On the Ledge

A Personal Blog

 

I had a dip, you might have noticed in some earlier thoughts I shared, mainly regarding losing my Mother and being reminded of this by the fact that my Parents Wedding Anniversary and Mothers Day being within three days of each other.

My Blog is my safe little corner of this cyber world, here I have always felt safe to express myself and write more than I could ever say in person and I write only a fraction of what I would like to say.

Having this space has given me the ability to work through my emotions and safely express myself, no one is forced to read my words and no one is obliged to reply, which places me in a comfortable situation. My life is interwoven with my ongoing ‘Not-so-short-short-story’ and I can find some measure of peace of mind.

A fellow Blogger recently sent me these precious words of wisdom:

So I started to write, and write I did… It took me three days to write the following notes and even though I know I am not an expert in such thingies, you need to understand that I wrote these words for me… I know that sounds selfish, yet at the same time, I am sharing them… Because maybe, only maybe, they just might resonate to someone else out there in cyberspace…

*Dedicated to all those who find themselves lingering on the ledge*

 

With Love,

Anne Harrison 30.03.17

Work in Progress

This is what the current working notes chaos mess is like, what I carry around in the black hole of my bag and add to bits when I’m waiting for a bus or otherwise randomly inspired.

Apologies – I write in pencil a lot – also there is a random spoiler somewhere in the scribbles, but you might not be able to decipher my dreadful handwriting and atrocious spelling… (Hopefully) …

… Sharing this and The Not-So Old Notes as a little oddity into my random writing process…

 

 

Anne Harrison 29.03.17

The Not-So Old Notes

Finding scribbles of notes which never came to be…

… Discovered at the bottom of my bag while searching for a Theatre Tickets that I swore I printed off weeks ago, instead I discovered all these random musings…

 

 

 

 

Anne Harrison 29.03.17

Four Word Story

Today, my watch stopped…

 

 

Anne Harrison 23.03.17

 

Milestone Mayhem

Some happy musings…
So, my silly little ‘notsoshortshortstory’ has reached the milestone 50 posts!

I hardly imagined that a simple workshopping story from my old creative writing class could have developed into quite a lingering tale, which is still flourishing nicely…

I appear to be collecting milestones here currently,  apart from Part 50… I now have 150 people following my humble little blog…  *Waves To Everyone*

Thank you everyone,  I know it’s only a baby blog and many of you have thousands of readers…  But I’m so thrilled,  especially for people putting up with my brain dribble…

Also!  This happened:

And then:

Followed by:

*Does happy little Dance*

Thank you for being there and helping me achieve this lovely collection of milestones.
Love Anne x

17.03.17

Of Heroes and Fools

Spoiler – I’m the Fool… 

 

Here I am, pondering over Story Structure, collecting sources of inspiration. Dreaming in character and re-reading through old University notes…

… Here’s something which has been brought to light, I don’t have a Hero!

I used to have a Hero… He had no name and is simply known ‘The Guardian’, but Kane killed him back in Part 14. How can I follow the well established structure of The Hero’s Journey, if I don’t have a Hero? Does the Hero need to be male? Yet none of my characters feel as though they are the main character… Is it possible to have a tale without a main character? Neither, do I have a main antagonist… I would be tempted to say this was The King, Yet my initial introduction gave him a Fatherly figure but he developed into a Tyrant… He’s dead too… Oops…

I don’t have any answers, just a collection of random tangled thoughts and self doubts that because I don’t follow a structure, because I don’t follow the rules of writing as gospel, I tell a story, I don’t show. I like to think of my ‘Notsoshortshortstory’ as a campfire tale. As I’m sat around with my friends, making up a shaggy dog story on the spot, telling what I see in my mind as if I was speaking to friends under a star lit sky.

I write without a plot, I scribble a few notes, but I’m still stuck regarding the next part currently. So while I’m bumbling along with writers block, you get my insane musings instead. But my little shadow of self doubt questions if I am a true writer?

I write, I love writing, I make things up on the spot and keep rolling with a tale because it doesn’t feel ended yet. But am I a writer?

Because I don’t have a hero…

 

Anne Harrison 14.03.17

The Best Thing About Blogging

Simply… All you other gorgeous Bloggers out there in blog land!

I adore discovering beautiful blogs to follow,  I passionately read through new posts… I have shed tears at devastating experiences people have bravery shared and laughed freely at amusing tales.

