My Baffling Brain

So I just decided on the spur of the moment that I wanted to participate in the bloghop by Jeremy Bates . I love Halloween so I figured this would be fun. For this bloghop I have to mention my favourite monster movie or book and my Halloween costume this year. My favourite monster books (I couldn't only choose one) are the classics, Dracula and Frankenstein. I read them both for the gothic module in my English Literature degree, and enjoyed them a lot. I prefer the books to the movie adaptations, but of course this is the same in most cases for me! As for my Halloween costume this year, I'm really excited because usually I don't do anything for Halloween, and therefore don't dress up, but this year I'm going to two different Halloween parties, so I get to dress up twice! I'm going as a Witch to both parties, which I'm excited about. I went and bought a Witches hat and broomstick the other day, and I'm going to use clothes I already have; a lace skir...

What a weekend! I had hoped to have a lot of free time this weekend to get this entry written, but that just didn't happen. I did a 13 hour shift at work on Friday, an 11 hour shift on Saturday, a 7 hour shift on Sunday and a 6 hour shift today, I'm shattered! Getting up at 3.30 doesn't help matters, either. I have 10 days off now, and I think I'll need them to recover! Because of my work-filled weekend, I've had to quickly write my entry for Spooktoberfest today, so it's not as good as I had hoped it would be. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun writing it, and reading everyone else's entries, which are awesome, by the way! Here is my entry: The old woman stood in what used to be her living room, disgusted by the sights in front of her. What a pathetic excuse for a haunted house. She watched the people milling around the room, curling her lip at their “scary” costumes. A girl as a ghost with a sheet over her head, a man with a skeleton costume, another ma...

Just a short post today, I really need to start planning my posts properly again! It's almost time for Spooktoberfest , I'll probably be posting my entry on Monday. I'm really loving all these Halloween themed blogfests and competitions, they're a lot of fun. :) I entered a competition the other day which involved writing a horror story in 50 words. It was very hard, it took me a long time because I had to make sure that every word was absolutely necessary. I rushed it a little so it's not brilliant, but here it is: Taken from here The seatbelt clicked as the engine roared to life. “It’s time,” growled a voice, and my eyes snapped to the rear-view mirror. Blood red eyes stared back as numbness spread, my limbs beginning to move without my consent. As the car crawled forward the scarlet eyes gleamed, hungry for torment.

This week, I have to choose my 5 favourite monsters in history, and I think I'm going to go with some mythological monsters, because they always fascinate me more than vampires and werewolves and things, which are a little overdone at the minute! It's going to be hard to condense the list to just 5, as there are so many interesting mythological monsters! So, here are my 5 favourite mythological monsters: 1. The Basilisk - obviously mostly known from Harry Potter , the Basilisk is known as the King of serpents, able to kill with only a single glance. One of my favourite monsters, because not only can it kill you just by looking at you, it's also super poisonous, so you have no chance, really! 2. Gorgon - a gorgon is a female creature whose gaze had the power to turn men to stone. The most famous gorgon is Medusa, who had snakes for hair, and was the only one who was mortal, and could therefore be killed. 3. Cerberus - Cerberus is known as the three-headed dog wh...

I found out yesterday that my application for a Career Development Loan for my Masters was successful, yay! I'm so relieved, I would have had to drop out of the course if it failed, and I'm enjoying it so much. This means that my course fees are covered, and I'll also have a little extra for living expenses, which means I can work less and write more! This is really good, because I've been working so much lately it's been hard to find time to write, so hopefully I can rectify that now. I'm really motivated because of the good news, so I'm going to work twice as hard. I also found out on Wednesday that a new Creative Writing Society has been started at uni, so I'm definitely going to join that. There's a meeting next Wednesday, so I'm really looking forward to that, it should be a lot of fun. It'll be nice to know people outside the blogosphere that I can talk to about my writing (although you guys really are awesome!) I get 5 days off wor...

It's that time of week again, time for the Express Yourself Meme! This week's question is: What language would you like to speak and why? My answer to this question is slightly geeky! I would absolutely love  to learn Japanese  for a few reasons. The main one is that I absolutely love watching Japanese anime, and it would be nice to be able to understand the characters without having to read the subtitles. I also really like the language, I think it sounds beautiful and I love speaking the few words that I have learnt. If I ever did learn it, I would make my sister learn it too so we could have conversations with each other without anyone else understanding us; I've always wanted to be able to do that!  

