Last week!

Okay I hatehatehatehatehate editing my own work. I am a horrible perfectionist when it comes to writing. I will stare at a sentence for three hours (not actually, I don't have time for that) and doubt every word. I have rewritten whole papers two hours before they were due because of self-editting. I like just writing it all out, hitting print and submitting. But I know I need to find my mistakes and there is always room for improvement. Which is why I usually pass my paper off to roommates or friends to edit first. I think it reduces my insanity a little. But still, self-editting is hard and the thought of "challenging every word" scares me because then I would never submit anything.

Rough Draft

Haven't had internet! Better late then never

Katie Brase

“The Cost of a Crown” 

The smell of rotting leaves filled my nostrils, which made no sense to me. The morning dew was settling on my glitter-covered dress and exposed thighs. I flexed my fingers and dirt burrowed under my fingernails. A groan passed across my chapped lips as I attempted to lift my body up. My backbone screamed its objections as I sat up and it cracked in five different places. My arm stung as it brushed against something sharp lying beneath the leaves. Blood was trickling down my arm, a scarlet snake wrapping around my pale flesh.

I dug my palms into my eyes, the pressure momentarily reliving the headache tearing through my skull. My tongue was heavy in my mouth, like there were cotton balls resting upon it. I spat several times into the dirt. The sounds of the forest was deafening, from the birds up in the canopies down to the steam that was babbling along nearby. 

I stood up and suddenly the ground was back to greet me. My hand slammed into something hard and I grabbed at it, pulling it up with my body. I looked down at the strange object. It look me a few seconds to identify it as a flamingo-pink high heel. I glanced down at my feet, seeing both of my silver pumps still strapped on. I slowly glanced to where I had grabbed the shoe from. I could see a pale foot connected to an endless leg sticking out of a ripped up black skirt. I slowly stood, and from out of a nest of blonde curls that I would have recognized anywhere, were two, lifeless ice blue eyes. The eyes of my best friend. 

I screamed until my lungs ripped in two and the blackness took me again.

This time when I awoke the first thing I noticed was the beeping. It was like a metronome for the music of the room: the hum of the air conditioning, the soft sound of the CNN from the TV, and the gentle snores of someone whose sweaty hand was wrapped around my own. 

I pried my eyes open and my first thought was of white. Mixing this in with the smell of disinfectant and over-oxygenated air, I concluded I was in the hospital pretty easily. 

I turned over to glance at who was squeezing the life out of my hand. He clearly had been asleep for a while, as his mouth was completely open with a bit of drool gathered on the corner of his lip. His brunette curls had a bit of oily build-up near the scalp, making me wonder how long I had been passed out. I could easily identify him from his crooked nose, which hadn’t seen set right after he had fallen off his longboard three years ago. It was my ex-boyfriend, Tyler. 

I gently shook his hand until he blinked his eyes awake. His smiled creeped onto his face. It was one of those smiles that you wish you could take a picture of and just look at whenever you were sad. I use to call it his Devil’s smile, because he could get away with anything just by whipping it out. 

“Hey there Sunshine, glad to see you finally awake.” He gave my hand a squeeze as he sat up, leaning in closer to me. I thought he was going to just keep going and kiss me, but instead he just continued to flash that grin. 

“How long have I been out?” 

“Just twelve hours or so. They found you out in the woods this morning and you have been asleep since.” I tried to think back, grasping for any memory. They came in flashes. Doing shots in my friends kitchen. Music pounding in my ears as my classmates gyrated to the beat around me. Sprinting through the woods and my theighs burnign from the effort. Paige’s lifeless blue eyes,

“Paige!” I grabbed his broad shoulder, my nails burying into his t-shirt and skin. “What happened to her? Is she okay?” Tyler’s eyes would not meet my own.

“They said I can’t talk about her to you,” he said softly.

“But I saw her! I saw her....body.” His eyes shot up, wider then mine. His hands dropped from mine.

“What? Where?”

“They didn’t find her? She was right next to me.” I looked down at my pale hands. “I was holding her shoe.” I looked back at him but he had a thousand-yard stare in his eyes. 

