xD

Even though it’s the third time I’ve read this book I still completely enjoyed it, as it’s been a while since the last re-read so I couldn’t remember all the details. I also still found myself rolling around on the floor squealing in excitement when something happy happens towards the end.

After finishing Blood Ties I began to read Lie Kill Walk Away by Matt Dickinson. I’ve not quite finished it yet, although I’m a fair way through, but so far I’m really enjoying it. The start definitely throws you right into the action, there isn’t any build up or setting the scene first, you just dive head first into the drama. It then settles down slightly for a bit, although the tension is still quite high, then BAM everything happens at once. And I happened to be reading this bit just as I had to finish and go do something else and it was TERRIBLE. I was with Alice at the time and kept just shouting “my book!” at her in strange voices and getting weird looks from people around us…

– – –

Hey readers!

So as I’m writing this section of this blog post it is Sunday (I gave up writing last night) but rather than scrapping what I’ve already written I decided just to keep it, put a little divider in, and then start a new section! Since last night I’ve finished Lie Kill Walk Away and I absolutely LOVED it. It’s definitely a book for you if you like reading things filled with action, and perhaps a bit of detective stuff/mystery involved too? I really really enjoyed it, it’s definitely going onto my recommends list!

I think the next book I’m going to read is The Medusa Project Hostage which I believe (/hope) is the second book in the Medusa project series. It might take me a little while to get into this one as I actually read the first book in the series about 2 years ago… it was either July or August 2015, if I remember rightly. But we’ll see how that goes!

Anyway, I think that’s all I have to write about for now… I wish I had more, but I don’t think I do. Perhaps by next week something interesting will have happened that I can blog about, or I’ll have read 24246236 books that I can recommend to you all?

Bye!

~ April

Hello (my blog titles are a lot less organised than April’s…)

Hello Readers! (It’s Alice)

April and I are keeping up our promise of a weekly post, and this week is no exception 🙂 In my last post, I wrote about the writing workshop we had been lucky enough to be a part of, and I’ve decided to post it on here so that you can read it if you want 🙂

Will Phoenix story

So, on with the blog: I hope all of you are fantastic, and if not, I hope you are soon. I’m in a good mood today, unlike yesterday… I’m a teenager, so mood swings affect me 😦 anyway, it wasn’t really over anything of any significance, just this girl who seems to find it amusing to be horrible…

Other than her, things are good – there’s not too much longer until the school holidays, and I’m going to a concert soon 🙂

Last year, April and I spent most of our lunchtimes (at school) holed up in the library, writing together. At the time, we thought our idea was genius, and our writing was even better. This week, we went back to it, and let’s just say there was a lot of laughing and groaning. It is TERRIBLE. Hilariously so, but who’d have thought that one year could make so much difference to the quality of our writing? (Or at least I hope we’ve improved…)

We’re both still fans of the story line, and have planned to keep going with it, typing up what we already have, then (very heavily) editing / rewriting it and continuing with the story.

We’ll keep you updated on that, and maybe one day, if it ever reaches a standard where it wouldn’t be incredibly embarrassing to share it, we’ll post it on here!

Happy reading,

Alice

Will Phoenix story

“Hey, Will.” The band teacher corners me on my way out of school. Pulling out one of my headphones, I step towards him to see what he wants to tell me. “You don’t have time for a quick extra practice, do you?” I make a show of looking down at my watch, shaking my head.

“I’ve really got to get home, sorry.” He frowns, his thin face almost collapsing in on itself. I’m the guitar player for the school’s notoriously terrible band, and Mr Simpson, the teacher who runs it, often reminds me that I hold it together, using that as an excuse to draft me into extra rehearsals.

“Never mind,” His features morph into an expression of deep thought, “Another time then.” I nod, twisting my headphone back into my ear and letting the music wash over me.

