Sometimes, nothing much needs to be said about one’s week, and that’s why conversiondiary’s Quick Takes is so useful.
~1~
Did I mention the Reading Rocs team went to a Quidditch tournament? Oh, I didn’t? Here, have a picture of me Chasing at the Southern Cup (photo by the Southampton team photographer).
~2~
This week has been an unusual one, where anticipation for its end has left me asking why the time is moving so slowly, as opposed to so quickly as per my usual stance. Tonight is the launch party of the university magazine The New Frontier, for whom I do the occasional writing about [creative] writing.
~3~
What have I even being doing this week, though? Less busy than last week, by dint of not having [immediate] deadlines, and I had the chance to briefly write (see point 7, as per the organised norm), but I’ve also been working (and have finished doing so, thanks to creating an excel sheet. *wipes brow*) on collating the data for my Autumn term mini project, on temporal discounting. I’ve still got a long way to go, though, as I start my report.
~4~
On Wednesday evening, we had a Taize evening of prayer, a very interesting experience, despite that I prefer traditionalism in hymns and praise. Taize prayer involves ecumenical meditative chant versions of hymns, silence, and experiencing God and the Spirit through being contemplative with others. It was very metaphysically cleansing.
~5~
Speaking of singing, my two choirs continue. The Duke Ellington jazz never fails to amuse me, but I’ve also had to concentrate on Christmas carols with the Chamber Choir; we’re singing in a lunchtime concert for the students in a couple of weeks, so that’s become my practising priority. I still feel rather out-of-joint for singing carols before December!
~6~
Editing and writing. I’ve done a bit this week. Editing has been somewhat productive; I received mostly positive comments from my CP, which is, in a way, worries me (doesn’t everything! ^_^). For if one cannot improve… Conversely, the main issues I have to deal with are the chronology and direct laying out of Phillip’s active time-stream and Aidelle’s temporally-frozen wasteland, and making the taxicab shelter scene beginning a firmer setting.
I may have to enlist the steampunks with this one.
~7~
Your weekly extract. I wanted to work on scenes I already had the groundwork for. So…I had them talking in the caves, but I had to get them to the caves first. Fun. And I’ve learnt that Laurie suffers from pseudovertigo when faced with heights.
These extracts seem to be getting longer, don’t they? Sorry – I wanted to include a little of Jess and Laurie’s mid-climb conversation, where they discuss, effectively, steampunk, that is, the world if history had been different. As a student myself, I can confirm that our conversations do tend to float from the mundane to the academic regardless of what we are doing.
He said, “One wrong move from a visionary and we’re living in broken world of steam engines and AIs and golems.”
“Anachronisms,” she added.
Laurie shrugged. She had a point. “Maybe not.”
“Pass the rope.”
He did so, and the rope burned through his hands, like a passive fire. She looped it around the rock, tugged it tight, and zoomed down.
He peered over the cliff-face. She was a metre down, dangling, with a wonderful grin over her face.
His mouth twitched and the canvas of flesh ached open in a mimic of her smile.
“Comfortable?”
She shifted in the harness, one hand massaging her back. Quite a funny sight, indeed. “Not quite.”
The cavern yawed out below. He swallowed and blinked away the dizziness, and launched himself off the ledge.
For a second – blackness. Then Laurie prised opened his eyes. The cavern below did not hang in total darkness, but light rolled down the stalactites from the cracks in their path and amber veins in the surrounding columns. Behind him, a vista of afternoon light warmed the edges of his coat.
Beautiful.
Alexandrina Brant 