Tag: writing exercises

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Flight (part 2)

That was the great thing about this happening to a person like my Mam. She is such a strong lady that she made her cancer some sort of joke. A joke for her anyway. She’d constantly go on about how much we’d all miss her because she is possibly the greatest person to walk this earth.

Of course, she was exaggerating, she didn’t love herself like most politicians out there or celebrities who have been born into fame and constantly told by people around them how perfect they are. The hilarious thing about these situations was how everyone around her would be hysterically crying, genuinely sad tears and she would just laugh it off and tell everyone to man up. That was easy for her to say. She was the one that was going to die.

My mother’s dealing with her stage four diagnosis was what made the horrific scenes at the hospital easier. The tubes going in and out of each and every vein. The photos Daddy sent me after her first few rounds of chemo and the news that it wasn’t working. The more upbeat photos of her sat with a large gin and tonic in the hospice more recently. It was all of this that encouraged me to book my flight to Paris on September 4th. Today.

However, today is different. I’m not feeling as cocky in my ability to handle the loss of my mother which will inevitably happen. Initially I thought that exploring Europe would set me free from the pain that is about to come but then I feel the pain will creep up on me sooner and I’m not ready to handle it alone.

I have had such an intensely beautiful month spent in Dublin with my family, visiting Mammy every day and making memories that I am going to hold on so tightly. The same way a toddler would squeeze onto their Mum out of jealousy while she was breastfeeding their new born brother. So many memories yet not enough. I am not ready to go.

As I sit and pack the last of my survival kit into a bag that already looks too big to lug around station after station and up numerous sets of hostel steps, I stare at the photo of Mammy and I from graduation. The proudest moment of my life so far and one of hers. I look to the right of me at Jenna and consider where it all went wrong. I wonder what she is doing right this minute and a part of me wants to speak to her. Though it was her decision to leave, to allow her life to go off track, she still may silently need her older sister.

Categories
Adulthood Non-fiction Writing

10 Things that help me distract my creative brain

As a creative with an overactive imagination, sometimes I find it getting the better of me. I feel overwhelmed by thoughts and sometimes even scared, especially when I dream.

I find certain things in life distract this chaos and help me masses when trying to relax without thinking up a new plot line for a novel or a horrific scene in my head for the next short story competition. Here are a few things that help me distract my creative brain:

Reading

Something I don’t do enough and miss it when I haven’t made time to read, but it is something that helps me lose myself in this busy world and escape into another one.

The radio

Even if I’m not actually listening to it, I find that simply by having the radio on in the background soothes me. I also have a theory that the wisdom from shows on radio 4 subconsciously sinks in, thus upping my intelligence, but that’s just a theory!

Podcasts

Much like the radio, I find listening to podcasts very relaxing and a way to gain an insight into various topical discussions and learn new things away from my writing. I am also more likely to be consciously listening to a podcast which is always a good sign!

Music

Whether it’s on my walk to work, whilst getting ready for work or on a car journey in between, music is essential to my life. I struggle to go a whole day without it. It is my saviour.

Walking

Walking is another essential to the structure of my days and a nice break from my writing. Sometimes if writers block is looming, a nice stroll will soon sort it out.

Socialising

Being with those closest to me is an obvious candidate for distracting my creative brain and exchanging scary story lines for happy thoughts. If simply being doesn’t work instantly which it usually does, then I find talking about ideas I’ve had or dreams that are bothering me helps.

Being by the sea

The sea is amazing in both chilling me out down to the core and springing up new ideas within my creative side. I wrote a lot of my first novel by the sea and loved what I wrote.

Travelling and car journeys

With company or alone, I find car journeys (train or any other method of transport) a happy space in which to stop, to contemplate and to live in the moment. All of the activities in this list are about living in the moment and focusing on that to take a breath away from the chaos that is life, especially that of a creative, and travelling certainly does that.