I love to read other characters come to life through the words of fellow writers. I find inspiration and feel inferior at times.  (most of the time)

I relate to a wide blogging family and hope you keep your words coming…

Thank you all

Love Anne x

03.03.17

Falling in Love with the Imaginary…

Friday Lunchtime Ponderings…

…I think I have covered, or at least started to cover, this topic before… But I possibly got distracted and danced off on another train of thought before I could put finger tips to keys and pull the words out my brain…

Disclaimer: I’m not clever, I don’t understand  psychology, nor pretend to, I can not include any intelligent quotes (because I’m not sure what they mean) nor do I have any answers… Sorry my friends, all you get here will be some mad ramblings…

Rambling Commencing: Isn’t it just delicious how we, as normal every day mortal folk, can find ourselves in love with the imaginary. The characters that grace books, screen, cartoons, comics, games, movies and so on… The lovable rogue, the bumbling fool, the anti-hero, the stone cold killer, the gunslinger or the sheriff… No matter what genre of fiction we embrace, we will find these archetypes and we embrace them, we follow them through their ‘lives’ we may visualize them differently from authors descriptions, artists representations or actors, er… acting…

Fandoms are born from people sharing the same passion for certain characters or series of adventures, it expands, morphs into Comic-Cons, beyond that to entire theme parks, events, studio tours… Where we the mundane can step into the world of Fantasy, Fiction or Sci-Fi etc… We dress as our favorite characters, we have lightsaber  battles with Jedi when we’re dressed as Sith… Wand duel with a Slytherin while taking a selfie and sharing it on social media… These things bring total strangers together, we can talk about the ridiculous without actually sounding ridiculous, because the stranger we’re chatting too understands perfectly the made up jargon you’re talking about…

It makes me (personally) feel like I am part of a huge family, I am a cosplayer, I admire the creativity the dedication and perfection of come costumes. I’ve never tried LARPing, but this could prove to be the ultimate step (for me) as a (non)writer, to become your own character, to act as they would act and put yourself in their shoes…

This whole concept is so expansive and so inclusive, I don’t think I’ve really scratched the surface here and could express myself further, include more examples, genres or characters… Good or Bad, Love them or Hate them… None of this ‘world within a world’ would even begin to exist if people hadn’t sat down, picked up a pen and wrote about the imaginary people inside their heads, by doing so, they crafted life, love and a whole realm where nothing is impossible in a world where we are restricted to reality, sometimes the incredible can be tangible.

Yet none of it would be so if there was never a ‘Once Upon a Time’ …

I’m going to get back to my own writings shortly and I’m going to leave you with a passage from Michael Moorcock, introducing one of his most chaotic anti-heroes… This is where I fell in love with the imaginary…

“It is the color of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. From the tapering, beautiful head stare two slanting eyes, crimson and moody, and from the loose sleeves of his yellow gown emerge two slender hands, also the color of bone. “

 

Anne Harrison 17.02.17

Question…

Just when does a short story cease to be a short story and morphs into something… erm… longer… and just what is just slightly longer than a short story, but not as long as longer could be… and with ideas rolling on top of ideas, but with no conclusion in mind, how do you stop? Do you stop? Or do you keep writing because you can’t stop writing?  Because your characters demand life, even if you can be mean to them, they haunt your thoughts, your dreams and daydreams alike… you know how they look, how they smell, how their voices sound like… if they dream in black and white…

I’m nearly on post 30, from what began as a singular adventure has evolved into a tale i did not expect… it’s not brilliant,  it’s not supposed to be, each part is written as free writing,  straight from my head to the screen, with minor editing and no plot to speak of, just whatever pops into my mind… I write because I love words, how words can paint an image in another’s thoughts from how you string them together,  to give characters life…

I honestly have no idea where my ‘short story’ will lead me?
My characters haven’t told me yet!

Anne Harrison 11.02.17

Leicestershire Landscape

A Brief adventure into the fumbling form of Photography…

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As my mad scribblings race ahead of my fingers, my written notes skip ahead to Part 33 and my mind races way beyond this as inspiration has flooded my thoughts. I was aware that I had not shared my rambling musings recently, which is just another aspect of this blog.

I have been writing considerably, the book on my desk is packed with my mental vomit as I use my words to work through the pesky brain worms in my head…

I keep writing ‘Getting There’ like some form of mantra, it pops up on my pages frequently and I like this concept – Although I do not know where I am going, I’m still getting there…

Last week I bravely ventured forth and posted a collection of my artwork – yet I would not classify myself as an artist… This week, I thought I would share some of my photography – Though I would not classify myself as a photographer…

Says the writer, who is not a writer, yet can not cease writing!

 

Anne Harrison 03.02.17