Press Play

The following is an exercise I worked on for my advanced fiction class spring semester 2015. We had to tell a story in an unorthodox, non-linear way, since stories usually are intensely linear and follow a distinct storytelling pattern. I chose to create a playlist using existing songs to tell the story, placing all the emphasis on the song titles as opposed to song meanings or real intentions. Ever since I discovered music and the capability of creating playlists, I've essentially captured stories and emotions with them, as I'm sure many other music fanatics have. It was only fitting to submit this as an exercise.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. Ta~!

-------

Press Play

Be Alone//Paramore

Anonymous//Three Days Grace

Close Your Eyes//Future Of Forestry

Daydreaming//Paramore

Think Of You//MS MR

You Have My Attention//Copeland

You Had Me At Hello//A Day To Remember

Looking Up//Paramore

Is This Love//Whitesnake

Fall For You//Secondhand Serenade

Start Of Something Good//Daughtry

Love Affair//Copeland

Made For You//OneRepublic

Adore//Paramore

Sweetness//Jimmy Eat World

Falling Into You//Mae

Hold Nothing Back//Copeland

D-I-E 4 Y-O-U//Family Force 5

Any Way You Want It//Journey
Love Addict//Family Force 5

Addicted//Saving Abel

My Hero//The Foo Fighters

Communication//Mae

I Belong To You//Muse

I Want You To…//Jem

Marry Me (Overture)//Hans Zimmer

Believe It Or Not//Nickelback

So I Thought//Flyleaf

The Awakening//Demon Hunter

Careful//Paramore

Careful Now//Copeland

Misguided Ghosts//Paramore

Secrets//Onerepublic

God, Drugs, & Sex//Anberlin

Love The Way You Lie//Eminem Ft. Rhianna

Dance With The Devil//Breaking Benjamin

Control Freak//Copeland

Toxic//Britney Spears

Decode//Paramore

Under Pressure//Queen

No Excuses//Alice In Chains

Had Enough//Breaking Benjamin

No More Love//Shinedown

Cry For Help//Shinedown

Dear Agony//Breaking Benjamin

Damn Regret//The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Forgive Me//Jars Of Clay

In Fate’s Hands//The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

All I Wanted//Paramore

You//Future Of Forestry

Never Again//Nickelback

Jar Of Hearts//Christina Perri

We’ve Got A Score To Settle (Red)//The Dear Hunter

I’m Sorry//Flyleaf
Hate Me//Blue October

It Ends Tonight//The All-American Rejects

The Grim Goodbye//The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Misery Business//Paramore

Are You Happy Now?//Michelle Branch

Hello Alone//Anberlin

Hello Cold World//Paramore

Someone, Anyone//Anberlin

Tell Me It’s Okay//Paramore

Running From You//Saving Abel

I Fade Away//Pillar

Where’s My Head//Copeland

Harder to Breathe//Maroon 5

Save Me//Jem

Save Me//Queen

Save Me//Shinedown

My Writing Journey (So Far)

Hello all~

             Today I added another finished (rough draft) book to my collection, which makes it...six...now....

My first actual novel I began and finished during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is in November - you've got 30 days to write 50,000 words: http://nanowrimo.org/) of 2010, almost four years ago. Let's rewind a bit first - I'm feeling story time! 

I wrote my very first ever chapter story completely from my imagination around Christmas of 2007, and that ended up being 14 pages (7,500 words) in Word, which was monumental for the time and I was very proud (let me put it into perspective - I was thirteen years old). Keep in mind, the stories themselves were pretty dumb, but the essence was cool, at least to my teenage brain. And I didn't stop. I wrote a sequel (9 pages, 5,000 words), a third installment (a whopping 27 pages and 15,000 words!), AND a fourth one (34 pages, 17,600 words), AAAAND I began to write a fifth book but I guess I got busy or something because I just dropped it (only got to be 4,000 words anyway, and if I recall, the story was starting to get suuuuper cray). All of these were written before an entire year passed. When I was 13-14 years old, I dedicated 49,100 words to this idea I had, and I wrote it all in a year. (I hadn't ever actually gone back to see how many words they were or added them up, so this is even very intriguing as well as surprising to me). I can easily say, in writing those dumb stories, I fell completely and utterly in love with writing.

