200 words - day three

So I wrote this the other week, but I didn't post it after getting some really bad family news. Then I took last week off from the writing because I was pretty sick. Here's to getting back on the writing bandwagon.

BTW, this may seem like an odd version to choose, but I rember when I first saw it and it made me cry.

From the tiny window of his room he could see the small blue-green planet earth. He'd never been, not many people had, but on lunar base 3 it was a constant reminder of where they'd all come from. He visited it in his sleep though, the doctor had mumbled something about ancestral memories and handed over pills to help him sleep. But sometimes he likes the visit. It was beautiful, but terrifying. All the colours were too vivid, nothing he'd ever experienced before, even in the green houses where they grew food plants it was all still muted. The distance to the sky was too much, having lived his life on bases or ships, always enclosed, the openness was scary. But even worse was waking and feeling claustrophobic.

He'd tried to replicate it in a holo room, but he hadn’t managed it, there was something missing. He wondered what it would be like to feel a fresh breeze on his skin, not air that had be recycled so often you wondered how often it had been since it had been outside and how any people it had passed through. 

He reached out and touched the window. One day.

200 words - day two.

I felt the last couple of posts were missing out because they've just been text, so enjoy a nice video of John Lennon, and it ties in  with the dream theme (anyone would think I was just throwing this together).  Today's 200 words inspiration just sort of came out of the blue, and I wrote most of it on my lunch break. Most difficult bit was the last few lines.

**

The alarm has woken her, but half an hour later than it was meant to. The shower ran cold half way through, just after adding conditioner, the gas meter must have run out. It took two goes to leave the flat, a quick return trip to pick up an umbrella to protect against the down pour.

Just enough time to grab a coffee at the train station, she was getting the train after her usual one and it was busy. No seats left, and a man fighting to get his case into the over head rack knocked her arm and spilt coffee sow  her shirt.

Arrived in the office late for a meeting, coffee stained and soaked after the umbrella has turned itself inside out the second she put it up. The report she'd spent a week working on back on her desk, red pen all over it. Returning to a cold, quiet flat at the end of the day that never improved. 

“Gilraen, wake, you're having a bad dream.”

She opened her eyes and found herself in a softly lit room, music was drifting in through an open window. A handsome man was lying next to her, slightly pointed ears visible through his tousled hair.

“Yes, a very bad dream.”

Creative writing week 2

So, this week on the #CNWritingChallenge it's 200 words a day. The prompt is Dreams, which hopefully will be a rich source of inspiration. Below is todays offering.

**

Sometimes I dream of flying.

I'm sure everyone does, it's one of those universal things, the dream to leave the earth we seem to be tied to with invisible chains. We'd all like to escape more than the few inches we can normally manage just by jumping.

Sometimes when I dream of flying it's like I'm a bird, I flap my arms and I'm gone, soaring in the sky, circling like an eagle, looking down at tiny people, cars, buildings, like the world is a toy train set.

Sometimes I have a broom, like the witches I've always wanted read about. Sometimes it takes a bit of running, but then even Granny Weatherwax wasn't perfect. But flying through the night, soaring in the moonlight where there is nothing but peace and quiet (and fluffy clouds) and it's all so calm.

I can go where I like, a trip to the seaside, the azure blue sea with white tipped waves on the beach below. Or maybe over the ever variegated greens of a forest, the bird song drifting upwards. Or a trip to somewhere snowy.

But the main thing, even though when I dream of flying I can go to all these wonderful places, and see wonderful things, I'm alone. I can't fly with a friend, I can't carry them with me to see all the things in my imagination. So maybe I'll just keep my feet on the ground.

Creative writing advetures

So I recently stated following Nadia from cottage notebook on twitter, and as part of New Year she set up a creative writing group of Facebook. The idea is to help creativity, and so using weekly prompts (last week was Nature) try and write everyday. Last week the goal was to try and write 100 words a day. Unfortunately a lot of shit is going on in real life, but I did manage to do some writing on two days.

**

Long, wide path, much like a river bed, winding downhill. Except I’m walking against the current that isn’t there. Leaves cover the floor, knee deep in places, even deeper in the drifts that the wind has blown up at the bend. The ceiling of the forest is mostly bare, the breeze and squirrels making those last few leaves shake on their branches whilst their fallen comrades decorate the floor with their mottled browns and golds, the reminders of another summer gone. The tall, skinny trunks of the sweet chestnut trees stretch as far as the eye can see, giving peace in isolation that’s really on my backdoor step.

**

Early in the morning the howling wind woke me from deep sleep.

Loudly the wind screamed around the corner of the house, whistling down the chimney, battering at the door.

Eleanor was finally here, I heard of her coming on the radio the day before.

Amber warnings in place across the county. Power outages, trains stopped, roads blocked. Cross country chaos.

News filled with weather based stories, keeping all other news at bay.

Our commute to work slower, the walk into the head wind difficult . Thank goodness for woollens.

Reality will slowly return, the world going back to business as usual. Until the next storm rolls in.