The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2008-02-17 07:31 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2008-02-17 07:31 pm
Three different pieces of writing
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the_zaniak: three radically different pieces of fiction, showing my breadth as a writer. I suspect he had me in mind when he made this one up - he knows I can't resist the threeness. :)
First, we have a poem:
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Wanderlust
The world spins past outside my window
And I sit here and watch as it flies
‘Cause it’s warm outside, but you’re not with me
And I can’t join in ‘till I’ve said my goodbyes
The stars are dim; the sea is calm
And our footprints will fade given time
The universe beats to the heart of a drum
In the breast of my hopes and my dreams sublime.
Should I let me make me unhappy
When the moon pulls me out with the tide?
I’ve lent you my heart and you’re oh, so gentle
But I’d break it myself as your faithful bride.
I’d hoped that we’d journey out to the beyond
I had thought that we’d go there as one.
I can’t stand the silence; my breath won’t breathe out
I’ll miss you forever until you’re gone.
I would do what I must to be by your shoulder
But I want you to want me to live
I need to be out there and I’d take you with me
But my freedom is all I can ask you to give.
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Next, a drama-ish flashfic which got the usual obsessive non-flashy Lily treatment:
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Lemons
Out here, when it rained, it poured. The kind of apocalyptic downpour that hurled itself at the rock-hard ground with enough force to break it open, shattering the hard-baked dinner plates of mud into thousands of tiny boats floating in the viscous paste.
When it didn’t rain, even the town water, sheltered as it was in concrete towers, bled away under the blistering winds, every drop of moisture sucked from the ground and the desiccated people who made their living tending it.
Grandmum hated rain, the muddy ochre particles of the ever-present dust clumping together and soaking into the carpet in the stained smears of a lifetime’s living. She hated the dry even more: the fine powdery dust sifting over the bric-a-brac, lodging the fibres of the clothing on the line, tinting the lemon cake for the church stall an ugly red-brown that wouldn’t sell.
Dry months turned into dry years, and Grandpa took to glaring at the sky as he turned over the latest row of ruined plants, burying their crisping corpses in the dusty soil. One day, he quietly insisted as the town dwindled and Grandmum’s friends moved away – one day the rains would return, and the dead crops would rot down, nourishing their brethren, rising anew.
Grandmum snorted and made chocolate crumble instead.
On the day the drought broke, Grandpa broke his hoe, the head knocked free from the wooden haft by a stone indistinguishable from a clot of dirt. He’d awoken early, sure that something was different about a day where his rheumatism was acting up in a way it hadn’t for years. Midway though coiling epoxy-smeared string around the hoe to brace the head, Grandpa’s fingers froze.
The tentative droplets came first, a barely perceptible scattering of darkened polka-dots on the dry ground.
Grandmum appeared in the doorway, swathed in her dust-darkened nightgown, drawn from bed by half-forgotten sound of tiny pings against the tin roof. The hoe fell, forgotten, to the ground and Grandpa’s face blossomed into a smile as the heavens opened at last.
She couldn’t have seen his outstretched hand through the vertical river between them, gushing over the overflowing gutters of the roof, but she came anyway. The nightdress transfigured from taupe to transparent white as her wrinkled hands joined with his and they spun together, capering like arthritic children through the tilled earthen soup.
That night, Grandmum baked lemon cake.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, we have some humour. ZOMG, Lily writes humour? Yes, yes she does. Unfortunately, it’s hard to sustain, so the story this has been clipped from is unlikely to ever make its novellength way out to being posted.
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Ginny Weasley was in a particularly foul mood.
With her lit wand in hand, her head and torso stuck as far as they could possibly go under the bed and her rear end left stranded unbecomingly in the air behind her, she was most definitely put out.
“Late, late, late!” she snarled, coughing a little at the dust. “Bloody Harry Potter and his bloody – ah, there you are –” Emerging victorious from under the bed, she jammed on the truant shoe and hopped unsteadily on the other foot for a moment before falling in an ungraceful heap on the floor. “Bloody issues!” she finished and then sneezed violently.
Hedwig blinked once – sympathetically, Ginny thought with some satisfaction – from her perch on the end of the bed before tucking her head under her wing once more to continue her interrupted nap.
Ginny didn’t notice; she had already thrown a quick cleaning charm at the screwed up bundle of her mediwitch robes and stuffed them over her head. “Bloody –” she managed, voice muffled by the fabric around her face as she began the process of blindly reeling and gyrating her way into the arm and neck holes, “– bloody, bloody Harry!”
She made it through the doorway into the corridor on only the second attempt and, by the time she reached the bathroom, had managed to track down all of her limbs and yank the garment vaguely into place around them.