To everyone who commented on my post on Tuesday, thank you very much for the advice, it helped out a lot! I read my piece out yesterday and didn't get any negative criticism, probably thanks to your help, so thanks again! Yesterday in class, we were all asked to set up a blog specifically for writing, that we could use during the course of our degree. On the one hand, I was quite pleased about this because obviously I have experience in blogging, so it's not like it's something new for me to get used to, but on the other hand it's going to be so hard to run two blogs at once! But, I'm looking forward to the challenge and I definitely won't let this blog fall behind, because I love it and all my followers too much to! Here's the link to my new blog, if anyone wanted to stop by, but there's not much there yet!  http://lauraclipson.blogspot.co.uk/ Basically I've decided I'll use my new blog for all things uni related, so any writing assignments ...

So today I'm going to ask for a little advice. Last week, we were asked to do a piece of writing, and we have to read it out tomorrow. Needless to say, I'm very nervous about this, so I thought I would see what you all think of it. Any constructive criticism you may have is greatly appreciated! The task was to rewrite an extract from Charles Dickens' biography, about a train crash he was in. We had to 'make it interesting' and move it away from realism. Here's my rewrite, let me know what you think! She watched the train meandering through the countryside, the sense of anticipation building inside her. She would never tire of the feelings of excitement she experienced before every incident. After all, the disasters she created inspired her name; Chaos. She moved further up the track, finally locating the flagman who was supposed to be signalling any trains that came along. She used her powers to confuse him, moving him along the track so that it would be too la...

Week #2 (Oct 8-12) - List 5 movies/books that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. 1. Jeepers Creepers (movie) - I watched this when I was younger (early teens, I think) and it scared the life out of me. I hadn't gone to school that day, and my mum happened to put it on - I think it was punishment for my skipping school! It absolutely terrified me - I never saw the second one, the first one was bad enough, thank you! 2. The Ring (movie) - I think this is the scariest movie I remember seeing so far. I watched it at a sleepover, so there were quite a few of us watching it, but it was still scary as hell! This was made worse by the fact that mid-way through, a fly landed on the screen just like in the movie, so we were all convinced it would be us next! Such a scary film.  3. Paranormal Activity (movie) - I watched this with my mum and sister in a dark room lit only with candles - bad idea! When it ended none of us dared get up off the settee, and we all...

I can't believe it's October already, where does the time go? Last month my goals were: 1. Pursue a Masters degree in Creative Writing - A lot of you already know that I did indeed get onto a Creative Writing Masters, so this goal was very successful! I'm still waiting on funding, but I've started the course and I'm loving it so far. 2. Get more overtime in -  I did a lot of overtime in September, and have carried on doing a lot - I definitely need the money, especially if my funding falls through! 3. Practise my keyboard - yet again, I didn't even touch my keyboard in September. It was a busy month! 4. Get back into my blogging schedule  - I think I've managed to do this quite well, apart from my Saturday posts, which I'm dropping for the moment. 5. Have an awesome time at Centerparcs! - I definitely achieved this goal - I had an amazing time and can't wait to go back next year, I think we're going to make it an annual thing.  Ok, so here ...

First of all, sorry for not posting yesterday, or Saturday for that matter! I think I'm going to give up posting on Saturdays, that always seems to be the post I miss, since I work all weekend. Yesterday I was just super busy all day, and didn't get around to posting, so I'm posting today instead. Dani at Entertaining Interests and Jackie at Bouquet of Books have started up a weekly meme together, and it seems like fun so I'm signing up! It involves writing about a different topic every week (the topic list can be found on both Dani and Jackie's blogs) to help bloggers get to know each other. This week's topic is: Pick a name in your current wip; what was your process of acquiring it? Most of the name's in my Camp NaNo novel were chosen from a name generator; I basically chose the names I most liked the sound of, or that suited the story the most. My main character's name, however, was chosen because I really like the name Alex and all of its...