writing-away-in-ingo

[writing-away-in-ingo]

Second Draft

Alterations made to ending in order to make it flow more naturally and be more satisfying for the reader, grammar and spelling checked and adjusted when necessary. 

To work on for next draft:

- Ensure timing throughout the story is accurate and even (maybe delete some of opening section to allow for a longer ending)

- Continue work on ending - still doesn’t fit right

- Add more references to the selkie mythology throughout 

- Add more dialogue between the sisters to show their relationship more clearly 

My alarm goes off at five fifteen.

The house is always freezing in the morning because we can’t seem to get the stupid timed heater to work, so I normally end up pulling on about five layers before I eventually get up the courage to stagger out of bed. Our My bedroom is up in the attic, so I also have to climb down a ladder before I’ve gained any sort of co-ordination in the morning, which has led to me falling on my face more times than I’d like to remember. It isn’t a problem though; I’ve yet to break a bone. I wouldn’t trade sleeping in that attic room for every bruise I’ve got falling down the ladder. It feels like a little secret nest, hidden above the rest of the house, and you can climb out of the front window and onto the flat stretch of roof at the front. The sea looks beautiful from up there.

When I finally manage to make it downstairs, I make coffee (black, I’m not American, I don’t need fifteen sugars) and let Minnie out of the kitchen. She’s so old and so loyal that I’m certain we don’t need to keep her cooped up like that at night, but dad insists that we do. He double checks the back door for foxes every night, triple locks the front. We’ve never had a dog run away before now, I don’t see why it would be the ancient precious collie that finally made a break for it. Minnie loves us all in that wonderful unconditional dog way, but its more than that. She’s a part of the family and she’s very aware of it.

Its possible dad may have some remaining trust issues from you-know-who. I do my best not to think about it.

Minnie and I tend to eat breakfast together, because dad won’t be up for a little while, and its nice to have companionship. I don’t really like eating breakfast, especially this early, but it’s a necessary evil if I’m going to have any sort of luck at surfing when I finally get down to the beach. I’ve tried surfing on an empty stomach and you just end up feeling defeated, which is not the sort of thing I need before a day of manning the shop and café. When it reaches six fifteen, I scoop Minnie into my arms, give her a quick kiss on the top of her forehead and send her in to wake dad. He’s always delighted to see her, no matter what kind of shitty night he’s had, and he yells a greeting through the door for me.

Next, I grab my board and my bag, tossing the dishes from breakfast into the sink as I go, then make my way out of the door. The world is so quiet at this time, especially in the winter months when there are no groups of tourists. It feels like I’m the only person here, like

There’s this huge painting of a selkie woman on one of the crumbling down walls near the cove. The colours are faded and chipped away, but she’s still recognisable, rising from the sea like some sort of ancient spirit. It’s definitely one of the more well-intentioned ones; she has nice brown eyes and a sort of melancholy expression, and there’s no innocently falling-down sealskin to make her seem “sexy” for some reason. Everyone always seems to draw selkies with their tits out somehow, as if you can sexualise a seal. They’re just big round blobs of cute. I never turn into a half seal, half stereotypically attractive woman with one boob peeking out around the skin. It’s unrealistic and sexist. Frankly, it’s a little disturbing.

I probably should have mentioned the selkie thing before now.

It’s a weird sort of thing to put into words. It’s always been a part of my life, but not a part that I’m allowed to share, so I don’t have any practise in putting it into words. When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone had clandestine sealskins that they weren’t allowed to show anybody, and that we were all just really good at keeping secrets. I only learned the truth when I was eleven, and I slipped up and made a joke to Brannok. She didn’t laugh, just looked at me curiously, her big brown eyes all serious. I never talked about it again, and Brannok never mentioned it, but I can still remember how it felt, to feel like I wasn’t alone and then to be reminded so suddenly and completely that that wasn’t the case.

Day Tremayne is the only other person outside my family who knows about my sealskin. I don’t trust a lot of people with a secret like that, but Day is different. He’s lying on the edge of the surf when I jog down – he’s so bold with it at this time of morning. Not many people know about this cove, but I do worry that someone will wander down in the early morning or stay overnight and get a sudden glimpse of Day and his tail. He doesn’t have the luxury of hiding it sometimes like me, but I don’t think he’d like being able to shed it. He’s much happier than most people I meet in this village, able to swim off at a moment’s notice, spending his days chasing the tide or hunting for pearls. He doesn’t like the term “Merman” because he thinks it’s too gendered. We eventually settled on “Mer” as a sort of compromise, but he still doesn’t love it. Day’s one of those people who doesn’t place a lot of stock in language or words, and he has no patience for those who do. I like to joke that it’s a fish thing.

“Caja!”

I wave my arms over my head as I run towards him, the wind tugging at my hair.

“You’re out early! What if someone had seen you?”

He grins up at me, water dripping from his hair.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little, Angove. We wouldn’t be given gifts like these if they weren’t meant to be enjoyed.”

He gives my bag a pointed look.

“Will you be joining me, or will my company be more… aquatic?”

I take a quick scan of the beach. The sand is clear, I can see all the way across to the town, and there’s no sign of anyone coming down the path.

The sea is so wide and inviting. I haven’t had a proper swim in months. Being human means you just dabble along the surface.

