Paper faces on parade

So moving on, to celebrate this momentous deadline me and my friends (Karen, Hannah, Sandy and the respective men partners) will be attending a masquerade ball on Saturday night. I state who will be coming tentatively, because while I know for definite we will have Karen, Hannah, Sandy and Damien with us, there's been a little bit of the usual broo-haa-haa whether or not Wayne (Sandy's husband) will come and yesterday Karen told me on a quiet aside that she's heard something about James (Hannah's beau) not being able to come either.

You may also notice the significant lack of Avanti - and yes, her absence will be sorely missed. I can't recall the exact reason, but I think initially she was supposed to still be in Holland at this point with V, but had to come back to England early. She's had more trouble with her project than any of us, and she also told us that a ticket plus a dress and a mask would be too much for her (in typical Avanti style, apologising profusely). Avanti is possibly the most honest and selfless person I know and while it's a crying shame she won't be with us, we arranged for pizza on the friday night to catch up with her then, instead (:

Anyway, I digress. Masquerade balls have been a point of quiet wonder for me for a long time - when I think masquerade I think Phantom of the opera (or god, that creepy scene from Labyrinth) and quite unlike me I'm stupidly, girlishly excited about the whole affair. Perhaps this has something to do with my mask arriving just this morning - I even got the whole 'special delivery for Natalie Beresford'. Anyway, the picture above is my mask. Pretty, aint it? I had already saved myself a tonne of money by wearing a dress I have *gasp* worn before (highschool dinner dance, yes it still fits. Better than it did when I was sixteen, actually) so I figured I could go spend a bit of money on a nice mask, rather than buying a three quid one 'and making do'. The trouble was, my dress is a fetching (if awkward) shade of purple and there was always that risk of 'if I buy a mask with purple on it, the purple will be a different shade and it won't match'.

So initially, I began looking at entirely black masks. I have to say after my searching, all-black masks are universally boring unless they're decorated with feathers. The problem with masquerade masks is that feathers tend to be huge, and with me being... petite, huge feathers stuck to my face would look really dumb. So a featherless mask that wasn't all black, OR had any purple on it was my goal. This narrowed my options down considerably.

In the end I stumbled across http://www.accito.com/, who claim to make masks that are 'hand crafted in Venice, Italy'. Whether or not this is true I couldn't tell you, but I liked what I saw and from my searching, the pricing was very reasonable (nice masquerade masks can be up to anywhere short of £200 or more). When I found a mask in black, gold and that old ceramic kind of white, with manuscript between the eyes no less! I knew that mask was mine. It was also in the sale so I snapped it up for just over £20. Bargain.

Deadlines

Well, the hand-in date for my project is today at 4pm.

But I handed mine in yesterday.

It definitely isn't the best piece of work I've ever done, but by yesterday afternoon I knew that 1.) I was never going to understand it more than I already did in 24hours 2.) if I kept it with me, I would just keep picking at it and probably make it worse, I mean, I'm absolutely terrible with scabs and projects not handed in are in the same vein. So I printed it off, which included about ten minutes fixing one particular chart up by hand because it wouldn't print right, getting it bound, undertaking the tedious task of filling out two cover sheets for each of my copies and then finally handing the thing in. Returning home I handed in my 'electronic copy' (which apparently they use to check you ain't plagiarised) and that was it. Since yesterday afternoon I've been sat here thinking 'oh I wonder if I did this...' then telling myself off for it. There's nothing I can do about it now, so why worry?

I think some small part of me feels bad for not being as religious with its synthesis as everyone else has been. It will reflect in my mark, this I know. But another part of me felt as though I expended all my time and energy on the data collection part of the project, while everyone else was sitting in a lab or whatever, I was lugging camera and tripod, chasing after a flock of wild birds. I hope I get effort marks. Also, and this may sound like an excuse but it's true; I struggle to be diligent at something I know I'm no good at. Rather than being a centre that fosters learning and independent exploration of a given subject, uni has made me feel inferior in every conceivable way. All I really got was a three year course on how to be a pedantic twat and question everything that's put in front of me. I know that I am not closed off to learning; I still pick up chord sequences on the guitar for a song I want to learn how to play, I collect scattered pieces of knowledge I put forth in my creative writing. I have an excellent memory for trivia but a terrible one for 'non-vocal communication'.

