Tag Archives: novemberwriting

The Opposite of Cake

Posted on by vgemmell
Pixabay image by Rotten77

Skipping ahead to prompt 13 on the list, ‘What is the opposite of cake’ as I thought this is probably one of the most random ones and I need to be creative here. (Also, it’s Bake Off night, which I will now be watching on catch-up!). I delivered an enjoyable flash fiction workshop this afternoon at Erskine Writers and the fact this post has turned into a flash fiction piece shows how much I enjoy the form.

When I was thinking about the opposite of cake, my immediate thought was salad. I decided to ask the internet what it thought, and it took me to Thesarus.plus which gave me this list of ‘Cake Atonyms’ (Atonym is defined as: a word opposite in meaning to another)

 bear · beast · chore · headache · horror show · killer · labour · murder. pain.

All quite dramatic, and I guess thesarus is thinking of cake in terms of phrases such as ‘piece of cake’ and ‘have your cake and eat it’. Anyway, here’s what these words sparked off in my brain:

The Opposite of Cake

I was promised cake at this party. I half-starved myself on salad and crackers earlier today and all I can see are canapes the size of my pinkie getting distributed around the room. One of the waiters who is serving reminds me of a bear – he’s about six foot tall, massive shoulders, fuzzy beard. He catches me staring and thrusts a tray of mini pastry-somethings under my nose and I take three and stuff them in my mouth all at once, just as Jeremy turns his head and catches my eye, and nudges his new fiancé to turn around too. So now they’re both smiling and walking towards me and I’m trying to desperately deflate my hamster cheeks so I can smile back and look like I’m having a GREAT TIME.

“Frances, so lovely to see you.” Saffron shakes my hand, but it’s more of a grab my fingers and cling kind of gesture and I find myself squeezing her thumb awkwardly and I’m already eyeing the free bar fantasising about the headache it’s going to give me. Saffron runs a manicured hand down my jacket sleeve, eyeing the pattern curiously. “Gosh, this feels divine. Is it a Westwood?” Jeremy is adjusting his bow tie beside her, his smile straining and I know he wants me to lie.

“No, it’s a Tumu,” I reply, enjoying the confusion on both of their faces.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of them,” she says.

“Really, they’re quite awful. Fans of child labour, and often pilfer your credit card details. But I’m a sucker for pretty patterns, what can I say.”

Jeremy looks like he wants to murder me and Saffron pauses, considering if I’m being serious, then decides I can’t possibly be and hee- haw laughs me over to meet her friends, who are all wearing badges with the new company logo. I realise with a startle that must have been what the boy at the door was trying to give me, and he wasn’t actually slipping me a tip to take his coat.

I try to join in with the small talk but I prefer big talk so I wander off to the bar and then peruse the tables of tiny sandwiches and sushi. Still no cake.

Jeremy clambers up to the make-shift stage with Saffron by his side and they give me a name-check, to thank me for my initial involvement in the ideas stage of the app, when I was Jeremy’s fiancé and Saffron was the face of the health and well-being marketing strategy, after investing a heavy amount of her family money into the start-up.

The start-up has now taken off. Jeremy also took off. And really it was for the best because he looks at home here, whereas I’d rather actually be at home, doing the chores even, anything to take me away from this pompous horror show of well-groomed ‘rising stars’ I don’t want to talk to.

Five drinks down I corner Jeremy and he looks scared, like I’m some crazed killer.

“Relax,” I hold up a hand, realising he thinks I’m upset about them and the company when he should know their pay-off was enough to sweeten any lingering pain. “I was just wondering where is the cake? You promised me cake.”

Jeremy lets out a shrill laugh, his body deflating with relief. “Did I? Oh, sorry. Saffron is gluten and sugar-free so we decided to spend the cake money on the badges instead. Aren’t they cute?” He’s pinned his in the middle of his bow tie and now I feel like grabbing the badge and murdering him with it.

He pats me on the shoulder then walks off and that’s it, the party is over. I look up to see the waiter from earlier beckoning me towards the kitchen.

I flash him a confused smile, curiosity making me follow. He is standing by an open fridge, and inside is the most magnificent chocolate cake, with a mutilated couple dancing on top.