Meditation

I tend to dip in and out of mediation and yoga but I find them both very useful. If I have had a particularly busy or mind boggling shift at the stores, when I come home to write, I meditate for five minutes before doing any work. This helps me to make the shift between different types of work and puts me in the correct zone to write.

Puzzles

Sudoku or jigsaws, without sounding like a grandma, are great in losing myself in the moment. They require focus so my brain can’t be bombarded with other stuff but not too much that they put stress on it.

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Flight (part 1)

It is the big day I have been looking forward to for so many years. For so long have I wanted to spread my horizons further than London’s south bank and the memories that I have of Dublin as a child. A place that I recently felt urged to return to yet I didn’t really know why so I booked a cheap Ryan Air flight number FR115 a month ago and headed home for the first time in thirty years.

It wasn’t only to visit Mam in the hospice because that didn’t need to be done for a month continuously. I have been preparing for the outcome since her diagnosis and realistically could get there when needed to say my final farewells. There was something pulling me to my home town, like a gust of gravity that whooshed like a tornado over London grabbing only me and taking me over the Irish Sea to my place of birth.

I am off to Paris tomorrow on an adventure around Europe. I booked my interrail pass the day after I found out about Mam’s cancer as if to stick my two fingers up to the world for cutting another life short to that awful disease. Though travelling had always been at the back of my mind, at the bottom of my to-do list, I had always been waiting and making excuses about why not to go. Not having anybody to go with was usually the main one but for some reason also the world seemed a bit scary, scarier still each time I started browsing flights and hostels.

Receiving the painful news about Mammy removed this fear because nothing is worse to fear than death, the fear she had been instantly faced with, which could crop up at any time. On that day I headed straight to the nearest travel agents and paid one hundred and eighty pounds for my ten stop Euro rail pass inside three months.

‘Don’t you think you should wait until…’ Uncle Jimmy had remarked on the phone once Mam had told him my exciting news.

‘Wait for what?’ I replied. ‘My mother to die?’

I felt harsh saying this and even more so when Jimmy began to sob on the other end of the line, but I knew that Mammy wouldn’t have wanted me to wait. She’d have wanted me to go out and explore knowing that I could return at any time when things got really bad. She never wanted me to put my life on hold for anybody not even her and she was even more persistent about this after her diagnosis.

‘You’re twenty-two.’ She’d say. ‘Don’t hold out for me to die. It won’t be easy and no time waiting in expectation is going to make it easier.’

Categories
Adulthood Non-fiction Writing

Pause For Thought

While doing the dishes, a pause for thought,
Waiting for the kettle to boil, pause for thought.

While walking your four legged friends, a pause for thought,
Waiting for a train, pause for thought.

While brushing your teeth, a pause for thought,
When you’re in the shower, pause for thought.

While sat in a waiting room, a pause for thought,
When you’re eating your lunch, pause for thought.

During the adverts on TV, a pause for thought,
Waking up five minutes before the alarm, pause for thought.

While travelling or stuck in traffic, a pause for thought,
The moment before you fall asleep at night, pause for thought.

In this busy little life we lead we have to find perks indeed,
Noticing areas on the daily can help keep our sanity.

Whether it’s at home or work and even if only short,
There are always moments in this busy little life when we can pause,
Pause For Thought.

Categories
fiction Writing

Missing (Part 3)

I walk around the side through the conifer trees so that I can hide behind a trunk if anybody should step outside. This route also gives me the option to peer in through the bifold doors to see where they all are in the house. A thought passes through me as to why I am being so secretive when I have done nothing wrong but then if Mum knew of my intentions, she would never let it happen. Knowing whole heartedly that it is a bad decision to drive in the current mental state that I am in, I turn on the ignition, exit the driveway and bolt down the A64 heading towards home.

I have always loved this road and enjoyed many drives on it, the sun gleaming onto the windscreen, windows open, our hair sweeping in front of our faces. Sarah’s beaming grin lighting up the rainier days and her beauty outside and within brushing off onto my miserable frame. The laughter filling the car so that no trouble in the world could get in between us. Each moment with her is total bliss.