A couple of hours later, after returning home and being fed by my foster parents, Simon and Rachel, I’ve snuck out of my bedroom window and am faced with a mirror. The person looking back is not me. Gone is my normal freckly blond face, replaced with a green eyed, dark haired stranger. The lady behind me smiles,

“All done.” I thank her and hop off the tall leather chair that I sat at as she transformed me. I’m handed the case notes, and run my eyes down the page to quickly remind myself of the key details.

A couple of years ago, I got picked up by an agency to do some undercover work – a one off thing. Apparently it’s fairly common (out of those chosen to do spy work) for kids in care to be chosen, because we tend to be lower profile, more off grid. Essentially, we don’t have parents that ask lots of questions about what we’re doing. It was all top secret; I put on a disguise and was sent to find out some information for someone (I haven’t been told who). I must’ve done something right, because since then, they’ve used me for numerous other jobs. Most of the time, I don’t even know what I’m doing, only that it is important, and crucially, that I cannot tell anyone anything about what I do.
Tonight, my name is Harvey Sallow, and I’m going over to see someone I’ve befriended over the past month or so (as Harvey). I don’t know the details, but I am aware of the bare facts: his dad is in some sort of trouble, and I have to find some documents proving his guilt.
I’ve done plenty of jobs like this, so it should all run smoothly. I love every second of my work, so much so that it is just fun, with the added bonus of a fairly large pay check.

I’m fifteen years old, and have been in and out of foster homes since the age of three, never finding a family that wanted me enough to adopt me. My parents anonymously dropped me at a care home when I was a toddler, leaving me with nothing but a battered edition of ‘A Collection of James Bond Stories’ book. That’s what spurred on my love of all things spy related, what made me accept the job as a sort of spy myself and what left me with the fantasy of my parents lives. In my head, they have the same line of work as me, but are highly skilled international spies working for the government. They were forced to give me up for my safety. They’re not dead. They did want me.

There is a parent shaped hole in my life, and no foster parents can fill that. Don’t get me wrong, Simon and Rachel are great, I’m just painfully aware of how temporary they are. They’ll never be the real deal.

With my job, I have access to facilities that let me encounter things that regular people can’t. I’ve been trying to track down my parents, but it’s near to impossible when I don’t even know their names. I’m working at it though, spending spare hours in the research labs and scouring through information.

So far, I’ve had a few leads, but nothing that ended up working out. There are no records of my parents at all in the Care system; they didn’t give their names when they gave me up. All I know is that they’ll probably look vaguely similar to me, and that ‘James Bond’ was significant enough to them to be the only thing they left with me, their child. I’ve treated the book like a clue, maybe it was just that they told me spy stories before I went to sleep, and they gave me the book to read when I’d grown up in the hope it would trigger a memory. As much as I know how unlikely it is that my parents gifted it to me so I’d discover their true identities, I know I haven’t got much hope in finding them, and it isn’t a bad fantasy to have.

I know they were alive when they gave me away, the records say that, and very little else. I’m fairly sure (and hopeful) that they haven’t died since then, and in my heart I feel they are out there. And nothing will make me give up my search for them.

Before I climb out of the car that is dropping me at the end of the guy’s – Thomas’s – street, I take the cool metal gun from the driver’s outstretched hand and tuck it into my pocket, carefully out of sight. It’s not too be used, or shown to anyone unless my life is threatened. I’ve grown used to being armed when on a mission, but that hasn’t stopped my heart from skipping a beat at the thrill of the adrenaline coursing through my veins. We exchange curt nods, and then I get out, making my journey to his house.

Later, when I leave the house, calling goodbye to Thomas and his mother, the papers tucked safely in my pocket alongside the gun, I walk down the dark street with a spring in my step, on a high from the art of my deception.

My driver drops me outside Simon and Rachel’s house, after returning to the base to be quickly turned back into me, William Phoenix, removing the contact lenses, prosthetic makeup and wig. I thank him, and then sneak around to the back, scaling up the wall via my practiced route of the drainpipe and some slightly stuck out bricks. In no time, I’m in my room, pyjamas on, sat at my desk with school books open. A couple of minutes later, my bedroom door is opened, Rachel’s head peering round it, smiling in a satisfied manner when she sees me, supposedly hard at work.

