Something to try...A Writing Exercise

"Look at the photograph on the insert. Imagine you are there. Describe what you see and your thoughts and feelings as you look around."

Write Prose...

The walls tower  awkwardly by my right. They stare at me... judging me and bickering their thoughts. Silently. Under foot the gritty sand nibbles at my soles and mock my blisters. A glint of water in the distance looks scared. As I approach it, it retreats. Crouching, I can study the sea life. Crustaceans, none of which I've ever seen before. Shrill reds and salty stenches greet me. I back away.

I haven't seen any one for days. I think I'm going in circles. Just round and around this island and I cant climb those cliffs though I can see some more stranded in the sea. They look lonely. Outcast from their brothers... like me. As I pause, I notice a bird ... or bird like thing.  It isn't stranded here. It wasn't abandoned. And for this I hate the bird! How did I get here? How can I leave? Do I want to?

There is something oddly familiar about this scenery.  Something strange about the sinister solitude, yet some how... it's comforting. Its like a sickly blanket of air washing over me. Sticking to my skin in the ever lasting twilight. Murky. Gray. Lethargic. Inescapable.

Change into poetry?

Something of a Nothing

I long for a place that we can be free.

I wish the walls to fall into themselves.
This place our watchtower cannot see,
A place where we can express ourselves.

The water retreats as we approach it,

Most things do in this barren landscape.
The cliffs stare down and together commit,
Crimes repressing us here, we can’t escape.

It seems so far, far away from us now,

And I’m sure both our thoughts collide.
Yet we both are aware they will never allow,
For us to forgive and learn to confide.

The walls may hold highest in this plane place,

But freedom’s nearer to love than to haste.


A Poem and Prose by Kate Ruston

Try with this photograph above and my own photographs below. Have fun and post your work.

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All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

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My art @ Deviant Art

Cayton Bay

It may not be a glamorous holiday, or an expensive one but it is the only place in this world that I feel the very essence of 'holiday' . In  every gain of sand that surrounds me I am able to escape and feel the the tiny grains of memories form a beach of comfort and calm that help me to stop, and become part of the past and the present.

Cayton Bay may not be exciting, but to me it will always be so much more than that. ThisThis is where I spent my childhood escapes from the classroom, and this is where I learned to swim. Down on the beach, my five year old self  could fill the wellies of my friends with sands, seawater and a puzzled crab. After which I would stand, the sun in my eyes and look down at a job well done. I would watch and notice how the sand becomes slowly darker in the in sole of the shoe... the now empty red bucket becoming lighter.
 Holding the crab as it tiny pin pricked feet scuttle slightly as I lower it atop the full welly. To be the smell of the sea is always link to the frill of mischief. 

How the waves around me continue to crash and froth around the rocks as the tide starts to go out. The warm sun begins to fall, feeling my body start to grow tired after a long day of castle architecture. Two Border collies running on the sand, leaving washed away paw prints, one of them was my dog. World War two bunkers filled with sea water, looking like concrete bread boxes.

Thank you for reading. Please show your support by clicking like, commenting and following.

All images were found on 'Google Images' and I do not own them.
Please check out my e-books on amazon kindle.
All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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My e-Books

The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre (£0.99)

My art @ Deviant Art

Filigree Bunting

I can feel the brown leaves underfoot and feel them crack and break against the soul of my shoe as I shift my weight from right to left and back again.

            I hear the sound of my purple dyed leather gloves making almost ripping noises against the bark where my father had calved our names as children.

            In front of me and down the short decline the water in the lake is rippling from a soft wind that is passing threw, softly like whispers of a thought crossing your mind.

            The almost nutty smell of damp earth clings to the air that chills my cheeks, nose and chin.

            Golden leaves hang like filigree bunting from the spindly branches as I turn to my sister who slumps down besides me, sitting on the tree root to the carving tree, brushing my shoulder with the coast as she does. She babbles about mushrooms she’s collected in a used teacup and my mums voice says poisonous from out of my mouth, as if we are still children placing chestnuts upon tree stumps for the fairy and squirrel parade. 

Thank you for reading. Please show your support by clicking like, commenting and following.

Please check out my e-books on amazon kindle.
All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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My e-Books

The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

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My art @ Deviant Art

Why I Write...

An exersise I believe all writers should do at some point in their lives is answer the question 'Why do I write?' much like George Orwell. In 2010, this was my response.

 It occurred to me during my A-levels that my art often included words and I began to believe that people are born with the tales inside them, often surfacing in many different ways. In my case this is usually dreams that have strong plots and have heavy visual imagery, which easily transfer into poetry or prose, and are bursting to get out like ink seeping though the spine of a book. The earliest proof of this is that in primary school, I was popular in the playground as I invented elaborate and imaginative games, and I still can picture the fantasy worlds that I created around us all to this very day. It wasn't just play.Writing has always had a place in my life as reading holds a strong role in my family as my mother always encouraged my sister and I to read, and often read to us in childhood, not only short children-stories but fiction such as ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R Tolkien. I recall having written short stories though-out year four to six and even being placed in an older class. Once I managed to get a role in my class’s self written musical, ‘Silas Marner’, as ‘Dolly’. This was a big step up from being a nameless shepherd or angel in the nativity. 
At the age of fifteen, poetry entered my world in the diaries that I kept, and after my teacher reading a first draft of ‘Dead Truthful’ written for our twist invoking short story coursework based on Roald Dahls ‘lamb to the slaughter’, I was enrolled in a poetry workshop for showing my talent. There were several schools involved and each school had around eight members from year ten and my first work was published in our anthology entitled ‘the mixture’. I had two poems published that were written about two sculptures that appealed to me at Yorkshire Sculpture Park during a visit with writer and sports journalist James Nash.

A Photograph I took at Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2007

I believe that my imagination is a strong influence on me but other writers and artists affect it. I often pick up random books but none more influential as ‘The Book of Lost Things’ by John Connolly as this became my favourite book. The novel is about the metaphorical growth of the hero David during World War Two and after going though a crack in a wall of  ‘the shrunken garden’ he enters a world that is either were fairy tales originate or are just the delusions of a comer victim. I am hoping to write novel that is as magical as this and also for adults. I am also influenced by writer such as Frances Hodgson-Burnett, who as the writer of the first novel I read first invoked my imagination and Arthur Golden’s ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, Adeline Yen-Mah’s ‘Chinese Cinderella’ and Anchee Min ‘Empress Orchid’ as I enjoy reading eastern based novels and I wish to visit the continent order to be able to write it as a setting accurately.

 'Why I Write' By Kate Ruston

Thank you for reading. Please show your support by clicking like, commenting and following.

Please check out my e-books on amazon kindle.
All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014

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My e-Books

The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre (£0.99)

My art @ Deviant Art