Day’s already smiling when I turn back to him. He knows. I scoop up a handful of seawater and throw it at him.

“Stop being smug!”

He laughs as I unzip my bag, rummaging in the bottom to find the hidden compartment that I hide my sealskin in. It’s like warm velvet against my fingertips.

I wrap myself in sealskin, and the world shifts and grows and shrinks until I’m-

The ocean swallows me and I am whole. Water. Shifting around me; push and pull. Swoop down and brush the seabed. Flip up and taste the air. Let yourself fly, let yourself weave in and out of the weeds and the fish and the sunlight.

Crest the wave.

Breathe.

I surface out of the sea in a mass of limbs that are suddenly too long for my body, in a body that doesn’t quite feel like my own, the sealskin gently unspooling from me. Quickly I gather it in my hand, pulling it out of the waves and away from the sand. Day appears next to me in a burst of seawater, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“That was great! I feel like we haven’t done this in ages.”

It’s a beautiful feeling; I’m not tired per se, but my body has the distant ache of a good morning of exercise, and the buzz of adrenaline that comes from open swimming in deep water. My watch says its been about an hour and a half since I changed, but this morning already feels like its drifting away, growing a little fuzzy around the edges. Whenever I wear the sealskin it makes me feel like nothing else matters, like the time I spend as a seal is all-consuming compared to the dull hours I put in at work. Human eyes don’t see the same kind of beauty that seal eyes do.

My phone buzzes, and I look over at it without thinking, without remembering.

abt an hour out! c u soon! Exx

Elowen’s back today. How could I have forgotten that? It’s not like I have anything more important to be doing today. Every day’s the same in the village; I wake up, I meet Day for surfing, I work at the bookshop in the morning and the café in the afternoon. It’s not like I don’t want to remember her coming back. It isn’t like I haven’t missed her. I suppose I didn’t really believe that she would. When people leave my life they tend to stay gone.

“Having a twin is the best. It’s like having a best friend already built in.”

Elowen and I were so close when we were kids. I used to feel like she was my other half, like she was filling in the gaps of the person that I was and making me better

“I don’t understand why you have to go so far. It isn’t like there aren’t science jobs out here.”

She was always cleverer than me, at least in an academic sense. People like to talk about the different types of intelligence like being attuned to people’s emotions is an actual skill you’ll be able to use in the world beyond making people like you. Sure, I’m emotionally intelligent. It isn’t going to give me a job beyond working at my father’s old bookshop. I didn’t stick around for much of school. It didn’t seem to have much of a point beyond making me miserable for a piece of paper which would only confirm how unsuited I am to the corporate world of work. Elowen loved school though. She was great at it, so of course she wanted to keep going. And there isn’t a lot of scientific research work available in a small place like Zennor.  

“She didn’t have to leave us though, did she?”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

I don’t really remember my mother. She only stuck around long enough to push out two babies and leave my father with a crippled sense of self and emotional issues and the burden of being a single father with a self-owned business.

“You’re leaving dad just like she did!”

Sometimes I think my mouth is too big for me. I say things like that and there’s no taking them back. I don’t really think was Elowen did is comparable to what our mum did. She didn’t want to leave us, she just felt like it was what she needed to do to keep fitting in. Elowen’s had a plan for her life ever since she realised that we weren’t normal, and anything that deviates from the plan is something she isn’t allowed to follow.

I just stand there stupidly as they hug, and then Elowen turns to face me, beaming. Her hair is shorter, neatly trimmed so it hangs just below her shoulders, and she’s wearing eyeliner. I never could figure out how to do the wings, even though she offered to teach me. Elowen always looks freakishly normal, ever since she was small, she’s managed to hit the perfect note between stylish and boring. I remember watching her plan her outfits. Working from pictures of her classmates, different styles cherrypicked from the kids that no one bothered, no one questioned. She tends to take a more serious approach to fitting in than I do.

“Caja, I missed you so much!”

I can’t seem to move my feet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

The words are wooden from my mouth, shrouding months of the pain and worry and grief I felt at being separate from her. I never expected her to leave, but once she did, I pretty much gave up hope on her ever coming back. I risk a look up at her, and I’m startled to see there are tears in her eyes. She reaches forward to take my hand.

“Of course I came back.”

Then she notices the wet sealskin hanging out of the side of my bag where I stuffed it, and I see her eyes go hard. Her grip tightens on my hand.

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe to be out anymore.”

I pull my hand away from her and step back.

“I’m not having this conversation again. Welcome home.”

She doesn’t follow me.

When I get up in the morning, for the first time in a long time I’m not alone. Elowen’s dark hair is spread out over the pillow; she doesn’t seem to have been disturbed by the alarm, so I creep down the ladder, trying not to make too much noise. I feel a little strange, like the house is listening in on my footsteps, and if I move too quickly or too loudly, the whole thing will collapse. The squeak of my chair is so loud it makes me jump, and I almost forget to leave the gate open for Minnie, who gives me a confused tilt of her head.

I shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel wrong to have my sister in my house. I can remember nights of staring at her empty bed with tears pooling in my eyes, days of trying to shake the feeling that I was suddenly operating without the use of half of my limbs, half of my mind. I knew it was going to be difficult living alone without her, even with dad. He’s lovely, of course he is, but even he can’t replace a twin bond, no matter how hard he tries. I spent so long trying to get used to living without her that it feels like I’ve done it too well and now I don’t know how to function with her back in my life.

