Writers Block? Try Five Songs

I often find myself experiencing writers block, sometimes I feel like writing but become totally lost and get stuck for an idea. Today we are going to try a creative writing exercise called five songs. There are various things you can do with this, but for this exercise we will choose five of your favourite songs and their last lines. See mine below:

FNT  by Semisonic
Last line; Even when you are not new.
Smooth Sailing by Queen of the Stone Age
Last line; Shut up.
Carry On My Wayward Son by Kansas
Last line; Don't you cry no more, No more
The Man in the Box by Alice In Chains
Last line; Feed my eyes now you've sewn them shut
Heart Go Faster by Davey Brothers
Last line; I feel I could make it last forever

We will now do a multitude of things with this; 

● Write a short paragraph with the last line of one song as a beginning.
● Use the last word all five songs in your opening sentence.
● Try to incorporate the themes or words into a narrative.

See mine below.

It was not new to him. Not that she knew at this point. No matter what, this was the last time. He'd sewn his own eyes shut to the truth of it all. She wrote that he was her always. They made love under the stars and kissed each others scars. Nothing was secret from him. Nothing was known by her. He had said to her "I could make it last forever." And she believed him at the time.
But as the years pulled at their relationship the stitches came undone and he began to see the lies he was living in, the guilt towards her became unbearable and his self destruction seemed the only way to end it. Little fights building, disagreements everyday and then he said "no more". It was the first thing they agreed on for six months of their wistful domestic failure. They gave freedom to each other in a kiss in the doorway and never saw each other again. Their past began to shut up, slowly at first as the memories resisted and the memorabilia was distraught before it was destroyed. Little is left of what they were and how they felt for each other. First love. Never matched, nevertheless it's not always real.

Please feel free to post your paragraphs in the comments.

Thank you for reading.
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© Kate Ruston and Happy Little Narwhal 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Ruston or Happy Little Narwhal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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From the Watchtower

The Blind Kings Sons 

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre 

Into the Lake of Souls

I'm just beginning to question it all. To try to see sense where there is none, I opened my eyes again and now I am here, what ever here is.  Physically, I feel lighter now. My thoughts make me sink. Under the water, I lay on the bottom for years, but rot doesn't touch my skin. I do not move. My eyes stay open and I see all I have done, all I have felt re-breaths inside me, bitter and stale. This goes on until i have picked apart ever second of my life countless times, breaking the seconds down into piecea so small that they stop being anything whole. A memory of playing as a child, broken into unrelated segments. colour, sound, shapes, warmth, touch, I took apart every detail and hid them out of order, in the wrong places in my mind. I broke it all down to take away all of the pain. It was after this that I noticed that I seem to have lost my name, it's all out of order. Just letter with no form or meaning... "H". H is for... it's for... and I don't know why it's important to remember. I sit up, pushing layers of mud and silt from myself and begin to rise.

Before I was here, I think I was standing below him, Darren. One of the memories I could not fracture. He looked so disappointed in me. I have betrayed a true friend. One who had defended me. And they all never suspected that I would do that, make an alliance with the enemy. It was for the greater good. Countless would have died either side. The vampranese knew that it was the best way. We made a mistake with Gavner. It all was pushed too far too fast. Why is this all coming back to me, little bits over endless days? He is so young to have done this to me."AR" It is out of order, what I did to them was wrong. I know that now, other wise I wouldn't be here. This can't be a place good people go.

They move around me, we collide, they are cold and lifeless, we touch, their yellowing eyes flash with fury for a moment before continuing onwards, as do I. Is that what I look like now? They are thin, skeleton showing under weakened flesh.  We are all just churning, swimming together in circles, never going anywhere but restless to stay still like the others thst lay below. The fluid we live in is thick and lilac in hue. I'm not sure if you can call this living. "KAT". I spell it with a K. Some times I'm blind again, memories are no trouble to me now as I have few left. Even the ones that remain are ditching,  like they were a story told to me long ago about someone I can't remember being. Once I had many, they pained me, perhaps that is why I sank,  under the weight of my life, only to serface when I could let it go. Sometimes I would see the mountain and recall my first journey there, then all the time I stayed within and all of the plotting I did. I am regret... I noticed my hands today. They are much fairer than before. And the fingers are unmarked."M" is another of the letters, I can remember the pen making this bird-like shape, my hands did that mark on the page. They were all in my name. My hands with the knife, marking a mark in Gavner. Then, repeatedly, the stakes. They came through my hands too, they punctured everywhere. So why am I together again? My nails are long and translucent now. My veins are indigo abd broad, pushing up my drawn skin. "U"... you did this to yourself you know... 

