Whatever I come up with is going to sound pretentious, because I'm going to try and place a sense of purpose where there is none.

University is over, and after a four year study block thing may just fall back to the way they were before.  And that would be a tragedy.  So this journal is part planning, part reviewing and part dumping ground.

Who: David Law.

What: Unpublished Writer.  Specialises in first person narrative prose and screenplays.

Why: Maybe it's been encoded, maybe it's the first job he heard about, maybe it's necessary to stay sane.

I'm weirded out by this dream I had just before waking up.  It seems even my dreams are becoming less hidden meaning more screaming extensions of my real life musings.

My dream started out in the Roehampton University LRC, in the middle of the ground floor like I'd drifted off for a moment.  I walk toward the exit where I passed people I knew.  There was that sense of disconnect instead of being the guy who knows exactly what to do, it was more of my observer mode, like watching my own life on TV even down to that bleached out look.

Then I'm at work, except it's nowhere I worked outside of dreams, so it was familiar and not.  It's an underground bar, much like the Roadhouse, except bigger and more hospital-like in appearance.  It's pre-opening time, so it had an emptiness to it, with the white walls and squeaky floors.  My workmates-- who were generic and not specific people at all-- and I head outside.  This is where I channelled my imagination of Demon Theory by Stephen Graham Jones, it's snowing and sometimes it isn't like a film with a bad continuity supervisor, but it's night.  We come out of a trapdoor, everyone else is tense and there is a cage which everyone rushes into.  Inside the cage is stock for the bar.  Someone locks us in the cage and we're being approached by a horde of Zombies, I find that I have a shot gun and then I seemed to be shooting a lot of buckshot into the undead, who are reaching through the cage, sometimes head first.  This goes on until they are dead dead.  But I never did dream about carrying the stock into the bar.

Okay, so I don't regularly think about shooting Zombies and it's not like I'm a Zombie fan despite the capitalisation of the letter Z.  So I can take a shotgun to what they stand for, but my real question is this.  Who would go to a bar when there is a Zombie horde wondering about?  And further to that, would you like to be drunk with such dangers lurking?

(Knowing some customers I think they would...)

What I've been doing would look bad in a regular CV sense, it would beg the question "What HAVE you been doing Mr. Law?". It would appear like I've been doing nothing these past months, but don't fret, I've been writing (he says pathetically while trying to justify his gap in employment and education).

I'm still purging my bad words/pages, and I decided to make it a learning experience, which it's supposed to be anyway, otherwise what's the point? So I came up with the 'Phineas Rang' blog. The plan is to publish an entry a week, I've been working out the storyline and writing a enough entries ahead to hopefully have a constant flow of stories. The point of it is to emulate TV or comic book writing schedules. I'll put up the URL once I post the first entry.

I've put the idea of using my family as a template for a novel on hold. Instead I'm writing another family based story either called The Life of Riely (Duck) or Duck, Duck and Goose -- okay the second title is a bit of a joke but I've always thought the way some companies are named would allow something like that.  I think the theme is to explore how the same person can turn out differently depending on the choices they've made.  The problem is I'm trying to work out whether it'll be literally the same person (as in a clone) or just brothers.  Them just being brothers would take away from the father's character though, who is a scientist.  I want one of the Riely's to have been under the scrutiny of their father and the other one to have fled and have returned because of the father's funeral.  Now I just have to decide who Goose is, perhaps the narrator...  I might have to get rid of the whole Duck/Goose gag too.

I'm still working on the Two Rooms horror movie script.  And it's still a horror story about flat sharing, but with the whole black water incident and flooding, I've got a renewed desire to work on it.  I'm still casting for characters in my head.

I've also been talking to some artists about a short graphic novel for the Observer Competition, but no luck so far.  I really should come up with an idea to pitch to them though.

So yeah, bad for CV, good for me.  I'll need to earn some money soon though.

