I miss writing. When I was in my teens and in my early 20s, I wrote all the time. I had notepads full of stories. But somewhere along the way, I just stopped. Now, I have ideas for stories. LOADS! But I can't seem to have the patience or the dedication to start a story and TO FINISH IT. Basically, am lazy. So, I thought "Why don't I try and get back into writing by doing a writing sprint once a week? It can be anything. I just need to write." And, because I wanted to keep doing this, I thought I would include this on my blog.
So, the plan: once a week (I'm thinking Saturday or Sunday, but I just going to try and do this whenever I can!), I need to sit down with my laptop and, for 30 minutes, write. Just write. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have be neat or make sense but I just have to write. And, once that 30 minutes are up, I must post it on the blog. Whatever I write, good or bad, I have to post it. To prove to you guys that I have done it and to show you guys that if I can write this awful car-crash writing, you can write too! And you guys probably write better than me!
So, to get it started, I wanted to just write something. Next week might be a Twitter poll idea or a song or try out a new genre (I fear it might be erotica [if I do, blame My Dad Wrote A Porno and We Write Sex!]). But as long as I just write, it doesn't matter!
Plus, I need to think of a title for the story after I wrote the 30 minutes are up!
So, you guys have to keep me in check and if I forget, SHOUT AT ME!!!
Now, who's ready to read something I write in the past 30 minutes...?
The Man Of Saint Paul's
It was so cold that the River Thames had frozen over. Which would have been fine in the depths of winter, but not in the middle of the hottest July in the past ten years.
And while it was the hottest July for the rest of the United Kingdom, London was under a blanket of snow. It was as if a giant weather knife had cut the sky over the city, with blue cloudless skies over Essex and Kent, but from Stratford to Richmond, the skies were a dense, angry grey with huge, fluffy snowflakes floating to the ground and settling.
No one could understand nor explain it. The Met Office couldn’t. The Prime Minister couldn’t. The Royal Family had to move out of the city due to the ill health.
It was strange. There was no other word for it. Strange.
But on the Tuesday morning this story begins, it wasn’t the strangest thing that happened. But to most people, they only saw part of the story, not all of it. And those who did had trouble explaining it.
On that Tuesday morning, no one saw the man sitting on the very top of the tallest steeple of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
The man himself was strange. No one, if they had looked at him, couldn’t describe him. One person would say that he was tall, thin, almost scarecrow-like with oatmeal pale skin. Another would say he was big, broad, black, with a scary tattoo wrapped round his eyes, like half-moon glasses. A third person would have describe him as something completely different. But the only thing that everyone would agree on was the gentleman’s eyes. They were a dark blue, so dark that they almost looked brown.
The man's clothes were bizarre. He wore shiny black shoes, unnaturally tailored trousers made a shiny blue fabric, a housecoat made of yellow and red Chinese silk and a felt top-hat. He had a walking cane tugged under his left arm, made of dark ebony, jade and unspecified bone. Floating just within reach of his right hand was a bag, an ugly hybrid of a briefcase and a Mary Poppins-type carpet bag. He was reading a newspaper that was made of pale parchment.
He didn’t feel the cold. Nor did he look up when a hideous-looking pigeon flew and landed on his bag. He just tutted and turned the page of the paper.
The pigeon wasn’t a pigeon, as I suspect you already knew. It was too fat to be a London pigeon and it looked almost like a parrot, with inky black feathers and evil little eyes.
It made a noise. The man ignored him.
It made a noise again. The man sighed, folded the corner of the paper and sighed at the sight of the bird. “You…”
The bird made a sudden movement, as if it was choking or gagging. The man ignored this violent movement and started to fold his paper.
The bird continued to gag, choke and cough before it vomited an ink blob, which floating in the air, a liquid sphere. The bird looked at the ink sphere with surprise, while the man sighed again.
As if an invisible pen had been dipped into the ink ball, words began to be written in front of the man, floating in the air.
You are needed. Return to the office at one. Hope you are enjoying your morning off. M.
The bird tilted its head, like a dog.
“Tell her I’m coming…” He signed after a long moment. So much for his morning off…
The bird tilted its head, almost as if it was nodding, before it flew away. The man had no idea why he told to the bird his reply. By the time the bird got to the sender, he would be back in his office for the past twenty minutes.
Maybe I should have sent a text… he thought to himself and he grabbed the carpet bag, opened it and stuffed the paper inside in unclear movement. He closed it and stretched. He felt his bones creak as he began to stand up, his hand holding the head of his cane, a jade dragon head.
If anyone had looked up at that moment, they would have seen a man, almost floating in mid-air.
With his cane, he drew something with the tip of his cane. A small rectangle shape. For a second, nothing happened. Then, there was a creak sound and the sky opened where he had drew the rectangle shape. It was a door in the sky, opening into a something dark and very oak. He stepped forward into he dark.
He was no longer standing on Saint Paul’s, but in a dark wooden office. There was click behind him and the door had snapped shut behind him and vanished, as if it had never existed.
He had stepped into the round, egg-snapped office. There was no natural light, but there were lit candles, hundreds of them coming out of the wall and sitting on the desk in the middle of the room. Because the candles, the room was warm and the man had to remove his top hat.
The desk was covered in papers, jars and, for some unknown reasons, a bag of mint humbugs.
He wasn’t alone in the room. Behind the desk, peacock quill in hand, sat a woman wearing a heavy green dress, with long sleeves and a dark green headscarf wrapped tightly round her head, hiding her hair. She had a long face and heavy eyelids and her pale, milk-like eyes were filling in a long form.
“Ah,” she said in a dark, masculine voice. “You are very nearly late. Take a seat, why don’t you?”
A seat popped into existence behind the man and he sat, crossing his ankles and lowering the carpet-bag to the floor.
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