Thursday 29 January 2009

A little break...

After devoting my entire evening to writing an essay on Much Ado About Nothing, and then analysing a Tennyson poem called 'Mariana', I decided on having a (I think it's well deserved!) break, to write a blog post, as it's been a few days since I've done one.

After the comments left on my last blog post (I love reading your comments, and now your blogs, Molly and Jessica!) I thought I'd tell you a little bit about my novel. Basically, I've been working on it on and off for the last couple of years, and I guess it's sort of a romance novel - romance is key, but there's also a lot more too it. It's called 'Family Portrait' I've actually written the blurb, so I thought I'd post it here, so it can give you an idea of what it's about!


Two very different families are about to collide, and no-one knows what the consequences are going to be. Mary-Ann Mendora has a past shrouded in mystery, and she couldn’t be less suited to the sweet, squeaky-clean Ella Kingsley and her family if she tried. As she tries to make the best of her new life, will her past return to haunt her, and ruin the life she’s beginning to build? And will she find out that the Kingsleys aren’t all quite as squeaky-clean as they appear? One thing’s for sure – the Mendoras’ and Kingsleys’ lives will never be quite the same again…

It's now up to 40,000 words, which I'm very happy with - although I'm worried about how long it's going to take me to finish, I'm less than a quarter of the way through all the things I want to happen! Never mind, I enjoy doing it. :) I hope that it won't be a pointless endeavour, but as I do enjoy it so much, I guess I wouldn't be too worried if only me and a few friends ever read it! My ideas come from all over the place: some of it's inspired by things I've 'roleplayed' on roleplay game sites - you may not have ever come across these, they're usually related to some sort of book or movie franchise, and you play different characters in their world. It's great for writing and imagination practice, and I used to do it quite a lot - now I find I just don't have the time! Other ideas come from my friends and me: scenes where the main character is with her friends tend to mirror things that happen when I'm with mine! I really love writing, always have done, and I've found I still love it now - even though I'm having to write quite a lot in school now, with English Lit and Lang - my only problem is not having enough time!

I have a very odd playlist on Youtube entitled 'Writing Music' - and I find that I have an extremely strange mix of music that I like to play whilst I'm writing. Most of it is songs, but there are a couple of pieces which are just piano pieces. One I have to recommend is 'River Flows in You' by Yiruma. I don't often listen to piano pieces repeatedly, but this is one I listen to daily, and it almost makes me cry every time I do, it's so beautiful. I'd really recommend listening to it!

Jessica - I'm really not too sure what I want to do at Uni yet: I think I want to do English Language/Lingustics, but it could all change! I'm not planning on doing creative writing at the minute, but like I said, who knows! I've been looking into Salford Uni, as it seems to have really good English courses, and also on the advice of teachers, I'm possibly going to apply to Oxford or Cambridge.

Molly - I'm glad you enjoyed the Virgin Suicides - I was really surprised that I did, but glad I'd read it! Middlesex is good: it's stranger than The Virgin Suicides (if you can believe that!), and although I'm not enjoying it as much as I did The Virgin Suicides, I am enjoying it. You'll have to let me know what you think!

Right, I'm off to do a bit more writing of my novel; thanks for the comments, I really do love reading them! =]

1 comment:

Molly said...

I like reading your blog too Becky :) Thanks for updating it. Hopefully I'll get time to update my blog tomorrow.

Your novel sounds very mysterious from the blurb. I wish I'd read that blurb on the back of an actual book, as now I want to read more. I'm glad you're enjoying writing it, I think that's the most important thing :)

I think that's great that you find music inspires you to write. I like listening to music, but not in a constructive way, I just enjoy it :) I mostly listen to pop music and the kind of music that's in the charts, but I like to think I listen to quite a variety. I'm planning to do a blog post with more about my music tastes soon. I don't usually listen to classical music, but I'll give that piano piece you mention a try tomorrow and I'll let you know what I think.

Good luck with researching your uni options. I found it quite daunting. Until the summer I was going to go to uni (probably to study Japanese), but after lots of thinking about it I decided that it wasn't really what I wanted to do. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next year instead though, maybe try out some different jobs to get an idea for what kind of career I might like, or I might do some vocational training. It's been odd at school though as everyone else is applying to uni. Some of my friends applied to Cambridge to study various subjects and all of them got accepted :D

I will definitely let you know what I think of 'Middlesex'. I'm currently waiting for it to arrive at my local library.

I'm off now as it's late and I really should head to bed.

Speak soon xxx