We spend a few days in silence, working around each other, trying not to notice the gaping void that’s opened between us. And then the storm comes, and all of that is left behind.

 The rain is still pouring, splashes echoing down the streets as the raindrops fall into the churning seawater, it’s up to my thigh now. Walking is difficult, and my mind keeps straying back to the sealskin in my backpack. It would be so easy to get it out and start swimming. I could make it to dad’s and back with barely any effort. But if someone saw me things could go very bad very fast. Next to me, Elowen’s face is ashen. She doesn’t deal well with situations like this where the possibilities for something to go wrong are so myriad.

Once I would have known exactly what I needed to say to comfort her, but now I’m not sure if I can find the words. I hate this alien feeling between us. It feels so wrong.  

There are still waves pushing their way up the beach, sending billowing swells of water speeding across the town, narrowing down through the streets and growing in power. A wave knocks into me and half sweeps me off my feet; I scrabble out for purchase and Elowen grabs my hand, but I fall anyway, my purchase lost, legs paddling uselessly against the surge of water. For a second I am underwater, but it’s never felt so wrong; this water is flecked with dirt and dust from the road and it bites at my eyes, at my throat. And then I’m on my feet, Elowen still at my side, breathing the air again, my clothes drenched.

“We need to shift. Dad could be hurt and it’s too dangerous out here.”

Not expecting that. I pull the sealskin from my bag and give Elowen a thoughtful look. She grabs her own out of her handbag, seeming unsure. Gently, I reach out and drape it around her shoulders, tucking it under her hair. She looks up at me, and then suddenly bursts out:

“I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have left. I hated it. I can’t stand not being close to the sea, but you know how important it is that no-one finds out, and I missed you so much, but I couldn’t just come home and now I feel like I’ve spoiled everything!”

“You haven’t spoiled anything. We’re just different now. I just… I felt like you were leaving me, I feel like everyone-”

She takes my hand again, and there are tears in her eyes.

We make the shift together for the first time in years, and I feel a glow of something satisfied, whole.

Elowen insists that we shift back before we get close to the house, hiding in an alleyway as we shrug off the sealskins. We struggle down the rest of the street, one foot after the other, forcing our way through the water. Our progress is too slow, its maddening. By the time we reach the door, the moon is fully overhead, reflecting on the water.

Together, we make our way up into the attic, climbing the ladder. Dad grabs my hand as we come over the lip of the trapdoor, helping to pull me to safety. I register a little late that he’s safe, and when I regain my footing, I fling myself into his arms.

#posted18.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

First Draft

Selkie Story - First Draft

My alarm goes off at five fifteen.

The house is always freezing in the morning because we can’t seem to get the stupid timed heater to work, so I normally end up pulling on about five layers before I eventually get up the courage to stagger out of bed. Our My bedroom is up in the attic, so I also have to climb down a ladder before I’ve gained any sort of co-ordination in the morning, which has led to me falling on my face more times than I’d like to remember. It isn’t a problem though; I’ve yet to break a bone. I wouldn’t trade sleeping in that attic room for every bruise I’ve got falling down the ladder. It feels like a little secret nest, hidden above the rest of the house, and you can climb out of the front window and onto the flat stretch of roof at the front. The sea looks beautiful from up there.

When I finally manage to make it downstairs, I make coffee (black, I’m not American, I don’t need fifteen sugars) and let Minnie out of the kitchen. She’s so old and so loyal that I’m certain we don’t need to keep her cooped up like that at night, but dad insists that we do. He double checks the back door for foxes every night, triple locks the front. We’ve never had a dog run away before now, I don’t see why it would be the ancient precious collie that finally made a break for it. Minnie loves us all in that wonderful unconditional dog way, but its more than that. She’s a part of the family and she’s very aware of it.

Its possible dad may have some remaining trust issues from you-know-who. I do my best not to think about it.

Minnie and I tend to eat breakfast together, because dad won’t be up for a little while, and its nice to have companionship. I don’t really like eating breakfast, especially this early, but it’s a necessary evil if I’m going to have any sort of luck at surfing when I finally get down to the beach. I’ve tried surfing on an empty stomach and you just end up feeling defeated, which is not the sort of thing I need before a day of manning the shop and café. When it reaches six fifteen, I scoop Minnie into my arms, give her a quick kiss on the top of her forehead and send her in to wake dad. He’s always delighted to see her, no matter what kind of shitty night he’s had, and he yells a greeting through the door for me.

Next, I grab my board and my bag, tossing the dishes from breakfast into the sink as I go, then make my way out of the door. The world is so quiet at this time, especially in the winter months when there are no groups of tourists. It feels like I’m the only person here, like

There’s this huge painting of a selkie woman on one of the crumbling down walls near the cove. The colours are faded and chipped away, but she’s still recognisable, rising from the sea like some sort of ancient spirit. It’s definitely one of the more well-intentioned ones; she has nice brown eyes and a sort of melancholy expression, and there’s no innocently falling-down sealskin to make her seem “sexy” for some reason. Everyone always seems to draw selkies with their tits out somehow, as if you can sexualise a seal. They’re just big round blobs of cute. I never turn into a half seal, half stereotypically attractive woman with one boob peeking out around the skin. It’s unrealistic and sexist. Frankly, it’s a little disturbing.

