NaNoWriMo 2015

As I mentioned in my last post, I aim to at least better my attempt at NaNoWriMo, hopefully from Camp in April, seeing as I managed about three sentences this time last year.
I have three ideas currently. More titles, really. One of them doesn't even have a title, so I can't even say that.
I'll just describe them already instead of debating what to class them as.

- Eyes of the Reaper

I've actually got a tiny bit down for this. Basic idea is, as I described it to a friend:
Say there were a reaper, sent to collect by a higher power. He does so obediently, for centuries unbothered, until he recognises the face of the one he's collecting. He's seen it before, several times in fact, how has he collected the same person so many times?

And because stuff it, here's what I wrote the other night.
* * *

You're not supposed to interfere, it had been drilled into him since he started. You go, you collect, you return; three steps, that he had followed to the letter since he turned; three steps he would follow to the letter until his sentence was served; three steps he'd never seen the need to disobey. 

A routine. If he were to call it anything, it would be a routine. He listened for his orders, grim as they were. Then again, it was in the job description. A description of the scene, exactly who he was collecting, and he was gone. 

'Better to forget' 

Since he began, it had been better to forget that it was people, like he had been. Better to forget that they had lived lives, be they long or short. Better to forget that the souls he was collecting were dead. 

- When Call My Demons

So this doesn't necessarily have an idea attached to it, so is subject to change. My thought is that maybe it could be about a demon (I'm all about the hellbeings apparently) who's assigned to a family, or a lineage, or something of that style. I feel like this demon would be the kind who's not tied by their own will, more cursed to be, and is called upon by the family members whenever they require some 'assistance'.

- ???

It doesn't have a title, but I just generally want to play with a fairy tale, twist it and mould it into something completely else than its original state, like Chanda Hahn's UnEnchanted (also originally a NaNo project), and the TV shows Grimm (David Giuntoli though), and Once Upon a Time; these two shows kind of contradict each other, as one shows the dark side of the creatures from the Grimm brothers' tales, whereas Once Upon a Time, whilst attempting to feature darker themes, doesn't really manage it.

It Begins

It begins with a swelling, in the back of the throat just above the tongue. Swallowing brings an ache, which unfortunately is necessary.
Suddenly, breathing is a struggle, through a thick tongue and a swollen throat, regular, unobstructed breathing seems a lifetime ago.
And then stabs, everywhere. Knifing pains in your ribs, your upper abdomen, barely thinking past the knife in your head.
You awake, sluggish, wishing for the world to burn if only to cleanse yourself of your plague. And yet you feel like death has already thrown you into hell, just to warm you up.
Eyes dry, thinking slow, you might as well be at home, suffering in burritoed silence, and yet you are here, in a school you'd rather raze, because who takes a day off for a cold?

Guess who's sick! I started coming down with something last night, and this morning woke up feeling like death threw me into hell to warm me up. So have a sickness drabble!

So I Haven't Blogged in a Month

Hi, I'm Eve, I kind of run this blog, but apparently not, seeing as I literally haven't blogged in 6 weeks.
I'M SO SORRY!
So, Eve, whatcha been up to?
Quick round up of last month:
I started year 11, the exam year in Britain, and I'm quite surprised by the lack of me being murdered by teachers, because I'm a little sh*t who has trouble completing homework which isn't 5 questions - heck, I can't even do that for English when it comes to Of Mice and Men, we're supposed to read section 5 this weekend, I haven't read section 2 in full!
I turned 16 a little over 2 weeks ago. I celebrated with quite literally all of my friends there, it was an awesome night, I just didn't get pictures of myself :-/
I'm currently staring at least half a dozen controlled assessments in the face, which each make up 25% of their respective final grades, and they can be the clinchers for a grade, so they're kind of important D:
I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, and maybe actually get something done for it. Here's hoping!
Well, that's kind of it so far! I have one post in the works, that I took pictures for before my accidental hiatus, and hopefully, I'll get some stuff up before I go on holiday in 4 weeks (I'm so excited!)
That's pretty much me at the moment, so I'll see you soon, hopefully, if I remember!

