Wait,now we don't have any poo jokes

So, as promised, today I am writing about my involvement in the chorlton players' newest production.
Our sketch show, Homegrown Hotpot.

I made this bad-boy!

Okay, so the production before hotpot (which I didn't get a part in) (yeah yeah, Maili, cry me a river) was An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. I stage-handed for this production which mostly included me staggering blindly onto an unlit stage groping around for a table that Rohan had bowled over making his dramatic exit and making sure that Giles had the right button-hole ready. So I was busy most of the way through this making sure I was on hand to throw a chair on the floor at just the right moment and the like, and completely forgot the fact that I had wanted to write a sketch for Hotpot.

Now, I had assumed that like all our other productions there would be a week off after it in which I would have time to write (I was still unemployed at this point so was posessed of all the time in the world but none of the vigour.) I was wrong. I was informed that on the following Monday and Wednesday, we would be meeting up and reading through our sketches and voting on them.At this point I didn't even have the inkling of an idea so I considered myself screwed but thought I would take a crack at it anyway. I missed the Monday session but presented my two last-minute sketches '101 Reasons not to drink alcohol'and 'Fangirls' on the Wednesday.

Both were greeted with actual real person laughter, which I honestly hadn't expected but gratefully accepted, and the latter was voted into the show! So, come the 31st May, something I wrote will have been performed on a stage by actory-type people! I am very excited! The sketch is about three girls waiting for a celebrity to arrive at a signing and that's all I'm going to say because you should really come and see it. Really. Make note of the details on that poster.


As is traditional for the annual chorlton players sketch show, the writers of the sketches direct their own sketches. Henceforth, I will also have directed an actual thing by the end of the month. Directing isn't something I take to naturally, having no bossy tendencies at all beyond my childhood penchant for bossing my brother around. Thankfully, the people I've cast are also my friends (everyone who auditioned was, so no favouratism, I swear!) so I feel better telling them what I want them to do than total strangers but it's still a bit daunting when someone turns to you and asks "So what now?" after a run through with fifteen whole minutes of rehearsal time to spare. ("Do it again? But with mouse voices?") I'm sorely tempted to just keep telling them "Again, but LOUDER" and see how loud I can get them to go before they realise what I'm doing. They've already included their own sex noises so I didn't even coerce them into that.

"Okay, let's do this again-but this time, less egg, more chicken"

The writing process for Fangirls was simple for me, I had very limited time in which to write my sketches and I took a type of people I knew well, namely crazy fan girls from the internet. I have known many obsessive fans in my time and I scroll through tumblr from time to time (ALLOFTHETIME) so I had a lot of material to draw on so I just wrote. Solidly. I wrote the whole thing in minutes and was printing it off, stapling it and carrying it to drama with me in a little plastic wallet within the hour. Admitedly, I'd left in a couple of typos in that short time span but apart from that, the finished product I'm using now is what I wrote feverishly in those few minutes trying to get anything funny on to paper. Some people might say that a lot of the humour is obvious but I would say 'Screw you!'to those people, or something a little more explicit.

And then I would expand on the point that if humour has to be ambiguous or complex to be funny than why do most of us still take joy in a good fart joke? (Slightly unrelated but a fellow, slightly more senior, member of the players divulged to us recently that his mother used to call farts 'poo noises').

Indeed, staying with the subject of fart humour, I was a little sad when a friend of mine, Charlie's, sketch didn't get into the show (not because it was his, he entered six and three of them got in so he's not disappointed.) but simply because it used the simple, unadulterated humour of one of our slightly posh friends saying poo a lot and the suggestion that the face of jesus could be found in a smear of dog excrement on the bottom of a shoe. (Also, the immortal line "I can't believe you thought Kenneth Brannagh was Jesus.") Thefact that it did not get in escaped quite a few people's notice until later when someone, with genuine shock and horror, exclaimed that 'Wait,now we don't have any poo jokes!"