I probably should have mentioned the selkie thing before now.

It’s a weird sort of thing to put into words. It’s always been a part of my life, but not a part that I’m allowed to share, so I don’t have any practise in putting it into words. When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone had clandestine sealskins that they weren’t allowed to show anybody, and that we were all just really good at keeping secrets. I only learned the truth when I was eleven, and I slipped up and made a joke to Brannok. She didn’t laugh, just looked at me curiously, her big brown eyes all serious. I never talked about it again, and Brannok never mentioned it, but I can still remember how it felt, to feel like I wasn’t alone and then to be reminded so suddenly and completely that that wasn’t the case.

Day Tremayne is the only other person outside my family who knows about my sealskin. I don’t trust a lot of people with a secret like that, but Day is different. He’s lying on the edge of the surf when I jog down – he’s so bold with it at this time of morning. Not many people know about this cove, but I do worry that someone will wander down in the early morning or stay overnight and get a sudden glimpse of Day and his tail. He doesn’t have the luxury of hiding it sometimes like me, but I don’t think he’d like being able to shed it. He’s much happier than most people I meet in this village, able to swim off at a moment’s notice, spending his days chasing the tide or hunting for pearls. He doesn’t like the term “Merman” because he thinks it’s too gendered. We eventually settled on “Mer” as a sort of compromise, but he still doesn’t love it. Day’s one of those people who doesn’t place a lot of stock in language or words, and he has no patience for those who do. I like to joke that it’s a fish thing.

“Caja!”

I wave my arms over my head as I run towards him, the wind tugging at my hair.

“You’re out early! What if someone had seen you?”

He grins up at me, water dripping from his hair.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little, Angove. We wouldn’t be given gifts like these if they weren’t meant to be enjoyed.”

He gives my bag a pointed look.

“Will you be joining me, or will my company be more… aquatic?”

I take a quick scan of the beach. The sand is clear, I can see all the way across to the town, and there’s no sign of anyone coming down the path.

The sea is so wide and inviting. I haven’t had a proper swim in months. Being human means you just dabble along the surface.

Day’s already smiling when I turn back to him. He knows. I scoop up a handful of seawater and throw it at him.

“Stop being smug!”

He laughs as I unzip my bag, rummaging in the bottom to find the hidden compartment that I hide my sealskin in. It’s like warm velvet against my fingertips.

I wrap myself in sealskin, and the world shifts and grows and shrinks until I’m-

The ocean swallows me and I am whole. Water. Shifting around me; push and pull. Swoop down and brush the seabed. Flip up and taste the air. Let yourself fly, let yourself weave in and out of the weeds and the fish and the sunlight.

Crest the wave.

Breathe.

I surface out of the sea in a mass of limbs that are suddenly too long for my body, in a body that doesn’t quite feel like my own, the sealskin gently unspooling from me. Quickly I gather it in my hand, pulling it out of the waves and away from the sand. Day appears next to me in a burst of seawater, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“That was great! I feel like we haven’t done this in ages.”

It’s a beautiful feeling; I’m not tired per se, but my body has the distant ache of a good morning of exercise, and the buzz of adrenaline that comes from open swimming in deep water. My watch says its been about an hour and a half since I changed, but this morning already feels like its drifting away, growing a little fuzzy around the edges. Whenever I wear the sealskin it makes me feel like nothing else matters, like the time I spend as a seal is all-consuming compared to the dull hours I put in at work. Human eyes don’t see the same kind of beauty that seal eyes do.

My phone buzzes, and I look over at it without thinking, without remembering.

abt an hour out! c u soon! Exx

Elowen’s back today. How could I have forgotten that? It’s not like I have anything more important to be doing today. Every day’s the same in the village; I wake up, I meet Day for surfing, I work at the bookshop in the morning and the café in the afternoon. It’s not like I don’t want to remember her coming back. It isn’t like I haven’t missed her. I suppose I didn’t really believe that she would. When people leave my life they tend to stay gone.

“Having a twin is the best. It’s like having a best friend already built in.”

Elowen and I were so close when we were kids. I used to feel like she was my other half, like she was filling in the gaps of the person that I was and making me better

“I don’t understand why you have to go so far. It isn’t like there aren’t science jobs out here.”

She was always cleverer than me, at least in an academic sense. People like to talk about the different types of intelligence like being attuned to people’s emotions is an actual skill you’ll be able to use in the world beyond making people like you. Sure, I’m emotionally intelligent. It isn’t going to give me a job beyond working at my father’s old bookshop. I didn’t stick around for much of school. It didn’t seem to have much of a point beyond making me miserable for a piece of paper which would only confirm how unsuited I am to the corporate world of work. Elowen loved school though. She was great at it, so of course she wanted to keep going. And there isn’t a lot of scientific research work available in a small place like Zennor.  

“She didn’t have to leave us though, did she?”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

I don’t really remember my mother. She only stuck around long enough to push out two babies and leave my father with a crippled sense of self and emotional issues and the burden of being a single father with a self-owned business.