I rush through my homework, completing it all before picking up my guitar by its neck. Flopping on to my bed, I sit and strum it, running through the fairly basic riff for the school band, and then playing a couple of other songs I like. Simon comes up whilst I’m playing, and I stop sheepishly when I look up to see him stood in the doorway. His eyes are shining with some sort of pride, which he inexplicably feels whenever I accomplish something despite the fact I’m not actually his son.

Later, just before I lean across to my bedside table to switch out the light, I do a final check of my phone’s inbox in the desperate hope of news. It’s something I do every night, and it always disappoints me, leading to a night of broken sleep, half formed dreams of varying made up memories filling my head. Tonight is different. The subject of one message leaves me shaken and short of breath.

New intel on Phoenix parents

I click the link.

Blog post #19 (I think?)

Hey readers! Happy International Women’s Day 🙂

It’s just under a week since my last blog post, but I just posted a short story and it kind of inspired me to write another blog post, so here it is I guess?

Not much has happened this week – I feel like I say that in every blog post, but it’s true. I go to school and do my homework, and that’s about it xD However, I have finished a book this week which I’d like to recommend to you all.

The book is called “At Yellow Lake” and is written by Jane McLoughlin. I actually picked it up because I was attempting to write a story out of book titles for a competition that I wanted to take part in (I never did it in the end, because I wanted my sentences to be grammatically correct and coherent but that wasn’t really an option), but then I decided I would actually read it.

Basically, the story follows three different people (Peters, Jonah and Etta) who live very different lives. However, despite their very different lives, they all end up in the same place and share an… adventure? ordeal? (something like that – can’t think of exactly the right word at the moment)

I really really enjoyed reading this book, much more than I thought I would when I first decided to read it, and I definitely recommend it! I’m trying not to give too many stories away, but it’s kind of a teen fiction/YA novel/adventure book if that makes sense? (I’m terrible at describing genres, sorry >.<)

The book I’m reading currently is another one I picked up for the competition. It’s called Hidden, and is written by Miriam Halahmy. It’s about a girl called Alix and her new friend Samir who one day save an immigrant from drowning off shore and then find themselves in a dilemma as they don’t know what to do (that’s not spoilers because it says that in the blurb)

I’m not very far into the book so far so I don’t have any concrete opinions on it yet, however at the moment I don’t think that the characters are portrayed as their age… I was quite shocked when it mentioned that they were 14, they seem more like 16 or 18 year olds to me. But I’ll try to keep an open mind as I go along, maybe they’ll seem older as I read more.

I’ve also already decided which book I’m going to read next: Blood Ties, by Sophie McKenzie (who is well known for her other book “Girl, Missing”). Blood Ties is a book that I’ve already read a couple of times but I really enjoy so want to read again. It follows a Theo and Rachel, two children who are mysteriously linked by the firebombing of a research clinic. (I took that from the blub so sorry for not much detail – but I don’t want to give away spoilers!). I really do love this book and would definitely recommend reading it if you can, especially if you’re a fan of action/adventure stories full of plot twists.

On the subject of books, let’s talk about Sherlock xD Both Alice and I are fans of the TV show Sherlock (although I’ve not get round to watching Seasons 2 & 3 yet – hopefully I’ll get to watch them soon though), and so both of us decided to try and read the books. Alice bought the full works and I think is still persevering with it, whereas I bought a book with the ones that Mark Gatiss and Steve Moffat picked out as ‘the best’ and have since given up. Actually, I think given up is the wrong thing to says, it’s more like I’ve… taken a break. I was finding it quite hard and slow to read for some reason (like when I read the Hobbit) so I decided to read some other books for a while, as I was getting a bit bored by it and was avoiding reading because I didn’t fell like it, which was a problem as I’m trying to rea a book every week this year and it had already taken up two weeks and I was only on Chapter 2 of A Study In Scarlet.

Now, as I’ve written about 700 words about books, perhaps I should move onto something else? I know this is a writing and book orientated blog, but there is other stuff I’ve been very excited about recently.

