#I love rachel tho so all time spent was time well spent lmaooo

[littlenimart]

// even if this is something that cannot be allowed, the flames jump higher still //

(my friends had a Good Omens S2 bingo where the winner chose their prize. @bargainbinsquid got the highest score and asked that the rest of us make them “good omens yuri.” this is my tribute.)

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Water Babies + The Light When You Close Your Eyes | Writing Update

Hey People of Earth! 

*This update is a few weeks old, whoops!*

It’s been some time since I last posted, and so much has happened! I’ve been uber busy with school (October and November always suck?) but I’m back for a quick writing update. 

I’ve mentioned it on here before, but if you don’t know, I’m actually taking a writing class]! It’s split up into four units (I think lol), and so far, we’ve covered: intro to writing, poetry, and we’re currently working on fiction! For fiction, we were asked to write two short stories (actually technically flash fiction but), and this update is about these stories.

(I meant to post this weeks ago as it was finished, however, I’ve held out in case I decide to fix these up in the future and publish them, so no excerpts this update, but I’ll be back with a FOSTERED update chock full of excerpts soon! I’m sorry!!)

WATER BABIES:

So the first story I’ll be updating you on is a short piece I wrote called Water Babies! 

The original draft was a pretty easy write, and made me realize how much I definitely wanted to revisit this story. (Which, this just in, future Rachel who is editing this post, has currently started! More on this later!)

What’s it about? 

WATER BABIES follows twelve-year-old Bea and her seventeen-year-old stepbrother Pluto as they con their way across America, when they get wrapped up in a murder committed by Pluto. 

Conception:

For this assignment, we were tasked to write a story based off a prompt (around 200-300 words). I didn’t have many ideas for a story (and by not many I mean zerooooo), so took to reading some short story collections as preparation (ya girl is not hecka experienced with short fiction). After reading Emily Geminder’s Houses, I was uber inspired!

When I sat down to write the story, I knew I saw the image of a boy standing on a hotel porch smoking, and the first paragraph flowed easily from there. 

Most of the plot meat came to me whilst on a night drive with my folks! In the initial draft, Bea and Pluto were just sort of meandering across America, but after handing in the story and brainstorming further, quickly concluded that they’re both definitely thieves (and pretty good ones, if I do say so) who quickly get wrapped up in a murder after a stint goes very wrong. 

There was a bit of a *tragic* twist to this story, that being we had to start the short story with a writing prompt. I mean no offense to the writer of these prompts, lol, but they weren’t all my faves. I really wanted to choose one that didn’t imply a plot, so I chose:  “Leaving two years ago was the best thing I ever did.” <<< The writing prompt was required to be the first sentence (the prompt I chose is actually dialogue).

The writing bit: 

I drafted this story rather quickly and painlessly! The first draft came out to be around 800 words. @sarahkelsiwrites slashed it (thankfully), and cut it down to about 400 words. In terms of prose, I didn’t find it was anything special since I was definitely restricting myself so I could hit that word count. Looking back, that wasn’t the best decision, because I think the line level struggled a bit (was a little flat), so I’m happy that I’m redrafting!

Speaking of redrafting, I’ve been very slowly chipping away at this story since the beginning of the month, and it’s been going rather well! I’ve written about 270 words, which I’m fairly happy with. The story definitely started off in a completely different place than the original, though I’m really happy with the change! Also, murder in the first sentence, folks. Murder in the first sentence. 

The aftermath

The story I handed in is super short, and will serve as the third-ish scene in the story! By the time I’m editing this post, I’ve already begun the redraft of the actual story, and OH BOY does it begin with a bang (literally). 

I made an aesthetic for WATER BABIES (which prolly will have a title shift who knows):

THE LIGHT WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES

I haven’t written many stories, however, I feel like I can officially deem this a Classic Rachel story because OH BOY.

What’s it about? 

THE LIGHT WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES follows twenty-four year old Leigh Suzuki as she seeks revenge against her ex-best friend, ft. a voodoo doll. This story has basically the same plot as a music video @sarahkelsiwrites and I made last year, wherein Sarah was a murderous jealous twin who spotted me with another friend, and spends the entirety of Daughter’s Burn It Down making a voodoo doll/clone of me, and subsequently, stabbing said voodoo doll to (what we can assume is) death. (January of last year was a dark time folks HA.)

Conception:

The concept of this story is a lil funny. I talk about this in the most recent writing vlog I’m editing, but this story was for a focus on character assignment. Meaning, we were required to design a new character and write a story featuring them. 

I think we had about a week to complete this story, and being the *weak bitch writer* I am, had a great idea, and decided to just make a character profile using my character Emily from FOSTERED. 

If y’alls don’t know, I’m a Pantser. I don’t plan things and that’s what’s always worked best for my process. Can y’alls guess what happened.

I spent about an hour writing out a character profile for the assignment, as well as wrote up some exercises for it, and then got ready to write the story. I had a list of ideas for the scenes, assuming I’d write about a witch doctor of some sorts. And would you believe it! I started writing the story, and it wasn’t even the right character. It was most definitely not the story I planned, nor did the voice suit any of the characteristics I’d planned. lol. 

What was funny is, Leigh (derived from Emily do u see me do u see me) totally had FOSTERED’s MC’s voice (Reeve we love u), and it just caught me by surprise. I was predicting I’d write a very upbeat story and instead it’s violent. Not predictable at all. I’d say Leigh definitely has some differences, however she’s very much if Reeve and Emily mushed into one. 

The writing bit: 

I drafted most of this story in a 15 minute writing session, and came out with around 600 words. After finishing it up (adding an actual beginning lol), it came up to 1100 words. It was supposed to be around 600, so I cut it down to around 700 (saved the original tho because there is so much SALT)! This story is basically a salty rant about friendship gone wrong. 

The aftermath:

I handed in this story knowing it would be sort of a gamble. I wasn't sure how my teacher would feel about the POV/the style in general since it’s kind of severe/violent (#catholic school lmaooo), but she really liked the story! 

Like I said before, there won’t be any excerpts in this post, but I still hope you guys enjoyed this update! I’ll be back with more stuff in 2019, folks, buckle up! Happy New Year! 

--Rachel