Writing Journal- 17/11/13

This week I have been concentrating on two pieces; The Awakening Conscience and the one hundred word short story for the competition.

The Awakening Conscience:

I really enjoyed this task. After studying the painting as a group, and discussing the different ways we could approach the task of writing an 800 word story about it, I was excited about getting started. I knew that I wanted to take the approach of writing from the piano’s point of view, as I found the idea interesting and wanted to explore the idea that the woman in the painting was what eventually ended the piano. I am pleased with the way that my piece turned out, and with the feedback I received for it. There were some minor criticisms about a few choices of words, but I have now changed them.

One Hundred Word Short Story:

After completely changing my idea, I am now much happier with my story than I was with the first. I hadn’t originally come up with the entire idea when I started to write it, it came to me as I started describing a girl. It took me quite a while to manage to get it down to 100 words exactly, but I did it.

I want to explain my thoughts behind my short story, so I will do that here. In the original version, I wrote about how the girl almost couldn’t bring herself to tear her gaze from the other girl’s eyes, because they contained so much sadness. As the other girl is actually her own reflection, this was reflecting how she was staring into her own eyes, as if she wasn’t sure whether she could actually bring herself to move her hand and slit her throat until she eventually looked away and just did it. Also, as well as to create the twist, I wrote it as if she was describing another girl for a reason. This was because she was in a bad place, and in order to be able to bring herself to be the cause of her own death, she had to detach herself from the situation. If she pretended that the person she could see in the mirror was someone else, then it wouldn’t seem as real or as scary.

My quote of the week:

“Home isn't a place, its a feeling”- Where Rainbows End, by Cecelia Ahern

I read this book this week, and when I came across this line, it got stuck in my head. I was thinking about this when I wrote my one hundred word story, because for my character even when she is looking right at herself, she cannot find any sense of ‘home’.