The first one of these things is the new Ed Sheeran album that came out last Friday (was going to put a divide symbol here but there doesn’t appear to be one on my keyboard WHAT IS THIS I DON’T UNDERSTAND). I might be slightly obsessed with it… my favourite song from it has to by Nancy Mulligan, for sure, followed up by How Would You Feel and Bibia Be Ye Ye. I also quite like Supermarket Flowers but I’ve only listened to it once because it made me cry

The second thing that makes me excited is the new Beauty and The Beast film that’s coming out! I saw some behind the scenes stuff the other day, and ITS AMAZING OH MY WORD SO GOOD I LOVE IT. It does make me a bit sad that soon there’ll be a whole generation of kids who know Emma Watson as Belle not Hermione, but the pros of this film outweigh that con by far. And to make things even better… Disney announced that was a LGBTQ+ character in it – and not just a random person in the background either! LeFou (Gaston’s sidekick, played by Josh Gad) has been announced as Disney’s first ever LGBTQ+ character, as a was of honouring Howard Ashman (who was the lyricist for the original 1991 animated version). IT’S SO EXCITING. Obviously this has had some negative backlash (*cough cough* Heagardriveinthreatreinalabamai’mlookingatyou *cough cough*) but it’s so exciting and aaaaargh I love the film even more now! SO BASICALLY YEH I’M VERY EXCITED I DUNNO IF YOU CAN TELL.

Anyway, I think that’s all I have for this post… an overload of information about books, and fangirling over Divide and Beauty and The Beast. Yup, that just about sums me up xD Oh, and I’d also like to apologise for the formatting of the last post, I don’t think the computer wanted to cooperate with me and so all the line breaks are messed up, sorry.

Bye!

~ April

(also sorry for typos I can’t be bothered to spellcheck at the moment but I also can’t type and make hundreds of typos all the time. maybe i’ll spellcheck another time, maybe i wont *shrug*)

Colin Banks – Short Story

(PSA: this is terrible. apologies)

Colin Banks had always been a bit of, for lack of a nicer word, a loner. He hadn’t had many friends in school, and he’d only ever been in one relationship. Not one serious relationship, one relationship, full stop. And now that had ended.

At 32 years old, most of Colin’s peers and acquaintances were now married, many even had kids. Colin, on the other hand, was still attempting to make his way up the ranks of the opticians he worked at, and where he’d been working for the past 9 years.

And now he didn’t even have a girlfriend… Colin had thought that their relationship had been going well. They’d been coming up to the year-long mark, when she had decided that she couldn’t stand him anymore. Apparently it was something about his taste in music and the fact that all he ate was spaghetti… he didn’t know for sure, he had been too busy crying when she had been telling him. Not his proudest moment.

It had been roughly a week now, 6 days, 5 hours and 9 minutes to be exact, not that he’d been counting, but the optician still wasn’t over it. In Colin’s mind, moving on was the hardest and the worst thing in the world. He’d been so devoted to her, he’d even bought her a bunch of £2.50 flowers from Sainsbury’s on Valentine’s Day, it was hard moving on from that. But she didn’t seem to feel the same way about him; it was over, forever. So now he was just getting on with his life, going to work, testing people’s eyes, coming home and watching, no, re-watching, some of his favourite cheesy romcom films. He tried to avoid the ones that made him cry, as the one thing he’d taken away from his split with his girlfriend was that apparently he wasn’t ‘manly’ enough, but that was hard, as every film seemed to make him cry.

So on the sixth day of the breakup he was going through the motions. He’d got to work on time, greeted his co-workers with a weak smile, then retreated into the room that he worked in. He wasn’t in the mood for a friendly morning chat in the staff room – he hadn’t been since the breakup. He just went straight to his room and began filling out forms. Sure, it was boring work, and the part of his job that he disliked most, but he preferred it to the sympathetic glances cast in his direction and the questions whether he was alright that he still seemed to get. So, he sat down at his desk, and began the day’s work.

