Month: November 2014

Discoveries Thanks to Writing Exercises

Posted on by arappleby

Discoveries thanks to writing exercises.

 

Well now I have a note book, I have given a few words to a few lines of a premise for an exercise, picked one at random and just gone with it free hand on here. Like taking a pencil to a plain sheet of paper with no idea how or what will appear on the page, and I love it. It may not be great quality per say but my gosh it is fun.  It makes a change from plotting and planning every scene or change or whatever and just writing that single moment.

But that’s the thing, the exercises are focused on a moment, and just exploring it, that is at least the aim. When I write and really write, I love knowing my journey and what will have to change the characters and test them.

That’s the thing though isn’t it? In our day to day lives we can be tested, multiple times a day. It boils down to how do we deal with a certain situation? The child on the train screaming because it wants a toy or something, when its so loud it is piercing through your skull and you are tired as it is. The coffee shop or the restaurant with rude service. The friend demanding reassurance and attention. The neighbours dog barking, their child blowing a stupid whistle from 8 am till 11 pm at night.

Writing exercises are a test, a no fail no success test. To change, grow and enhance skills, to try something new, a new genre, a specific moment, to confront something differently.

It has to be more about having fun and keeping yourself going than being meticulous about every tiny detail. To not worry if it is right or wrong. To not be so concerned by the outcome to just enjoy every second your fingers are tapping on the keyboard as you watch the letters appearing, forming words on a blank screen. To just enjoy and be at one with a single thought following it where ever it may take you.

While you may have a tiny goal in mind this is far from the be all and end all of the post that you are so engrossed in writing its just a natural stream of thoughts appearing on the page as they do in your head. The simple honesty.

That is why I am currently enjoying the exercises, they are just what they are, snippets of thoughts that occur, and what is wrong with that? Sometimes the best laid plans go awry and sometimes just taking each moment as it comes can produce something you had no idea that you could achieve. That is great and fun and different, you are exploring you, not your character (unless that is the exercise). You could explore any world you choose for a short period of time and not feel guilty about underdeveloped maybes.

 

Writing exercise- The Moment I Knew It Was Love

Posted on by arappleby

“The Moment I Knew It Was Love” this one isn’t perhaps as hard, and it happens quite often, but not perfectly.

It was recently, fairly recently, that I discovered one of those moments, but it was more perfect perhaps then usual.

It was a slightly more adult moment in my life than perhaps I realized a very private moment, but a moment all the same.

So now I must confess, I am damaged, I am what can be called damaged goods, I fear intimacy. To me the biggest struggle I face, daily, is trust. Very few people I trust, my closest friends I trust with my life, my family I do not.

It has taken me some time, some months to learn to trust my boyfriend, actually quite a few and it felt almost too natural which of course meant I had to fight it because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t fight it a bit, live in a little denial for a few days. Well that trust has of course grown with time.

This moment was entirely intimate in the throws of passion. Due to my nature and fear, during such times I struggle to make eye contact because it is far too intimate. But it was different, it was honest, but we weren’t speaking, not out loud. You see this time, in this moment, I felt the complete trust, I could feel every hidden thought of affection I had buried and I held his gaze.

Intimately it was a perfect moment, I let the guard down, broke a few walls and let him in mentally, I wasn’t compartmentalizing or trying to protect myself from getting hurt. I was just being myself in that moment, and so was he.

They say your eyes are the window to the soul, and that is where I sometimes keep my guard, but it is the first place I look when I want to read someone. Sometimes you can just tell everything in a moment by a gaze.

In his eyes that moment, I saw affection and care and respect, everything I had been looking for, and I would like to say that as I write this I am not crying but that would be lying. Because I have my guard down in this moment, remembering the moment I knew I could trust him completely, and though he doesn’t really say it, I know he trusts me, the times when he opens up and tells me something he is struggling with make me the happiest because he is testing his trust in me and I am just there. I tested my trust in him, in my most vulnerable moments and I discovered safety and security, something I have wanted and yearned for, for so long, I found in him in one moment, I felt the rush of love and affection for him that I now struggle to hide.