“They never found Paige, she is still missing. They searched the whole area but only found you.” I silence fell over us like a blanket as my brain fought to process. Where could Paige be?

The police officer across from me was trying his best to be my best friend, and I personally found it patronizing. He had done all the comforting gestures, from gently touching my shoulder to offering to get me some water. It took a lot to be polite to him. 

He was writing down all my basic information as I stirred my pudding cup absentmindedly, wanting nothing more then to get out of this room that was beginning to smell more and more like death. My mom was sitting in the corner, reading the latest Cosmopolitan and being completely oblivious to my interrogation. 

“So, you began the night at the home of Matthew Stevenson?” I nodded. He was the varsity quarterback, of course I was at his house party. “Were you partaking in alcohol?” I hesitated, glancing at my mother who had not even glanced up. “You can’t get in trouble for that now.” I nodded again. He jotted down notes. “Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t remember. One minute I was doing shots at Matt’s and then I was waking up next to Paige’s body.” I paused. “Which you still haven’t found.” He ignored my attack.

“And where did you see her body?”

“She was right next to me.” Her corpse had visited my dreams last night. I had been walking through the woods and it trailed behind me, pointing. No matter how fast I ran, it remained right behind me. 

“And where did it go exactly?” He looked at me over the rim of his glasses with doubt written clearly in his eyes. 

“I don’t know, isn’t that your job?” He wrote something down in his little leather book. Probably that I was difficult or something. 

“Well, if I need to know anything else I will let you know. But for now, get some rest.” He winked at me, patted my knee and sauntered out past my mom, who didn’t even look up. 

Over the next few days my phone strained to keep up with the sympathetic text messages, tweets, phone calls, and Facebook posts. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, or offer up their own theory on what happened.

The details were slowly revealed to me through these interactions and what I could find on the internet. The party had been packed with every person that mattered in my grade, it being one of the last parties before graduation. I hadn’t wanted to attend but I needed to make a public appearance. It was two weeks from prom and I was one of two girls vying for Prom Queen. The other girl was Paige.

The cheap beer had been flowing freely but I had declined. The last thing I wanted was to be “that girl” at the party and do something embarrassing. The alcohol acted as a social lubricant in everyone else’s veins, making even the shiest teenager talkative. I had danced from conversation to conversation, trying to talk to everyone no matter how awkward or out of place they were. My mom had always said “the nice girls get the crown,” and it was a phrase I took to heart. 

Past my arrival, I had next to no memories. People told me they saw Paige arguing with someone before running out into the woods behind the house well past midnight. Tyler and I had apparently chased her. Tyler had come back, complaining loudly about girl drama and demanding another beer. The cops were finally called six hours later when through their drunken stupor, my friends had realized that neither Paige nor I had ever returned. 

A week went by and Paige still wasn’t found, despite her picture being plastered on every news show and #prayforPaige trending on twitter. I couldn’t stand my home any longer, and demanded I be allowed back among the gawkers at school. 

My return was a momentous affair. Every eye in the hallway immediately found me, and my bruises. I was used to being stared at as I made my way from class to class, but this was a different sensation. I felt like everyone was dancing around me, as if they even bumped into me I would shatter into a million pieces. 

“So, you don’t remember anything?” My friend Dianne asked me in her squeaky voice that made me want to slam my head onto my desk until I bled into the brain. 

“Just bits and pieces.” I looked down at my hands, a habit I had developed recently. “Nothing important.” I neglected to mention how I had awoke last night covered in a hot, think sweat and the image of a knife stained in my memory. 

“I wonder who took her,” our class president, Scott, sighed. “There were so many people around that night. She could be anywhere right now.” 

“No one took her!” Our heads snapped to look over at Tyler. His hair was frazzled, stuck up in every direction. His eyes were so red that my own burned just by looking at them. The pain in his face was so off-putting in comparison to his usual carefree smirk and mischievous glint in his eye. 

“What do you mean?” Missy was visibly leaning away from Tyler as she grimaced at his new look. I had to admit, he looked a bit serial-killerish. 

“Don’t you get it? She isn’t lost, she is dead! Her body is rotting somewhere out there in the woods! And it’s all my fault, I just let you two go.” My lunch table watched as he burst into tears once more. Everyone else in the room was glancing over their shoulders at him, and whisper behind their hands.