Colin had seen a young girl getting her first pair of glasses, an elderly lady who couldn’t see even with the glasses on, and a young man who really didn’t need glasses but insisted on coming back every six months for another test, ‘just in case’, and was preparing himself for his last patient before lunch when Jonah Williamson walked through the door.

Now Colin prided himself of being professional at work, just going through the motions and helping people to see well. However, he couldn’t help but admire this man as he walked through the door, escorted by Mary, the small and annoying manager of the practice who insisted on micromanaging everything that went on. He was so engrossed in admiring his tanned skin, his broad shoulders and his smooth brown hair that he only became aware of Mary talking when she suddenly said:

“Mr Banks? Are you listening?”

“Why yes, Mar- Mrs Aklesonn.” Colin said, slightly flustered after being brought out of his trance. “You want me to test this man’s eyes.” It was hardly likely she’d want anything else of him, after all, he was only a junior optician, but he wasn’t wrong.

Mary gave him a suspicious glare and then turned on her heel, not even plastering a false smile onto her face to keep up appearances as she left. He wasn’t the best at reading signals, but Colin was willing to hazard a guess that she wasn’t the biggest fan of him. The optician gave the other man a look that said ‘women’, and a slight eye roll, meaning to lighten the tense atmosphere that had been left behind by the bird-sized woman who seemed to hold a lot of power for such a small person. The man laughed as Colin gestured to a chair for him to sit in. It was the first time he’d made a joke or sarcastic comment in a while.

“Please, have a sit. No, wait, seat.  Have a, have a seat.” Colin fumbled. He felt his ears turning traffic-light red, as they always did when he was embarrassed. What had got into him? He just hoped the attractive man didn’t notice, that would be embarrassing. Not that he wasn’t already embarrassed enough… oh dear, this wasn’t a very good first impression.

“You are… Jonah Williamson, am I right?” He asked, checking the notes on his clipboard. Jonah nodded. “So… it says here that you don’t currently own a pair of glasses, but you sometimes feel as though you need some?”

“Yes, I just feel as though I can’t see things sometimes when I should.” Jonah replied, nodding.

“Well, that tends to mean you need glasses.” Colin muttered sarcastically under his breath, as he tended to do a lot. He was a sarcastic person by nature, he couldn’t help but make these little comments. It appeared he wasn’t quite as quiet as he thought he was though, as just then Jonah let out a loud laugh.

“That’s why I thought you could help me.” He replied with a grin. Colin felt his ears glowing an even brighter shade of red, if that was possible. But the man didn’t seem hostile, he seemed to just be as sarcastic as Colin was, so it wasn’t too bad.

The test went ahead as normal, with Jonah reading out letters from the screen and telling Colin whether the dots were clearer with “option 1…. or option 2… option 1… or option 2.” It was only when he had a torch and was looking into Jonah’s eyes when he found the thoughts on how attractive he was creeping back into his mind.

He has such nice eyes… Colin thought to himself as he inspected at them through his own glasses, which could do with being cleaned. Not physically of course, his vision is terrible, but they’re very pretty…

“Uh, thanks?” Jonah replied, somewhat awkwardly. Colin jumped backwards so suddenly that his torch flew out of his hand and across the darkerned room into a far corner. He hadn’t realised he’d spoken out loud!

“Uh, they’re just, um, they’re a nice colour.” He muttered as he crossed the room to retrieve his torch again and switch on the lights. When they came on again he saw that Jonah was just about as red as his ears were, if not more. Colin didn’t know what else to say – it was clear to both of them that he was lying. Jonah’s eyes, after all, were just brown. Plain brown. Nothing special at all.

Luckily, he had almost finished testing Jonah’s eyes, so there wasn’t too much awkward interaction following the accidental speaking out loud and then it was time for him to leave and Colin to go on his lunch break. It was only when Colin called one of the sales assistants to take Jonah to look at some frames for his new glasses when they had another interaction that wasn’t solely about eyesight.

