Stuff about my WIP (FINALLY THOUGH) + plus SNIPPETOS

SO here's the post you've all been waiting for.

Probably.

Maybe.

You have been waiting for this, right...?

OKAY WHATEVER. The point is I've been wanting to write this post for about 150 years (or, like, a month) and I'M FINALLY DOING IT YAHOO! 

I want to talk a bit about my current work in progress, the story that's been destroying my sanity for the past month or so! Seriously though... why is writing so hard. I'm constantly panicking that my ideas are terrible and nothing that I've written so far makes sense. I just keep reminding myself that this is just the first draft; it's MEANT to be bad. I'll just make it better while editing.

Anyway, here's the blurb for my WIP:

Fifteen-year-old Ashley Lenham is dying.

There's only one hope for her: cryogenics. Having her body preserved in the hope that one day, a cure for her terminal illness will be found...

One hundred and thirty-two years later, Ashley opens her eyes. She's been cured, she's perfectly healthy, she's ready to restart her life. There's only one problem. It's now the year 2149 - and the world is unrecognisable.

The world's cities have been completely rebuilt. Computers are the size of a fingernail. Clothes change size, adapting to the size of your body. Cars don't have wheels. The Moon has been colonised. The Earth is ruled by a single government. War, inequality and discrimination are all things of the past. And police agents live on board vast spaceships, patrolling the Earth's skies.

Ashley finds herself a place as an apprentice on one of the spaceships, fighting crime in this crazy alien world she now lives in. Because this world might seem like paradise, but even paradise has its dark side. Terrorists who were defeated in a war five years previously lurk in the shadows cast by the bright lights of this peaceful planet - and they're waiting for a chance to strike once again.

While working for this crimefighting force, memories plague Ashley, dragging her down and making her feel more and more desperate to go back to her old life in the twenty-first century. But there's no going back. It's all history now. And then she discovers some shocking information that makes her doubt everything she ever knew about her previous life... And makes her desperate to find out the truth. 

Even if the truth tears her apart.

Well, that turned out pretty well didn't it?? I've just wrote that now, if you're interested. I've been meaning to for ages, but I never had the tiiimmeeee.

If I'm honest with you, I'm not too sure what's going to happen towards the end of the book. I have the general idea of how it's going to go down, but as you can probably tell from the blurb, it's all very vague. I haven't really thought every single detail through yet. See, for me, writing is a journey; I start at one point, and I always know exactly what's going to happen in the next two or three chapters, but after that it's all blurry... until I write more, and then the next few chapters clear up, and I know what's going to happen next. I occasionally change the plot as I go along, and have to go back and adapt some things in the previous chapters, but it's no big deal. I write quite slowly (I've been working on this for over a month and I'm not even at 10,000 words - meanwhile others have written a whole novel during NaNoWriMo) but for me, it's not about finishing my writing projects as fast as I can; it's about enjoying the process. It's about not knowing exactly what's going to happen in my story, going with flow; letting the story itself guide me.

Which is basically just a poetic way of saying I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FRICKING HECK IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN MY OWN NOVEL. But that's fine! I know a lot of writers like planning out everything in their novels in loads of detail, but... I don't... and it's okay! We're all different.

Lately I've just been having loads of fun imagining what the world could be like in 2149, and crafting this entire world. While I might not have thought out the story out in much detail, I've REALLY put a lot of thought into the world it's set in. I know everything about it. EVERYTHING. ALL THESE REALLY DUMB FACTS THAT WILL NOT MAKE IT INTO THE STORY AT ALL. BUT I STILL KNOW THEM.

Also there's Ashley. I swear I've learnt so much about her since I started writing her story?? Her personality has changed so much; it's like the moment I started writing she just went, "NOPE, this is not my personality, this is my personality." She's really awkward around people she doesn't know and she finds it really hard to understand others - actually I think she might have some type of autism?? I don't know. I should probably do some research about types of autism to see if one matches with her characteristics. But this was NOT planned beforehand; it sort of just happened?? Her personality was completely different while I was planning the story. I swear characters have a life of their own and they just decide what they want to do... 

Anyway, here's the bit you've probably been wanting to get to since you started reading this: SNIPPETOS!! If you're wondering, I call snippets "snippetos" because why the heck not. Snippetos sounds better. Who even says snippets anymore. They're called snippetos now, get with the times people.

(I'm weird, okay. I'm not sorry.)

LES SNIPPETOS:

                                                                                                                                                        

I’m going to survive, was her last thought as she was pulled into blackness.

***

She was free.

