Lorna Loves to Write

Lorna loves to write.  Her first short story, written on a yellow legal pad when she was six, starred a family of mice.  The next year, she wrote a poem about black roses, which caused her teacher to request a meeting with her parents.  Lorna has been trying to cheer the hell up ever since.

She was a kid on a New York Island, and grew up in the Highlands of Scotland.  While there, she couldn’t wait to get off the mountain.  These days, she spends a lot of time trying to go back.

Lorna left University twice.  She wanted to stop reading other people’s writing and concentrate on her own.  These days, she spends a lot of time trying to go back.

Lorna is on wheels, and her day-job involves making the world a more accessible place.  She walks up stairs on the promise of beer and conversation.  She has been dragged up a hill backwards.

Lorna lives with her boyfriend and a cat who thinks she’s a dog.  Her Dad was her first best friend and he’s still on the list.  Sad songs and bad coffee make her cry.  She cries when she’s happy, too.  This confuses people who don’t know she cries when she’s happy, too.  She does not care.

Lorna loves to travel and then write about it.  She once fell off a toilet in Pisa, Italy.   She hasn’t written about it.  Ok, maybe she has, but only once.  Twice.

Lorna cannot read maps.  She doesn’t care.

Closer to home, she and her boyfriend like to kiss (each other)  in public.  It’s disgusting.  They do not care.

Lorna is not normally known by her initials, nor does she like to talk about herself in third-person.

 

(Inspired by a new online writing community.  Details can be found here.)

A Do Not Want List For 2011

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These are things I could do without next year.  Just for the record.

Insomnia/heartburn/bad stress.  Who needs that?  Even if it does mean blog posts can run through your head at four in the morning.

My internal Editor.  Shut up, seriously.  When in doubt, let it out.  Just do it.  Write it/say it/send it.  And do a little dance when you’re done.

Mail that consists only of bills.  See Item 1.  Anyone want a pen pal?

Fear of turning 30.  It’s happening in March.  If I was scared, I’d be screwed.  Considering that on any given day I feel 8, 19, or 83 and half years old, 30 is just a number.

Cabin fever.   Get out of the house.  Now.

Bad coffee.   I don’t have the time.

Out-of-Order signs on accessible toilets.  Or said toilets being used as supply cupboards.  Or no accessible toilet at all.  Because I don’t want to pee on the floor.

Living in a place called Procrasti Nation.  Do it today.  And then do something else tomorrow.

Unfinished/Neglected projects.  Do SOMETHING towards SOMETHING every day.

Scatterbrain Suzy:  Put your cards back in your damn wallet.  Put the phone back on charge.  Tape your keys to your head.  File your paperwork.  Don’t leave books in the fridge.  Throw stuff away.

Inspired by a Reverb10 prompt.

 

What’s on your Do Not Want list for next year?

Nostalgia And Other Distractions

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A few weeks ago, Sarge came home from work and caught me doing something.  Something I’ve wanted to keep secret.  I couldn’t stop before he walked into the office.  And he caught me.  I was reading People.com.

I’ve said before that the only time I read gossip magazines is in various waiting rooms.  I suppose that is a fib.  But I’ve never really considered my website viewing actual reading.  I don’t buy gossip magazines.  Except maybe when I’m sick or other times I want to make myself feel better.  Hey, I may not have a job, but at least I don’t have a bad tan job!

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve come home with a gossip magazine magazine rolled up and hidden at the bottom of my shopping bag, underneath my semi-skimmed milk.  But it has happened.

And while I’m on a roll, I like reality shows.  I still think of them as social experiments, and I watch them for extra insight into how people tick.

I wanted to be on The Real World before it got too stupid and I got too old.  At University I thought about sending in an audition tape.  Like all deadlines back then, I enjoyed the sound it made as it whooshed past me.  There is no evidence of this audition tape, you’ll be grateful to hear.

These days, I watch The X Factor while Sarge is at work.  I watch this ‘singing competition’ for the little girl who used to belt out country songs in her grandparent’s kitchen.  That little girl was me.  She grew up and not-so secretly wants to be on The Amazing Race.