I'm going to try and be as lucid as I ever am here. I've finally accepted my springy, lateral and off kilter way of thinking as something that is survivable and not something I should feel the need to keep inside, because trying to think like everyone else takes up too much time, energy and makes me seem slow anyway. I've been talking to a counsellor and told her about this strange thing from a few months ago. I was in a class and we had to talk to someone as one of our characters and how I found that I thought faster and was more efficient at answering questions, as the character had worked through some issues that still haunt me. Anyway she made me 'become Garrett' there. And it sort of worked, but maybe it was more to do with the fact that I was thinking as someone else which I do often when I want to get something done. But it's these quiet moments, the times when I am totally alone that let me down. So, with that in mind, I'm trying to do all the things I see myself doing instead of drowning in loneliness. Yeah, I never give up, but I never get anywhere either...

That was filler before the spoilers for 'Last of the Timelords', in case the cut doesn't work.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk and Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall just arrive. So I'd count today as a good day, despite not having cracked them open yet. I just have a good feeling about them. Especially Raw because it has the same style cover as the Phineas Poe trilogy. Chuck, had lost his luster but he'll always have a place on my shelf as long as he doesn't get to be like Clancy or Grisham with his stories.

These stories, by their mere ideas are influencing my innovative form story (which is not the Black Luck story), the one with the Journalist/Mental Patient, Therapist, Detective and Poet. Rant's full title is Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. It says 'oral' *snicker*. So it's Buster's story told via interviews. At least part of Untitled has to be this way. Raw Shark Texts has an amnesia victim or multiple amnesia victim trying to evade a shark which wipes minds, before it does it for the final and fatal time. There's a therapist in it, but also, it's innovative. Think House of Leaves.

I've since found another book I've ordered. The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits. It seems to play with form in a way that I'm aiming for. But finding all this stuff that is kind of what I'm aiming for leaves me wondering about much of the innovativeness of the story.  This story has a modern story where Mary is attending her mother's funeral, a story about her in the 80's after she may or may not have been kidnapped and a story about a kidnapped girl who is never named.  And at least part of that is told from Mary's therapist's perspective.  So, something to learn from- especially since I can't do the primary research right now.

So how has my idea for the story changed?  I guess I was ambitious in the reality/unreality way I wanted to present it.  Like in a found file.  I found a good example in D.A Stern's Shadow's In the Asylum.  Which is purely found and written notes/emails, the story is told without someone telling it.  I wanted to be more direct.

Recently I've been thinking, what if I wrote scenes that clash against what the characters are doing, like what the writer intended.  But I still want the whole reality to be open to debate.  I want enough for people to say 'That's just crazy-talk' as well as 'They are just fictional characters.'  So, don't know yet.  But now that my fingers are warmed up, need to go...

Think I found an idea, but it's unlike anything I've thought of, because I've been avoiding this, and it's semi-biographical, so safe- in theory.

Okay, if you know me, you know my writing style has been from the Gothic, to the Neo-Noir, the crime capers and most of it has dream-like images. And that I have trouble with character, I know what to do externally to make it appear like the characters have the same internal logic, but I don't know if I know the internal all too well.

For the last few years I've been disconnected from anything I cared about, cast out to sea and smashed up against the rocks from everyone expecting something different. Externally I've been trying to follow every logic, possibility and characteristic- none of which I've every fully involved myself in, because I knew everything I was doing was a placeholder for what I really feel. Which, at the moment, I have to say feels like nothing. Well, except guilt and awkwardness and doing the wrong thing and when that is the only thing you feel, it's a problem. It could become something you pursue, consciously or not, just to feel. Some people physically harm themselves others mentally, I guess.

I admit, I find it hard to think in social situations, merely because of the fact that they are that, social. Imagine you are starving, locked up in a room and suddenly you get lead to a room with a feast on one side and on the other is everything you need to make your own food. You're not going to cook, you're going to go to the feast, negate table manners, gorge and creating an almighty mess. Doesn't mean that afterwards, when your belly is full of empty calories, that you don't think you should have made something substantial and healthy, but by that point it is just that- a thought and an after thought at that.
Sometimes I think along the terms of a tank. Like a fish-tank, where it is constantly being filled and what it's being filled with is up to you- mostly. It depends how much time you want to spend stopping other people from filling it with liquids you don't want. Urine would be a good example.