The road reminds me of holidays and how life with Sarah has changed my entire view on them. I used to live for getting away. For weeks where all my cares and worries vanished along with the mundaneness of and everyday working existence. Nowadays, my happiness comes when driving in the opposite direction down the road heading home. There is no happier place for me, and I no longer continuously wish to be away from it. Home is a good place and my life is a constant vacation whenever I am around Sarah.

My mind slips back into reality when I glance to the passenger seat to see yesterdays newspaper with our story on the front page. I look up, slam my foot on the breaks causing the car to screech to a halt upon seeing police cars by the edge of the road, signalling traffic to go around them in an orderly and safe fashion. My vision blurs as I look at other drivers throwing their bodies around in anger and frustration. Others merely pause to stare before zooming off into the distance. More than one emergency vehicle usually attracts viewers from the prying public, but four flashing police cars makes even the most uninterested passer by glare over their shoulder.

I slowly approach the scene and begin to veer round following the cones, but I swiftly ignore the police signals after seeing what it is that they have found.

Categories
fiction Writing

Missing (Part 2)

My breathing is drastically increasing in pace, but I won’t stop until I find her. Each time the wind blows I jump as if someone is behind me or in case I miss a vital clue. The sounds of the birds and other creatures in nature makes me also second guess whether I am missing something that will lead me to her.

‘Why did she leave? Why did she ever go out on her own? Why?’ I shout this out loudly in case somebody can hear me and might be able to help. Even if they can’t I long for a companion, someone to be a physical comfort through my search. Simply to be there.

I find a large stick the size that our Cocker Spaniel, Buster, usually chooses whenever we are on a longer dog walk. His size is always disproportionate to the stick he decides to carry with him and no matter how many people he nearly knocks over with it, there is no way he will let us take it off him. He growls as if in danger when Sarah or I attempt to remove the wooden trunk from his mouth, so we always give up and let him have his own way, as with most other things.

I use the stick to move the trees and bushes away so that I can clearly view what lays underneath. I don’t know why I am choosing to do this, but I feel it is more productive than doing nothing at all. I realise I am jumping to conclusions or pre-empting an awful discovery by choosing to search this way, but I am hopeless in despair, so I feel that I have no other choice.

After a while of being away from the house I notice that I have forgotten my phone or any form of time telling device, so I have no way of knowing how long I have been gone. The children must be wondering where I have got to and Mum must be worrying silly about my whereabouts or where my anger and frustration has led me. She knows from experience how bad I can get sometimes. She must have so many questions running through her head about the real story of what happened to Sarah. She always second guesses me but this time I have told her the whole truth. All I know of it anyway.

Suddenly, I get a sense within me like a dog would in a police search unit and run back to Mum’s to get into my car. Adrenaline kicks in giving me the energy to take on the distance from the forest to the house. I run off-pieced to get to the fields quicker, cutting my leg on thorn bushes and obtaining numerous nettle stings in the process. I run through the fields, ignoring the clearly marked public footpaths and instead trample through the carefully planted crop, my nose starting to run as soon as I reach the bright yellow field full of rapeseed. Usually I wouldn’t be able to cope with the allergies but the panic increases with my desperation to get to the car, so knowing that this field is the next from home allows me to continue. I stop at the edge of Mum’s garden to catch my breath and decide how to enter so that nobody will notice me taking the car or notice me at all in fact. I don’t wish to be seen, I just want to get to her and fast.

Categories
fiction Writing

Missing (Part 1)

My face is numb, but I can still feel it. It is a weird sensation as if my cheekbones have turned to jelly and the feeling is slowly evaporating never to return, but in the present moment the physical awareness remains. The expression that I have been holding for the past fortnight won’t leave and it is paining me knowing this but there is nothing I can do about it. The exhaustion throughout my body remains too and no matter how much I try to relax, my mind doesn’t allow for any form of recuperation.