I watch soaps, too.  Well, one.  This is also for reasons of nostalgia.  My most prized project when I was 10 was creating a General Hospital scrapbook.  Don’t ask me why, or even where it is, because I don’t know.  I still watch it, every few years, in my mother’s living room at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  Followed by Judge Judy, which I watch here is well.  She reminds me of my Nana.  Watching her yell at people makes me happy.  Although it does eat into my writing time, but everything is research.  And I can write about not writing.

(Inspired by yesterday’s Reverb10  prompt.  I didn’t post it because I was distracted by brightly-coloured websites.  Which I’m going to check again.  And then I’ll switch off the computer and write today’s words.)

One Year Ago Today

This time last year, I was moving into my fifth flat in Glasgow.  I’d lived there since 2006 and had five addresses.

The reason I moved so much wasn’t because I’m fickle.  It was because two of my five landlords neglected to pay the mortgages on the flats I occupied.  And the secure places had lifts that liked to break down when I needed to go to work, or on nights I had tickets for concerts.  During one particular breakdown (with me in it), my friend and I had sushi we’d just bought while waiting for the engineers to arrive.  It was a stair lift that was continually getting vandalised or broken by people who weren’t me/didn’t know how to use it (you had to get in, spin around twice, clap your hands three times and ask it nicely to work.) In the end, the management stopped short of asking me to leave, not very nicely.

I’d found a coveted ramped access place after looking for ages.  I’d looked for ages only to find the perfect flat in the building next door.  On the day I got the keys, I celebrated with Sarge and my Dad, and toasted with vanilla lattes.

And on this day last year, I moved in.  With the help of my Dad and my band of crazy friends.  CJ, on the cat equivalent of tranquilizers from having to move, yet again, was no help.

I set up my bookcases that first night, and it really did feel cozy.   Sarge stayed for a week in the run-up to Christmas and I had a pretty damn good flat-warming party.

We went to see It’s a Wonderful Life, and had vanilla tea and left-over party food every night.  I secretly pretended we lived together already.  I bawled when he left, I’d had such a good time.

For Christmas that year, he gave me his favourite book, which I read on the train on my way to spend New Years with him.  I finished the book sitting in my reading chair at home.  It was my first read of 2010.

A few months later, we were watching a DVD (as we like to do), and he asked if I would ever move to Edinburgh.  ‘It is not outwith the realms of possibility,’ I said.

Two weeks later, he said that the reason he was sorting out his spare room was so he could rent it out, and we could find a place together.  We’d been having dinner at an Indian restaurant and the naan bread stopped short on it’s way to my mouth.

‘Did you just ask me to move in with you?’

‘I think I did, yes.’

‘Well then, I think I’ll say yes.’

After my birthday we started looking in earnest.  We found one building with a set of steps at the front, and opposition when we asked for a ramp.   I figured there was another place for us.  We found this flat and moved in during the first week of May.  With the help of my Dad, my crazy band of friends, Sarge’s friends, and a van.

I have now lived here longer than the flat I moved into a year ago today.  Crazy.  Awesome.  Crazy awesome.

Post inspired by a Reverb10 prompt.

My books, before we put up the bookcases.

29 Stories

And so, my current NaNo effort has turned bleak and predictable.  Even if I do say so myself.

There is a Plan B, and I like it.  Remember when I said I had trouble finishing things?  (NaNo is a perfect example.  However, moving on.)

I am going to write one short story a day until the end of November.  And they will all have endings, I tell you.

If the word-count of my collective stories reaches 50K, I will consider it a NaNo victory.  If it doesn’t, it will be a personal victory.

I’ll be writing from prompts I find here, there, everywhere and on my bookshelf.

While I won’t post the full story, I may post excerpts and I will post the prompts I’m using. You may want to play along. I hope you do.

So, who’s with me?

Oh, and story light-bulb 1 is:  Dinner party

Use that however you wish.

The small print: I first thought of 29 Stories when there were still 29 days in the month.  I’m going to keep that number because it matches my age.  I may double up to write 29 stories.  I may not.  Either way, they will be stories written by me, at the age of 29.  You do not have to be 29 to play along.  I’m now going to stop typing ‘29’. No purchase necessary.