This is becoming too full of imagery. What I'm trying to say is that I'd like to experience a moment that is pure me, or the self I picture for me. And I know I always blame family, but that's because I always go the easy route, and they do make things hard- As soon as I was born, my mum pictured her retirement, with me taking care of her- she was 21. My Uncle, every time he sees me or my brother- well he's just an arsehole and you can't help wondering what he's making up for. As for the other two uncles, the other is also an arse and one is normal.

But I feel the need to understand them, always had, but like I said, they never made it easy.

So, I've been told many times- not in too much detail cause it's my mother telling the story- about how they grew up in poverty in Hong Kong. I mean they couldn't afford food, let alone school for all of them and I wonder how could you choose who goes? They all work hard from a young age. They were different then, they had dreams and whimsy. Fighting hard to live, I think over time that has distorted to purely the physical sense, especially in the case of the ones who didn't go to school. The differences, what got them to England, seems to be too well hidden nowadays and they all came for different reasons and not at all at the same time. I have to ask more about the past.

My eldest Uncle, who'd conned and painted and decorated as well as other various jobs, along with the brothers- he now owns a Fish and Chip shop. A simple life, one he might have dreamed of, but I noticed all the books in his house were bought in the 80's and they might have been his Wife's. He went to University, that's where he met my aunt, even before my cousin was born they were a work to live couple. She gave up Nursing to co-own the shop. Talking to him now, is impossible. I always get the feeling he's making up for not feeling educated anymore- I can relate. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's a reason I'm set on a career in creative writing. I don't want to find my place and then maintain it. One of my cousins is studying to be a Doctor, the other is Autistic, so I understand the need for calm, but he seems to look down on my mother's branch of the family tree and while my brother and I have interests that keep us busy, my mother has none of that and is too traditional to even try and think badly of him, even defending his total disrespect for any of us and he never even found out about me turning into a drunken stoner when I lived with him for a year!

My second Uncle, he's vague in the foggiest sense of the word. What can I say, he came over to England when I was seven. He played guitar back in HK, so you have to wonder what they had to do to get it- but anything resembling creativity has been absent for years. In fact, I've yet to determine an ambition as he'd only worked at the shop, on and off for years. He recently acquired a Wife, who used to be a pen pal, I think he knew her before he moved. Not sure. But he's taken on board some of the worst attitudes from Uncle 1. They argue like brothers, but beyond that, I'm sure he's got what he's supposed to out of life. To them it must feel like a jackpot having a job and somewhere to live, but I need to make my own journey and it can't be the same one as theirs because no matter how I try to be satisfied with routine, I'm not. It's not often I follow my instincts efficiently, but I enjoy collecting scraps of information and forming a big picture of the world. For every new thing you do, I feel it makes you a new person, if only for the fact that you consumed something into yourself and there are strands upon strands and sometime I can't see the wood for the trees, but I've still not felt that sense of achievement. Not when I went back to college, Uni, nothing. I still feel disconnected and unsupported.

My mother. What can I say. Sure I have a problem with her. Here's this woman who basically said from day one 'Our destinies are intertwine and when I'm old and feeble you're going to take care of me'. Fine, but please don't say it for the other 9125 days. I mean could you make it feel less like an obligation and more of a choice. I don't get it, I really don't I mean I choose to believe that she did work hard. And I know having to look after a child is not easy, so why continue acting like they still are? Me and my brother are out of there, so I'd like to see some of that determination back. Because of certain things when I was younger, I was never disillusioned into thinking that grown-ups know best or everything. But she does, and maybe I shouldn't have played along. Because to her, there isn't more things in heaven and earth than she dreamed of, tradition is all important to her. She actually makes me feel guilty for taking time to do things I need to do for University, taking time to think about things that don't directly relate to your life for instance.

The Youngest Uncle, came over for University and a whole lot of maths books. He went back to Hong Kong and became a teacher and now lives in the house they managed to buy. I mean, it's weird, kind of poetic that he returned. I also think he's the one I like most, except when he tried to teach me maths. I never got it. He's married to a divorcee, with two teenage daughters now and one of their own.