The Sibling Gap

I've mentioned before that I have two older sisters, and I now have a nephew by each of them (D's baby F came on 24th July). By this, you can probably guess that there is quite the age gap between the three of us; in fact there is ten years, on average between us, I refer to this difference as the Sibling Gap

I love my sisters, but this gap does provide some different perspectives.
Out of my group of friends, I am one of maybe two who are the youngest siblings in their respective families. I've also noticed that there can be a semblance of resentment between siblings in some of my friends, especially the ones who are the oldest in their families.
I don't think I could harbour any ill will for long against my sisters, because since I was young, I've had an appreciation of my sister's time. I only actually realised the other week, but my eldest sister was doing her GCSE year the year I started in reception, so how she actually made time for a five year old whilst studying was amazing, so thank you! (I know she reads this)
My sisters both moved out around the time I was seven-ish, one to work, and another to university, so since then I've come to appreciate the time my sisters spend with me, because they both have their own lives to live; also, I can't exactly drive to see them or anything, especially seeing as one lives in Portsmouth, so I appreciate it even more.

I've also found that I'm learning a whole lot more about my sisters now that I'm older, because they were living their lives at my age whilst I was ten years younger, so I'm only now learning the antics of my sisters when they were in their teens, because I was pretty oblivious to all the stuff going on with them.

I've found that there are downsides to the Sibling Gap at the same time. First being, my sisters are adults, they're not dictated by the things that teenagers are, such as exams and the burdens of growing up. One thing I've realised since baby F was born that 'I'm next'; both of my sisters have had kids now, so if they have more, it won't be anything new (well, it will be, but you know what I'm getting at). That's kind of the feeling I have for the rest of my life now; finishing school, my sisters have done that, going on to college, one of them has done that, getting jobs that I'm good at, they've both managed that pretty well.

The Sibling Gap also means that I get a lot of advice, like a lot. A couple of years ago, I had a 'career' in fanfiction writing, which ended up witfh a lecture from one sister talking about the twilight fandom being weird and kinky (much appreciated, my tastes have changed, American dorito heroes are much better!)
Then when I first actually started with my internet presence on Google +, I had a lecture from the other sister. I greatly appreciate all the advice I've received, but also my sisters don't exactly say 'don't do this', more like 'you should probably stay away from this'. because I prefer to make my own mistakes rather than just take my sisters' words for it.

So yeah, I live in a very strange generation wapr, because I'm technically in the same as my sisters, but they were 90's kids and I was a noughties kid.
So, I should be working on some new, more beauty type stuff in the next couple of weeks before chol starts, after that I have no clue how busy I'll be, because of year 11 and controlled assessments and stuff. Here's hoping I won't be, because I love coming to my little corner!
Love you, Eve <3

Writing Wednesday #18 ~ Railroad

It was the railroad, he decided, that brought them together. A hodge-podge team who you wouldn’t see together on an everyday.
They were made up of a self-taught website hacker, a personal training nut, a frantic commuter, an army dropout, and a single mother of two.
He liked to think of them as the civilian Avengers, except the only thing they had avenged so far was a morning coffee run.
They had all met before; he had asked the hacker for laptop recommendations when he had needed a new one; the gym nut and army drop out had bonded over juice cleansing; the commuter and the mum had met in the ice cream aisle after a shared bad day.
They came together for the first time in the coffee shop, offered nods of acknowledgement, smiles tainted by 8am yawns of ‘what am I doing in civilisation at this hour’, raised eyebrows of agreement.
It was after that that they noticed each other’s presence in their lives; his niece was in the same class as the single mother’s twins; the website hacker’s brother had served alongside the dropout; the commuter and the gym goer worked only two buildings apart.
They didn’t do much; they weren’t the Avengers, much as he wanted them to be; they met for coffee whenever they could, arguing over this and agreeing over that.
Until the day it crashed, with him on it; the smiling high school teacher.
It was the railroad that brought them together, and it was the railroad that tore them apart.

* * *

I liked the idea of a railroad being the kind of catalyst that brings a group of people together, kind of like in the Railway Children, so I wrote it! Sorry about the ending, I just kind of felt it fit, and I couldn't shake myself from writing that last line, so it went in.

Got to take some pictures at some point tomorrow and Friday for posts to work on.

Also, if you haven't noticed the picture to the right, I am now on Bloglovin', which if you haven't heard of it, it's essentially a platform where you can save all the blogs you read, whilst also saving the posts you like into collections!

You can find my account here. Combining the followers I have on blogger, and on Bloglovin', we're up to around 44 followers, and no I'm not going to cross match followers, just let me be happy with my numbers :)

So, yeah, love you <3

Temporary Hiatus

A tragedy has befallen me!
You know when you've had your headphones for a while, and they only transport the sound if you bend the wire in a certain way? (side note, I recommend you look into 'bobinos', they're a device that you can wrap your headphones around, but they also come in different sizes for larger wires)
I discovered that was happening a couple nights ago...

