Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

(Sorry for the long entry guys. Feel free to skim over it until something catches your eye. I won't be offended.)

I think I'd make a good dragon. I'm quite a hoarder. For a while now I've been collecting cute notebooks from Tesco. I save a set of spotty and stripy notebooks of various sizes and browsed the "seasonal" aisle last week to find some very fun stationary cashing in on the back to school time of year. For the Olympic and Paralympic games they've been open until midnight on Sunday (due to UK trading laws they can normally only be open for four hours on a Sunday....or was it six hours? Well, they close at 4) but because of this lovely little set of circumstances we don't need to rush around on Sundays any more. Ah well. We'll be back to normal next week but that's beside the point.

Since we didn't have to rush around I had plenty of time to waste looking at things I may or may not buy. Last week I did it in the seasonal goods aisle and found 3 very fun looking notebooks. I got one A4 and two A5. The A4 was a hardback super hero themed book with cliché comic book "sound effects". Although I never read super hero comic books I have an admiration of them and their characters (I did watch a lot of super hero cartoons when I was little though)I thought at the very least it would be good for stories I might write for my nephew. (When I couldn't sleep last week I started writing a story about an alligator....no it was a crocodile, definitely a crocodile, that lived under a little boy's bed. It was quite fun.)

The first A5 is black and green with a skull and some other things on it. It's okay but the lines in it are pink and it has a little skull in the bottom right hand corner. I disapprove of that because it's less space to write....unless you write over it but there aren't any lines there so it may go askew. Well. I say I disapprove. I'm starting to waver about things like that. I used to be very strict about the kinds of notebooks I used but now I'm loosening up a bit. So what if the lines are pink? It's a cute notebook.

The second A5 has brightly coloured cows in lines. I thought it was so cute.

While I was doing this mum had a look around too. She said she was thinking about getting a notebook. I assumed it was for her dog poop diary (she keeps a track of unusual poops or odd circumstances, like whether a type of food or biscuit might have given Yuki diarrhoea). But she didn't elaborate on the reason. I probed her on the necessary size of the notebook she was looking for but she didn't answer and decided not to bother so I let it be.

Today I was browsing the stationary aisle and happened upon an A5 version of my super hero notebook. I wanted to get it but decided against it. I also noticed an A4 version of my cow book and one from the same maker as my skull one (it wasn't the skull design, it was brighter with colourful characters but in the same style as the skull one). I debated whether or not to get them and complete that collection. While I was doing this mum spied a pink A5 hardback with a random kind of scrapbook motif with flowers, butterflies and London themed buildings and images and picked it up.

Spurred on by this I decided to finish my collection. Yeah. I'm pretty selfish. Since I started this Tesco collection I now have 15 notebooks of varying sizes and only 7 have been used for anything. So far 3 have been used for random notes, one of those was also used to keep score in our scrabble games but was elevated to tracking the times I took painkillers during my period, just to be safe, I have a fear of overdosing so leave a 15 minute window on top of the four hours advised between pills, I make a note of it to be sure four hours have passed.

I used one to try and rewrite my novel. There's only so many times you can tear out the pages of a notebook before you know you can't keep rewriting a novel in it so I restarted with a fresh one.

I used one to write some character ideas for a show I was watching.
(It's an old habit where I see a TV program and like it or feel sorry for a character or become annoyed by some character's inability to do or notice something and I design a character and start weaving them into the show. Although quite fun, as the show progresses and the real characters develop then the one I designed doesn't fit in so I have to think of reasons why they weren't in a particular scene or I've imagined an outcome that doesn't end up happening so have to work a new plot around my character. To be honest it get's tiring and I think it's kind of sad that I keep doing that. Normal people don't do that...at least I don't think they do. But when I've put so much time and effort into these characters I feel kind of sad that they'll never become anything because I wove them into someone else's work.)
So. In this notebook I jotted down character information and relationships nonspecific to the show I put her in. I'm getting sick of wasting good ideas for characters I'll never use in the original setting I put them in but if I use nonspecific information that all my own design then I might be able to use them later.

Sorry. That was kind of a long explanation.

I used another book to write down some ideas for "something of a fairy tale" I thought of. I say "something of" because I'm not sure it would be classified as a fairy tale and I'm not sure of the age group it would be aimed at since it's not your average "everything's fine, a little hardship but nothing too graphic or gruesome, dreams come true, and they all lived happily ever after, believe it when you're five but question it when your sixteen as the harsh reality of real life sets in" kind of thing. It's' kind of sad but I don't think all children can be as happy and innocent as we'd like and that makes me sad. Some learn the harsh realities of life too early so I don't think "happily ever after" fairy tales can always reach them. So, that was the idea behind this "something of a fairy tale" thing. I planned it out well too. I wrote a basic plot summary and started doing a rough chapter by chapter breakdown like I was taught at Uni (something I haven't been able to do with much depth with my novel because it's too vast and I haven't fully planned everything yet).
I got a few chapters into the planning but had to go to bed since it was like 6am. I didn't continue the planning as the mood that inspired me passed.