But it's over with now. It's a month until my exams and that's another kettle of fish I'll boil when the time is right. Hooray!

A novel thought

I hear there are two main approaches to fiction writing; plot driven and character driven.

What I mean by this is that a 'plot driven' story tends to focus on exciting, action-driven writing populated by characters that were probably created with a personality constituting of five, single-word bullet points (RE: 'adventurous, philanthropic, strong-willed, moral, hot-headed'). From my reading, people attribute this kind of writing with 'male fiction' and rightly so; I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but I would say action films fall into this category, and what kind of films do men generally want to go and watch? Still, I'm not condemning this type of writing; a good plot-driven story that springs to mind is the Matrix.

The second method, 'character driven' seems to have a basic, generic plot but creates characters that to me seem very human. They have goals, preferences and their errors not only include failing to achieve the plot's aim (as the characters in the first scenario often do), but often failing in terms of being a good person. They take two steps backward for every step forward; they are not perfect archetypal cut-out people. Obviously, for this reason character driven writing runs alongside 'female fiction' because generally, women take more of an interest in people and their personal lives than men do. The Last Unicorn is still a book I value for its characters.

My point to this is a thought that occurred to me recently - surely combining the two; an excellent plot with fantastically real, fleshed out characters, would create some kind of 'super story'. But after about half an hour of trying to make this work in my head it became clear to me that it possibly cannot be done. I doubt I was alone in this idea; that there exists no examples to my scant knowledge of somebody marrying the two together suggests so. In my mind, one aspect will ultimately suffer; developing a good plot leaves little room for development of your characters and vice versa. It was as though within the predefined 'space' I had created for a novel, both were opposing forces that expanded like balloons to crush and eventually burst one another.

In my previous endeavours to write I have always been irritated by how flat and lifeless my characters are as opposed to the plot and this prevented me from moving forward. Perhaps, as a female writer, I should concentrate on the second approach. After all, creating characters is what I enjoy doing the most, thus it makes sense I ought to be exploring their lives rather than attempting to squash them into a story they want no part in.

Rant

I'm worried this blog will just turn into my own personal ranty nej-space. So it's probably best to just skip this one; it won't contain anything constructive, it's just me on a hormone induced rant-fest.

So first off, I realised for myself why Phil Collins as a solo artist is rubbish. That might not be everybody's opinion, but it's my opinion. Why did every song he churn out (except perhaps, the soundtrack to Disney's Tarzan) some dreary, churned out dirge of bland crapola? (I realise that statement made no sense. Deal.) Like, mum put on one of his CD's in the car the other day, and my god, I sat through every single one waiting for it to end. None of it inspired me.

Next, I have zero faith in about 80% of my friends right now. Maybe I've been a terrible friend lately, but have they asked me how I am? Why is it always me putting my nose out for them, yet when I need them they're not there? Rach keeps on doing weird wtf stuff behind my back, and has made me out to be the enemy even though I've done nothing wrong - that's fast becoming the flavour of my life right now. Am I some kind of easy scapegoat or something?

Thirdly, I'm eating too much. My period won't start, I've had cramps for four days in a row now and I'm sick of feeling like a bloated whale. I've eaten five slices of toast, one and a half Jamaica ginger cakes, one and a bit roast chickens, three bowls of salad, half an arctic ice roll, several hand-fulls of cheerios, a bowl full of cinnamon grahams, god knows how many cups of tea, three milky bars ... in the space of two days. I'm still hungry. I'm in pain. I want to cry all the time. Mum invites me to go shopping with her for some company then yells at me because I don't know what I want to eat. Look at the above list - does that look like it's a very decisive kind of diet to you? The grahams came at half seven in the evening. The chicken was for breakfast. No dad, I'm not pregnant.

