Insane Characters

I'm telling you, the folks in Pterodactyl are insane. Take John for example. When I first started writing him, I thought he was a bit of an introvert who was really into jazz, and was best mates with the guy he shared a shift with. Two minutes after his creation, as I started writing him, it turned out that he was actually being beaten up by the other guy on his shift, but he didn't fight back because he could take the beatings that the other guy could dish out. Then the other guy pulled a knife on him and cut his back a bit, and John reacted really violently. Turns out he'd been seriously injured and has a gash the width of a hand running diagonally across his back and his left shoulder's a real mess. Plus this is something done within the last three months and hasn't yet properly healed. Took a while for me to work out how it had happened. Then it turns out he saved Yarev (who I thought was going to be my main main character at the start, but now he's just an equal member of the dozen or so VIC's in my story) from being crucified, and they're actually on the same team but both thought that everyone else was dead. John also happens to have a missile launcher in his room, is close friends with the supply pilots, which I never expected, and is actually fancied by one of them, though I haven't worked out whether he returns the sentiment yet. And John has recently revealed that he has jumped out the front windscreen of a moving aircraft before. He's led a very adventurous life. Then the others are all doing random things that I never expected too, and it'll take far too long to rant about them all, so I'll stop now. Suffice to say, I have absolutely no idea what's going on in this story, bar a very, very basic plot outline, which I will stick to. It basically goes: People are starting to die on the UN's new collaboration, Pterodactyl, a ship-carrying aircraft. It falls to a small group of friends to thwart the dastardly plans of the head captain. Of course, the bit about the head captain won't be released, because I'm trying to make everyone think that it's the head captain's brother. It's fun.

Frustrated, Again.

Wrote this at school, and promised myself to stick it up. Also need to do an update, because more has happened, but I can't be bothered right now because it's late and I'm tired.

I’m so annoyed that Zobia hasn’t bothered to bring my tent back. She’s got half of it, and she’s had it for two weeks, since the D of E expedition. It’s really annoying, because I’m going into Blackburn tonight, and if I had the tent I’d text my dad and get him to come and pick it up, and he could take my schoolbag at the same time, but she hasn’t brought it, and it’s Spring Break now, so I won’t have my tent over Spring Break, and I’d been wanting to do a bit of sleeping in the garden, which I now can’t do for obvious reasons. Argh! She said ‘oh, I’ll call my dad and get him to bring it,’ so I said is that actually going to happen, I need a guarantee that’s actually going to happen, because I’m not having my dad make a wasted journey from Preston when she can’t be bothered to get her act together. She’s saying it’s because she’s at her other house, but she hasn’t been at her other house for two weeks, it’s just a recent thing, so if she’d bothered to bring it in when I first asked her, when she said she’d bring it in, cos I said should I wait a minute after the D of E expedition and get it out her bag and she said no, she’d bring it on Tuesday (we had the long weekend for Easter, so our first day back after the expedition was Tuesday), but it’s just not happened, and it’s really, really annoying. She couldn’t give me any guarantee that her dad was actually going to bring it.

Plus she owes Naomi £15, and me £2, and she’s not making any effort to pay up. I mean, I’m really careful about stuff like that. If I borrow something, I bring it back when I say I will, regardless. I’ve even had my brother bring in pieces of work for teachers if I’m off school ill. But she hasn’t done any work in maths for ages, never turns up for form, and is just generally being an idiot. Need that banging head against the wall smiley now.

PSHE Day

Hi.
It was way better than I expected. The guy who came in to do a talk called Stand Up Tall seemed kind of boring when he was introducing it, but he was actually really, really good. He was a great speaker, and he'd been an actor in the past, so he was doing different accents and talking about some of what he'd done as well as teaching us about working on different levels, and saying that exams aren't the be all and end all of life. In fact, when someone first meets you, 60% of what they go off is body language, 30% is the tone of your voice, and only 10% is charisma. He was also saying that there are no 'bad' emotions, but that you should try and be aware of your emotional state.
He explained it all using the Elizabethan analogy:
We're made up from four things:
Earth, which is your physical body, body language, that sort of thing;
Water, which is your emotions;
Air, which is what you know, which makes up about 90% of what you learn at school;
Fire, which is your vision, what you aspire to be.
It was really interesting.
The next thing we did was coursework clinic, but I'd finished all my coursework, so I had ten minutes on a computer, but when there were people without it seemed tight to take one up for no reason, so I came off and did loads of writing by hand. 'Twas good.
Then I had the PE Games thing, and that was loads of fun. We played two variants of mat rounders, one where you kicked the ball, and then one using a tennis ball and racket.
The last session was really boring though. I'm really glad nobody told me when it actually started (it was this special thing for only a few people), because 1 hour was more than enough. I feel sorry for those who had to sit through the whole thing. The speaker was really boring, and you could tell it wasn't really his passion, like it had been with the other guy. Plus we'd heard everything before, and didn't need to hear it again. I mean, why take the high achievers out, when it's the high achievers who are actually going to revise and do know how to do it because we've been told about a million times. Still, overall it was good fun.