Each of them had something they wanted to achieve. So I'm trying to work out if they are really being supportive just because they have and think that I should have the same. Maybe I need to write about alternate universe versions of them to reconcile my thoughts about them, even if it'll never happen as long as we're all the same. I see enough of their bad habits in me, and not enough of their good ones, from when they're younger.

Obviously if I want to make a story out of their background, it needs to not be a rant, but I need to figure out how they became what they have. Is it because they obtained their goals or have families or can appreciate the simple things more? Writing keeps me restless, I also want to achieve something. Somethings, because I'd always want to try something different in my writing and it's endless.

Have to start getting up a lot earlier to fill this in before I start my day. But anyway here's what I plan for the rest of the day...

"I finished off the journal entry and decided to finish off this reading of The Exquisite by Laird Hunt because of it's questionable reality. I could do with a lot more Philip K Dick in my collection and to learn from, but I'm out of money for at least 23 days. So far I've found the descriptions really well done: 'There was a laugh: a box full of electric light bulbs being stepped on, a school of small frozen fists shattered against a wall.'  This description, brings to mind the old man's laugh perfectly.  The sound of a failing body, cackling, static and fading.  And Kindt himself is such an old man who's full of life, like someone's nice grandfather.  Although he's also faintly terrifying and a bit of a strange one.

The shifts in realities (or perhaps it won't turn out to be, the blurb is ambiguous on this) come unannounced, as does the shift from first person to second, while still relating to the main character.  The shifts?  They come fast and go just as you register them.  I'm only on page 69.  If I have extra time today, I'm going to read something else.  But also I want to re-watch Doctor Who and eat."

Okay, bit of a rusty start and I realised I should have written the section as if I'd been through the day.  But I don't want to edit now.  As I've got a lot to read.

Here's how it really turned out:

 I watched Doctor Who and made a sandwich.  At nine, I got tempted by a documentary about a middle aged woman looking into looking young again.  I don't know why.  After about half an hour, I got to reading.  I thought about getting comfortable and fell asleep in bed.  Woke up and stopped reading about page 120 and messed around on the net.  The net.  I think it is an addiction, I mean the cons are outweighing the pros and I could have read another 50-60 pages by now, because I'm writing this after I trimmed my sideburns and showered and I don't know that I did anything useful before that.  The book is getting very interesting, but the switch between realities or location or whatever the hell it is is getting to be alternating chapters.  Still annoyingly hard to keep straight the events and to work out if they are indeed separate or part of the same storyline.  This is further mixed with events that Henry the protagonist tells you happened, but then in the next few sentences tells you it was what he wished happened.  So not a book you can lose concentration on.  Anyway, since I slept I'm going to read some more.

Don't know why, but I always assume that there'd be nothing to distract from the plan.  Yet it always happens.  But that's what this blog is for.  It helps me plan out what I want from the day and have something to reach for, even if I don't achieve it and it provides me with a more realistic example of what I can do, so I can amend the plans.

EDIT: Made it to 160, but need to tidy the house today.  So not much scope for variations!

The disappearing girlfriend story is going to be the one I'm going to write. I really need to spend more time thinking on it, because after a few minutes I think I cracked the key to it. The way to stop it feeling like just a self-aware-fictional-character-breaking-the-fourth-wall story. I'm not sure how much the figure of the writer is going to work into it, but the writer is going be disciplined the way I wish I am. He's going to be a composite of all the extremes I've read in interviews. But he's never going to be part of the story, just discussed by the characters. Also he is a he because it is another Noir influenced story. I didn't want to do another one, but we'll see how it sidesteps into a thriller, if it does.

The characters need work, because I want them paying against what the writer intended for them.

The protagonist was meant to be the antagonist in the writer's mind and his language should reflect this with pitch black, almost psychotic descriptions and he should have the charm of a true villain, but he's gone and done his own thing which leads further from his intended plot.

The Doctor. Total stereotype as he was only meant to have a small sections. But enough details should be considered to allow him to have tangents and quirks. I don't know what yet. I mean characters should have lives beyond what you intend for them. Making them point behind you and run away when you look is not the same as them telling you to look and then them hitting you over the head when you do.