So, back to my first real novel in 2010. Between 2007/2008 and 2010, I wrote little blurbs of things, short stories and whatever. During the summer of 2010, I had the incredible pleasure of participating in the Young Writers Workshop at UVA for 3 intensive weeks of nothing but writing, which is the event in my life that really jump started my serious writing journey. However, I didn't pick up the idea of trying to write a full-length novel until I was introduced to NaNoWriMo that year. I got really excited by the idea and figured what the heck, I'd try it. I'd pledge to write at least 50,000 words on a piece of fiction of mine in a month. Now, before, I had written almost 50,000 words over the course of an entire year. Granted, I had grown up a little since then, but to cram all that work into 30 days? It seemed daunting, incredibly so, at first. But then I started writing on the idea, just kept writing and writing, and I got it done in a month. At it's finished stage, it came out at 53,600 words. My first novel was born, November of 2010. After that, it's obvious that I simply couldn't stop writing.

That next summer, 2011, I wrote a novella, 29,500 words. NaNoWriMo that same year, I wrote another novel, 52,400 words. That next year, 2012, is when things started to get serious. I was becoming tired of writing one-book stories - I needed something more, at least a book and a sequel or something. I had been sketching out and tossing around ideas for three separate books revolving basically around the same idea, within the same universe, for years. Years. (Some of the word documents holding the sketches and ideas dated back to my time in Peru, which was over 3 years ago.) It was NaNoWriMo of 2012, during my very first Freshman semester, that I penned the first idea. It's 92,700 words. I had broken the 50,000 word barrier I was under for the first three; I could never seem to get much past it. So this satisfied me for a while, but then, the sequel grew, and then it grew into a trilogy. The sequel, which I penned last summer (2013), turned out 54,600 words. And, friends, I'm telling you all this, because today marks the day that I finished my first trilogy. The third installment weighed in at 54,500, before I've gotten a chance to read back through it and do some quick revisions and additions. Just a couple hours ago, I declared the rough rough draft complete. I am the proud owner of a trilogy. And you may not care, which is okay with me, because I'm pretty darn pumped about it.

The little take-away from this story (if you’re a writer and you care about these things) I can give you is that starting and finishing that very first full-length novel idea is tough. Goodness, it is sooooo touuuugh. I've started millions of things, and finished only these. Some of them I'd rather pitch, but they're my babies and we're proud of each other. So just write, okay? If you want to write a novel, do it. Don't psych yourself out, don't demoralize yourself - just. do it. That first one is hard, but any after that are so much easier, because you have proved to yourself that yes, you can write a novel, because hey YOU'VE ALREADY DONE IT! NaNoWriMo proved the perfect kick in the pants to motivate me to do just that, so if a countdown helps you, then I encourage you to try that. Now that I'm in college, it's hard to find the time in November to write a novel, so now I just do them over Winter and Summer break ;)

Writing is hard, I know. But to be able to step back and take a look at that rough idea all laid out, well...that's one of the sweetest feelings an author can experience.

Ta!
V

Fragments & Poppycock

A chapter taken from one of my novels. Felt the need to post something writing-related, so here it is. Woot.
-V

---------

It was bitingly cold outside, the wind howling its own misery and despair through the trees.

Jodi quietly stepped outside of the house and onto the front porch to clear her head and get some air. The police were already done “investigating” and questioning the three that had called them about Kaylis’s alleged “suicide”. Now all they had to do was write up their reports and decide whether James, Jodi, and Vincent were telling the truth.

“If this was a suicide, then why’s that boy out front’s name written on her arm?” one surly officer had asked Jodi, glaring at her with beady little owl eyes.

“He didn’t kill her. They were dating and he broke it off a few days ago. You can ask anyone at the party that we were at before we came here; they’ll testify that none of us were present at the time of death. We just found her like that,” Jodi explained with her arms crossed and eyes unwavering. The officer stepped down, although regrettably, and waved her away.

James had called Kaylis’s mother and what he thought was her older sister’s number in her cell phone to tell them of the news. He was currently leaning against the door of his Acura, arms crossed and expression sullen. He’d stepped away to allow Jodi a moment alone with Vincent, who was resting his back against the house on the other side of the door in a droopy fashion.

A cigarette was perched between his lips and every few seconds he would blow out a cloud of smoke, watching it dissipate listlessly in the passing wind. He had retracted back into his shell.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Jodi began quietly. Her breath came out looking as a cloud in the cold air.

“I don’t,” he murmured, continuing to stare into the shadows of the night. He pinched the end of the cigarette and slipped it gingerly from his lips. “But I do now.” He exhaled slowly, creating a steady stream of smoke and breath.

After a beat, Jodi took a few steps toward him with a sympathetic expression on her face.