“You, uh, you have my number, on the forms, right?” Jonah asked as he was leaving. Colin nodded, slightly confused, and almost missed the man’s wink as he left the room. What? The optician was slightly, no, very confused. He wanted to check that the opticians had his number?… ooooh, wait. He understood now. Wait, what?!

—

A year passed, and during that time, Colin went on many dates with Jonah Williamson. After the first hesitant text message, send during the lunchbreak following the awkward appointment, their interactions had grown more and more frequent until they messaged each other daily and met up with each other almost every weekend. Colin felt happier than he ever had before – even happier than he had been with his first girlfriend. He even splashed out a bit and not only bought a £2.50 bunch of flowers for him on Valentine’s Day, but also a cheap box of Christmas chocolates in the sale section of Sainsbury’s. Jonah had made him spaghetti in return and they’d watched a cheesy film together. Despite his best efforts, Colin did cry (very loudly), but it was okay, because Jonah said he didn’t mind the crying. He said it showed he cared.

Every morning Colin would catch the bus to work as he’d always done, but then he’d spend a bit of time in the staff room drinking a coffee and having a natter with his co-workers, enthusing over a cheesy film he’d watched with Jonah or a new rock song that Jonah had introduced him too. Jonah, Jonah, Jonah… his co-workers often complained he was all he ever spoke about (in a nice way of course, as he was now a senior optician, and was therefore above them). But Colin didn’t care.

—

Another year on, and Jonah proposed. It was the happiest day of Colin’s life, hands down. And it was in the moment that Jonah got down on one knee that he realised something, something very important.

Maybe moving on isn’t so bad after all…

Overdue Blog Post About Writing

(so this was technically written yesterday but I got distracted and started listening to Ed Sheeran’s new album instead of proofreading so it’s only being posted today, sorry!)

Hey readers!

 

First of all, I’d like to apologise for the severe lack of posts recently. We did Write-A-Day and posted solidly for a week, and we haven’t posted at all since… which has been over a month. Let’s say we were doing a no-blogging February challenge? Maybe? Yeah, let’s just go with that…

Anyway, moving on to what I want to write about today. Alice and I are sitting together writing blog posts after we’ve attended a creative writing workshop with an author. I won’t say which author, as then you could stalk him and track us down, so let’s just call him Dave.

The creative writing workshop was quite different to what I thought it was going to be. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but basically what we did was create a character and a storyline for a story (that I’m now going to go home and write) rather than listen to a monologue on all the usual boring stuff about the importance of metaphors and personification in your writing to enhance it. I really dislike those talks, as I get that all that stuff is important but when I’m writing I don’t want to have to interrupt my flow to add in a couple of similes and some alliteration, if you get what I mean?

Anyway, Dave began by writing 3 lists: facial features, personality traits, and jobs (he wrote the titles, we gave him words to put into the lists). He said that he personally always made a character first then formed the story around them, which actually seems like quite a good idea, as usually I think up of a story line but then have no idea what type of character to put into the situation. So perhaps this is the solution to my problems?

The next thing we did was create our character. We had to pick one from each list that had been written, so I ended up with a bespectacled and sarcastic optician. Then Dave gave us some more categories which we had to put answers into about our character (I don’t think that sentence made sense. Sorry if it didn’t make sense) :

Age

Gender

Where they live

Whether they like their job

What music they listen to

What their favourite food is

What films they watch

Whether they’re sporty

Whether they’re in a relationship

Whether they have kids

Once we’d all written down our character and had this outline of their personality, Dave asked us what was the thing that started off a story? Not just a story, but anything. A film, a soap opera, a play. What was the thing that kicked it all off? The answer is a problem (in case you’re wondering)

We then had to think of a problem for our character, a reason for the events to happen, a reason for our story to be talking place. It could be a big problem, like aliens taking over the world, or it could be more mundane and every day, like not having a washing machine so all your clothes stink. I personally found that basing the problem around the character worked quite well, although it won’t work for all. This way I’m not forcing a character that doesn’t fit into a position that they won’t be able to fulfil, which is what I find myself doing quite often.