‘Why don’t you get some rest,’ Mum says affectionately while she tries to remain normal and feed the children their favourite – spaghetti hoops on toast.

Though I know she means well, it is the last thing I wish to hear because I cannot rest until we find her.

‘I just can’t.’ I snap at her not meaning to and leave, heading into the unknown.

I walk out of Mum’s patio doors which lead into her huge garden. Her garden has been an ongoing project for as much of my life as I can remember. It has been so carefully designed at an extortionate price by a professional to look as wild and uncared for as it does, and my feet speed up into an almost run as I traipse through. Her garden backs on to an expanse of fields. Wide open space with nothing else around until the forest, but that is over a mile in the distance so I don’t know whether I will get that far.

Running through this landscape gives me a total sense of freedom and new energy that I haven’t experienced for almost a month and it is something that cannot be explained in words. I feel as if I can fly and the sweet smell of Mum’s garden resonates in my nostrils as I proceed to make the distance to the forest. This is also a new thing that I am noticing because smells are certainly something that have vanished during this dark time. Noticing the scent of the Hydroniums and Honeysuckle lingering in my memory bank pleases me but doesn’t remove my hurt.

On reaching the forest a wave of panic that I am so familiar with now comes over me again. It swarms my body as if a snake wrapping itself tightly around my frame with intention to kill. All the new energy that I had whilst I was pacing through the fields has instantly disappeared. My sense of freedom too has washed away into the air and I am left feeling that all too intimate sensation of horror that has been a permanent fixture inside me lately.

I begin searching frantically in the bushes, even looking high up into the trees.

‘Sarah!’ I scream in pure desperation hoping, naively, that she will pop out from behind a large tree trunk and shout ‘Hello!’ as if all of this has been some sort of sick joke.

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Descriptive fiction

Thankfully the sun was shining, already brightening my mood for the day and I had just started a new book on recommendation by Eileen who I can always rely on when it comes to good reads. It was one that she had found in a charity shop which is where she finds a lot of her suggestions if they don’t come from the book club that she irregularly attends and it was by an author that she loves which is usually how she picks out the good ones. She is a very loyal reader and once she finds an author that she likes she reads every book written by them until the list has been completely exhausted.

This one was complex from the start and had me gripped instantly. I love books that have that effect and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to put it down until my eyes began to droop with tiredness later that evening. The protagonist had experienced a death of someone close to her, a relative I felt, though it wasn’t clear who had died. She was sorting through the will while trying to sort out the house with a useless brother and intrusive friends to make matters worse. Three chapters in, she had discovered so much about her life that she never knew, and each chapter ended on a cliff-hanger forcing my addiction to the story line to continue.

I was so engrossed in the novel that I hadn’t noticed Jack set up his chair beside me with his iPad and headphones in. He must be playing a game, I thought to myself, but didn’t start to ask him because we were both content in our own worlds but sharing a happy space in our garden, together.

The sky looked like one in a perfect world, clear blue with just a few fluffy white clouds dotted about, perfectly shaped. The breeze came at intervals that provided just enough cool air but never too much that we had to get jackets on, and the warmth continued to make our skin smile. The birds seemed to be enjoying themselves with subtle sounds coming from the trees but apart from that everything was still.

The first smells of freshly mowed lawn came over the fence as our neighbours started to perform their initial garden tidy up of the year and the sounds of the lawnmower and laughter from their children hinted strongly that summer was well on its way. As I started to think that the length of the last warm period on my skin was considerably longer than the last, I looked up to see that most of the clouds had vanished and the sun shone down on its own.

‘Here, you two. Put some cream on,’ Eileen shouted from the kitchen, a tea towel in her hand and clearly emptying the dishwasher while listening to Randy Travis on the stereo.

I had attempted to introduce her into the world of Spotify, claiming that it would save her a lot of money, time and space on her shelves, but she disregarded my efforts and instead wanted to keep her old habits alive.