Forthly this is just a random hatred of the way people take out their anger on me. I'm not taking your crap just because you don't feel happy right now.

Fifthly, I got an email from Jonny but he can trav off to travland and become welsh and fall off the mountain and break his legs. It was a bunch of lame excuses as to how that status wasn't aimed at me (of course, how could it be, I'm so amazingly perfect to him!) - I picked it apart in five minutes. Everything he said in that email was a lie. Go figure. GTFO. He'll get a reply, eventually. Not right now.

Sixthly, I really hate how mum is such a compulsive liar. She said we were going to visit bapcia today, but this morning she said "you know, I really ought to get the car serviced. I don't want to drive all that way. I don't think it's safe." And whenever craig phones up she makes up some bollocks about how much housework she's done.

Bapcia phoned up today, asking what time we were supposed to be there for. I felt awful - I hope mum will too when she realised Blythe had the guts to tell Bapcia the truth about what happened. Why shouldn't we? It'll all fall on our heads I know but props to Blythe - at least she was honest.

Basically, nej stamp to the world.

In other news, I've been spending less time on the internet. Instead I've been reading my book, watching Greek, thinking about buying another book to read after I finish this one, taking random excursions out, seeing baby jackdaws and I've been colouring. Yes, the poster. I'm really enjoying that - thanks dad (: xxx

"Completely fake and full of nothing but bullshit and deceit"

Nice when you know that comments like that are specifically aimed at you, isn't it?

I read that in somebody's MSN status today, and I'm pretty damn certain the only time said person signs into MSN is to talk to me. So that comment was for my benefit.

I'm not naming names, but this will be because I haven't been hanging on the end of the line for this person when they want to talk to me. Yes, I did agree that we ought to meet up and do something but I know what this person is like.

This is the kind of awful friendship that exists between a lad and a lass, and the lad 'wants something more' and the lass doesn't. She won't ever want anything more than for him to be her friend. She's told him this to his face. Twice. The second time she was blissfully single, not in any rush to fall back into a relationship. The first she happened to still be in a relationship. But he still persists. He still invites her over with the pretence that what's going on is everyone included, but instead it's a cleverly engineered situation to get him alone with her. He guilt trips her into staying longer than she really wants to, so late that he insists on walking her home. He invades her personal space almost constantly. He tries to play footsie under the table with her.

If she wanted a relationship, if she was even vaguely attracted to this lad, it might be sweet. Instead it just comes across as stifling and slightly creepy. So instead the friendship becomes unbalanced with him putting in far more effort than is needed and her doing everything in her power to avoid sending out signals that might be misinterpreted as 'leading him on'. She doesn't even feel capable of making eye contact with him most of the time. This is the kind of friendship that people base the whole scenario of 'guys and gals can't just be friends' upon, because it's true - eventually one person always ends up getting hurt. If you cave and decide to date the other person, you're essentially lying to them; you can't generate feelings of affection for somebody just like that. It's going out with somebody because you pity them, because you haven't got the balls to say no. You can't begin a relationship on lies, heaven's knows most relationships generate enough lies throughout their course as it is.

I've told him, he deserves somebody better than me. Because he does; as wonderful as he thinks I am I'm never going to be that person for him; he can love and dote on me all he likes - I wish I did have somebody like that in my life who I loved just as much. I just don't love him in that way. I never will, and I certainly don't currently. But how can I be any more blunt with him without sounding like a complete cow? I tell him these things because I care about him as a friend, I don't want to lead him on but it seems that whatever I do I end up messing things up more.

As you can see - he's clearly not happy with not being able to speak to me for the sum total of seven days. I've not spoken to Karen for about the same length of time, and she's not posting bitchy statuses on msn. I can't deal with the guilt that's piled onto me for not being able to generate affection for somebody, it isn't fair. I struggle to be a good, consistent friend to people at the best of times - but he brings out the worst in me.