“Hey, it’ll be all right--”

“Wrong. It won’t ever be fucking all right,” he said, cleanly cutting her off midsentence. He hadn’t expressed any emotion in his words, although in Jodi’s head it seemed strange not to put any emphasis on one word or another. He spoke like he was talking about dreams, about lovely, plushy, happy dreams. “It can’t be. Jodi…something’s changed in me. Something’s happened and I can’t explain it but it feels like a fucking black hole in my chest. I don’t understand it but it hurts, okay? I can’t…I can’t…” He grabbed at words, his tone suddenly different, and in the porch light, Jodi could see his lip wobbling and eyes glimmering. He cursed and shoved his palms into his eyes, grinding his teeth. “I can’t feel anything. I…it feels like I died back there. It’s like I’m a ghost now, or some shit.”

Jodi knew whenever he had talked to her before he put a filter on his words to be courteous, but now it was anything goes and he didn’t care. She could easily see it in his dull, inexpressive blue irises. He was losing himself and there were no rungs on the ladder to bring him back. He would just keep falling away, piece by piece, into madness.

Jodi wanted to hug him. She wanted to hug him badly, but she wasn’t sure how he would respond, if at all. He needed something she couldn’t give him. He needed something she wasn’t sure anyone could give him anymore. He seemed to read her thoughts and shook his head in agreement before pulling something out of his pocket.

“I gave this ribbon to her and told her to think of me and how much I cared when she wanted to self-harm…I guess it backfired. And I don’t want it. So you should take it and remember her whenever you see it. Please,” he asked, placing it in Jodi’s hand without her permission, but she took it anyway. “I’ve got enough memories to last me a lifetime. I don’t need any reminders.”

The spinning, silent police lights on top of the cars illuminated his face in blue and red, flashing through his eyes as he stood there, gazing at nothing and wondering everything.

“Well, I guess it’s time to go home. What are you going to do, Vince? The party is probably going to continue well into the morning.”

“There’s no way I’m going back there tonight. Fuck all those happy people; they don’t deserve it,” he lashed, although his tone was still cool and calm. She had no idea how he managed it.

Jodi closed the distance between them and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean go back to the party. I meant where are you going to sleep? What are you going to do for the rest of the night?”

“I don’t know, float around, and terrorize some people. I’m a ghost, remember?”

Jodi gave him a sympathetic, concerned look, but his eyes didn’t match hers. “Vincent, you know as much about psychology as I do and I know you know how much thinking those kinds of thoughts are going to screw you over.”

At this, his blue eyes stared straight into hers, but there was no emotion. There was absolutely nothing.

“I’m already screwed over, Jo. Go home and sleep. Goodnight.”

Mortal Deficiency

I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m willingly strolling, unarmed, right into the bad part of town. Christ, I don’t even have my switchblade, but that wouldn’t do me any good anyway based off the stories I’ve heard about this place. A more fitting weapon would be a machine gun, loaded to the gills. And even then, survival would be iffy.

At least I’ve got someone with me. He seems to belong to this place, so perhaps I won’t seem like such a stranger to the scum that hangs around here. Although I’ve only just met this guy – he could be playing with me when he said he’s got “something interesting to show me” back home. He definitely could turn a phrase in an enticing way.

This is stupid beyond stupidity. But I’m not stupid. Just desperate.

He glances over his shoulder to check and see if I’m still following.

Yup, this rat is still pressing the pleasure button. And wasting away to nothing in the process.

We stalk up to a very shady hole in the crumbling brick wall and although this should deter anyone in their right mind, I don’t turn and run. My escort bangs on the door twice in rapid succession. The door opens a crack (I almost expected an eye slit to open) and a scraggly, bearded man peers out with malted eyes. The contrast between this and his dirty face is staggering. At first glance he seemed in his forties, but upon further scrutiny, he’s probably only twenty-something. I blink and look down at the ground in thought.

“He’s a virgin and he wants a taste,” the escort greets, smirking as he spoke to the doorman. I want to protest in some way but find I can’t and decide to stay quiet, letting the boy speak for me. He must mean something else, I think.

The doorman blinks and nods his head in understanding, opening the door enough for us to shimmy through. The room is stark and bare for all but a chair and sad looking table. Things are getting sketchier by the minute.

Instead of stopping here, the doorman hobbles over to the far wall and draws back a curtain, revealing a door and opening it. Commotion blasts up the stairwell and I realize this is just a cover for when the cops come knocking.

We are guided down the stairs into a room bustling with people of all shapes and sizes. I hear lots of boisterous laughter and profanity and I’m sure this is the place. The place woven of rumors and full of dreams. Existing and not.

“Set down there and we’ll get you fixed up,” the doorman tells me and I do as he says. The man hobbles away into the mass. My escort sits in the rickety chair next to me and stares at me with an unmistakable sparkle in his eyes.

“Since this is your first time an’ all, I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen,” he begins, his rancid breath bringing tears to my eyes. I don’t flinch back; I regard him as if his words are gold. “So, you get all relaxed like and calm yourself. Do that meditation shit. And we’ll bring you what you’re here for, all dressed up and ready to go.” He smirks at me like he’s sharing with me the best secret he knows. Perhaps it is.