It always made her feel somewhat better to use Harry’s toothbrush, brushing hard and wishing the bacfearithingies that Hermione was always going on about from her mouth into the bristles of the borrowed brush. She grinned frothily at her reflection as she tossed the toothbrush aside and spat Lockhart’s Dental Lumos into the sink with a vehemence that would have done a llama proud.
“I won’t put up with this forever,” she told the mirror as she ran her fingers through her hair, mentally lamenting Harry’s refusal to buy a comb even for his own use if he wouldn’t let her leave hers here. “I bloody won’t!”
Her reflection looked thoroughly convinced and supportive. Pleased, she gave it a professional nod and then whirled to leave, chin held high, before a non-committal sound from the mirror spun her back to face it.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“I said ‘whatever you say’, dearie,” patronised the mirror, amused at the words it had already heard so many times.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that Ginny had grown up in the Wizarding world and knew all about the dangers of throwing death glares at magical mirrors, because otherwise there could have been a rather nasty accident. As it was, she contented herself with a throat-tearing growl as she wrenched open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind her rather more loudly than was strictly necessary.
With a scowl, she detoured back via Harry’s bedroom to pick up Hedwig before racing out the front door, late for the first day of her new job – and wearing yesterday’s clothes.
Bloody mirror. What did it know, anyway?
----------------------------------------------------------------
I also have the rest of the chapter (in which we get Harry’s perspective on the state of play and the delights of paperwork) if anyone’s interested.
the_zaniak: three radically different pieces of fiction, showing my breadth as a writer. I suspect he had me in mind when he made this one up - he knows I can't resist the threeness. :)First, we have a poem:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Wanderlust
The world spins past outside my window
And I sit here and watch as it flies
‘Cause it’s warm outside, but you’re not with me
And I can’t join in ‘till I’ve said my goodbyes
The stars are dim; the sea is calm
And our footprints will fade given time
The universe beats to the heart of a drum
In the breast of my hopes and my dreams sublime.
Should I let me make me unhappy
When the moon pulls me out with the tide?
I’ve lent you my heart and you’re oh, so gentle
But I’d break it myself as your faithful bride.
I’d hoped that we’d journey out to the beyond
I had thought that we’d go there as one.
I can’t stand the silence; my breath won’t breathe out
I’ll miss you forever until you’re gone.
I would do what I must to be by your shoulder
But I want you to want me to live
I need to be out there and I’d take you with me
But my freedom is all I can ask you to give.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Next, a drama-ish flashfic which got the usual obsessive non-flashy Lily treatment:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Lemons
Out here, when it rained, it poured. The kind of apocalyptic downpour that hurled itself at the rock-hard ground with enough force to break it open, shattering the hard-baked dinner plates of mud into thousands of tiny boats floating in the viscous paste.
When it didn’t rain, even the town water, sheltered as it was in concrete towers, bled away under the blistering winds, every drop of moisture sucked from the ground and the desiccated people who made their living tending it.
Grandmum hated rain, the muddy ochre particles of the ever-present dust clumping together and soaking into the carpet in the stained smears of a lifetime’s living. She hated the dry even more: the fine powdery dust sifting over the bric-a-brac, lodging the fibres of the clothing on the line, tinting the lemon cake for the church stall an ugly red-brown that wouldn’t sell.
Dry months turned into dry years, and Grandpa took to glaring at the sky as he turned over the latest row of ruined plants, burying their crisping corpses in the dusty soil. One day, he quietly insisted as the town dwindled and Grandmum’s friends moved away – one day the rains would return, and the dead crops would rot down, nourishing their brethren, rising anew.
Grandmum snorted and made chocolate crumble instead.
On the day the drought broke, Grandpa broke his hoe, the head knocked free from the wooden haft by a stone indistinguishable from a clot of dirt. He’d awoken early, sure that something was different about a day where his rheumatism was acting up in a way it hadn’t for years. Midway though coiling epoxy-smeared string around the hoe to brace the head, Grandpa’s fingers froze.
The tentative droplets came first, a barely perceptible scattering of darkened polka-dots on the dry ground.
Grandmum appeared in the doorway, swathed in her dust-darkened nightgown, drawn from bed by half-forgotten sound of tiny pings against the tin roof. The hoe fell, forgotten, to the ground and Grandpa’s face blossomed into a smile as the heavens opened at last.
She couldn’t have seen his outstretched hand through the vertical river between them, gushing over the overflowing gutters of the roof, but she came anyway. The nightdress transfigured from taupe to transparent white as her wrinkled hands joined with his and they spun together, capering like arthritic children through the tilled earthen soup.
That night, Grandmum baked lemon cake.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, we have some humour. ZOMG, Lily writes humour? Yes, yes she does. Unfortunately, it’s hard to sustain, so the story this has been clipped from is unlikely to ever make its novellength way out to being posted.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Ginny Weasley was in a particularly foul mood.
