ninasdrafts

[ninasdrafts]

Hey there, I'm not really writing to post at the moment because I'm so busy. But I'm still working on my book, and if you'd like updates on that, you should follow me on twitter - it's ninasdrafts.

[ninasdrafts]

Still looking for comp titles for my fantasy book.

Strong themes: family betrayal/fighting inner demons and tragic past

Plot points: competition for the crown/seeking revenge for murder ("eye for an eye")/falling in love with the person supposed to kill you

If anything comes to mind, comment or shoot me a message 🤗

Edit: thank you guys for reaching out, but I'm not looking for a title for my book - I'm looking for comp titles

[ninasdrafts]

Who would've thought it'd be holding your hand where I'd lose my footing? After all we'd been moving in tandem half our lives. The question plaguing me is not the why or the how, it's the when. When did we lose sight of each other? When did the ache of missing you turn into relief inspired by your absence? Perhaps when you started seeing my wins as your losses. Perhaps when you wanted to be heard to be so bad, you forgot to listen. Our story has two sides, I know. I turned into a ghost for you. An empty casket haunted by memories that'd lost their shine long ago. I no longer wanted to talk about the sunlit past, glorified treasures of time that felt bigger for you each day because nothing came after. I no longer wanted to pretend we had a future together going forward. We didn't. We don't. I knew, you knew, but we didn't voice it. We couldn't. Things like this happened to other people, not to us. Ugly truths are hard to admit, but how ugly are they really when they feel like the first breath of fresh air in a year? I'll say it: I miss the times we lived through together, but I don't miss who I was with you. I'm doing better now. I'm doing better than I ever was and that's what you can't stand. And this is why we can never go back to what we once were.

-the ugly truth / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

We've all got a story to tell, don't we?

[ninasdrafts]

Somehow we became everything we swore we wouldn't. We slipped into our routines, into our habits, alone, stumbling into the life we'd always wanted for ourselves, but it didn't fall into place like we imagined it would. Over the months, we got separated and drifted further apart, two pieces of a whole that became so unrecognisable that if we met again now our edges would no longer fit, roughened by time, disappointment and not wanting to be the one to take the first step. I told you I missed you, you said you wanted things to be the way they were - but there was no acting on these words. No payoff. No route leading back to what we'd been. We'd grown apart, like two flowers who'd gravitated toward two different suns and my heart couldn't take it - until it eventually could. Until I'd moved on and stopped wondering what you were doing and why you were doing it without me. I unlearned knowing you and even though it feels right now, I remember how wrong it used to feel. Letting you go was like erasing a part of me, but the skin around the hole you left has long since knitted itself back together. And I wonder how you used to fit there. I wonder how you used to be the centrepiece of my life and now you're not even on the board.

I unlearned knowing you / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

It's been a long time coming💫🫶🏼

Literally - long time no see.

As you may or may not know, we're busy building our future home so the past months have been the most stressful months of my life and time to write (and to update my socials! Obviously) has been cut short. I will be back, though, fear not😌

I got to see Taylor Swift twice in the past weeks (for the first time!!) and I cannot begin to describe what this experience meant to me. I feel like this woman held my hand during a huge part of my life, guided me through falling in love, my first heartbreak, grief, wonder and all the emotions belonging to growing up. In terms of writing and being true to what I'm feeling, she is one of my biggest inspirations and influences and finally seeing her perform was an absolute dream come true and exceeded my already great expectations. I also got to hear two of my favourite songs as surprise songs - this is me trying and Call It What You Want - and somehow managed to get two guitar picks (thanks to Paul I guess???). I'm grateful, happy and very exhausted!

So how do I go back to normal?

[ninasdrafts]

After all these years, these thoughts are still what keeps you awake at night, even though you'd sworn to yourself you wouldn't go back there. I think it's because we faded over time. Quietly. Naturally. I didn't disappear from your life - the parts I gave to you just became smaller and smaller and one day you no longer recognised them as mine. Sometimes I find myself thinking it would've hurt less if there'd been a big fallout. If there'd been hurtful words and betrayals and ugly truths. My loud laughter faded to whispers. Whispers faded to silence. I belonged to you and then I didn't. And even though you don't want to, you find yourself lying awake in the middle of the night, your finger tracing the spot where I used to stretch out my hand, waiting for our palms to meet.

fading / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

The years are slipping by and we're falling back into old patterns, reducing ourselves to our bad habits, crashing into each other like waves that've been doing this for decades, for eons, forever. And I think: is that all there is? A love that lasts but crushes me from the inside out, where every day hurts a little more, sharpening the thorns growing around the bones of my ribcage. How do I break free, I wonder, but I come up empty. Because when I dig deeper and my fingers scrape against soil, there's only sand and dirt caked underneath my nails, never anything of substance. Never anything that tells me how to cut myself loose from the ties you braided into my hair, my tendons, my soul. How does it stop, I wonder, and the answer is one I've always known but never dared to speak. I burn the photos. Destroy the files. Bury the memories. And years later, my heart still remembers the shape of yours and there is nothing I can do except for hoping that one morning I'll wake up and won't be able to recall why it took me so long to fall asleep.