Sometimes these moments aren’t these movie moments that sweep an audience off their feet, it might not even sweep you off your feet. It s just the seconds in which you are aware, you realize you have stumbled upon a feeling that can be so precious and rare they may happen once, maybe twice in a lifetime.

Writing Exercise- The Moment I Fell In Love

Posted on by arappleby

I don’t know where to start with this, “The Moment I Fell In Love” exercise, so it may well be a surprise.

Well, I know it doesn’t sound right, and I know it won’t make sense. I doubt it was via  I.M. but you see, a special familiarity is formed when you message someone until past six in the morning and only stop because you have no choice. After all it was past six in the morning.

I suppose it could have been that day, well night, had I have let it happen that way. Instead somehow I think it happened twice.

We met over the internet, the way a modern love story would. We talked for a while, it was so familiar. I remember, just a little, the journey to the train station, the brief slightly out of breath rush texting and trying to beat my way to the station before the train came in. It was raining, as it always does in London. I remember waiting by the little bike shed by the station, anxious nervous, not really knowing who or what to expect. I remember being told to look for a long umbrella and black coat, and that was it. I had no expectations, I didn’t really know who I was waiting for and somehow I knew. The man with the umbrella, the smile and somehow I knew it was him. The world fell away and this strangers face suddenly became every conversation we had ever had, I knew it was him. I didn’t know who or what I was waiting for, I walked their with no expectations just nervous excitement. This strange man with dark hair and a sweet smile had become everything we had shared, the conversations, the laughing and joking, just it became him.

It is those two seconds perhaps in that smile and me making the connections that it was him, those two seconds letting the world fall into place, I started to fall in love, with him.

It was perhaps that same day, well evening by then that I can say that was the moment. I had spent most of that date itching desperate for him to just kiss me, the connection the flirting it was all so solid. He was nervous and somehow I knew he wasn’t going to make the move, I was too tense and too curious that I couldn’t wait longer. I did it, I kissed him, it was while he was mid sentence, and I caved. It was then in that moment perhaps, I didn’t know it then at the time.  But all I knew was I didn’t want to run, with every first kiss so far I had wanted to run and it had been a disaster and I would beat myself up for not running, this time I just didn’t want to run away. I wanted to stay, and ever since I have never been able to walk away, no matter how bad it gets, it has gotten better. That first kiss is the moment I fell in love.

A little more about me

Posted on by arappleby

A little more about me.

I am shy. In person, unless I really have to be otherwise, in my natural state, I am shy. I like to be polite.

To those who haven’t guessed yet, I am female.

I love to write, especially “strong” female characters because hey why not?

I have a dog, I would love another dog, but all in good time. I absolutely love dogs, in general, staffies freak me out though, there is something about the jaw that unnerves me. I had my dog at 8 weeks old potty trained within two days, with only eight accidents over his first week to two weeks.

I love my best friends, they are the family I have chosen. I have a “brother” and three “sisters” that are actually friends that are that close. I don’t generally consider myself extremely social with many out of my circle but that suits me fine.

I am in my early twenties, but I feel much older, possibly because I have always been wiser then my years. I don’t drive but I want to, I honestly can’t afford to learn let alone drive a car of my own, the same goes for motor bikes, I wish I could learn to drive one of them, when I was little my uncle let me ride on his bike with him, it was fun but my nana and mother forbid me to ever learn or get one of my own. I am starting to ignore their rules slowly more and more so who knows maybe one day I will be riding a motorbike.

I honestly stumbled on my love of writing as a way to deal with traumas in my personal life and so I turned to writing to both confront and escape from the things that were destroying me from within. Writing has become a powerful tool but it is also now a passion and something that I am a slave of.

 

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