The Detective. Is a bit part, but should be well rounded as he was supposed to be the protagonist. I'll think about this in the morning. Basically he's here to let the reader know what happened to the other two. His report should be straight forward and describes action rather than detail.

No idea on the story yet. Well some, none solid. I'm starting on character.

And I'm really sleepy.

Zzz.

What have I learned about presentations? I can not do one to save my life...

Today, or Tuesday in innovative fiction I had to do a cyberpunk presentation. I thought I was pretty prepared. I had the information in mind and the only thing missing was sleep. But I knew what I needed to know, back to front and inside out. I mean I can still rattle off what I want to say right here and I don't even have the book anymore. What is it like? It's like I concentrate on what I'm not supposed to or can't at all around other people. When I am placed in a moment my my flops like a fish out of water. But even a thrashing fish catches details.

So this was how I planned my presentation.

Open by telling about the short story CYBERPUNK written in 1980 by Bruce Bethke. It's basically more about hackers than the technology. The technology in this is less of a focus than in the later cyberpunk stories but this story is the origin of the word.

Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep verses Blade Runner.

I think the differences in characters between the book and the movie illustrates the differences between sci-fi and cyberpunk. Deckard- played by Harrison Ford in the film- is single in BR whereas in the book he is married. The difference makes his more on the edge of society because BR Deckard is also retired. Retired is a phase used for the killing of a Replicant, known as this in the movie only. In the book they are called Andys short for Androids and Blade Runners are just known as Bounty Hunters.

Andys can only live for four years in the book because that is how long before they deteriorate. Replicants have a four year shelf life because they could be dangerous otherwise. It is a fail-safe from Replicants becoming more human and in keeping with the technology is dangerous themes of cyberpunk.

Replicants become murderous in the film because they want to extend their lives. In the book they merely want to come back to earth. Back home. This brings us to moral ambiguity in typical cyberpunk. Blade Runner is also know as a Future Noir story or a Neo Noir story. It is this Noir element which makes cyberpunk different from Sci-Fi.

Neuromancer by William Gibson is the archetypal cyberpunk novel. Which brings a different narrative voice to sci-fi. The voice has a lot in common with Noir, especially that of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow character. It is this focus on low life, high technology which defines (at least in part) cyberpunk.

The Characters, their use of technology and affiliations.

CASE
Case was a 'Console Cowboy' (Hacker) before he did something he promised himself he'd never do- steal from his employers. They got revenge by damaging his nervous system with a toxin, just enough so that he cannot access the matrix - a digital construct of shared consciousness. They allowed him to keep the money because he'd never be able to work again. He spent some time in Chiba city, where semi-legal/illegal operations with expertise on physiology are cutting edge, but they couldn't fix him. He later became a drug addict, getting high and destroying his pancreas and liver.

He is cohered into helping Armitage with an offer he'd lost hope of: Repair to his nerves, which would allow him to enter the matrix again. He agrees to this before finding out Armitage's plan. But Armitage has protected his investment by making sure Case also has a new pancreas and plugs in his liver so that he cannot get high off of his usual stuff. Armitage has also placed toxin sacks in Case which slowly dissolve and ensure his co-operation if not loyalty as Case has no alliances. Still one of the first things Case does is find a way to get high in spite of Armitage's effort to keep him clean and functional.

MOLLY
First introduced in Gibson's short story Johnny Mnemonic, which the film is partially based on. Molly used to be a meat puppet. A kind of prostitute which has an implant that shuts off the brain and loads up a program into the body. She did this so that she can afford cybernetic enhancements, such as her claws. The implant is not 100% effective as some memories come back, and Molly discovered her bosses found out about her modifications and decided to use her as a fetish meat puppet and she remembers killing a girl in while a Senator is getting off on it she became aware and she kills him. Molly meets Johnny and helps him escape the Yakuza, but they hadn't escaped and years later Johnny is killed.

