new + old

new: It's now a new month, so I have a new header. I'll probably change it every month just to keep things mixed up a bit. This time I opted for more reds as a contrast to January's blues. Hopefully it will liven things up a bit. :)

H a p p y   F e b r u a r y   e v e r y o n e !

old: Yesterday I was looking through all my documents and I found some things I had written from a while back, like two or so years ago. Here's something that I think I originally wrote in fall of '09. It's just a little excerpt, since I only got around to writing like six paragraphs or something. XD Yeah, I fail.

Her name is Rosalynn Spring Brooks and she is newly twelve years old. She is a girl of few words; what she does say is only spoken softly and deliberately, for she doesn't like to waste her breathe. She is a thoughtful girl who loves rainy days, newspapers, and gardening. Rosalynn is tall-ish and thin with brown hair, regular brown hair that frames her face and cascades down her rail-like frame to just past her shoulders. Her eyes are blue, a clear, light blue that is startling against her dark hair. She lives, most of the time, with her father, a teacher, in a small cottage-like house surrounded by the gardens that she loves dearly. She has lived in this tranquil world in Elizabeth, New Jersey all her life; only it became a lot quieter after her mother moved to New York City two years before.

It is November and the warm months are long gone from New England. What was once a gentle, teasing breeze is now a harsh, whipping wind that jerks on the frayed edges of her scarf and her hair. The trees are bare and empty, their vivid colored leaves only a memory. Rosalynn hates these winter months, these in-between months. They are filled with bitter cold and the boredom that comes with being confined indoors. Of course, she has the holidays to look forward to, but they still seem eons away.

For now, though, Rosalynn is content to lie in her bed, under the pleasant warmth of the layers of blankets and comforters. It is the best place to be in November, she decides, especially on a Saturday morning like this one, when there's not much else to do. She yawns and sits up slowly, throwing the covers off and leaning over the side of her bed until she feels her fingers clasped around her notebook. She's thought of a good idea for a story and she jots it down her her journal that she keeps by her bedside specifically for times like this. Today, her story is about fairies again. It was about fairies last week, too. This one is different, though, she tells herself. Much more original, much more thought-out. That was the problem with all her other beginnings of stories, she thinks: they weren't well thought-out, which is why she could never follow through with them. Rosalynn's biggest problem as a writer isn't coming up with ideas or even the actual writing part; it is sticking with them and finishing the stories. In this notebook alone, she bets there are at least a dozen stories, none of them more than a chapter long. She lets loose a dramatic sigh, finishes her scribbling and drops the journal to the floor. Her eyes wander around her mess of a room---clothes, piled up on her desk; books and newspapers dating weeks ago, strewn across the floor. Her bedside table is a complete and utter rat's nest within itself: sticky notes, sunglasses, her iPod, jewelry, an odd collection of bottle caps, nail polish, an alarm clock and her wallet, among other things, sit collecting dust in the drawer of her nightstand. Her mother, if she could see this, would say that cluttered rooms are a sign of cluttered minds, but her father doesn't really mind it. He's not exactly the world's neatest guy, either.

Okay,  I hope that wasn't too bad. Any constructive criticism? Like, don't ever write anything again? If anyone actually *gasp* likes it, then maybe I'll post something from my NaNo story later. I actually kind of enjoy that story, odd as it is. Everyone else is like, "in retrospect, it's terrible" but I'm like "I'd buy this". I think there's something wrong with me?

~Starr