With her lit wand in hand, her head and torso stuck as far as they could possibly go under the bed and her rear end left stranded unbecomingly in the air behind her, she was most definitely put out.
“Late, late, late!” she snarled, coughing a little at the dust. “Bloody Harry Potter and his bloody – ah, there you are –” Emerging victorious from under the bed, she jammed on the truant shoe and hopped unsteadily on the other foot for a moment before falling in an ungraceful heap on the floor. “Bloody issues!” she finished and then sneezed violently.
Hedwig blinked once – sympathetically, Ginny thought with some satisfaction – from her perch on the end of the bed before tucking her head under her wing once more to continue her interrupted nap.
Ginny didn’t notice; she had already thrown a quick cleaning charm at the screwed up bundle of her mediwitch robes and stuffed them over her head. “Bloody –” she managed, voice muffled by the fabric around her face as she began the process of blindly reeling and gyrating her way into the arm and neck holes, “– bloody, bloody Harry!”
She made it through the doorway into the corridor on only the second attempt and, by the time she reached the bathroom, had managed to track down all of her limbs and yank the garment vaguely into place around them.
It always made her feel somewhat better to use Harry’s toothbrush, brushing hard and wishing the bacfearithingies that Hermione was always going on about from her mouth into the bristles of the borrowed brush. She grinned frothily at her reflection as she tossed the toothbrush aside and spat Lockhart’s Dental Lumos into the sink with a vehemence that would have done a llama proud.
“I won’t put up with this forever,” she told the mirror as she ran her fingers through her hair, mentally lamenting Harry’s refusal to buy a comb even for his own use if he wouldn’t let her leave hers here. “I bloody won’t!”
Her reflection looked thoroughly convinced and supportive. Pleased, she gave it a professional nod and then whirled to leave, chin held high, before a non-committal sound from the mirror spun her back to face it.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“I said ‘whatever you say’, dearie,” patronised the mirror, amused at the words it had already heard so many times.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that Ginny had grown up in the Wizarding world and knew all about the dangers of throwing death glares at magical mirrors, because otherwise there could have been a rather nasty accident. As it was, she contented herself with a throat-tearing growl as she wrenched open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind her rather more loudly than was strictly necessary.
With a scowl, she detoured back via Harry’s bedroom to pick up Hedwig before racing out the front door, late for the first day of her new job – and wearing yesterday’s clothes.
Bloody mirror. What did it know, anyway?
----------------------------------------------------------------
I also have the rest of the chapter (in which we get Harry’s perspective on the state of play and the delights of paperwork) if anyone’s interested.
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1. Love the overall theme of it, and the rhyme is pretty well sustained, if particularly noticeable. As a whole piece, I really like it.
Con-crit: all the stuff I've read on poetry has driven home the message that you need to make your images as original as possible. If you write metaphors that come from somewhere other than your head, it doesn't matter how brilliant your *idea* is, it'll get lost in the cliche. And there's no image that's unique enough that it pulls me into the poem. Anywho, not sure if you were really going for imagery, or just narrative, so. Punctuation confuzzled me, but oh well.
2. Concept has, as you know, been done; but some of the imagery was tres tres pretty. (Hence, confusion as to why it was weaker in the poem.) Feels like it should be a well-written literary novel, rather than a short. Reminded me a little of something like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Painted House (John Grisham) -- i.e. set in the deep south (though I'm guessing this is Aus), where life is simple and BIG at the same time. Didn't quite get enough feel for the characters to make me *want* to guess.
Me thinks maybe you should try writing something a bit more literary for your next nano.
3. Pretty inventive and solid. Got a smile from me. I think I've read the paper-work scene. You were writing it an age ago, and you were trying to figure out which Britis swear to use.
Anywho, good job.
no subject
the rhyme is pretty well sustained, if particularly noticeable
Yeah, I noticed that it felt pretty heavy, but I don't know why. Possibly because the last line had an extra beat which made the rhyme come later than expected, but it didn't feel much better without that beat. I haven't managed to work out why rhyme sometimes goes so transparent rather than plonking onto the page. I know a few tricks for hiding the weaker rhyme, etc., but if I'm going to be trying a bit more poetry I think I need to do some more hunting into this one, because poetry without rhyme isn't poetry.
If you write metaphors that come from somewhere other than your head, it doesn't matter how brilliant your *idea* is, it'll get lost in the cliche.
Total mintage. You should have seen the first version of this! It was titled "Random emo poetry" because it had just about every cliche imaginable. I finessed the worst of it out, but couldn't make it totally forget its roots. One thing I'm particularly fond of, though, is a cliche with a twist, which takes a turn of phrase which you've seen a thousand times and substitutes a totally different word. Not sure I really managed that here, but I think it's the closest to what I was aiming for.