We meet her in her Razor girl phase. Her eyes are protected by mirrors which display information which are grafted to her face. She also has increased reflexes as well as her claws and she still uses a a gun. We find out she works for Armitage not because she was forced to, but because she wanted to. She's tough and lethal, a femme fatale, but shows enough vulnerable moments for Case and the reader to find out about her past. Ultimately she lives for the action.

ARMITAGE/CORTO
He is a rebuilt human. Born off of the legless, jawless, barely living body of Corto. He is not as in charge as he seems and the basis of his personality is the last memories of Corto. Wintermute, manipulated enough events so that Corto's body was reconstructed into Armitage who is sort of a servant in the real world to Wintermute who is an Artificial Intelligence. Wintermute created the Armitage personality by manipulating Corto's sense of betrayal, but making Corto seem unreal to Armitage, but Armitage begins to crack.

WINTERMUTE
Half of an AI program whose purpose is to merge with his other half. Even an AI or maybe especially an AI is morally loose in this world. Wintermute is manipulative and would do anything with the patience to back it up. His plan was put in motion years ago. Wintermute appears as memories, anyone you remember, so to different people he can have a different appearance. He sometimes appears in monitors and has control over a lot of mechanical systems. There is a Turing act against AI's becoming too powerful or too self-aware. Again showing fear of technology.

FLATLINE
One of the first things Armitage had Case do is to help Molly break into Sense/Net and steal Flatline's Construct. A construct is a replicated consciousness stored on ROM. It is not really the person's consciousness, but processes the memories of the person and will not change. They needed Flatline's expertise. Flatine is named so because he came back from brain death several times.

RIVIERA
Someone they force to join the team because he can manipulate people into seeing things because of his implants.

3JANE
A clone who runs TA while the other clones or members are in cryogenic sleep. They take turns.

Other notable things in the story is that animals seem almost extinct. A feature used in both DADOES and Blade Runner. While most of these concepts seem familiar now, at the time they were pretty innovative, but ultimately I think cyberpunk is just a label.

That's what it would have sounded like if I could concentrate around people... Remember it would have only been my half of the presentation.

Since I don't want to buy another notebook just yet I think I'll try and log my writing here.

I had a couple ideas:

Birthday Boys, which tells the tale of two men whose Birthday's are the only thing in the narrative. Each birthday they get an extra line to indicate their age and like Mark Z Danielewski's 'Only Revolutions' their stories would have started from each end of the pages. There is no reason for it except to save trees, but if I were to make one up I'd say it's the nature of life. One person dies and another lives. It's the circle of life!

Unnamed, a story spanning a number of years where this guy who is suffering from alzheimer's disease is the narrator, we learn about the past as he recalls/relives it due to the disease. Character's were going to double up and the way you tell the difference is their speech and solid characterisation. In parallel to the past would be a modern murder mystery. This structure would be kind of 'Lost' meets 'Demaphoria' (Craig Clevenger) meets 'The Exquisite' Laird Hunt in the confusion around what actually happened/is happening. This one seems tough to pull off, I still might do it, but I don't want to be half-arsed about it and what research I did into Alzheimer's made it seem hard to pull off a narrator who has it. I'm just not skilled enough yet.

Unnamed #2, I don't know- it seems to be the one I want to do. It's Noir soaked and weird. A guy's girlfriend disappears and as he investigates it seems more and more likely that she had been re-written into another character and that the narrators world is just an authors imagination.

I have given a lot of thought to the form of Unnamed #2. It's going to appear as a file on the narrator, with comments on his notes, transcripts and investigations by a doctor at a mental institute. The narrator is there because of his belief that the world is fictional. I don't know if I should add a third layer of having a police officer further comment on the doctor as the narrator disappeared from the institute. Holy- 'House of Leaves'(Mark Z Danielewski)/'Pale Fire'(Nabokov) /'Demon Theory'(Stephen Graham Jones) footnote fiction- Batman! Also some people might say it's close to 'Stranger Than Fiction' and 'The Number 23' but I haven't seen them.

So I guess I should get to working out the kinks of this story...

And you can listen to it here.