Short Stories

I don't usually like writing short stories, because there's no room for a really good plot and loads of twists, but I think I might write a collection of them for youngish children. I'm going to try and do my Service for Silver Duke of Edinburgh at the Harris Library, doing a story time on Saturday mornings, about 11 or something, and just read out stories to little kids for a while. Could be quite fun, and it'll give me a chance to practise my story-telling skills. I'd love to be a story-teller. Plus, I could read out some of my own stuff and get a reaction to that, which'd be good.
Saw my English teacher on Tuesday, to hand in my descriptive piece. She said she'd read my short story (we were doing a practise on Paper 1), and that it was 'interesting'. Said she could tell I'd been reading Alaistar MacLean's books, but that it was good. Just 'interesting'.

Pterodactyl

Yeh, this story I'm working on at the moment with loads of little plot threads. It's, well, it's interesting. Characters keep telling me all sorts of random stuff that I never expected but which is kind of important. John has a rocket launcher in his room. Marinel isn't as bad personality wise as I thought he was. Sakura is a Japanese terrorist. Zait gets killed. Tommy and Ben are basically best mates. Jake is a reformed computer hacker. Matthew Nicholback has a metal hand and was really badly burned, though not on his face. Sam used to be a thief. Tiger was in Special Forces and part of Yarev's team, as was John. All stuff that would've been nice to know at the start, because it has now become the first story I've ever been seriously working on that isn't being written chronologically. I keep going back and adding stuff. Like I have a murder done by Sakura to add before Sakura gets murdered, and like I want a lot more from various plot threads. Still, it's all good fun.

Whoops.

I hardly posted at all last month, which is really bad of me. Shall make an effort not to let that happen this month. I was planning on three posts per week this year, and I think it might still average out to that, but... Oh well. Nothing I can do about it now. It just looks a little weird having some months with loads and some with scarcely any. Never mind. It'll eventually just all go under one year and then you won't be able to tell. It'd be kind of cool if I could average out at sort of three-hundred-sixty-five posts, one per day, because I do sometimes post more than once in a day (like today).

Coursework done, yay!!!

Yay!!! Finished all of my coursework yesterday. Including French. I may need to do a tiny, tiny bit more on my textiles, not sure, but I think I'm completely, completely done. Hope I am anyway. And tomorrow we get an hour and twenty minutes of PSHE day to do coursework. So guess what I'll be doing? Writing of course. Should be quite fun. And I have no excuse not to go, because there's nothing that I really need to stay at home and do. Still, I'm sure I can survive it, can't be much more boring than double history with Mrs Pitman, and even that has it's bonuses. I mean, when the course content is so interesting, it's difficult to be really, really boring. I mean, there's always the text book to read...

My dream...

Not an actual dream dream as in a sleeping dream, but a kind of far-fetched goal dream. I shall explain.

I want to become an author, and become kind of famous, or at least, well read. Then, I'll use the money to buy land in Africa, and set up a community for people to live and work together, like a monastery, but more of an everyday kind of thing. In this place, people won't use money or trade, everyone will just share. People will do what needs doing, and help each other to do it. They'll make crafts, and everyone will do the job that they're best at and that they most enjoy doing. We'll sell the crafts abroad, and the money will be used to help keep the community running.
Maybe it's a kind of weird dream, but it's just something that's been with me for a long time. It'd be run kind of how I've set up heaven as being in my angel books, and it'd be amazing. There would be very few disputes, because everyone'll share what they have so there's no material possessions to argue over, but there would be a kind of council to govern it, with the people on the council elected. I guess it's kind of like a communist/socialist thing, but that's how I think the whole world should be. It's a shame peoples' greed gets in the way.