“You’re leaving dad just like she did!”

Sometimes I think my mouth is too big for me. I say things like that and there’s no taking them back. I don’t really think was Elowen did is comparable to what our mum did. She didn’t want to leave us, she just felt like it was what she needed to do to keep fitting in. Elowen’s had a plan for her life ever since she realised that we weren’t normal, and anything that deviates from the plan is something she isn’t allowed to follow.

I just stand there stupidly as they hug, and then Elowen turns to face me, beaming. Her hair is shorter, neatly trimmed so it hangs just below her shoulders, and she’s wearing eyeliner. I never could figure out how to do the wings, even though she offered to teach me. Elowen always looks freakishly normal, ever since she was small, she’s managed to hit the perfect note between stylish and boring. I remember watching her plan her outfits. Working from pictures of her classmates, different styles cherrypicked from the kids that no one bothered, no one questioned. She tends to take a more serious approach to fitting in than I do.

“Caja, I missed you so much!”

I can’t seem to move my feet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

The words are wooden from my mouth, shrouding months of the pain and worry and grief I felt at being separate from her. I never expected her to leave, but once she did, I pretty much gave up hope on her ever coming back. I risk a look up at her, and I’m startled to see there are tears in her eyes. She reaches forward to take my hand.

“Of course I came back.”

Then she notices the wet sealskin hanging out of the side of my bag where I stuffed it, and I see her eyes go hard. Her grip tightens on my hand.

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe to be out anymore.”

I pull my hand away from her and step back.

“I’m not having this conversation again. Welcome home.”

She doesn’t follow me.

When I get up in the morning, for the first time in a long time I’m not alone. Elowen’s dark hair is spread out over the pillow; she doesn’t seem to have been disturbed by the alarm, so I creep down the ladder, trying not to make too much noise. I feel a little strange, like the house is listening in on my footsteps, and if I move too quickly or too loudly, the whole thing will collapse. The squeak of my chair is so loud it makes me jump, and I almost forget to leave the gate open for Minnie, who gives me a confused tilt of her head.

I shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel wrong to have my sister in my house. I can remember nights of staring at her empty bed with tears pooling in my eyes, days of trying to shake the feeling that I was suddenly operating without the use of half of my limbs, half of my mind. I knew it was going to be difficult living alone without her, even with dad. He’s lovely, of course he is, but even he can’t replace a twin bond, no matter how hard he tries. I spent so long trying to get used to living without her that it feels like I’ve done it too well and now I don’t know how to function with her back in my life.

 Day is still waiting at the beach when I come down that morning. We don’t speak. He doesn’t try to ask me what’s wrong. 

#posted17.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

3,500 words - timeline

- Introduce Caja, give detail to her routine as she moves around the village in the morning, allow the reader to get a sense of her character before introducing anyone else, then introduce Brannok as her best friend and her father 

- Make sure to add detail on Caja as a selkie and establish her two voices as a seal and as a human. Also introduce Aiden (the human side of the argument) and Day (the animal/mer side of the argument)

- Produce a reminder that Elowen will be arriving back soon (maybe a calendar reminder or a text? maybe Caja sees a photo of her) 

- Give flashbacks of Caja and Elowen’s relationship to establish the way they act around each other and give the reader a contrasting look - emphasise how they’ve grown apart based on the pressure of having to hide their identities/seal form, and give their polarising views on their mother’s choice to leave them when they were children (Caja is resentful, Elowen is hopeful) 

- Build the tension by repeating the first section but this time with Elowen in the mix and throw off Caja’s routine, throw a few more bickering moments in between the two of them to keep building up the tension 

- As this is going on, have both the sisters speaking with Aiden and Day in order to establish both of their perspectives on keeping themselves hidden and to create interesting parallels and dynamics between the four characters. Include the father and Brannok if more texture is needed 

- Create a breaking point by having Caja do something reckless related to her selkie status (maybe she goes swimming in her skin not at night?) and force the sisters into an actual fight situation

- Make an external point of conflict - some kind of natural disaster (flood? hurricane? storm?) that means the girls have to work together and somehow bring up their mother again in the midst of it. (maybe put the father in peril to mean they need to put their differences aside and to raise emotional stakes) Allow the girls to work through their feelings together and create a resolution in their argument

- Give a final look at the two of them working together, maybe even reprise the morning routine for a third time 

#posted16.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

3,500 words - planning

What is it about? 

A selkie and her struggle to exist as her human and seal selves - gives me good opportunity to work on the different voices/perspectives of the girl and the seal. Her sister has just returned from a work placement away from their village and the two struggle to reconcile their different approaches to living with their secret (being selkies). 

Where does it take place?

Zennor in Cornwall - this will need to be addressed to make sure my sense of place is clear as this was one of the things I particularly struggled with in some of my earlier writing. 

Who are the characters involved?

The MC (Caja), her sister (Elowen), her mother (unknown), her father (also unknown), her friends (Aiden, Day, Brannok) 

What is the main conflict? 

The fight between the main character and her sister because of their different approaches to being a selkie/fitting in. 

How is the conflict resolved? 

Communication between the two siblings (in a dangerous situation? potential) allows them to see past their differences as well as recognising the error in their own ways. 