So now for my story. I’ve not started writing yet, but I know how it’s going to end. Maybe I won’t say that, and then when it’s written I’ll post it so you can see how it develops… yes, I think I’ll do that (if I ever write it – I’m not very good at doing things I say I will. Although maybe putting it out there on the internet will help motivate me?)

My character is a 30 year old man called Colin Banks who works as an optician. He enjoys his job but is sometimes frustrated by his patients, which is when he becomes sarcastic. Colin likes to listen to heavy metal and rock music, his favourite food is spaghetti, and he likes watching cheesy comedy films. He’s very un-sporty, some might call him overweight, others would say he’s ’rounded’, or ‘portly’. He has no kids and is single. That’s his problem – he’s getting over a bad breakup with his old girlfriend. She didn’t like rock music or spaghetti, and so they just weren’t getting along.

Anyway, that’s my story. And I also think that’s all I have to write for now. Perhaps I’ll think of something more later but I’ll put it in a different post – the more posts the better, right?

Bye!

~ April

SORRYSORRYSORRY (and writing advice from a published author (and me))

*Sheepish voice* Hello, It’s Alice.

I am very (very very very) sorry that neither of us blogged at all in February, but it’s March now and we have vowed to try harder. We are aiming for at least one post between us per week (seeing as we are called writeaweek…) and will try our best to fulfil that.

So, what happened during our month of silence? I’ve just sat and thought about this for a moment, and sadly, the answer is: not a lot, other than the fact that I just found a random fire extinguisher under the desk… (I’m writing this at school whilst April is writing her own blog at my side). Life has just gone on as normal, and although I’ve had something of a large fall out with someone who I once considered a friend, things are going okay. The ‘argument’ has been good for me, as it has made me realise some things that I had overlooked beforehand.

Basically, if there is someone in your life who never brings anything positive and / or tries to control what you do, chances are that you don’t actually like them very much but have just grown accustomed to the way things are with them (or at least this was the case for me). I see said person a fair amount at school, and although things are quite awkward between us (she is very good at death stares…), I feel much happier at school, because I can see whoever I want (mainly April) and be happy without her constantly putting a downer on things and not letting me go anywhere without running it by her first.

April and I had signed up to go to a creative writing workshop with an author, and I know that April is writing (and has probably finished by the time this is posted) a blog all about that, but I’ll summarise – he took us through the basic steps that he took before writing any story:

• List as many different: features of appearance, personality traits, and jobs as you can think of in different columns and then pick one of each to make the basis of a character. (Write this down)
• Note down key facts about your character: Do they like their job, are they in a relationship, any kids, favourite food, music they like, etc.
• From these things, start to think of a problem that your character can be facing: has their relationship broken down? Have they been fired? Anything that will cause your character issues.
• Next, develop an outline of the story revolving around your character (this should be between half a page and a page)
• Write!

Okay, so, coming up with ideas might seem difficult, but once you have a strong character, I tend to find that they won’t leave me alone until they have a story. The hardest part about writing is, in my opinion, not coming up with what to write about, but doing the actual writing and not giving up or getting bored! I am a huge procrastinator, but this isn’t always a bad thing, as in the back of my mind, there is always something whirring away, and things sometimes piece themselves together. Writing is largely a battle of will, so don’t let yourself be an obstacle, as at the end of the day, the only thing stopping you from writing your story is you yourself.

I hope this has helped / given you something to do for a couple of minutes, and remember, there are always good writing prompts online, and great instagram accounts that provide you with inspiration / motivational quotes. Our instagram account is @ writeaweek, and we keep that updated through posts or stories, also letting our followers know when we post something new on here, or if we reach a landmark point in out writing, or just to ask the important questions in life, such as ‘is there such thing as a metaphorical question? – Are you the lean green killing machine?’ and ‘is ‘you’re a metaphor’ a metaphor?’ 😀

This has been a bit of a random mishmash, but remember we are both VERY sorry for not posting anything last month and will not let March be a repeat of that! Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this, and happy writing!

Alice