On that note, I am also appearing in the sketch show in a couple of things. I will be on at the very beginning doing some air-hostess-style pointing for my friend Vicky's health and safety announcement, briefly in some black and white filming we did which will be played in clips in between sketches, and then at the very end in Charlie's sketch 'The Mysterious Case of the Lots of Murders'which is a satire of Poirot-style mystery/crime dramas. (I've also volunteered to be a congregation member in a funeral sketch but I have no idea where that is in the running...)

I mostly told you that so that you could see there is lots of me to be had in this production! ( I even made the poster!) Therefore, it is most definitely your duty to come and see this production if you're in the country. 

I EXPECT TO SEE SOME OF YOU THERE.

director chicken courtesy of Jeanette McCurdy

From zero to one hundred in four months

So my life has taken a major leap in the past few weeks. For the four months before April I was jobless, demotivated with time stretching before me in a long and potentially lifeless line. Thankfully, I got a job at my old school working their alumni office and it's really turned things around.

I feel more motivated for one, which is helpful because I have so much going on. Especially writing wise which is why I have come to talk to you lovely people again. You missed me, right? Admit it. You've been crying a little bit.

How I imagine all your sad little faces have looked.

So back in September of last year which is 8 months ago now (whaaaaat? where does the time go?) I signed up for radio play writing class. Unfortunately the class was full so I forgot all about it but in February I got another email from Allfm saying that they were having another class and was I still interested. So of course I said yes and we started a couple of weeks after that.

 It really doesn't feel that long ago that we started but we're all on our last working drafts of our scripts now and I'm really impressed with everyone's progress. Especially mine, of course. I'm waiting to hear about award nominations as we speak. (Not really, that was a joke. In case you hadn't twigged.) But anyway, we did some really interesting writing exercises when we started which I thought I could share with you guys seeing as this is what this blog was supposed to be about in the first place.

The first of which was simply called 'What if?' and is pretty much what you'd expect. It's an ideas game specifically designed to generate some inspiration and get some ideas flowing (I think it's best done in a group because it's great to see what others come up with but you can just as easily think about it by yourself and write it down.)

We did this exercise sitting around the table and going around in a circle finishing the sentence 'What if...' our answers ranged from interesting "What if I could speak every language?", to unusual "What if my bones were made of glass?" to confusing and slightly worrying "What if I was my own dad?" but I think it helped everyone to just start the creative juices flowing. Whether we used what we'd come up with at all didn't really matter it was just getting inspiration. I think this exercise is particularly useful if you're finding yourself at a bit of a loss at where to start. When you're sat in front of a blank page and you know you want to write something but you just don't know what.

Sometimes it helps to turn the piece of paper into a chicken!
(but not always)

Another of the exercises we used was describing a character. The first person in the group would come up with a name and then we'd each in turn say a fact about this person. Again, the answers were varied and usually escalated to the ridiculous. (e.g "He's secretly a spy for the Russians. He's keeping a cow in the cellar!) but at points it could be really insightful into things that could be useful for your character but that you might not neccessarily ever have to mention in the course of your piece of writing. (e.g. "He used to be a teacher but became disillusioned with the career." or "She likes to collect hats. Lots of hats.") Again, this is probably a technique you could adopt as a solo thing. Simply come up with a name or find one online or in a newspaper/magazine/catalogue/shoebox and start generating random facts that you could attribute to that character.

After a while playing this, Ed who runs the sessions for us introduced the practice of shouting "I don't believe it!" a la Richard Wilson when a fact got too ridiculous or when it didn't fit with facts that had already been said so we were kept on track about creating a character that was believable (even if they existed in an unrealistic context.)

"I don't BELIEEEEVE it!"

This exercise is best used for character development if you need to flesh out an exisiting character or create a new one but it's also great for figuring out what direction you want your story to go in. Say, if you seem to be generating facts that pertain more to fantasy or sci-fi than the real world then maybe you want to think about basing your work in one of those genres, for example.