I lay in silence beside my brother reading my book and my attention only became slightly interrupted when passers by walking their dogs and their children were in loud conversation that interested my brain. The topics were never that interesting at all and they were talking about people I didn’t know but I felt it was natural for a girls brain to focus on any form of gossip, whether it involved me or not.

Categories
Adulthood fiction Stories Writing

The Disagreement

Jane and Oliver knew that they were late for lunch at the new pub that opened in the village last night, but they couldn’t leave during the debate. Both of them were very excited to try the new menu and see how the place had been transformed from its old ragged self into a shiny new upmarket venue. Yet they also didn’t want the onlooking villagers to gossip over their table mannerisms showing quite opaquely the row that they had prior to arriving.

He’s certainly having an affair with the accountant, the rumours would begin, Jane knew the village too well. They had to settle it before leaving the house.

‘Look, all I’m saying is that he would be much better off in a care home. It’s for the best,’ Oliver said with the same irritatingly calming tone that he always used during arguments.

‘What if it was your father? Would you be happy just to lock him away?’

‘Jane, it’s not a case of locking him away. We will visit him all the time and some of the homes are luxury these days. To be honest I’d prefer to stay in them rather than a posh hotel.’

The playful shift in Oliver’s manner wasn’t reciprocated by Jane who merely stared at him disapprovingly.

‘I’d personally want to live my last years in my own space, my own home, without old folk making me feel twenty years older than I am. He’s not even ill!’

‘Jane, we’ve been through this.’

‘Don’t.’

Holding back the tears, Jane soon realised that lunch was going to have to wait until another day.

Categories
fiction Stories Writing

Chapter 3, Erin

Of course, I worried a little initially about the horror stories I had heard. The trolls, the glamorous accounts of false lives to make me feel awful about my own, the mass of uneducated opinions, the dangerously fast addiction and everything else in between, but I never thought much about it all after a while. Besides being sixteen in 2019 meant that I had a firm grasp of what lay before me and felt strong enough to cope with life on social media.

At the beginning I tried to remain strong anyway. It was more to prove a point to my mum but a fraction of it was fear of the inevitable. I could feel instantly the addiction looming. After two days of having access to the virtual social world, my phone was the first thing I went to pick up in the morning and the last thing that I put down at night. I spent hours scrolling and still do, but I don’t know why because after doing so I have never gained anything more or lost anything – my life remains exactly as it was.

On days when I feel bad about my own image, Instagram strengthens this sad emotion when I witness the accounts not of celebrities but of my own friends looking like celebrities. Their accounts fill my newsfeed with perfection and no flaws. The perfect brunch, the most exotic holiday venues, the prettiest new haircuts that look better than I looked that time when I had my hair and all my makeup done by a professional for a family wedding back in Ireland.

At the weekend I see friends and acquaintances out having fun. I always think to myself how they are doing the things that I should be doing when I am visiting Mummy or at work. Friends who have gone to places without even asking me so of course I feel totally left out and forgotten. Acquaintances who I don’t even care about doing things that make my Saturday night look so boring and suddenly I am deeply involved with care for the comparison.

On a more distant level, I see opinions all the time that I completely disagree with or that make me so angry that I can feel my face going red. I see people being horrible openly in their statuses or indirect Tweets and I laugh a little inside in agreement, but never would I say it to their face. I don’t wish to be involved with that kind of negative behaviour, but it is too easy to get sucked in.

When it all began though, I didn’t and still don’t feel I got too involved. I always stayed back and never posted much on my own accounts. The last picture I posted on Instagram which I also posted onto my Facebook account was wishing Jack a Happy Birthday in May. I made a collage of photos of the two of us from when we were very little up until our holiday in Ireland last year.

I am finding it very hard to see how my involvement affected anything. I guess you never know what is happening behind somebody’s eyes. Their thoughts and feelings are totally invisible which is the danger when they don’t discuss anything going on inside their head. I have been over all our accounts since finding out, even hers which is hurtful to do, and nothing seems too awful, but it must have seemed awful to her.