“It’s supposed to be Beauty and the Beast, but that part didn’t quite work out.” He makes a face. “I run a cake decorating class here on Tuesday nights. I heard you talking about the lack of cake…”

And then we’re sitting sampling the sweetness and he makes me laugh, and I think how Jeremy and Saffron and this whole night has been the opposite of cake, right up until this moment. The waiter cuts me another slice and I bask in the sugar high.

Sandcastle

Posted on by vgemmell

Today’s November writing challenge is to use an image as a prompt.

The image above is my prompt and my little piece of fiction below is the result. I scrolled through photos on my phone on my commute home from work and came across this little sandcastle, spotted on a beach in Oban back in 2019. I gave myself an hour between dinner and Bake Off (which is on in the background just now) to write something, so it’s not polished but I’m glad I got something down on paper.

The Dress

Posted on by vgemmell

Today’s November writing prompt is ‘Write about an outfit you associate with an important memory.’

I’ve chosen the above dress, and it’s not memories per se that have prompted me to choose this outfit (though the ones below are good ones). It’s the dress itself I feel attached to and even although I can no longer fit into it I can’t bring myself to put it out to the charity shop as I love it so much. I bought it from the Joe Browns website back in 2011 I reckon, and I love the ‘graffiti’ style of it and the detail of the skulls and playing cards and random other squiggles.

I wore this dress a lot during my 30s which was a fun decade for me. It was when I developed confidence in a lot of areas of my life; with work, with my writing, forged some great new friendships and went on amazing trips alone, with family, friends and then later, with my now husband.

This dress joined me on some of those journeys…

The Writing Conference

This blurry photo was taken at the York Writing festival back in 2012. I’ve cropped out the very drunk ‘celebrity’ who was in attendance trying to pitch his book to agents. This was a great conference where I got to pitch Follow Me to two agents, one of whom loved the idea and first few chapters and told me she was dying to read the rest, so as you can imagine I was excited for the rest of the conference and the six months that followed, until it was a disappointing ‘no.’ I felt this conference marked a turning point for me with my writing, where I was starting to get really serious about it, in terms of thinking maybe one day I could get a book published, and I was soaking up all the workshops with hints and tips of how to submit, and improve my work.

Cruising the Mediterranean

I was lucky enough to go on a couple of amazing cruises with my parents – this photo was also taken in 2012, on the lead up to my Dad’s 60th birthday, when we went on a cruise around the Mediterranean. My Dad always worked in travel and as a family we went on some amazing trips throughout the years. One of the best things about this cruise was the amazing food served on board and the library! I loved the fact I got to see so many interesting places without having to unpack each time. This was me dressed for dinner one night and it wasn’t long after posing beside this big apple that I made it to the actual Big Apple… (on a separate trip). Some favourite stops on this trip were Venice, Taormina and Dubrovnik.

In Barcelona (one of my favourite cities)

I’ve been on some great trips to Barcelona. This photo was taken in 2017 and it was fairly early on in my relationship with my now husband. We had a great time on this trip – visiting lots of great art galleries and the food was amazing. I loved this piece of art work behind us called ‘The World Begins with Every Kiss.’ by Joan Fontcuberta. It’s a mural which is made up of hundreds of little photographs and I just think it looks so cool. (and has quite a lovely title).

Chris loves to remind me of the evening we started off with pre-dinner drinks at the amazing Vietnamese restaurant/bar beside our hotel and by the time we finished our bottle of white wine and pizza at another restaurant he had to practically carry me home. I blame the rocket fuelled cocktails in the first bar. Europeans seem to like to free pour their measures! I also have some great memories of another Barcelona trip I went on in 2015 (or thereabouts!) with my friend, Julie, but ‘the dress’ didn’t join me on that adventure.

November Creative Challenge

Posted on by vgemmell

Last month I mentioned taking part in the #writetoctober23 challenge over on Instagram which was a great way of making time to do short posts about my writing life and keeping my head focused on creative things. I didn’t take part some of the days when I was on my abroad honeymoon, but managed to keep up with the challenge for most of the month.

Since this ended I’ve missed having this fun creative focus, as often I’m so bogged down during the week with work brain I often find myself not having the headspace to work on longer novel projects. Then I get frustrated with myself because I’m not devoting any time during my week to anything creative at all.