I put my arm around Tyler and gently rubbed his muscular back. For the hundredth time that day, I wondered if I would ever see Paige again. If I would ever hear the clanging bells of her laugh again. If I ever would share a secret grin across a crowded room with her again. If I ever would hold her close to me again, two best friends becoming one identity as I breathed in her Jasmine perfume.

“Let’s talk about something happier!” We all look over at Kim, who had a permanent smile pressed into her muscles. I was convinced her face was frozen that way. Her eyes darted toward the ceiling. I always imagined that someone was writing things in the sky for her to say, but only she could see. “Like prom! It’s in a week!”

“Wait until you see my dress, it’s fab!” Dianne chimed in, the depressed look on her face washing away as easily as if it was never there. “It matches Scotty’s eyes!” She ruffled Scott’s hair as he winked his emerald eyes. “What color is your dress, Pepper?” 

“I don’t even want to go to prom now. Not without Paige.” I glanced around at them, daring them to convince me otherwise. I could see they both were painting on the looks of sympathy and concern about my melancholy. The thing I hated about “sympathetic” is that the main part of the word was “pathetic”, and that is exactly what everyone was. 

“You have to go!” squeaked Dianne, eyes as wide as an owl’s. “With Paige gone, you are a sure win for Prom Queen. You need to win, for her.” Paige had been a lock for Prom Queen. It was in her genes and linage, as well as mine. But she was prettier, smarter, and more sociable. I had dreamed of the crown since birth, but it was clear Paige was going to be the one to have it placed in her perfectly styled golden hair. She was going to be the one to make the uplifting speech, despite the fact that I had one written since I was twelve. She was the one who would get the slow dance with Tyler, who was sure to win King, in front of every envious eye. 

She was going to have all that, if she was ever found. If she was even alive. 

Suddenly, my eyes jammed shut in agonizing pain. I tore my manicured fingers down my scalp and started pulling at my roots. I fell out of my chair and hit the linoleum floor hard, deepening some of the bruises I already had. I rocked back and forth as my friends scrambled out of the chairs to comfort me. Paige’s eyes bore into my brain, unblinking. The iron-hot smell of blood suffocated me. I heard people yelling for a nurse. The entire school watched as I broke down in the middle of the lunchroom. 

As quickly as I had started the fit, I ended it. I blinked my eyes carefully, like an amnesia patient in a soap opera. I was surrounded by a thousand eyes. Most would be alarmed by this, but I welcomed the attention, just as I had my entire life. 

I could see the nurse and principal pushing their way through the crowd, their facial expressions a mix of alarm and concern. I tired to stand but the nurse ordered me to stay sitting on the ground. She started jamming my body with instruments, checking my blood pressure, pulse, and god knows what else. She couldn’t see that there was nothing wrong with my body, but with my soul.

Meanwhile the principal was shooing the rubberneckers away from me. Though they took steps back, their eyes remained fixed upon my broken form. That sympathetic look was written across every face in the room.

“Pepper, maybe you should take the rest of the day off. Clearly you need more time,” the principal calmly said to me, taking a knee next to me and gently touching my shoulder. Her compassion meant nothing to me. I jerked back from her and the nurse, defiantly stand up. 

“No! I won’t be babied! And I am not sitting around all depressed anymore.”  I had everyone’s full attention. Someone could whisper about me and the whole room would hear. This level of silence was unheard of at my school, and I was the cause of it. “And another thing, I am still going to prom this weekend! I’m going for Paige. I am not giving up hope like everyone else. She will be found. And if not, I am going to be Prom Queen for her!” The room exploded into deafening applause, and this was coming from kids who didn’t even clap for our own football team. I had united them. The slightest of smirks played on my lips but I suppressed it. 

I squeezed into my custom-made aquamarine dress. It hugged my five-foot-five frame perfectly and made my skin look five shades darker then I was. I gingerly rubbed my hand down my flat stomach, feeling the prickle of the sequins catching on my fingertips. I wonder what I looked like, but since that night I was terrified of looking myself in the mirror, of the face that would look back at me. 

