Wrote a guest post for my lovely friend, Shannon's blog. All about the lovely Alice.

http://freedomtights.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/monday-guest-post-by-shannon-donovan/

Hermione

This is a painting/ drawing of what I imagine Hermione Granger to look like. She's a character I admire greatly and has always held a special place in my heart.

Drawing again.

I like to draw other people's characters in the way I interpret them, it helps me clarify my own.

Articles

I've written a few articles on weekend notes if you'd like to read.

http://www.weekendnotes.com/profile/131346/

Train Station

My marshmallows melt, oozing into my coffee.

Coffee? Don’t you mean hot chocolate?

No, coffee. If I’d meant hot chocolate I’d have said ‘hotcho’.

There aren’t stars in my eyes, just specks of dust. Realistic, irritating, infuriating specks of dust that are incredibly real.

The sparkle walked out a year or two ago; we weren’t seeing eye-to-eye.

The man across the tracks reads the paper and has the forehead of a teacher I once learnt from. English, British he was, from Yorkshire.

I listen to a girl with confidence and faith and motivation sing through my headphones, allowing her qualities to take me over (hopefully) and to add happiness to my life.

Loose t-shirt walks past; she has a Tim Minchin canvas bag hanging from one shoulder while she the other is used to hold her violin case.

I wonder vaguely whether she’s a musical genius and I’ve just missed an opportunity to speak with such a being.

There’s a young woman in red sitting by the man across the tracks now, on the same bench-seat.

The lit-up sign says the train is three minutes from arriving. I stand up and walk to the end of the platform in preparation. It arrives and I board.

I sit down across from a boy (man? He looks more like a boy) who is listening to his iPod and staring at me incredibly uncomfortably.

Avoiding eye contact is the only way I can think of to let him know his attention is unwanted.

There is a man sitting a few seats down from me who looks almost exactly like a boy I used to have a dancing class with. He’d worn long black coats and boots- he would have frightened me if I hadn’t seen how sweet he was to everyone.

He may have been Spanish or something similar, ‘Lorenzo’. Intriguing.

He was kind to me even though I barely spoke a word to anyone at that time in life, stifled by self-conscious shyness. I always appreciated the people whom didn’t dismiss me because of how shy I was or how little I found myself able to interact.

The man on the train though, isn’t him. He doesn’t have as soft a face and he’s nowhere near as tall.

Sometimes I write in large capitals ‘I HATE PEOPLE READING OVER MY SHOULDER’ when I’m writing on the train because I’m very aware of others and paranoid of their reading what I write. Probably a self-obsessed un-justified paranoia but what can you do? I guess my ego is just that big.

Writing exercises

My tutor has said to be me that creating odd scenarios for your character then writing about what they would do or what they would think. I've found this exercise extremely helpful as it's brought up many new things about my character that I hadn't thought about before, especially personality traits. It's very good for character development, even if you don't end up using the specific piece in your finished work.

This is an example of such an exercise I tried where I wrote a scene in which my protagonist was blind:

I think I am sitting on carpet, it is soft and fluffy, though for all I know it could be the fir of a dead animal. I don’t really believe that though because I can smell a strong scent of detergent in the air surrounding me and if my sense of smell can pick that up, then I’m sure the smell of a rotting corpse would be easy enough to spot.

I open my eyes, and it is dark. I blink them shut then open again but nothing. My breath is vacuumed out of my lungs and my head is dizzy. I realise my brain must be shutting down from lack of oxygen as I begin to feel drowsy and I take control and inhale a sizeable gulp of air.

The smell of detergent seems to be strengthening and creating an ill feeling in my stomach. I feel suddenly terrified of everything, I have no idea what or who I am sharing a room with, if anything.

There is a creak in what sounds like the room next to this one – it is a threat.

There is a slight buzzing hum coming from a few metres away from me – it is a bomb.

Every sound I hear sounds threatening.

Every scent I smell I am suspicious of being gas.

I realise very suddenly that I have completely neglected my other senses my entire life and have relied far too heavily on my sight.

I am disoriented and confused and I have no control over what is to happen to me. If someone were to walk into the room now and attack me, all I could do is flail and scream and maybe kick them a few times before they got the better of my loss of sight, and defeated me. 

I found, a long time ago, that drawing/sketching/painting really helps my imagination warm up and let loose which prepares it well for writing. I think most creative processes would make a good warm up before writing.