Story update

Done loads of writing this month (part of the reason I've not been posting here). It's the most I've done in a month this year, and the month isn't quite finished yet, so I might manage to equal my nanowrimo wordcount, though I doubt it. I'm working on Yarev's story at the moment. Well, that's the provisional title anyway, but it's not really very accurate, because I'm not even convinced he's the main character. Don't think there is one main character. I've stolen some stuff from real life (like Hazel and Adam), but everything apart from them is completely made up. It's going pretty well I think. The right people are dying, because it's kind of a murder mystery thriller type thing, something along the lines of Alaistar MacLean crossed with sci-fi. It's good fun to write at any rate. Wrote quite a bit in physics yesterday, on paper, which I then had to type up, but it's good to write it by hand first, it makes the words flow better, plus it means you get a kind of second draft when you type it up. I did finish my physics work first though, just so you know. I wasn't just randomly sitting in physics for an hour and a half (or something like that, maybe an hour and a quarter, I didn't time it, but certainly over an hour) writing while the teacher was talking. My teacher wasn't here, so I finished the work really, really fast, and then because we had to sit in silence I figured it was a good chance to do some work on my story.

I got into Cardinel Newman!! Well, pretty much anyway.

Got a letter yesterday saying they were pleased to tell me that they were going to send me a letter to let me accept a place. I just need to get good grades, and then I can go there to study English Language, Maths, History, Politics and Sociology. Yay!! I really, really wanted to go there, right from when I first saw it, plus I know a few people who're there already. Ok, so I might be the only person from my school going there, but who cares? It's a lot nearer my house, so I won't be spending an hour and three quarters on a bus every day I go to school, and I'll be able to make friends who actually live in/near Preston so I can meet up with people a lot easier. My mum reckons the letter they sent wasn't a standard one, but I'm not entirely convinced. It was a nice letter all the same.

Hello

Hello. Got a headache. Slightly bored.
I walked into town today, because I missed the bus. It was wet, and annoying. Didn't manage to find any nice fabric for mum to make my prom dress with. She's found a really, really nice pattern. I did get four books though. That's why I shouldn't go into Oxfam bookshop and then wander past the nice guy on the market...

Update on mum

Yeh, mum's not doing so bad after her operation. She can cook again. We're having cleaners in tomorrow, because she can't hoover, and my dad doesn't really have the time to do that along with everything else. My room is therefore now tidy.
She's going to have chemotherapy over the next 18 weeks, so right over the top of all my exams, and then after that she's having radiotherapy.

Update on stuff in general

Yeh, haven't posted for a while cos I've been busy with my mum and with coursework and homework and writing and I kind of couldn't be bothered to do this. But I will. I shall keep this up as a record of my life, because if I don't I'll forget everything that ever happens.
Last golf lesson today. Apparently after the holidays we have to do 'house events'. In other words, rounders competitions. I HATE ROUNDERS!! Why can't I play baseball? Why can't I just keep doing golf? I'm getting a lot better. Hit it to 75 today.

D of E

Whoo. Did my Duke of Edinburgh Final Expedition for bronze on Good Friday and Saturday. It was good fun. We pitched our tents under a huge white thing, so we stayed a bit warmer and the tents were dry in the morning. Zobia got stuck in mud and I was highly amused as I pulled her out. Got a bit tough on the second day, but I didn't do so bad, nowhere near as bad as last time. Enjoyed myself plenty, though I did have a bit of a rough patch in the evening because I couldn't see properly and my tent wasn't up and stuff like that. Still. All good fun. Part of growing up and being British as they say.

Frustrated

I just feel so frustrated at the moment. Zobia's really getting on my nerves, keeps skipping meetings and form and stuff and relying on me to tell her what she needs telling and it just does my head in. It really annoys me when I get relied upon for answers, like in science, and in maths. They put Miss' pen in my pocket today in maths, twas quite amusing, but a little annoying too cos it was like 'let's put it in Joanna's pocket, she never gets in trouble'. I was so angry in maths when Miss was like 'oh yeh it wasn't homework' when I spent ages last night, when I really didn't have the time and so didn't do other homework that needed doing, doing it. Argh!
Went to see Mr Bolton today, to kind of check up on the newspaper stuff. He's asked me to do an article on the OFSTED inspection, so I have to go and see Mr Whyte. I love how when I ask at dinner if someone'll come with me Zobia and Eleanor both refuse, especially Zobia, and they're both part of the newspaper team too. I don't see why it should fall to me. I've already done a story on choir, another on the author visit, a short story, a story on Script Frenzy and one on Laura for swimming, and neither of them has done anything. It's so annoying. Especially because Zobia went out of her way to try and get in the newspaper after Leon opted out. She should do more than me, because I was like one of the first team, got asked to do it, and she specifically went and made a fuss so that she could be in it. Think there's going to be a meeting soon, next Tuesday Mr Bolton said.
I wish I had the guts to actually say this stuff for real, but I don't, so it just all goes on here.