#posted16.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

Story planning - research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie

https://www.cornwalls.co.uk/zennor

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/selkie-stories-are-for-losers/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n6OwQOPlD0

https://www.connollycove.com/the-legend-of-the-selkies/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_Sea_%282014_film%29

These are the main areas of research I pursued when writing my main story. I needed to complete research into the location I was writing about in order to create a good sense of place in the story. I also completed research into the mythology of selkies as this is another big part of my story. 

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 11 – Writing from Life

·        Core texts:

  -   A Coup (Bruce Chatwin)  

  -   Dead Man Laughing Jokes Run Through A Family (Zadie Smith)

  -   Fes (Michael Chabon)

  -   On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl one Beautiful April Morning (Haruki Murakami)

  -   Three (Sedaris)  

  -   Aftermath (Rachel Cusk) 

·  This week in the seminar discussion we looked at the way that autobiographical writing can be used when creating a short story. We mostly discussed what was actually my favourite story of the week, “Aftermath” by Rachel Cusk. Cusk places huge emphasis on form and not on the actual content of her story, which a lot of the class found strange and alien to their own styles of writing. After the discussion, I decided that there are essentially three ways a writer can make a piece of life writing: it can be a mundane event from personal experience which has greater significance to the author, a noteworthy event that the author personally experienced or a noteworthy event that the writer imagined themselves into. 

·  Most of what autobiographical writing lends to the short story is based in emotional value, which is why I found Cusk’s stance so confusing. By placing all the merit of her story in form, she loses a touch of the emotional conversation with the reader and slightly alienates them from the feeling she is putting forwards in her story. “Aftermath” contains a lot of very personal feeling for Cusk, but it can in places feel somewhat disconnected from the reader and from Cusk herself, because she is so focused on making the form perfect rather than connecting with the emotion that comes through.

· Life writing is one of the styles of writing I really struggle with, because in my opinion fiction exists for a reason, as a form of escapism. For this week I did try to write a piece based on myself and my sister in the run up to my first term at university. I did enjoy writing it but this is an area of writing I really need to persist at. 

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 10 – Building Scenes

·        Core texts:

  -   Bullet in the Brain (Tobias Wolff)

  -   How to Talk to Your Mother (Lorrie Moore)

  -   Reunion (John Cheever)

·        This week’s seminar focused on the different ways that stories can be divided into scenes while still maintaining a solid overall storyline. We also talked about the actual factors that make up a scene - the dialogue, the characters, the actions performed within it. 

·        Part of the seminar discussion focused on the correct way to write a scene in terms of the entrance and exit – after the seminar had occurred, I tried to identify how the scenes I wrote compared to the idea that you should “start late, get out early” (as stated on the asynchronous tasks) and discovered that I often overstay my welcome in different scenes, explaining a lot of the details that do not need to be explained. This has also come up in a couple of the feedback sessions for my writing, so I’m really trying to work on leaving more of my work unexplained and allowing space for the reader to make their own interpretation of the events.  

·        My favourite text from this week’s seminar was “How to Talk to Your Mother”, mostly due to the unusual timeline and separation of the scenes. By beginning the story at its conclusion, the reader is left searching for answers and is encouraged to read on by the curiosity that the story evokes. It makes no attempt to explain itself because Moore is confident enough in her character portrayal that she doesn’t need to explain the details, they are simply revealed through the movement of the rest of the story.

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 9 – Structure: Shape and figure

·        Core texts:

  -   Bullet in the Brain (Tobias Wolff)

  -   Greg and Sarah (Jane Feaver)

  -   The Red Convertible (Louise Erdrich)

·        In the seminar for this week we discussed the different forms and structures that a story can take. We also briefly touched on the differences between story and plot, and the importance of planning when constructing a story. Most of the class agreed that the plot of a story doesn’t need to be completely finished when you begin it, but that without a plan of some kind to map out the narrative progression the story will often become confused and difficult to follow.

·        This week, my favourite text was “Bullet in the Brain”, which I think is a really great example of how to write a well-structured piece including clearly established scenes while also making the choice of scene seem completely random. The use of the man’s dying flashbacks as “things he doesn’t remember” rather than a summation of his most important moments is a really interesting choice and helps the reader to learn more about the character in a really unbiased form, free of any unreliable narration.

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 8 – Voice and Dialogue

·        Core texts:

  -   Love (William Maxwell)

  -   She’s the Bomb (T. Coraghessan Boyle)

  -   The Voices (Elizabeth Taylor)

  -   Cat Person (Christen Rupenian)

· In the seminars for this week, we discussed the ways that voice and dialogue can affect the way that a story develops. Some people in the discussion were of the opinion that the best way to write dialogue was to completely minimise the dialogue in a story. Personally, I feel that while dialogue is often very important to the story, the internal monologue is often much more effective at creating strong emotion in the reader.         

· My favourite story from this week was “Cat Person”, due to the intense realism that the story uses. The best section to demonstrate this is the stream of texts at the end of the story, as the author was able to brilliantly capture the awkwardness of a man who hasn’t grown up with texting (see the mismatched emojis). As well as this, the author manages to create a character that you feel a sort of pathetic sympathy for, then remove that sympathy slowly as he becomes more and more powerless in his own situation and takes it out on the main character. 

