HELL yeah, I did it!

I finally did it. I went up on stage and read my poetry. Out loud. In front of people - strangers. It was, in a word, exhilarating.

Since 2014 kicked off, I'd been looking for open mic poetry nights in order to fulfil my resolution to get my foot in the door. I thought I found one at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden and was all set to have my 'debut' performance there. I even invited my friend along... Only to discover a couple of days before that it wasn't open mic, but a selection of published poets spurting their stuff. Boooor-ing! Okay, not really but it wasn't what I was looking for. I kept searching and eventually came across Rich Mix's open mic session, Jawdance.

It was perfect: free, chilled, and in my favourite place in London. It was made for me to appear at. I invited my bestie and practised my reading in a Sainsbury's in front of a mate. I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then, the night before, I found out the bestie couldn't make it. She had a meeting at her college that was pretty serious and wouldn't be able to travel to the venue in time. I understood and didn't want her to feel bad, so I immediately invited my Sensei in writing whom I'm sure you're all sick of hearing about by now. She was up for it before I even asked - actually, I didn't even get to ask, she sort of just invited herself along. I knew it was a good move inviting her because she's so fabulously insane.

On the day of the performance, I had hours to kill. I finished classes at 1pm and had lunch with some friends, sitting in a vegetarian cafe with them until 3.15pm. Sign up for Jawdance was at 6.15pm so I went to the library and managed to read the last quarter of Mansfield Park. Intense. Eventually I made my way over to Shoreditch.

You've been short-listed! Now give me some money.

I was going to demonstrate my creativity in a creative writing exercise I nicked off my friend for today's post, but then the postman dropped me a letter and it changed my mind. Big time. You see, the letter was from the organisers of a small competition I entered late last year.

They claimed that although I hadn't won, my poem was good enough to have been short-listed and they wanted to publish it in their upcoming anthology. However, first they needed my permission and while they had my attention, would I like to purchase a minimum of two copies of this anthology for the largely discounted price of £25.00 (+£4.99 p&p)?

I don't know about you, but the last book I bought that was close to that price was my poetry anthology for university and that made sense because it has over two thousand pages and the paper is like Bible paper (thin and basically see-through). I quickly learned my lesson and since then, have rarely bought books for my course that were brand new.

Anyway, why the hell would I want to pay £30 on two books that were only interesting to me for one page? I wouldn't. And as for the organisation wanting my 'permission' to publish my poem, they could forget about it. I can smell a scam when I see one (okay, Sharena can smell a scam when she sees one but then she can tell me and I can sniff it too!). I found it hilarious how on the first page of the four sheets of paper they sent me, they dedicated an entire paragraph to trying to convince me they're not vanity publishers. Well, duh, of course they'd say that. I'm sure a vanity publisher wouldn't be proud of the fact and tell it outright!

I'm going to ignore this organisation - which, if you're interested, are called United Press. Maybe they're a stand up company and maybe I'm too cynical but maybe I've found a lucky escape from them and their extortion-like prices. I'm not that knowledgeable about these sorts of things so will probably never know 100% for sure.

In all honesty, I am quite disappointed that the competition ended this way though. I was fairly excited at the start because I was really shy about entering my poetry to competitions. I won't let this experience set me back though! I'll keep an eye out for genuine writing competitions and keep writing and improving so that one day, I'll be good enough to win big. That's the dream, anyway.

Mini victory dance time

As of right now, I am one chapter away from being halfway through my latest WIP. This is something of a milestone. I can remember way back in November when I was panicking about how to go about writing this particular story and now I'm sort of breezing through - though I am wary of saying 'breezing through' because I've been on Christmas break which has allowed me loads of free time to write. Now that classes are back on and (gulp) essay deadlines are once again looming over my head, I may not be as quick finishing this as I could be. Which is fine.

I really do enjoy writing this WIP. It's got everything: advanced technology, people of colour, strong female characters, strong male characters, characters who are gay, characters who die, secret organisations, a corrupt government, underground housing, bombing, trained assassins, aliens (or close enough), science experiments gone wrong, premonitions and swearing.

You won't believe how long it took me to find links on TV Tropes for those (and maybe you noticed, but I couldn't even find links for all of them). It was difficult to find some that applied to my story - which, on the one hand is pretty promising. That means my story isn't filled with over-used clichés and might just have enough of a jumble to be something close to 'original'. Terri is a happy bunny.

Is the government monitoring me yet?

Thank you, Clip Art.

The things I've searched on the internet as research for my story, I'm surprised I haven't been hauled off by the authorities for questioning yet. The physical effects of being drunk/hungover, how long a person can go without food or water, what a thick rural accent would look like written down, how to escape a police chase on foot and the ins and outs of stealing a car.

It definitely sounds like I'm up to no good, judging by my search history. But of course, there's an explanation behind everything Officer, I assure you.

The Tree House

Long, unwashed hair partially covered the face of the girl who slipped through the back door of the house. Her clothes were filthy from spending many nights sleeping in the surrounding forest. Cold bare feet left behind muddy prints on the tiled flooring as she crept around the kitchen.

She swiped the fruit from the fruit bowl sitting prettily in the middle of the table – not the apples, she hated those, but the pears, the two bananas and an orange. In a high cupboard she found a packet of muesli and some chocolate biscuits. She grabbed them greedily; she hadn't tasted chocolate for months.

It was as she had her head in the fridge, debating whether she would be able to carry a carton of milk along with her other finds, when someone screamed.

Conversation or dialogue?

What happens when we talk? Words come out of our mouths and are heard by someone else, who understands what we mean even if - and this is so often the case - we aren't using full sentences. Transfer that way of speaking to writing and what do you get? A whole lot of mess that looks like this:

(1)
Mary  do you know the thing that (Tim)                           
Jim                              (Tim said?) yeah I do (2) and 

(2)
Mary                 =girlfriend of his      she's a wa she's 
Jim   what about that=                   mm                                 
(3)
Mary  a (chav)
Jim     (chav) (.) yeah

It's not very neat, is it? Although it's a conversation I just made up in my head, I modelled it on  a transcript of actual speech, something I'm working on for one of my modules in uni. The more I write it, the more it becomes obvious that this is not the sort of structured dialogue I'm used to. People talking at the same time, using fillers, taking pauses for no reason - and most of all, not talking with punctuation or capital letters?? What is this madness!