There were lots of other exercises but the last one I want to talk about isn't a game like the previous two, it's more of a technique to help set out a story. We worked in pairs to do this but again this is one that's definitely transferable to solo work. You take your characters and you strip them down to their basics.
Which character is your main protagonist? Which is the antagonist? (if there isn't one, then think about  whether your story has enough conflict to hold interest. If so, then work with two protagonists or whatever you have) What are their main wants? What are their main needs? (Yes, these two things are different.
The character may well want something but remain completely oblivious to what they really need. For example, your main female may want Mr Right to stroll on by, but what she needs may be self-fulfilment or a really good biscuit.) What is the main obstacle to their wants and needs? If you have all these elements then often that means you have instant conflict and as such, instant drama.


Of course, all of these exercises were used in our sessions to directly relate to the radio plays we would be writing but I think they're transferable to all mediums and I'll definitely use them myself in future to work out the bones of plots and get them creative juices flowin'! (This is what no longer being allowed caffeine does to you, people. YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED.)

Baby chickens, a responsible alternative to caffeine!

Another writing endeavour that came my way in the past month or so was writing a sketch for my amateur dramatic group's annual sketch show. But I'll write about that in my next post which should be up tomorrow, all things going to plan (I am writing, directing, starring and making the poster for this extravaganza- because I am just that talented...and masochistic.) So any of you reading this better at least attempt to show up! If not, I'll trying and drag a recording of it out of Annie after it's been done.

Til the morrow, adieu!




sad chicken picture courtesy of Aaron Jansen
paper chicken courtesy of origami-kids.com
angry chicken courtesy of urbanfarmonline.com (flat cap added by me)
baby chicks in a teacup courtesy of bugschicks.blogspot.com

An (Un)Spectacular Come-back!

So...hi there. Fancy seeing you here. On the internet. It's been a while. How've you been? Good? Oh, great. Me? I'm okay. Emerging from the depths of job-seeker's despair and boredom is a little harder than I expected. Yeah, yeah. No, you're right, I am talking to myself.

"Hey....where'd everybody go?"

Oh wait! No I'm not, I'm talking to you! My lovely bloggering friends! I think. I mean, if nobody reads this now I am going to feel so stupid. Or insane, although as most of you know I'm not really on the good side of sane most of the time anyway.

I feel like there should be more a point to this blog.

So, NaNoWriMo. I did it! I actually for once in my life completed NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words and everything. I haven't exactly finished the novel yet although after a few months of just leaving it to stew I'm actually getting on with it and am writing the final scene. The final scene which is supposed to be really dramatic but may just end up being full of exclamation marks ("you! it was you! I am surprised and shocked and all the other feelings"!) However, once I have finally finished writing it I will be able to come back and edit it which will actually be quite nice and I've read a bit of it already and it's not actually as awful as I thought it was.

Lady Phoebe was shocked and horrified at the revelation that pink was perhaps not her colour.

So I'm mostly applying for jobs at the moment but I am also doing other projects such as painting. I painted Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock, naturally) recently and I'm actually rather proud of it and may try my hand at Watson and Moriarty some time soon. I have also begun swimming, today with my lovely friend Ni being the first of such escapades, as I'm pretty sure I've decided running isn't for me...at least not until I'm a little bit more fit than the hugely unfit state I am in at the moment.

I'm also taking my driving theory test tomorrow which by rights I should be revising for right now but I procrastinate pretty much everything apparently.

Apart from that though my activities are a little thin on the ground. I think I may need a writing project but then  perhaps I should be continuing on with the novel and actually finish it.

Okay, thinking about it (see, this is how you can tell I haven't planned what to write in my blog- stream of conciousness people! I am so sorry.) perhaps I should do what I intended to do with this blog and find small writing exercises to do to get myself in the writing frame of mind to write my novel. Next blog post, which may well be some time this week, I will write about a writing exercise I have tried out and maybe put up some samples of my writing (again, I am so so sorry.)

So, be excited!

Actually, don't, this could really not work at all.

Bad Habits- NaNoWriMo 2011 - Day 4

Okay so I thought I'd write a post about writing habits,  bad writing habits in particular. A lot of my worst writing habits come out when I do things like NaNoWriMo and when I've done essays in the past. I sometimes wonder whether these habits are just mine or whether all writers do them, so I compiled a list below.