is that all there is? / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

When I ask the universe to send me little signs of you, I don’t have to keep my eyes and ears open. They're not hidden. You're everywhere. I notice you in the smell of freshly made coffee, or a whiff of perfume I pick up in the streets. I notice you in a word I read on an advertising space or in a song playing on the radio or in a conversation I pick up on a barely occupied train. I notice you in an echo of laughter ringing through a room that otherwise would've been empty. You're in a ray of sunlight warming my cheek and in the first drop of rain hitting the pavement on a hot day. I don’t even have to focus to notice you in everything all around me. I don't have to listen. I don't have to look out for you. That's the magic, I guess: knowing you're not gone, not really. Believing it with every fibre of my being. And on days where I forget, I can return to the places where I know I'll find you and I will never be disappointed.

you're everywhere / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

The promises you'd made to me were only in my head after all. I believed in your return the way someone believes in things they are certain of. Irrevocable facts. Grass is green. The sky is blue. You'd come back to me. Next month. Or maybe next year. I waited. I left the window open. I brewed two cups of coffee every morning just to pour the cold leftovers down the sink. I had your number on speed dial, knew it by heart, yet never rang it. I was used to not hearing from you, but the last words you said to me were seared into my brain. "I'd wait for you." But you didn't. Not like I did for you. See, I had this picture of you in my mind. Slightly warped - blurred. Your mouth a red slash in a pale face. Your smile sharp enough to hurt. We choose what we want to remember, I think. I remembered the softness in your gaze when you watched me underneath the street lights and the way you held my hand when I needed you to. Maybe I should've recalled how you looked at me when I said goodbye for what both of us knew was going to be the last time for quite a while. Because you didn't - you did not look at me at all. And maybe it's time for me to stop seeing you in everyone I meet. Maybe it's time I closed the window.

you'd come back to me closed windows / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

Apparently... it's my 12th anniversary on here??? I've been sharing my writing with you guys for... 12 years? Wth! I still remember how nervous (actually - terrified) I was before I uploaded my first post. Can't believe it's been this long. Thank you all so much for your support and nice words, whether you've been here for 12 years, or 5 or for a week. Thank you! I'm not done yet🥰

For shits and giggles: who was here when I set up this blog to share my One Direction fanfic? Is there anyone who actually read it back in the day? Or when I shared the first chapters of the book I was writing at that time?

[ninasdrafts]

I think that even if I hadn't met you by chance all these years ago, I would've ended up right here. In this city. With its old buildings, history carved into every brick, and its bustling centre. Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic but I want to believe fate would have put me into your path no matter what decisions and mistakes I'd made. That all this time I've been navigating life, it would've ultimately led me to wherever you were. You would have found me here. Or I would have found you and brought you back with me. It doesn't really matter. I want to believe that if two people are just right for each other, circumstances can't help aligning in just the right way. If that's true, we can do no wrong - fate would always bring us back here. Together. Right?

you & me & this city / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

Ahhh hi hey hello! I didn't realise you'd missed me so thank you for the lovely comments on my latest piece! I missed you guys too. Sorry it's been so quiet - I'm gonna tell you why so you'll understand. My boyfriend and I are building/renovating our future home so that's obviously a lof of work and takes sooo much time. I use what little time I have to work on my book and sadly there is hardly any time left to write and update my socials regularly. I miss writing and I miss sharing my pieces with you, but I'll try to check in frequently and whenever I find a spare minute to pen something down, you'll find it on here☺️

See you soon! 🤍

[ninasdrafts]

I‘m no longer hurt by the things you said to me, but the way you saw your opening and got out stays with me. It was easy for you. So convenient to flee whenI wasn't looking. I was too busy rearranging my memories in my head, too caught up changing up conversations so they would have a better ending. Words said in anger lose their sting over the years, and yet every single one left its mark. Another nick in the flesh, another brushstroke added to the mural of our past. Sometimes my fingers brush over the places you touched and I remember how it felt when your knife split my skin. It's all right, I tell myself. It's all right to no longer want to see my scars and view them as landmarks of the town we built together. You weren't the first person I'd loved and lost but it still took me by surprise when your face that used to feel like a road map for me turned into no-man's-land. The tells I'd memorised over the years lost their meaning. While I used to read your mood by the tilt of your chin, I see nothing when I look at you now. Empty eyes and a mouth that speaks a language I became rusty in. I wonder when it changed. When the car drove right off the road. By now it doesn't matter. It only matters that it did.

landmarks of our town / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

“You could always tell my fake smiles from my real ones. When it comes to this, I wish I could have lied to you to make things easier. It still amazes me, to be known, to be seen like this - and to go back to being strangers despite of it. To forget the shape of your palm pressed to mine. To unknow the cadence of your laughter. To unlearn the secret language we taught ourselves over the years. It’s a shame we didn’t last. It’s a shame that I was lucky enough to meet someone who took the time to get to know my soul only to let them go again.”

— to be seen like this / n.j.

[ninasdrafts]

Hey! I love your writing/drafts. Do you post stories as well? If so, where can I read them?

Hey, thank you so much! 😊 Not yet, but I'm hoping to start querying later this year and if it all works out you'll hopefully get my book at some point.

[ninasdrafts]

(shortened)