You can hear how he is one of my influences, I mean he has such vividly rendered descriptions of things that last no longer than a flash from a camera. "The snap of his chrome lighter chimes like a coin hitting pavement" and it gets better...

Even from the two chapters you hear you can see how he plays with language and twists things around.  He presents something to you like a gift- say a carpet- and as you understand it to be a carpet you stand on it thinking how nice it is.  And then he pulls it from under you and hangs it on the wall tapestry style.

Not much to update you on.  I guess I can tell you the books I bought and hope to finish by the end of June (Along with my other unread).

Arrived today...
Ulysses - James Joyce
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott
, Said the Shot to the Head - Saul Williams

Still waiting on...
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
She - Saul Williams

Rock Angel
Celestial music has lost it for me, it's full of dissonance. But rock music with the driving drums, the racing guitar solos? Not even Angels have the voice of some of these rock gods on the scene today. Who cares if they are fake gods?

My ears are ringing with tinnitus, but I have to go.

My feathers freeze for a fraction of a moment as I fall. Falling is freedom, freedom is fast, fast are the windows flying towards my face. But my wings are wet dogs. I feel the impact tear through me as I heal flat on the floor.

But like a teenage boy, I rise fast.

I don't know where I am, but most people- the ones that don't know better would call this a hell-hole. The wall I broke isn't the only thing falling apart. I hurry down the stairs hoping I'm not locked in some condemned building because I might as well castrate my wings right here.

The door isn't locked and as I stumble into the dim earthly light I see it. The answer to my prayers: A man with a chainsaw. My head spins as I rattle off the possibilities. Was I really going to do this? If all Heaven had to offer me was music it wouldn't have been a question. But I want to stay.

My stomach grows numb and full of bubbles, I wasn't aware I had one until now. I stumble past the children on the street and I feel like a pair of naked breasts, the way they look at me and then I knew: I have to do this! The man with the answers has a look of faint disinterest burning dully underneath a hard hat and beard. He doesn't react when he sees me, a tattooed Angel, he must think the wings are fake. They twitch instinctively at the mere thought of being cut on.

I find some money left over from paying for the ticket. Using cosmic voice I convince the guy to cut off my wings. I turn and prepare to really fall. Feelings are different for Angels, but I know by the morning I'd be mortal and my back will be sore as my wings detach. It may be of surprise to learn there's no blood, not yet anyway. My father to mortality asked what I wanted to do with the wings. I tell him to toss them. I have a concert to get to and I love music more than eternity itself.

(I skipped most characterisation, descriptions and feelings to save time in class I may turn this into a longer piece.  Who knows?  For the website where the sample pages come from go here)

I was a yuppie slut today with an eventful lunchtime. On the way to lunch I saw professional looking camera pointing into an alley. As I pass the alley, I spot the model, wearing a lime green dress; there was something odd about it. And I realised instead of looking like a person being turned into a photo, she looked like a photo being turned into a person, because people say they’d never wear the stuff that models wear. She just popped out of the dreary day. The colours, hair and makeup gave a slice of unreality to the scene. Seeing her in the alley I realised that it was an interesting looking alley. Funny how a few seconds can impact your day. It was such an interesting sight, I realised I prefer wondering around London or doing a lot with my day.

I ended up in Boarders, looking at books. By the time I decided to buy some books there was no time to go eat anywhere else. So I went to the in store Starbucks with my books and I slide into the yuppie crowd. Eating my sandwiches and drinking my coffee, as I listen to the attractive French girls speak. I realise I missed culture.

This morning, I did not know what to expect from the day. My work experience at IBF has been spotty. I personally felt I had made too many mistakes, especially when I was on reception. When I was a runner, I got lost a lot, ending up in Russell Square and then Holborn was a big give away. But in a square mile there are so many ways to get lost. On my second day I went up the street to the Post Office. The instructions were simple: Follow the street up and turn right. Look for the sign. Even if it was dark and the end of a long day, it should have been easy to go back. It wasn’t. There were many side-streets that I didn’t pay attention to on the way there. I probably ended up turning down one of those. I can’t tell you for sure, because I just walked until I found a street I knew, when it could have been much faster.