1. DISTRACTION - My most common problem when it comes to writing in large volumes is getting distracted. I will watch a man walk slowly down the entire length of the street that I can see from the window before I will write even a word. I will put on more jumpers. I will drink my weight in water. I will water all of the plants in the flat. Now, I'm very aware that this is not a problem that's singular to me. Procrastination is rife, especially when you throw the internet in the mix. You can find billions of pictures of adorable kittens on the internet. You can find a picture of a chicken in a jumper.

That's some fierce posing.

My brain is constantly asking me, why would you want to write a book when you can stare at this hypnotically majestic chicken modelling knitwear? And sadly, I too often agree with it. The only way to get past this is DETERMINATION and WILL POWER. Either that or completely disconnecting the internet. But that's a stupid suggestion, we all know that.

2. Word count- Now, this isn't always a problem when I'm writing. This is one of those habits that comes out during NaNo or when writing essays. I open up the word count toolbar (I'm not going to tell you how to do that if you don't know, I will not feed anybody elses obsessions!) and basically what happens is that I compulsively check how many words I'm up to. And I mean compulsively, sometimes I will write a sentence and then check it. That's at most about 11 or 12 words, WHY DO I NEED TO CHECK THAT? NaNo is particularly the worst for this because I have a specific word count to meet EVERY. DAY. That's like word count mania. I start to realise I update my word count about 10 times more than any of my writing buddies. This habit feels like an addiction, one I'm not sure how to kick.

3. Useless and/or ridiculous words- To bump my word count or just because my brain is having a bit of a moment and stops thinking properly, I often tend to add words that make no sense in the context, are completely ridiculous (Examples: Thusly, partake, whomsoever) or just really don't need to be there (the amount of times I use therefore in an essay is embarrassing.) This has become less of a problem with my NaNo this year because I have to write all Victorian-like and it's super easy to just stick in a load of random 'heretofore's and 'as such's.  

4. Total grammar meltdown - This is my worst faux pas when it comes to writing under pressure. I have a habit of completely forgetting all of the rules of grammar and sliding into utter literary chaos. I before e except after c is the least of my troubles. I start forgetting entirely how to use the comma and the apostrophe (the apostrophe is the worst of my crimes because I remember spending a whole week on the apostrophe in secondary school because we were all so terrible with it.) I completely forget all of the rules of capitalisation and start subconciously capitalising words like Doctor when I'm not even writing a Dr Who fanfiction. Terrible, I know. I feel like this is the one that most people don't always want to admit because I am all too aware of how many Grammar Nazis there are on the internet, and how we all like to feel like we're very smart with the words and such.

"Something's gone terribly wrong, I can sense it."

And that's four. That's definitely enough to be getting on with, though it probably (and by probably, I mean definitely) doesn't cover all of them. I should probably have some lunch or something. Cheerio!

Of Ashbourne Blood- NaNoWriMo 2011- Day 1

Hello there my dears. Yes, it's November, and we all know what that means. It's NaNoWriMo season. The season where I most likely to be found desperately typing nonsense to bump up my word count.

"And now my Main Character's going to recite the entirety of Edgar Allen Poe's  The Raven..."

So far I'm 869 words and counting. I think I've given myself a little more of a challenge than I bargained for this year- I'm writing a 'Period Drama' novel. With some supernatural elements. And a mystery. Oh dear.

But before I really get nattering about all that I should probably mention that I eventually sent something off to the paper for their A Piece of Your Life writing competition. It was a very short, atmospheric kind of piece about my grandparents' old house. I tried more to get a sense of place in it than any sort of action. I'm not sure I'm going to even be a runner-up but I'm happy that I sent something off to my first writing competition. Considering seeing if I can find more competitions to enter- but probably not at the same time that I do NaNo. NaNo is a challenge all on its own.

So you can find my over at NaNoWriMo.org under the alias of ninjapirategirl. My novel this year is called Of Ashbourne Blood and is narrated by Phoebe Ashbourne and tells the story of her and her two sisters.

It's 1892 and Lady Phoebe Ashbourne's sister, Emmeline, is getting married.

