Sunsets - Special Pilot

No stimulus provided.

Due: 11:59 PM AEST 02/03/14 

#WRITERSNEVERDIE

Hey guys! Exciting news!

We're back with a new series of beautifully written pieces for your personal devouring and enjoyment, delivered live and flapping like freshly floundering salmon straight to your computer screen.

Our new program schedule will be broadcasting individual pieces every second Sunday, starting from the Special Pilot episode this weekend, before university starts for your loverly writers.

And on that note... Introducing, the writers of this season!

• Your beloved returning cast: Jennifer, Alicia and Katrina 
• Fresh meat: Maggie and Alison

But this season, there's a twist.

Gone are the 30 minute writing restrictions. Gone are the restrictive genres of belonging. GONE ARE OUR BORDERS.

This season... our hearts, minds, creative limits, and procrastinative abilities can't hold it back anymore and are letting it go! (sorry)

The new rules:

• any written text type is cool. (e.g. short story, poetry, scientific report, documentary, speech, presidential address, resume etc. BE CREATIVE) 
• the minimum effort required needs to feel like you actually really tried ok?
• no writing time limits 
• one prompt a fortnight - must be addressed sufficiently in your piece. do not include it as a random reference. you still have to use it like you would a stimulus in high school, just maybe a bit more creatively this time. 
• each πece is due Sunday 11:59 PM AEST

Happy imaginative writing, and may the motivation be ever in your favour! 

Don't miss out!!!

Revival Request

Hey guys, let's revive this blog after our extreeeeeemely long hiatus!

I was thinking that as well as creative writing, we could have other modes of writing too ... like feature article type opinion posts (if you know what I mean, we might even have to do a bit of research on the topic). So maybe we could have a committee of some sort to decide the type of writing, the stimulus/topic it's going to be on (it could be a normal stimulus like the ones we've been using, or it could be a controversial topic e.g. euthanasia, or a topic inviting opinion-fuelled discussion e.g. the questionable existence of bus timetables), and other specifics (like compulsory vocab or whatnot).

But I guess this wouldn't work so well with a time limit ... maybe we could just say that you have a whole week to work on it or something, and you just post what you've got at the end of the week? (No peeking at the drafts though haha!)

I thought that this would be good preparation for uni as well ... where we're going to need to engage in some academic writing :)

Any opinions, etc. welcome in the comments! This is just a proposal hehehe ...

Parade - The Bus Will Come by Alicia

The Bus Will Come

There is difficulty in maintaining the contents of a mug when it is not built for travel.

Here I am, awash in rain.

Amelia flexes her wrist softly in a circular motion, watching as the opaque brown stuff sloshes gently from side to side in her rapidly cooling mug – it meekly suggests CPS Current Population Survey on its curved face in a thin, grey, bending typeface. A little pale sunlight Toyota hurtles past, jostling the little party of water molecules and city street pollution into frenzy. She takes the chance to look down the busy road, looking for the merest sign of the tall blocky bus shape. There is none, yet.

Leather boots are not an adept demonstration of practicality when it is raining buckets of goldfish.

She totters in the short heels, wriggling her feet in a rather unpleasantly squelchy fashion as she shudders at the sensation of moisture seeping into her toes. Bus, bus, bus, bus where are you? A large droplet of rain has gathered its nearest comrades and has tumbled into her mug. Amelia’s eyebrows wrinkle in a small resigned annoyance as she watches it disperse into homogenousness with habile chemical ability. A figure steps into her peripheral vision, dressed in the mutually-accepted-by-society colours of black, brown, and black.

Amelia decides to swirl the tea again because she can see a small particle of rainwater which has not dissolved into the rest of the watery stuff – she’s not even sure it’s concentrated teabag enough to be called tea anymore.

An umbrella is essential when you see a swivel of cloud dusting the skies.

Rain on me. My jacket can handle it.

Of course, no one thinks to take an umbrella when they work in a petite little bookstore on the corner of Cleveland and Crown; that little plastic bin full of fold up and stick brollies is only for the lovely patrons who flutter in, bringing with them their own smells – coffee, cigarettes, cars, cardboard or even carcinogenic carbon. Amelia is that girl who sits behind the counter at Oscar’s reading a book about physics one day, and hearing the echoing sentiment of ‘old boy’ the next.