Punctuation confuzzled me, but oh well.
I find a comma on the end of every line distracting, so I decided not to obsess over it and simply use absolute minimum I thought I could get away with. Maybe that didn't really work. *shrug*
but some of the imagery was tres tres pretty
*grin* Yay! And ooh, such illustrious company! Thank you, yes, I think I worked harder on the imagery in this one because I knew the concept was weak and it needed *something* to be anything at all. Not 100% sure where it's set either - I was thinking of the region up inland of Mackay, I guess, which is currently completely underwater, but I have no idea of the weather patterns there - but yeah, red dirt is pure Oz.
Me thinks maybe you should try writing something a bit more literary for your next nano.
Not sure I could manage anything but mixed metaphor and cliches at speed! :) I have enough trouble keeping any images at all straight, let alone consistent and creative!
Pretty inventive and solid. Got a smile from me. I think I've read the paper-work scene.
Yay! Thanks! And yeah, you have - I remember you saying then that Ginny wouldn't have put up with the serial one-night-stand treatment from Harry. Of course, that was before DH and her proving once and for all that she's a doormat. :P
Thanks for commenting, you are marvelous as always.
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I like this bit especially, even if it is cliché:
I’ve lent you my heart and you’re oh, so gentle
But I’d break it myself as your faithful bride.
The alliteration between break/bride is shiny and sad.
2. Mm, I'd want it to be longer, not like novellength or anything, but I'm wanting more on their personalities. It's a cute concept but it's sorta static without distinct characters. Imagery is cool, if a bit forced at times. I especially like near the end,
...and they spun together, capering like arthritic children...
Such a cool image. I don't know any old people like that and I want to. (That's to say, I know cool old people but they wouldn't dance if you promised them the biggest sockeye they could imagine. Mostly they just swear a lot and have brilliant bits of advice that I want to follow but won't. Eh, anyway.)
3. Doesn't really feel like humor to me. Well, not like the LOL sort anyway. The bit about the mirror made me smile inside because I babble at my mirror all the time and I totally wasn't expecting this one to talk back at her (just goes to show I haven't been reading enough HP fanfic lately.) The imagery here is like the last one for me, a lot of it is quite awesome but at times it seems a bit forced, like it's not really necessary but it's just there? But mostly cool.
"...by the time she reached the bathroom, had managed to track down all of her limbs and yank the garment vaguely into place around them."
HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT'S HOW I AM IN THE MORNING?
.
I'm thinking I'm going try this mini-meme myself. *has some things in mind that she needs to write for the sake of her sanity*
no subject
The rhythm is a bit uneven
No, I agree with you, the rhythm's odd. I couldn't make myself cut that last line down, so I evened them up. I think it's at least consistently odd, but maybe that just means it feels the same oddness each time.
but I'm wanting more on their personalities. It's a cute concept but it's sorta static without distinct characters.
Definitely not much movement in those characters - I could probably expand this one out to a short story, if I could be bothered, and establish their characters a bit more before I try to break the pattern at the end. I'll keep that as a project for a rainy day sometime. :)
I don't know any old people like that and I want to.
I don't know many old people like this either - they're sort of a conglomerate of a few old people I know.
The imagery here is like the last one for me, a lot of it is quite awesome but at times it seems a bit forced, like it's not really necessary but it's just there?
*nods* I know what you mean, looking back at them. I thought that had just a feeling I'd been getting about it, but I'd ignored because I knew the images were nice, so next time I'll look into integrating them a little more. :)
HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT'S HOW I AM IN THE MORNING?
*laughmint* Me too. Mornings should be banned, methinks.
*wonders how the coat!fic is going/went*
no subject
I like dawn, actually. I have no problem waking up at 5:30 everyday to watch the sun come up. It's just when I have to do anything besides watch the sun come up, like not burn my croissants, where I run into difficulties... :P Maybe if I pound a can of Red Bull before I even try to get out of bed...
Coat!fic is... obsolete now. :P Emotional stuff seems to move a mile a minute for me. And hey, it's not just my fault this time, either! *is trying to restrain herself from writing too many long angsty posts*
I have a pretty fic I might use for prose instead, though - wrote it for Mozzie. It's deeper, the coat!fic was mostly a conglomerate of literal memories with the deep stuff added on as explanations, whereas this... is deep stuff with stuff made up to describe/explain it. It's the first real fic I've written in a long whiles anyway. *is very proud of it, but is waiting for it to ferment at least two weeks before she editz*
no subject
Angst away, my dear, it's what we're here for. And hey, if we ever get sick of the angst, we can just not read. I'm not sick yet, though.
Your prose fic sounds fascinating - I shall look forward to it rather than coat!fic. :)