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Imagine...
Snow...
Lot's of snow.
If you would indulge me, turn off the music, turn off the TV and try and envision this small tale I will tell you.
What sort of tale, you may inquire?
A tale - a little bit of make-believe - about YOU.
Just wait a moment, until all the noises have faded around you and there is silence.
The silence of smoke, of quiet corners and forgotten things...
Try and keep a hold of that silence friend.
You are standing in white, surrounded by it. Broken and muffled snowflakes fall around you like a song that has its volume muted and the pictures still moving. It is quite cold, but not unpleasantly so, and you don't mind, because you are wearing the most splendid, and most snuggest coat that has ever been invented, in your opinion.
You begin to make out something through the white: scraggly figures, as thin as whips and laced with ice...trees you realize, but ones that have long ago forgotten the light and how to live. To the right of this group of forlorn trees, you start to see the outline of a great lake, frozen firm and violent with ice as darkly robbed of life-glow as a deathly ill patient.
A certain curiosity fills you and you trudge towards the edge of the lake, your feet making uneasy scrinching noises upon the snow. You reach its' edge and look out across its' sudden vastness: at the points in the ice where it is so thin and delicate that you can see that water - black as licorice - flowing madly in secret currents and ways.
The wind lifts itself about you, and you jump...feeling an abrupt creeping of fear in you at the distorted voice that drifts on that cold wind to your ears.
"We..r... a.. al..ne.. d..wn he..r..."
You shiver, and continue staring out over the lake. You can see all the way out to the centre of the ice and it is there, that you start to make out a pale figure. Like the voice, you cannot decide if it is female or male, but in a few seconds the twirling cloud of ice and wind has wrapped around and latched itself together in the shape of a human.
You cannot feel anything as you watch this part-mist, part-solid entity sway its' way towards you without hesitation. Closer and closer it comes until you are able to make out burning eyes and the glint of a smile somewhere on its face.
"We're all alone down here...if only you would join us...join us if only, we wouldn't be so alone, would we? No if you would join us we wouldn't be very much alone. No..."
You try to speak, to force your feet to backpedal you away from the uncertainty and strangeness, yet you are paralyzed...
She/He/they reach you and you feel their hand rest on your cheek...instantly numbing the entire right side of your face. A slow drifting begins in your mind, and you fancy that someone or something...perhaps the figure or perhaps the wind itself, has planted a kiss on your forehead.
You are drifting, drifting away...from the ice, and the lake and the forest...drifting...
"We were never really gone...only lost, and now you are one of us. The cold ones, with burning blood...burning emotions. We burn so feircely that we die even faster, and eventually our skin melts with the heat."
You fall far away...and you wonder, if at the end, if there weren't other figures with the first...the one who you believe gave you the ice kiss...and that they were also saying things, many things.
It is cold, so very, very cold....
The cold falls away as a fire swings around to replace it, and finally the world comes back to you and you are able to open your eyes.
You look up at a roof of translucent black-blue, and you feel the water currents swarming about you...and something else: a presence, or many presences.
"Yesss..." they corus. "You are ours, and we are yours...forever an Ice Child. Ours and Yours and Theirs..."
You open your mouth wide and bubbles cascade inside, yet your terror is gone, and you can breathe easily. Eyes burning and the voices of the Ice Children filling your ears you swim, and they swim and we all swim...down, down, down.
Until finally we reach the place, where it doesn't burn no more.
An Ice Child forever more.
Well :] , after that small tale, I think all that is left, is for me to leave you with a small list of writing practises that should help you keep on the ball in honing your craft. We always need practise, and we can always improve. Thankfully, with my new job and my savings plan that I shall start when I get my first, ahm, paycheck :] I shall be able to really put my entire writing plan into action: and my life.
Things aren't always so bad, and I know things change, but right now I think it's pretty cool that I have half a week to work and the other three or so days to write and devote my time to creativity and dreaming. :] Thank-you...for this wonderful job I have recieved.
Also on a small note, have you ever recieved a call from Eternity?
If I have your curiosity, I'll try not to keep you very long. But what I mean...well, it's very similar to what the character Steppenwolf experienced occasionally. He described it as an eternal trail of glowing light that would appear every so often in his dark life. Mine is not so dramatic as that, but I still think of it as so.
One instance when it happened:
After Lindeman - my island - closed, it was fairly hard for me. I guess I think about things too much, but it's hard to explain. In that in some ways, the island had planted itself deeply in my heart, and I'd often speak to her (Yakaima), out loud or in my head. She was a living, breathing thing for me (which I know sounds weird, but that's how it was for me). But in this instance I'm talking about, it was three or so months after it had closed and I was back living with my parents, slowing recovering I guess. On a side note, on the day we all left the island, I lost all of the books I owned, my bank cards and my iPod heehee. But all this time later, after I'd long ago given up, I walked outside one afternoon and discovered two tattered boxes marked Care of Lindeman that were filled with all my lost books. I hadn't even heard the van deliver them but the feeling I had...it was so clear and filled with pure, clear air.
A call from Eternity, and a last send-off from Linde.
I always believed that Yakaima was like a cat or a spirit. That the way she showed that she loved you was by messing you around a bit but in the end throwing surprises and pleasures at you when you least expected it.
Other times I experienced the Call from Eternity were in times of brief, but pure, happiness. There's been a few, and yeah...it's pretty cool.
Anyway, enough chatter, and here's a small list of writing honing tips:
- DEAW: Drop Everything and Write. :] Basically what it says. It's what I did for the tale in the first half of this Blog and the other brief times I've put stories up in my posts. Just think of something...be it as seemingly insignificant as a leaf, and let the writing lead you to its' conclusion. Eventually it will come to you, and don't go over what you've written until you've written out most of it. But just experiment, and have fun. Don't think of it as a series of rules or tasks, just do what you feel.
- Improvise: This is maybe more of a challenge, but try audibly telling stories to others without writing them first. Just improvise, don't stress and let your thoughts lead you where they will.
- Get into your characters Head: Write character Biographies, interview your characters as if they were really there, think about them: what would your main character do in this or that situation. Let them be the ones who you tell everything to...yess okay, you've found the writers secret. We are adults that use writing as an excuse to have imaginary friends heehee.
- Write: Yeah, cliche I know :] but it's important. Write journals, write in Blogs, write poetry, write everything. Eventually you'll be able to type without looking and just...whatever it is, just keep writing.
It also really helps to look at each word you're writing when you go back over it an edit it. But believe me, if you are bored with your writing or where you are in your story, then your readers will be. Don't write safe, take the weird ways, and describe things in as startling and unnusual ways as you can manage. It's not always possible, but don't rush, keep practising and yeah...eventually it will be easier.
Much Love,
Miss CLScarlett xx
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