Never let tea cool if you intend on drinking it.

Bah! She swallows it gingerly.

That figure from before, on the edge of her peripheral vision, walks over with a smile – at least she imagines it to be a smile behind the darkness that is the hair and the hoodie and the everything dazzling about this newcomer.

Dazzlingly brilliant and as fresh as spring rain – until their hand raises and plops five sugar cubes rather arrogantly into her mug. This contumely from a no doubt self-named tea-genius has offended her. Amelia sniffs discordantly and steps away, the sly letters CPS turning to face the glass barrier of the bus stop instead of the stranger.

The bus will come, but do not expect it to come on time.

The stranger seems oddly put out – their shoulders have slumped. Amelia cannot find it in her tea-loving heart to feel any sympathy for someone who has just ruined her tea.

And yet, in that moment, as her eyes focus away from her thoughts to the distant horizon of the street, she sees that chunky block that is definitely a bus.

The right bus.

She throws her arm out into the gunfire, an imbalance of cold and warm singing as bullets of rain repeatedly strike her bare wrist and open palm. Her shadow stranger does the same. The bus huffily comes to a halt, the base of its steps teetering precariously towards the kerb.

There is a moment where it is just the sound of her cold breath mingling with the sighing of the engine, a romantic backdrop of rain pattering away on the roof of the bus shelter and the bus itself – and then the doors clatter open with some exasperated sounding pumps.

Board the bus, you little peasant.

Mind the gap.

Amelia minds the gap very much. The other steps forth unhesitatingly, jumping over the gutter and into the damp metal shell of the bus. Their steady sneakers beckon. She hastens to do the same, even as she watches with a sinking heart, the deepened wound of her severely diluted tea.

Finally, frisson, when the confined space of the pass traps you.

She sidles over, CPS raised high above her breast at a safe distance from the ground. Amelia does well in dipping her pass, and she listens in pleasure to the chirping duet of the two machines in synchrony with one another – the other has dipped too.

Only then does she remember the predicament of the pass.

A bat-like object comes into contact with her shoulder, continuing forward with the velocity of an accidental steam engine. Amelia can hear the apology on the other person’s lips, but she can only hear her own silent profanity as the foldable black umbrella comes to a shuddering halt right above her mug.

And releases a torrential downpour of sulfurous and haloalkane infested liquid.

Amelia turns instinctively towards the other person, only to glance at the Funny Girl poster behind them, absorbing the long brown locks tucked away in the abyss of a green hoodie. The other woman looks at the poster too, and is amused at an untold joke, understands an untold story, foresees an unforetold future. 

But all Amelia cares about right now is saying this:

No you seriously cannot rain on my parade.

~OvO~

Author's Note: Woah 912 words. I got a lot carried away. Wrote for about 45-50 min. It doesn't relate to belonging - it's a story about Amelia who is a girl waiting for a bus in the rain, remembering some advice, and meeting a lovely young stranger who just happens to annoy her a lot. I'm really sleepy, so most of this is really badly paced and everything. I might fix it later, I just felt so guilty because we have class today and I don't have anything complete to give in. :( 

Also, Funny Girl is the original musical that the song "Don't Rain On My Parade" is from. I didn't know how to end it and use the quote from the stimulus, so I did that. 

Hope everyone else updates soon! :)

Parade - the stimulus!

Welcome back from hiatus!

Thanks to Maggie! :)

3 Words of the week:

• Contumely [n] - insulting display of contempt in words or actions; contemptuous or humiliating treatment. a humiliating insult.
• Habile [adj] - skilful; dexterous; adroit 
• Frisson [n] - a sudden, passing sensation of excitement; a shudder of emotion; thrill

Guidance - Devolution by Alicia

Devolution

This is our world.

This is our universe.

Humanity was a speck of existence. We… we are the giants who stand on the shoulders of quarks.