To my laptop charger

As you can imagine, I was mortified. My entire life is quite literally within the hard drive of this laptop, whether it's stories I have worked/am working on, pictures from my primary school days, or just my itunes library.

I survived for a day twisting the wire to charge it. Until I lost the kink in the wire last night.

In a panic, I closed my laptop, not wanting to decimate the 38 minutes of charge I had left.

So I went to sleep. Until about 5 this morning when I began getting anxious over it , and paranoid, and also guilty; I'd looked up the cost of a replacement charger, and I honestly didn't want to have to ask my parents to pay for it, and this all kind of culminated so that I was up at 6 this morning backing a load of files into usb keys in the off chance that I lost all my files.

We do have a charger ordered, so I'm at rest now, and am simply anxious over whether it'll work or not!

So yes, back to the hiatus. To be quite honest with you, as handy as it is to blog from my phone, it's a pain in the arse, and I can only really stand it for small posts, like Writing Wednesdays, so I'll take this as a tiny hiatus until the charger arrives.

Remember I love you all, and back up your files for God's sake!

Would You Rather ~ Collab ~ The Terrible Tales of an Awkward Teen

 (Just lost half an entire post trying to correct some mishaps with highlighting D: WHY HAVE I NOT LEARNED TO SAVE SHIT!)

So today, I have a bit of a different post. A couple of weeks ago, I found another blogger through the Teenage Blogger Central community on google plus who was asking if anybody wanted to collab. So I checked out her blog, and I feel like we have quite similar senses of humour and writing styles.

This is with The Terrible Tales of an Awkward Teen, and she's going to be posting these questions also and her answers to them, but I suggest you check out her blog and share the Pen and Key love! (that was far too enthusiastic, it's twenty five to two in the morning, I'm sorry!)

Would You Rather?...

~ Spend a week without wifi or a week without blogging? (that means no reading other blogs or writing for your own)

I find wifi literally wherever I can, so I'd probably go mad without it. Maybe a break from blogging would give me some actually good ideas ;)

~ Be trapped in the last book you read or be trapped in the last tv series you watched? (for interest, what were they?)

Seeing as the last TV show I watched was Hair (I am eternally jealous of their skills), I'd have to say the last book, which was called Wild Designs by Katie Fforde, because Patrick Donahugh sounds hot (if I were Althea's age, not the age I am!)

~ Drive a motorbike or a car?

I'd love to ride a motorbike, but I barely have the centre of gravity to keep a pushbike stable, so a car would probably be safer for me and everybody in my vicinity.

~ Only listen to songs that were popular ten years ago, or only listen to songs that were popular fifty years ago?

I quite like the songs from 10 years ago, because my sisters were my age ten years ago, so I was influenced a lot when I was younger by their music tastes.

~ Spend the rest of your life living in small towns or big cities (you can still move around, just not from one to another)

I love small towns, because they adapt to the changing times. I'd love to live in a big city, but small towns have my heart.

~ Stay in school for the next 30 years or leave school after the 2nd grade?

In second grade, I knew how to add up and how to read, and that was it, so I'd have to say 30 years, as long as the curriculum changed, because I could not stand learning the same thing over and over for thirty years.

~ Live in a world with no problems or live in a world where you rule?

I'd say live in a world with no problems, because I'd probably start a load more if I started rulin

~ Be three feet taller or three feet shorter?

I like being relatively tall (though a lot of friends and classmates have grown taller over the years D:), so I'd say three feet taller.

~ Have hiccups for the rest of your life or itch you can't reach for the rest of your life?

Hiccups for me are physically painful, but at least itches can be tuned out eventually, so I'd have to put up with the itch.

~ Would you rather lose half your hair or half your hearing?

Hearing for me is pretty bad, my sister complains whenever I'm on the phone to her because I have to say 'what' a dozen times, and I've been wondering recently what I'd look like with shorter hair, so I'd lose half my hair.

So that's my answers to all ten questions, I gave the ones in bold, Awkward Teen sent me the italicised questions. If you want to see her answers, you'll have to check out her blog!

And hey, if you wanna collab with me, I've just created an email specifically for just that, so if you ever want to collab, guest post, or if you just need someone to talk to (I'm pretty sure I'm halfway to either a psychiatry or philosophy degree by now!), you can contact me at

penandkeyeve@gmail.com

Somebody's already taken penandkey, the nerve of some people!

But yeah, guess who's been on holiday for three weeks out of seven, and hasn't even opened a book to attempt holiday homework!

Have a good weekend everybody, sudden epiphany impending!

Love Eve <3