“Honey, let me cover up those bruises, no one wants to see them,” my mom reached for her enormous bottle of concealer. I already felt like a painted canvas with the amount of eyeliner, shadow, and blush applied to my smooth skin. I gently poked at the yellow-green discolorations.

“No, I am not going to hide it.” I wanted everyone to see my injuries. I wanted to remind them what I had gone through.

“I am so proud of you for going through with this. I want to show you something.” She took my hand in her overly-smooth one and pulled me to her bedroom. She led me to her enormous closet and carefully opened a drawer of which I had never seen the contents.

Immediately I was blinded, for sitting inside was nine shining, silver crowns. They were adorn with every color jewel and were cut in every style. I reached out to touch them but my mom pushed my hand away on instinct. 

“These are all the prom queen crowns of our family, including your great-grandmother’s. And tonight we can add yours to the collection! A perfect ten.” She kissed my on the cheek, careful to avoid the bruises that blemished my skin. 

<Add in more here>

My mother shrieked at the sight of the tiara twining trough my tresses, and she ran up and hugged me in a way she had never done before. Wiping the tears from my eyes in a way to preserve my make-up, I walked up the stairs into my bedroom. The exhaustion of my success was overwhelming. 

I stood in front of my floor-length mirror, taking my own image in for the first time since that night. I was beautiful, I was perfect. I twirled and giggled as my hair fanned out around me and the false diamonds in the crown caught the light and threw it around the room. I flopped down on my bed, the grin still plastered on my face. I rolled over onto my silk covered stomach and untangled the crown from my hair. I could see my perfect smile reflected in ever gem that had been carefully glued on. I gingerly placed it in the drawer of my nightstand.

Right next to the knife I had used to murder Paige. 

Project 3 project idea

Alright, I hope my story idea is feasible and doesn't make you send the men in white coats. I love crime fiction and crime shows and all that, so that's where I drew inspiration from this. Also, as you pointed out, I got inspiration from my one of my favorite movies Rear Window and did a bit of an opposite of it.

Exposition: Dave is an average guy, with a bit of OCD. Every night he comes home from work and stares out his window to the apartment across the way, where a young woman lives. The two exchange  smiles and waves.

Rising Action: Dave continues to obsess over the girl, having panic attacks when she is gone. His obsessions lead him to begin planning to meet her, and he fantasizes about their future together.

Climax: He goes over to her apartment to meet her, she rebuffs him. In a rage, he accidentally kills her.

Falling Action: He snaps out of his delusional state and realizes what he has done. He tries to cover his tracks.

Conclusion: He sees the cops in the girl's apartment. He draws the blinds closed.



Not sure if this is too intense or whatnot. I love psychological thrillers and that's why I wanted to write one.

Style

Alrighty, it's style time. My immediate thought was how my was how my English 15 professor told me I have no trace of seriousness in any of my writing, although this may have to do that my topics were stuff like mac and cheese and why Batman is the best superhero of all time. Yeah, I didn't take classes very seriously freshman year.

So for the first reading, on readability, I have several thoughts. I have noticed that my favorite books are  the easy readers that go super fast. Sure I love some Game of Thrones, which has a much higher reading level, but given a choice I am going for a James Patterson book over War and Peace. I think my writing is the same, where I tend to write at a low "reading level". I just don't think reading level really matters for how people enjoy books. I don't think it matters.

So tone is really important in writing. Just ask anyone who has an awkward moment due to a text/email not conveying sarcasm correctly. This will be especially important for my story idea (if I can run with it) because I want it to be scary and tense, and that is all dependent on tone (no jokes this time round)

Generating Good Ideas

This week is the perfect subject for me, because I never know what to write about. I was sad none of the websites had my favorite place to think, the shower. I did think that the public places and overheard conversations was an interesting idea, especially with the amount of time I spend in busy places like the HUB or creamery. I have overheard so many things, and I think fleshing them out into stories could be a lot of fun. I decided that today and tomorrow when I am in HUB for hours on end, I am going to spend time with my headphones off (scary thought for me) and try to listen. I don't like getting ideas from movies or books though, because I feel like its too likely to steal ideas. I don't currently have any ideas of the final project, so using these readings will definitely help!