#allthewrongwords

[thewrongwords]

Being Good

Perhaps as we get older, the definition of “being good” changes. When you are a child, you are “being good” if you follow the rules set out for you. As an adult, perhaps you are “being good” when the rules you set for yourself are kind and thoughtful.

[thewrongwords]

Telling yourself you can becomes more important, the more that it seems that you can’t.

[thewrongwords]

Small Wins

When I am in joy, I find the right words elusive. My need to write diminishes, cast downwards to slumber deeply inside my memories.

When I am in sorrow, my world fills with blank pages, choked with the need to write, but so burdened by doubt that such a feat becomes impossible, and words remain unwritten.

Some days, it seems a wonder I have ever written anything at all.

[thewrongwords]

Extract from an Unfinished Work

Hello. I’m relatively new to the writeblr community, however I notice some of you pop in short notes before your writing, and I thought I should do the same to explain some of my writing. I’m predominantly a sci-fi writer; I study psychology, however have a strong interest in other sciences, so I guess that makes sense. I’m mostly just writing here to prove to myself that I can, really. Maybe along the way I’ll find that other people have an interest in the stories I have to share.

I have two (and a half) books I’m currently exploring. The below is an extract from the first. 

“The human race has always walked the razors’ edge: between good and evil, light and dark, survival and extinction.

Or, perhaps, that’s just what we’d like to believe. After all, history is just what we’ve written- we set the stage, we wrote the scenes. We forgave our heroes, condemned our villains to a fate we convinced ourselves they deserved. 

And maybe they did. Or maybe we chose to see black and white, right and wrong, when there was nothing different between the two at all. Perhaps it is the design of all humans to choose this strange balancing act for themselves. To live their lives truly believing they know wrong from right.

Before us, humans had always walked their line alone. Perhaps that is why they fear us- they fear what we mean, what we say about their neat little lines. That is how the struggle for humanity begins: not for the race, but for the word. It begins with realising you have blood on your hands, and that you’ll do anything to keep from admitting your sins.”

[thewrongwords]

I imagine the greatest fear of other people to be the clamoring of too many voices within their heads. Voices that cry out for change, with others fearful and rejecting of the new. A voice which pleads for reason, whilst another tempts with wild promise. A voice sinister and sly, insisting on to-the-death combat with the voice which loudly espouses your many virtues. Each demanding attention, and where your attention wanders, so too does the balance tip in that voices’ favour, but still not granting you a moment of peace.

The chief distinction for writers, then, must be our fear of those voices falling silent.

[thewrongwords]

Extract: The Anti-Hero

Have you ever wondered what it is that makes you a good person? Perhaps it is just something that you know- but, if you consider it, perhaps you would say that you are good because you do not do bad things. Or, if questioned further, if pushed to admit your faults, you might say that you mostly do good things, and these small transgressions you do commit are insignificant: not bad enough to for you to be bad.

Ultimately, we will all say- or at least believe - that we are inherently good.

The problem is that we are - all of us - wrong.

[thewrongwords]

To Be Continued?

Opening para from a book idea I had a while back but haven’t touched since because I have six million other ideas which need my attention (also more of a super-natural thriller, which is outside my usual genre preferences)

***

Have you ever woken from a dream so vivid, you remained certain it was real?

Clutching the sheets against yourself in the dark, eyes wide and breath suddenly all too loud in the silence, the dream refusing to fade into oblivion? Perhaps you turn on the light to help you hound the monsters from your head; perhaps your dreams were pleasant, and you cling to your thoughts, half convincing yourself what you had been dreaming could be real. I’m told these kinds of dreams are common- dreams like memories that cling and fail to whither to dust upon waking.

So perhaps I’ve always dreamed like this.

Perhaps one day I’ll remember.

For the moment, I can’t remember much of anything at all.

[thewrongwords]

100 or Less Drabble: Anger

Sometimes I like to hash out characters by writing short drabbles for each (occasionally to the same prompt to compare).

“My anger has always been a shark when there’s blood in the water: thrashing, thoughtless, lashing out at everything in its’ path until spent, intent long forgotten. This anger was poison in water, cool and clear, honey; an apple with razor blades hidden beneath the skin. And so I sank into it, not quite drowning, not quite floating - but ready, waiting, calculating. I needed retribution, and I needed it all the sweeter for her having thought she had damned herself.”