On reception, I got conscious of my voice. I started mumbling and wasn’t that sure of much and I probably lost them those £100, 000 clients they kept mentioning or at least mightily damage the corporate image. Who knows? And then I skipped two days. Stomach bug from ill prepared food, was the reason. Then yesterday I had to skip another day for the deadline of my script was biting my ankles. Never mind that it actually ate my feet before I handed in my script. I spent way too much time checking it when I should have been working on the Series Bible, which I should have been working on for the last month. I should have taken notes on my process too, because I needed to write a self-critical essay from scratch. And you know, maybe I should have been blogging all the time during that, but I’d lost the motivation to blog. Now I realise what blogging or writing is to me: It’s when I stop and process what happened and a time to plan. If I keep it up, things should be much smoother.

Oh yeah, so today. Today I set the alarm for 5:40 hoping this would help me be up for around 6:30. No joy. I ended up snoozing my mobile until it gave up. It does that- snooze it enough times and the alarm goes away. I only properly got up because a housemate left the house at 7:30. (My room used to be a kitchen. As such it is by the front door, has the constantly ticking boiler and the gas mains. Worst room ever.)

Being up at 7:30 gave me less than half an hour to iron my severly wrinkled clothes and have breakfast. I ended up at the bus station at the front of the campus 8:10. I live round the back of the campus, so I have to walk through Frobel, to the path linking Frobel to Digby and through Digby and out the main entrance. And then I wait for the bus, trying to read Cloud Atlas (More on that later). The 72 went by too full and I wait some more. It’s 8:20 and the 265 turns up, having learned of another route from Tegan- who I don’t see much of anymore- 265>Putney Bridge Station>Earls Court>Leicester Square and then you walk to IBF. It doesn’t seem all that quick and when I got to Putney Bridge, it was already 8:30-ish.

I get into IBF maybe 9:30/9:40. And I spend the day in the library preparing the tapes for dispatch. It’s weird, the titles you see, like today I took out a lot of ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ and ‘Ray’. I wonder why. I just got on with that, but it’s a lot of checking stuff off of a list. A complicated list, with shelving codes and IBF numbers and since the tapes aren’t just used by IBF, they have multiple numbers. There are three rooms the M room which has moving shelves and the MW and M-Film rooms. The later two you have to get down and dirty to find the tapes. They are smaller.

While I was in the MW room, the fire alarm went off. I watch as the door almost shuts itself. I grab it just in time to get out. Once it shut, you can’t open it. While the building is cleared the entire staff queue by the entrance. When it was time to be let back in, the guy said we should not be gathered round the building but away. Some things never change. Fire alarm goes off; people will stay near the possibly burning building.

And then I had lunch.

(A previous lunchtime I had been in Covent Gardens. I ate my Cornish pasty in the street, watching the street performer. He was covered in mottled silver paint, head to toe and only moved when paid. I noticed that from behind you could see the grey on the upper part trousers. It disappointed me slightly. It ruined the effect and I went for a walk. I watch the roundabout with the horses and the lights and on the way back I see the performer waiting in line to order food from a cart as he smokes.)

After lunch, I was in the M room when someone almost crushed me with the moving shelves.

Hang on! I said

I bet you felt like Indiana Jones, she said. I know it was an opportunity to be adventurous and cheeky and perhaps at one time I would have been. But I think a part of me has been caged as I just laugh a little. And recount my adventure with the door, during the fire alarm.

There was not much scope for messing up so having done a ‘good’ job; I get to go home early. But soon I’ll be on reception again and nervous about messing up. But we’d get to find out what the city brings then. And I do have the two books from Borders to read in between the £100, 000 clients. And maybe one day I’ll be one of them.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/0571219357/ref=pd_rvi_gw_3/203-9647519-6424700

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peace-War-Forever-Free-Gollancz/dp/0575079193/sr=1-2/qid=1166141897/ref=sr_1_2/203-9647519-6424700?ie=UTF8&s=books

From EHarmony (Idea borrowed from Bill mvaldemar)[Unknown LJ tag]