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 7 – Point of View

·        Core texts:

  -   Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway)

  -   Life (Bessie Head)

  -   Point of View (Lucia Berlin)

  -   Puppy (George Sanders)  

·        In the seminar this week we discussed the ways that an author can use language in order to differentiate character voices in their narrative. While an author can use devices like accent and vernacular in order to show the differences in each character’s physical voice, it is also important to change the way that the character thinks and forms their words, not just the accent on the outside. We also talked about the ways that point of view can be used in an unreliable manner in order to disorient or mislead the reader, so that a plot twist will have more impact on them. 

·        We also discussed the story “Puppy” as a good example of differentiation between characters’ narrative voices. Marie’s voice immediately establishes itself as an upper middle class, anxious perspective, and she fixates on a few aspects of their surroundings throughout the entirety of the piece, giving her narrative voice a consistent (if repressed) feel. Callie’s voice is much more clipped and efficient, but it’s also much more honest, and it doesn’t have the same sort of romanticised fixation as Marie’s. The two voices contrast very nicely, creating the right amount of friction between them.  

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 5 – Object and Emotion

·        Core texts:

  -   Finishing Touch (Claire-Louise Bennet)

  -   Neighbours (Raymond Carver)

  -   The Pier Falls (Mark Haddon)

  -   Powder (Tobias Wolff)

·        In the seminars for this week we discussed the way that objects can be used within the story to represent different emotions and relationships; even to be parallel to an entire character arc, if they are used correctly. 

·        After the discussion I did also consider how subtlety is incredibly important when working with symbolic objects in stories, and how a poorly executed representative object can completely ruin the emotion of a piece. If the symbolism that the author is trying to create is too simplistic or apparent, the effect is much less than a complex, subtle symbolism. 

·        My favourite story for this week was “Powder”, because of the incredible relationship between the father and son that is presented. It is a really excellent example of the way that objects can be used quite obviously to represent a relationship between two characters - the Austin Healey is such a good representation of the burgeoning trust between the two of them. The story has so many little details that make their relationship ring true to the reader; the Thelonious Monk concert, the specifics of the Christmas setup, the in-jokes between them. 

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 4 – Digging Deeper

·        Core texts:

  -   A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (Ernest Hemingway)

  -   Grist (Georgina Hammick)

  -   Millie and Bird (Avril Joy)

  -   Miss Brill (Katherine Mansfield)

  -   Love Many (Niamh Campbell)

·        In the seminar for this week, we talked about the ways that unconventional relationships can be created and represented in fiction, and what significance the relationship can have on the rest of the storyline.

·        We also touched on the way that objects can be used in order to represent these relationships, mostly looking at “Love Many” and the strange stones that are given to the main character at the end of the text (magnetically attracted and repelled, always moving towards each other but never being able to stay together) but also discussing the objects we could use in our own stories in order to represent the way that different relationships function. I think that a gift from one character to another is often a very telling and effective way of displaying how that character considers the relationship between them, as is an object that is passed down as it tends to hold more emotional significance.

·        The stories that people showed in class this week gave very interesting insights into the different ways that unconventional relationships can be presented, like the example of a woman and her bodyguard in the uncomfortable position of balancing a working relationship with a one-sided romantic attraction. By creating one relationship that was functional and good, then adding another, the author was able to make the dynamic between them more interesting and layered.

·        My favourite text from this week was “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, because of the clarity of the picture that Hemingway presents of the surroundings; his language is so clear and evocative that you really feel you are able to see and hear and feel the place that he is describing. The particularly interesting thing about “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is that the relationship between the two waiters is partially established via the way that they see another person – their conversation about the old man is what allows them to establish their characters, both separate and as a pair.

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 3 – Character

·        Core texts:

  -   Beginning of Augustown (Kei Miller)

  -   Girl (Jamaica Kincaid)

  -   Houses (Mark Pantoja)

  -   Pioneers, Oh Pioneers

  -   Sand (Tim Winton)

  -   Soapsuds (Louis Macneice)

·        The seminar for this week was mainly focused about the different ways that character can be established through the language being used. The way that writing has developed in recent years means that using physical description to hint at character traits is often frowned upon as it often ends with harmful stereotypes rather than an accurate character description. Currently, character traits tend to be established via the decisions that a character makes rather than their physical attributes.

·        In the seminar we debated whether character is a static thing that is slowly revealed or a constantly evolving one, and the opinion was more divided than I expected. My perspective on character is that while aspects of it can be hidden and revealed at the author’s behest, it is constantly evolving and changing along with the plot of the story. Without the character being allowed to change and grow, there is no movement in the story, or in the character arc, and without movement in the story there is no reason for it to exist.

·        In the asynchronous tasks we were asked whether “character” itself is a performance, and we are always performing it except when we are alone. This I do disagree with, as I think true character will always reveal itself despite the performance that a character puts on. When character traits are written realistically, they comprise the core beliefs of the character and help to shape their actions; this cannot ever be entirely suppressed.