***

78^th of Stymphalian, 5608

For the first time in a long time, I once again began to question who I was. Humdrum answers pulsed through my brain: you’re a human presenting as the most prominent result.

I have a routine, as humans do. My routine is to wake up and not die. Not dying is a great daily objective, though not as easily accomplished as you might think. Every few days I pass through the tunnels of a time of truth transcended into dust. Man has left his imprint upon this cave’s walls. I see the archaic infrastructure of an anti-gravitational aeronautical transportation scrawled in the form of a blueprint. In bold letters atop the sheet in an ancient laptop’s typeface, it says BOEING 787 DREAMLINER. Its edges remain pressed behind the glass forged of a distant era, its sheets a mellow cream-white.

I travel the thundering tunnels, wandering in the darkness, wondering of the light.

I press my palm into the dry soil to my right, waiting as it glows to life with a singing enthusiasm.

"Transmitting…"

My impatience level is high, a trait non-existent in the artworks of my ancestors. These humans of old, with such delicate spirit, manoeuvred the globe to seek answers. How could they withstand the hours and days in their medieval flight technology? The 5590s edition of the arc-optic transmat twitters as it prepares for beaming. My hand is inevitably warming to the contact of hyper-carbon fibre on flesh as I wait. I envy my great grandfather, who experienced the speed and processing capacity of the mid 55^th century.

The darkness fades with a soft ping!

The guidance of our forebears has become simplified into a solitary catechism.

“STOP MOVING FORWARD. WE'VE GONE TOO FAR.”

Chasing a dream has become racing from a nightmare. The integrity of humanity has decomposed into the pitch black of loss into which I’m falling.

Crummy lamplight tumbles into existence as I flicker into my mother’s living room. Thin tinkling trembles through the teacups. The strange time-keeper in the corner chimes in a low tenor, bothering Amphisbaena from his slumber by the heater. He growls with a sneer. My mother has a priceless collection of road signs from a millennium ago. They all speak the same message of warning, hidden in undertones as they scream at drivers from their odd pixel manifestations.

I wait for my particles to cease their painful fusion – an unavoidable side effect of the old transmat, the only one we could afford in the new world.

I imagine the day that my cells simply don’t realign.

It’s a possibility.

I simply don’t understand humans anymore. 

~OvO~

Author's Note: 467 words. I actually went at least 5 minutes over. I wrote more than half of this blind before I actually remembered I had a stimulus and three words to shove in. So it barely relates, and the three words really were shoved in. 

I actually had many different thoughts on the direction of this story as I was writing, and it was actually my 3rd idea. My first was a repressed Victorian era young lady, my second was a young man leaving for the war with the story from the perspective of the mothers left behind (how typical), and this was my third. 

My story is a post-apocalyptic view on humans, which struggles to restore its previous height of enlightenment, even with the ancestors telling them not to, warning them to heed the warnings that they themselves did not. Honestly, it needs a lot of development. I wanted to end it with a view on the past, to maybe the persona's grandfather working with scientists and considering the moral implications etc. etc. But my mum called for dinner and :( food

Some paraphernalia:

• 78th of Stymphalian, 5608 - I made up a futuristic calendar. This story is set in the year 5608, the month Stymphalian, on the 78th day. 
• Stymphalian Birds are man-eating birds from Greek mythology [click the link for wiki page]. 
• Boeing 787 Dreamliner is one of Boeing's newer aeroplane models, introduced in October '11. 
• arc-optic is completely made up. I was thinking of optic fibre speeds. Originally I wrote just optic but it seemed too our-contemporary, so I added a random "arc" in front of it to seem more futuristic.
• hyper-carbon fibre - same as above. I was thinking of those transparent plastic displays we have nowadays. 
• Transmat - is a transport booth from general sci-fi, similar to a transporter in Star Trek. I really couldn't think sci-fi creative enough today. 
• Amphisbaena is a snake with two heads, also from Greek mythology. In my story it's the name of their pet (the futuristic species of which I'll leave to your imagination)

I'm upset about this story, because I wish I was bothered and had enough time to bring it up to standard. Oh well, criticise away! :P