Lots of people take part in NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) every November, where they commit to writing a certain amount of words per day, usually with the aim to accumulate 50,000 words of a novel by the end of the month.

I thought it would be fun to set myself the challenge of writing a blog post a day (hopefully!) throughout November instead, with no word count goal imposed; the goal is just to get some words down every day. (Obviously a bit late to the party as we’re 5 days in to November, but I will make up for lost time).

So I went searching online for themes and prompts to inspire me and came across this great post here on the See Jane Write by Javacia site which contains a whole year’s worth of blog prompts. I also flicked through my helpful little book of creative prompts, The Pocket Muse by Moncia Wood and found there was actually an overlap in some of the themes.

I made a selection of ones I found most interesting, and I’ve listed them below so that anyone reading this can maybe join in or find your own inspiration from this. Even although I have made myself this list below there is probably going to be some variation on it (for one, I probably won’t do them in order as I feel some will be quicker posts than others, so this may be my deciding factor for which one I land on for a particular day).

I am also going to give myself permission to use the ‘prompt’ loosely as I know it may spark off alternative ideas.

I’ve listed 30 prompts and obviously we don’t have 30 days left in November – so this allows for space to skip past any I feel stuck with. I might duplicate some posts (interviews, cities I love) so again if you are using the prompts, don’t feel confined by them.

I plan to put the prompt I’ve selected for the day on my Instagram account so you can follow me over there for reminders: @victoriagemmellauthor

PROMPTS:

  1. Why do you Blog?
  2. Write about an outfit you associate with an important memory
  3. Use an image as a prompt
  4. Write about a City you love (I might use this prompt more than once)
  5. Write a 6 word memoir
  6. Take a negative comment and flip it into an essay or post
  7. Write a love letter to your body
  8. Write a letter to your younger self
  9. What do you love most about writing
  10. Write about a time you had to speak to a large crowd
  11. Write a 6 word story
  12. What songs would be included in a soundtrack of your life?
  13. What is the opposite of cake?
  14. Interview people who inspire you (I plan to make this a recurring post, interviewing writers/creatives)
  15. Write about a milestone birthday (or birthdays)
  16. Write a commencement address for girls graduating high school/college
  17. Look out a window. What do you see?
  18. Write an essay/poem with the title ‘This is what I say, but this is what I mean’
  19. Write a 6 word poem
  20. Take a notebook to a gallery or museum and write about something you see there
  21. Write a post about an hour that changed your life
  22. Write a thank you note to your readers
  23. A high point or low point (or both) of your day/week/month/year
  24. Imagine the day living as someone else (I’m going to use prompts alongside this from an exercise I did in the Artists Way)
  25. Write about the best trip you’ve ever taken
  26. Share your goals and how you plan to achieve them
  27. Write about the 5 things you know for sure
  28. Write a post celebrating winter
  29. Explain what self-care means to you
  30. Write a poem, essay or story inspired by the Emily Dickinson quote, “I dwell in possibility”

You’ll see number 1 is Why do you blog? I started seriously blogging on the blogger platform back in 2010. I flew out to Vancouver to visit my friend Jane who was living there and during this trip I realised I wanted to properly document my experience (as I was spending some days exploring the city alone when my friend was at work). I also wanted a platform where I could experiment with creative posts. I remember when I was staring at an Alice in Wonderland themed shop-front (photo below) on Commercial Drive I came up with the name of my blog ‘Through the Looking Glass’ and I started writing posts as soon as I returned home.

I stayed on blogger until 2017, which overlapped with the creation of this website here on WordPress (which I created during the launch of my first YA book). I switched to soley using this blog platform since I found it hard to maintain two separate sites, and this one has my writing domain name so I use it on contact cards/promotional materials.

I feel on this blog I’ve not been quite as creative and experimental as I used to be on Blogger so I guess this opens the door to try something new and return to the core of what I wanted to achieve through my blogging; to keep my creativity flowing, sparking off a more creative life in general and keeping the fun in the day-to-day when developing work. And also maybe daring to be a bit more personal in my posts again, not being so super-conscious of my audience and expressing opinions or writing about things I feel passionate about.

I was also much better at connecting with other bloggers through the Blogger platform and used to enjoy reading about other writers’ journeys, so if anyone decides to do a similar creative challenge for November leave your blog link/social media handle in my comments and I will give you a follow!