·        “Girl” was my favourite short story from this week’s reading material, because I found the style and form really intriguing and effective. By staging the story as a sort of list of tasks, it may seem like a simplistic style at a surface level, but the inclusion of more informal and personal language in some of the tasks quickly delivers more information, which gives the reader more context and makes the story much more intriguing. The way that the main character begins to mirror her mother’s harmful words also helps to establish her character, and her relationship with her mother. By presenting this information as part of the list of tasks rather than openly presenting it, the reader is able to learn about the character without the author just listing facts about them. This kind of work in hiding the important information amongst other facts is something I’ve really tried to work on in my own stories, as I feel they can often be a little too blunt with the information.

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 2 – Place and Mapping

·        Core texts:

  -   Marion (Emma Cline)

  -   Draft Horse (Michael Delp)

  -   The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Kei Miller)

  -   The Garden Party (Katherine Mansfield)

·        This week’s discussion was focused on the setting of the story rather than the content, so we were asked to think about how the setting of a story could affect its movement and atmosphere. We discussed the different ways that setting could completely change the tone of a story, even if the language and characters used remain the same.

·        The seminar also inspired me to think about how the familiarity of a setting can be used in order to either reassure or disorientate the reader – by creating a setting that the character is familiar with, the reader will be at ease, whereas if the character is in an unfamiliar setting, it will be much easier to draw the reader into a state of tension as there are more unknowns in the scenario.

·        My favourite of the core texts from this week was “The Garden Party”, because of the incredible characterisation of Laura and the way that she observes her surroundings. The movement of the setting from the happy, colourful garden into the darker regions of poverty is very polarising and works well to entirely shift the tone of the story from light-hearted to heart-breaking. The language used to describe both the garden and the house is incredibly expressive and vivid, and forms the main backbone of the story, as the plot is fairly short and simplistic. I planned a piece based on this text, this time moving from the beach to the ocean in a similar transference from safety to danger. This piece not only helped me to work on my description of the different settings in order to differentiate them, but it helped me to work on describing a setting solely through the eyes of a single character rather than using a floating perspective to try and get a more generalised snapshot. This aided me in establishing a character voice as well, because when I limited my description to the thoughts of the character, her voice quickly became much clearer and better established.  

#posted16.12.20

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Seminar reflections – Week 1 – Transformations

·        Core texts:

    -   A Visit (Steven Millhauser)

    -   My Wife the Hyena (Nina Killham)

    -   Lady Into Fox (David Garnett)

    -   Mrs Fox (Sarah Hall)

·        Discussion centred around the concept of animal transformation – we each tried to come up with an animal we could use in a transformation story with significance. I picked a chameleon in order to explore the concepts of anxiety within a transformation and developed it into a fuller story, detailing a setting and how the transformation affected the other characters in the story.

·        Other people in the seminar used transformation to represent different emotions – a woman who transformed into a corgi through her royal family obsession, a girl who became a bird through her nervousness at a party, a girl who transformed into a sloth because of her slow nature and her mother, who became a tiger as a representation of her anger. This helped me to see the ways that transformation in a story can be positive and negative, or even devoid of those biases (in the case of a transformation based on obsession or neutral feeling).

·        This week really highlighted how important transformation is to the structure of a story – without transformation we can have no arc within the story, without transformation at its base level the story cannot move. All character development is transformation at its heart, and all story progression is involved with transformation, or lack of transformation.

·        My favourite of the core texts for this week was “Mrs Fox”, due in large part to the stylistic choices made by the author that make the story so unique. The voice of the author is very abstract, hovering above the characters and giving hints of their internal thoughts but never moving into a fully first-person voice. By keeping the reader somewhat separate from the characters’ thought processes, the characters are able to become more animalistic to the reader.

·        Selkie Stories are for Losers (Sofia Samatar) http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/selkie-stories-are-for-losers/

    -    Lots of separated scenes/observational sections that give the story a conversational informal feeling – you begin empathising with the main character almost immediately because the tone makes you feel at ease, even though it’s a little sad

     -   Transformation presented with ease – the movement from human to selkie takes place in a second “She just throws on the skin and jumps into the sea”

     -   “No transformation happens because of a kiss. No one loves you just because you love them.” Shifting the importance away from the transformation of the person into the seal and back onto the emotion of the story – the physical transformation is the thing that the main character fears rather than a positive influence for her

#posted16.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

story inspiration - write a perspective piece about someone tracking another person through the countryside. Don’t give the reader too much information about the tracker at first, try to reveal it slowly through the way that they think about their surroundings and the person they’re tracking. 

things to consider: perspective (write from both the tracker and the pursued), dialogue/relationship (do the characters have a relationship? how do their preconceptions about each other affect the way they communicate?), setting (where in the world are they based? how far have they travelled?), emotional significance (who do we side with as the reader?)

#posted16.12.20

[writing-away-in-ingo]

story inspiration - write a mystery story about graffiti appearing around a small town and the different characters it impacts on. Use the appearance of the graffiti in order to reveal different aspects of the characters’ lives, make sure there are plenty of secrets to uncover and misunderstandings to untangle. 

things to consider: perspective (who is making the graffiti?, who is finding it?), dialogue/relationship (is the artist someone that the other townsfolk know? do they have multiple levels to their relationships?), setting (where in the world are they based? what effect does the size of the town have on the way the graffiti is received?), emotional significance (how does the appearance of the graffiti affect the way we as readers view the different characters?)

#posted16.12.20