This seems like just another regular occurance in Victorian England, even in the county of Derbyshire. But when the girls approach their grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Gastgern, with their younger sister Delphine they find out that there's something much more sinister and demanding in store for Ashbourne women who hope to marry. A curse stalks the Ashbourne line and the girls must solve three ancient riddles to save Emmeline from the same fate as their young mother.

But even darker secrets are waiting to come to light as the Ashbourne sisters go cross-country in their search for the answer to the Gastgern Hall riddles.

It's very different from anything I've written before but that's what I always try to do with NaNo, challenge myself with something completely new. I've planned this one out a lot more than last year, probably because I feel I have to with the riddles and all the mystery. With things like that if I don't know what's going on or how it's going to end then it just becomes a big jumbled mess.

Then again, it could still become a big mess. I forsee myself struggling to keep within the language of the time period whilst still telling an engaging story.

Anyway, I'm going to stop rambling and get on with writing.

Challenge the first: October is Life Story Competition Month!

So I told you this wasn't going to be consistent. Life has been busy and I've not been feeling well so yes, I finally got round to identifying my first writing challenge. It's not an exercise, it's a writing competition. I've always thought about entering creative writing competitions but never actually have, never having the guts or perhaps just being lazy (probably laziness, as those of you who know me would already have worked out.) But this time, I'm actually determined to do it.

This particular writing competition is called 'A Piece of Your Life' and is being held by the local paper (the South Manchester Reporter, if you wanted to know) and all pieces must be under 1500 words and in prose. Now, it's starting small, I know, but there's a saying about running and walking and that applies to pretty much everything. And should probably be said to me more often. ("Play the bass in our band? Of course! Let me just buy one...and then learn to play it")

Compared to NaNoWriMo (which is 50,000 words. You know, in case you were unaware. Look at me, providing you with all the informations!) this short short story feels like it's going to be a walk in the proverbial park but I will bet you any amount of money that I'll feel differently only a few hours in. Minutes in. Probably about three characters in.

Don't try to run before you can walk- as it applies to chickens.

I've not actually chosen what part of my life to document yet. This is probably because my life feels pretty uneventful when I have to sit down and think about a really interesting part of it. Thankfully, I have poetic licencing on my side and am free to...embellish on any of my anecdotes to make an actually good story. Or at least something that I'm willing to enter into a competition. Or at least something that's makes sense. Or something that is words.

This challenge is going to be month long because the entry date is 31st October (but maybe I'll finish it before then! Who knows?! Oh what a spontaneously thrilling life I lead! Ah, if only the interrobang had caught on...) I will update you on the (probably stilted and frustrated) progress of said short story whilst trying to write it instead of a new story I've started which is period drama and far too much fun to write when I have so many unfinished things lying around.

If any of you in the general area (or any of you, GO MAD) feel like joining me in my clearly wild and crazy endeavor, feel free! We could compete!


...wait.

(Ohohoho*)


*I can hear your faked laughter even from here. Unless there was no fake laughter. In which case, how very rude of you. You could at least pretend to laugh at my terrible attempts to make jokes. 


I get the feeling I'm no longer making any sense.

Searching for Inspiration in the Arctic of My Mind

So recently, I've been finding it hard to fuel my writing.

I don't know whether it's because I have less time to myself or just less classes on creative writing and thus a drop in the creative temperature.



Bernadette is left out in the proverbial creative cold

 So, basically, I decided that I would start a blog to help me with my writer's block and hopefully amuse/help some of my other writerly friends who could be in similar situations. (I'm looking at you, NaNoWriMo-ers.)
You could say the idea came to me in a dream. You would more acurately say that the idea came to me whilst lying in bed thinking about how I had just spent the entire day at a museum staring at elephant skeletons and mummies.

The premise of this blog, then, is that every week (or so, I'm definitely not going to promise any consistancy here. I'm not exactly known for it) I'll take up a new writing task, whether that be a particular story/style or, probably more commonly, a writing exercise/experiment to try and coach my brain into the creative zone that it seems to be avoiding.

So there we go. As first posts go, it's not the most entertaining nor the longest but I just wanted to say hi and this is what I will be doing.

Yes, there are/will be chickens.

No, I'm not going to explain.