She was floating, flying through darkness, and she no longer felt any pain, any suffering, any distress of any kind. Everything was fine now. Nothing could hurt her. She was weightless, as light as air, and most of all, she felt completely peaceful. There was nothing for her to worry about; nothing to even think about. The only thing she had to do was keep floating through this endless, silky black sea, completely tranquil and at peace.

Something was moving, far off through the shifting darkness. As Ashley drifted closer, she saw that they were the images of people and places she’d seen throughout her life; they were memories, suspended in the blackness alongside her. As she moved closer to one of them, she found herself pulled inside the memory, living through the moment a second time. It was the memory of her eighth birthday, when she’d gotten home from a fantastic day out and found that her dad had gotten her a huge chocolate birthday cake as a surprise. She felt the same emotions that she had then; joy, excitement, pure happiness, but not quite as strongly – it was as though she was a passer-by to the scene, and she could sense the emotions that her eight-year-old self was feeling, but she wasn’t feeling them herself. As the memory came to an end, she found herself back in the black nothingness, surrounded by the images of other memories; without wasting a moment, she plunged into another memory.

She had no idea how long she spent drifting in and out of memories; she’d lost all sense of time. She felt as though she’d been here, in this dreamy world of times gone past, for as long as she’d existed. She vaguely remembered there being a time before this, a time when she’d actually lived through these experiences rather than just being a silent observer, but she found that she couldn’t remember it. Every time she tried to cast her mind back, it was like a wall appeared in her thoughts.

After some time – it could have been a few hours, or a few days, or a few years, for all she knew – she grew tired of this entering and exiting memories; and the moment she thought that, the images started fading away, leaving her alone in the silky darkness once more.

She resumed her serene drifting through nothingness. She thought about relaxing her muscles, and it was then that she realised that she didn’t have muscles, she didn’t actually have a physical body. She wasn’t just floating through the rippling darkness, she was the rippling darkness; it was a part of her and she was a part of it. A tiny part of her mind was telling her that she should be worrying about this, but the rest of her consciousness persuaded her that it didn’t matter, that everything was fine, that it had always been like this, there was nothing wrong.

So she kept calmly floating through the infinite black sea, her mind completely clear of thoughts. Time was standing still; she was frozen in this dreamy existence where she thought nothing and did nothing and felt nothing and where there was simply nothing.

But then, suddenly – the blink of an eye or millenniums later – something cut through the darkness. A rip, spilling bright light through it, tearing apart the blackness. She turned away, not wanting to look at it, not wanting anything to spoil this tranquil non-existence – she instinctively knew that whatever was on the other side of that rift was bad news. But the rip was getting bigger and bigger, the light engulfing her, pulling her against her will towards a different world.

No, she thought desperately. No, I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back. Please don’t make me go back.

But another voice in her mind said, yes, you have to, you have to go back to the real world, you can’t stay here forever, Ashley.

She was suddenly aware of a strange heaviness; the weight of her body, weighing her down. She could feel her own heart beating, her blood pumping, her lungs inhaling oxygen: she was no longer just a drifting consciousness, not anymore. She was human once again.

As the light surrounded her and swallowed her up, darkness settled on her once again; a different type of darkness this time, a darkness that dragged her towards her body and her world, not away from it.

And a thought from a very long time ago broke into her thoughts: I’m going to survive.

                                                                                                                                                           

[Her eyelids] felt sleepy, heavy, and she struggled to keep them open. With each drowsy blink she noticed one detail about the place she was in. She was lying in a large bed, underneath clean white covers. Blink. She was in a semi-lit room with cream-coloured walls. Blink. The room was medium-sized and oval-shaped, with no corners. Blink. There were a few screens set into the single wall directly in front of her. Blink. There didn’t appear to be a window, but there was a black screen to her left. Blink.

                                                                                             

Shoving her sense of unease aside, she went towards the monitors displaying her stats. It was as she got nearer to them that she noticed that they weren’t hanging on the wall, as she’d thought. They were set into the wall; they were a part of it. So was the black screen to the left of the bed. And she realised another detail at that moment: that there were no lights in the room, no lightbulbs or fluorescent tubes; the warm, cream-coloured light seemed to be coming from the room itself, radiating from the walls around her.

She staggered back to the bed and sat cross-legged on it, still looking around, perplexed. The bed shifted as she sat on it, nestling around her, adjusting to the shape of her body. There was something alien about this room, something unfamiliar, something she couldn’t quite put a finger on, and it was making her feel extremely edgy.