“It’ll only hurt for a second, but after that, all you’ll want is more. That’s usually the case with most guys like you, since you can afford it,” he explains.

The doorman walks back toward me with something in his hand. It manages to shine despite the terrible lighting.

“He ready?” he drawls, looking at me intensely. I nod, answering for myself for once. He kneels beside me and rolls up the sleeve of my blazer as well as the dress shirt underneath. “You businessmen and your suits,” he mumbles as he ties the broken rubber band above the bend in my elbow. Bringing it up to the light, he taps the syringe, ridding it of unwanted air bubbles. “Just a poke and then you’re done.”

The anticipation skyrockets in me and I go into a high before the syringe even breaks my skin. This is it. I’ve found it. This is happening. The drug everyone wants but no one can find.

And now it’s mine.

The needle plunges easily into my vein and the man presses down the plunger until it’s bled dry. A slow smile breaks my face as I stare at the red dot marring the bend of my elbow.

My escort claps a hand on my shoulder and for once I don’t mind the unwarranted contact.

“In a few minutes you’ll feel the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing compares. Think of it this way: imagine the best sex you’ve ever had and multiply that by a thousand,” he tells me. I do what he says.

His words are truth.

But what they don’t tell you is what happens later.

The drug weaves through your veins and makes you feel euphoric for a while, but then it becomes a dependency and you can’t wake up in the morning without taking a shot. The feeling is not worth the after effects.

It sucks the nutrients from the body and feeds off them, leaving nothing behind but disintegrating skin and fragile bones.

Months later, I lay here in my hospital bed, feeling dead already. Not one of the nurses can look me straight in the face and not cringe. It is pitiful and disgusting.

I used to be a successful man. Now I’m nothing but bones and memories of what once was.

The heart monitor at my bedside slows more and more with each passing day as the remainder of the drug in me leeches all I have. The doctors don’t know how long I have to live, although it seems only days away at this point. I wish it would take me already.

I wish I hadn’t been so stupid.

-----

Fiction. Gotta love it.

Ciao~

V

Mirror

She sits alone, teasing the hem of her long, elegant sleeve when a man steps close to her and reaches out a hand to take hers. Her eyes dart up into his and a smile meets her gaze, soft and comforting. Reassuring.

A small grin lights up her lips as she stands and folds herself into his arms. One around her waist, the other clasping her hand tightly.

A song begins to play in the background and the room gets completely quiet except for the shuffling of some children through the crowd.

Tears fill her eyes as the melodies weave through her head. He kisses her cheek before she rests it on his shoulder.

“How did this all happen? Us?” she murmurs as they sway together.

“I don’t know. But I’m glad it did.”

A small, choked laugh slips out and she sniffles quietly.

“Look at the stars,” he whispers, tickling her ear.

A few tears roll and she can't help the grin that blooms across her face.

“Look how they shine for you.”

“Do they?” she asks gently.

“Yes,” he replies, resting his lips at her forehead. “And they will shine for you forever.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“Believe me, you are.”

She grins even wider.

“Why did you choose me?”

“I didn’t,” he responds certainly.

At this, she brings her head off his shoulder and gazes into his eyes with a furrowed brow.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t say I knew it from the very beginning, but after we met and started talking, you came to me, as if in a dream. In my mind it would be more right if I said you were the one who chose.”

“I feel this is just how it was meant to happen,” she says.

He chuckles and it warms her through.

“I agree to that.”

A contented sigh leaves her then and the close of the song becomes apparent. Her hands begin to shake as a chill sears through her. She clutches on to him harder in defiance. Fear soaks her thoughts through.

“It’s almost time to go,” he murmurs, his tone tinted with sorrow.

“I know,” she chokes out.

“I’m glad I got to see you one last time. I’ve missed you.”

The tighter she grasps, the weaker her fingers grow.

“I don’t want to go,” she sobs.

A sad sound tore from his throat, mingling sickly with a knowing chuckle.

“Oh, my love…you already have.”

The shock barrages her limbs and the foreign breath in her lungs leaves her completely as the image of him disappears from her vision.

Her eyes close softly and she falls, unmoving.

“I’m sorry,” he cries, clawed with pain, while gripping the edge of the casket. The way he looks upon her pale face brings others to tears, but he doesn’t care about them. “I should have been there.”

His knees give out and his mother rushes to his side, leading him away from his deceased beloved with consoling words. He doesn’t hear them.

Oh my love…

I have failed you.

------

Wedding/Funeral. A play on words.

Happy V day, folks.

     ~Vicki