Then I did something I rarely do. If I'd actually started writing the story I probably wouldn't have done this but since it was just a plan I was fine with it. I started planning a new story. It's just character descriptions at the moment but it might be fun to write. Although, with the ideas I'm thinking for it, it would probably be better as a shōjo manga but you never know.

Like I said, I used the A4 super hero one for the children's story about the crocodile.

You'll probably think I'm crazy....crazier but I collect so many notebooks for writing, even though I probably won't use them right away, but I like to have one handy if I get an idea. I do this because once I start writing in one notebook I don't like to write anything else in it, even if it's been a year or so since I last wrote in it. I just hate the idea of not being able to continue if I suddenly get inspiration for that story. Even though every story I've ever tried to write, bar Uni work that had to be finished, has never been completed, I just can't bring myself to write something else in those books. Even though I now know that it's a terrible story. That it was a good idea but needs to be rewritten. I still can't bring myself to use those books.

Does that really make me crazy?

Anyway. One other point of interest today. I put away my notebooks from today (I keep them in the One Piece messenger bag mum bought me one Christmas (although I love the show and the character I would never have bought it myself, I prefer more unassuming bags that are a uniform black with maybe a logo or some characters in a more neutral shade like white, rather than a beige bag with a full colour picture of a character that people will stare at and ask what it is or where it's from) that's on the chair by my desk, with all my card making stuff and the box my monitor came in (as you know, we never have company and I always sit in my computer chair so the only armchair we need is mum's, everything else is used for storage so the dog won't jump on it. She has a bed to sleep on.))
Ah. Sorry. Off topic again.

I put my notebooks away and handed mum hers. I asked if she'd be using it as a poo diary for the dog (as I'd imagined) but she said no. So I asked if it was to monitor her general health (Be it a poo diary like the dogs, or a food diary or a diary of aches or pains or something like that. That's what I was thinking) I mean, what else would she need a notebook for? She never writes notes bigger than a Post-it and those are readily available on my desk. Only then did she tell me that she wanted to use it to write a story.

Eeeeeeeehhhhhhh?

Story? Trust me, this woman has little to no imagination (Kind of like Napoleon but not quite as bad) so you'll forgive me if story isn't the first thing I'd think of. Besides, stories are my thing.

I'm not jealous though, or belittling her. I actually think it'll be cool. I've been trying to awaken her imagination for years. Mainly because I feel a little freaky being such an imaginative person with unimaginative parents. My grandparents were quite imaginative though. My Granddad painted and did old fashioned crafting things. So did my Nanny. She painted a little, dabbled in poetry and home crafts like knitting and such and dedicating lots of time and care into lots of family albums and holiday scrapbooks. We don't have any of them though. The other relatives got there first. Mum tried to keep holiday scrapbooks but she lost interest too easily so we have one scrapbook "Jersey 1992". And for you Americans that's Jersey as in the Channel Islands not New Jersey. I knew a girl at Uni from Jersey and whenever she told anyone that most people assumed New Jersey so the was surprised that I didn't, then again I'm English. (In case you're wondering, it's Granddad and Nanny because I only had one Granddad but two Nannies. Napoleon's father died when he was young so I never met him).

Anyway. Went off topic again. Sorry.

I'm actually kind of pleased that she wants to write a story. I want to know what it is but I know how it feels. I hate when people ask about my stories because I'm embarrassed about them, I don't think they're good enough, I don't want to build anyone's hopes up because I probably won't write it, I certainly won't finish it. Also I don't want anyone to steal my ideas.

So. Because of all that I'm not going to ask her about it. I won't ask her how it's coming or what it's about. I did bug her a bit asking if she'd planned it out a bit and if I could proof read it for her (since she had to proof read my Uni work....Oh and that story I once wrote for Tom for his birthday. It was supposed to be for Christmas but I overshot that so I did it for his birthday instead. It was a bit embarrassing since I used our own personal alter egos and it was about them fighting an evil guy who was collecting a harem of anthropomorphic animal women to be his sex slaves. At the time that was Tom's preferred kind of dream world. It was when I was still in school so it was even more embarrassing to have my mother reading it when I was that age. Although it didn't contain any actual sex scenes, I could never have written such a thing then, they were implied.)

So. Even though I'm not very good at it I'm more than happy to proof read for her. I just hope she doesn't write anything better than I could, otherwise what was the point of studying creative writing at University? Though as a failing writer I know how hard it can be to actually write so I should whish her all the best. If I do get to read it or she tells me her ideas then I mustn't be too critical. I mustn't nitpick. I mustn't belittle her just because I went to university and my imagination isn't the same as hers. She'll have different ideas to me. That's fine. It's good.

For now it's best not to think of it. Not to badger her about it and not to complain.

I'll keep you updated on her progress though as and when I find out about it but I won't give you specific information, like I don't with my own stories, out of respect.

I'll tell you this though. I'm not about to let her beat me.

Bluebiird out.

Oh. I take back my previous disinterest in the Olympics. It was actually pretty cool. I wonder how the country will do now though, after all the hype, tourists and excitement are gone.