She shook her head, as though to rid herself of the feeling. She was alive. Against all the odds, she’d survived a terminal illness. That was what mattered. Not how the screens were receiving her information or whether or not the walls were glowing; that didn’t matter at all.

                                                                                            

Full of foreboding, Ashley got up and joined Nurse Sophie next to the screen.

The nurse placed the palm of her hand on the wall next to the black square. A small, rectangular panel appeared underneath her hand, and she adjusted a setting on it. As she did so, the black screen started getting more and more transparent, until Ashley could see out of it to the world outside. It was only then that she realised that it wasn’t a screen after all, but a window.

She looked out of it – and her heart stopped. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She was frozen to the spot, unable to believe that what she was seeing was actually real.

She was in central London, that much was certain; she could see all the familiar buildings of the city, including the Shard, the Gherkin and the Houses of Parliament. But the thing was, she wasn’t looking up at any of these buildings. She was looking down on them.

The building she was in rose up, up above any of these familiar landmarks, way above them, and the London skyline she was looking at wasn’t her London skyline: unfamiliar buildings that were just as tall or taller than this one rose up among the ones she knew, their tips piercing the golden evening sky. Some twisted and turned into each other like snakes, others stood straight and majestic, and all of them were made of the same material; a kind of glass that seemed to ripple and coalesce as Ashley watched. The setting sun was a glowing ball of gold on the horizon, and its bright light lit up the tallest of the buildings, sending shafts of light that almost dazzled Ashley.

She stood there for a moment, staring out of the window, her breath coming out in ragged gasps, her heart pounding at a thousand miles per hour in her chest. Her eyes were seeing this view that was both so familiar and so alien, but her mind refused to accept that it was real.

                                                                                           

The nurse was saying something, something about how she just had to be strong, that she’d been given a chance at a new life and she had to take it. Ashley just wished she’d go away. She wanted to be alone with her agonising thoughts.

A chance at a new life. She felt like screaming in frustration. She didn’t want a new life. She wanted her old life; her parents, her home, her school, her hobbies, her schoolmates. But they were all gone. All gone.

And if they were all gone, what was the point in her being alive?

Maybe she’d have been better off staying dead.

                                                                                            

She glanced around at the people sitting around as she walked. Two girls aged around eleven or twelve were playing some sort of game on a tablet. A little boy with one of the strange black devices around his eyes was sitting on his mother’s lap, cooing excitedly at something he was obviously seeing. A father had one of the silvery-paged books open on his lap and was reading out loud in a quiet voice to the little boy and girl sitting on either side of him. Ashley watched them, the children’s eyes wide as they listened, enthralled, to the story their father was telling them, the father’s voice growing more intense as he obviously got to the most exciting part of the tale, and felt a pang. Her dad had read out loud to her like that when she was a kid.

Not wanting to dwell on the thought of her parents, she lowered her eyeline to the floor and kept walking.

She’d almost made it to the glass double doors when a hand suddenly snapped out and grabbed her wrist. She whirled around in surprise, a yelp rising in her throat.

Her wrist was caught in the grip of a boy of around thirteen, who was looking up at her with a frown. He was wearing a white jumpsuit, like Ashley’s, and had extremely messy black hair. He appeared to be wearing some kind of eyeliner, but Ashley supposed she wasn’t seeing right.

“I know you,” he said, peering at her face. “I just seen you on the N, five ago. You’re that girl from the twenty-first century. The one that got preserved.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered Ashley, trying to shake her wrist free. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, much less some random stranger who knew nothing about her. “Let me go.”

“But you are, ain’t ya?” insisted the boy. He had a similar accent to the one the nurses and doctors had, the one that Ashley couldn’t quite place.

“For the love o’ God, Cedar, leave the poor kid alone!” A teenage girl with the same thick black hair as the boy leaned over him, giving the hand holding onto Ashley a hearty slap. The boy yelped and let go.

The girl glared, yanking out two tiny circular discs from inside her ears. “Can’tcha see she don’t wanna talk to you?” she snapped. But her eyes as she looked up at Ashley were full of curiosity. “Are ya really from the twenty-first century?”

“I…” Ashley looked from one teenager to the other, feeling strangely trapped. The idea that these kids had heard about her before, that people from this alien world knew her story when she didn’t know a thing about them, made her feel uncomfortably exposed. It had never occurred to her that her story might be widely known. She didn’t like the feeling at all.

“I have to go,” she mumbled, and practically ran towards the glass doors.

                                                                                             

Anyway I hope you enjoyed them! Comment your thoughts.

Right I have to go, bye -

 >>> A n d r e a <<<