It never seems to be night here. always a half darkness. Indiscriminate time. "L"ife. Life is time going forward, the growth and decay. This place is past decay. Like we are pickled, stored in a purple lake for an unknown purpose. How long has it been? Sometimes, for days, I swim and do not think at all. I have no way of telling for how long I do this. But when I come back around I notice changes in the others, some become slimy or scaled, others are so thin now that they are little more that bloated skins. The sky is dark. Dark sky."DS" Close... but not right. I still cannot tell if it is day or night, but the sky is black I look up to the water surface and the black floats on top like a lid, from time to time it ripples, but mostly it is still. Some times I see an old man looking down from the other side of the black and i see that he is smiling. But it is not a happy smile. He tells me things inside of my head. He says that I will come fishing here one day, along with he who put me down here. They will pull me out and give me back my name, etched on the teeth of the traitor lord. And I will risk it all for the two of them to live, perhaps returning me into the lake. He speaks like destiny.

© Kate Ruston - A doodle I did when originally reading the books in 2006,when I was 14.

Thank you for reading. The above work is based on the 10th book of The Saga of Darren Shan by author Darren Shan, my favorite series when I was a teen. I would highly recommend this series for any Vampire fan but advise that it is written for young adults.
  Please show your support by clicking like, commenting and following.

© Kate Ruston and Happy Little Narwhal 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Ruston or Happy Little Narwhal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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My e-Books:

From the Watchtower

The Blind Kings Sons 

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre 

One of the Days

It's the stillness that gets to you first. After a life in the age if sound and colour the world seems faded. In every sense. At night the silence becomes intolerable. Almost like a physical thing, creeping into your ears and expanding. You dig in your fingers to relieve it. So much blood can come from an ear. Finding a place with some sound is a luxury. I wish I had never learned to speak. I found an old train once, it creaked and moaned even when there was no wind. It was a friend to me in a world of hostility. The seats still had padding and some were big enough to lay strait. I stayed there with a stockpile of food from the end of summer until late winder, nursing my leg back to health from the last raid I had done. Quick in, quick out. Shadow person. I fed a few scraps to some rats and gave them names, what were their names in Cinderella? I can't remember. Fed them up and they trusted me. They were a good source of protein when I left. I kind of regret that. I'd like to go back there this winter, but the train was yellow and most likely some group have found it and claimed it. They may have even gotten it working again. Taken it elsewhere. In a world so still and lifeless it's surprising how much effort can be wasted on something that is too far gone to save. Nothing is permanent but the passing of the day. Even the silence isn't permanent and some nights you pray for it's return. Those nights when they are out there, there is not much you can do but listen. On the darkest nights of summer they are insane, much louder. Digging into corpses and eating each other. Winter slows them. But winter slows me.

He was resting on the tracks when I found him, maybe he was rusted into being motionless, maybe no one could have moved him. All the windows were covered in dirt and stained green from the rain fall. The station platform was an old cobbled stone one, with wooden shelters and and a stone clock tower, frozen at eight forty five. Weeds and grass had pushed up against the cobble leveling to create a surface much more challenging to the foot. A tree had started growing from the door of Carriage A, it was only little more than a bush really. A snow had fallen unseasonably for a few days now, hiding the greenery from view creating more danger. I was more wary of being followed than running into one of them,  so I was lax. What I saw... The cold had frozen one to a chair. She was strapped in anyway with electrical wire, a note frozen on the seat next to her. The wire had dug into her flesh.

I need to keep moving on. Stay still, get caught. There is not a lot of fight left in me now, not after all of this. I'm staying in someone's old apartment tonight. One of those small apartment blocks above shops, like the one I lived in when I was nineteen. Other peoples possessions still here after all this time, dusty but unmoved. Some canned fruit, not bad yet. I may save it, it will be my birthday soon. Not that I know for sure. I've pushed the sofa to the door and this is where I will sleep. The window prepped with rope. A loss of rope better than a loss of life. Or perhaps not? Check the pipes for water, only a small amount but better than none. Boil it. I've been looking at their photographs. A couple lived here about my age. They are slightly overweight and don't look like they love each other very much. I guess all relationships get like that. I wonder if they broke up or if they are still out there fighting together, longing for the days that they fought each other. If they are alive they will have to fight until they are dead. Or they have become one of them. I wish I could find them when this is all over. Though I don't think I will see that day, if it ever comes. We could have a drink and look back at the past few years and laugh about it. Laugh off all of those we loved and lost and those we were robbed of ever meeting, like the good old days of news papers, jokes and memes. This couple are two of my best friends, the third is a train.

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

© Kate Ruston and Happy Little Narwhal 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kate Ruston or Happy Little Narwhal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Like us on Facebook

My e-Books:

From the Watchtower

The Blind Kings Sons 

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre 

Her Breath

It’s dark. Cold, almost damp, moss grows through the stones like an idea in the brain. There is a bed under a small window, see the slats through the mattress. If it were day, you would see a forest, where she is waiting. The rain flecks in though the glassless window and dots the dusty floorboards

I’m sitting on the wall opposite, leaning, my legs in front, my toes looking like stalagmites. A glint at the window shifts my eye; the crystals there are stirred by the wind and rain. Little rainbows inside them whisper to me and make me want to move them, but I’m too smart. So I sit. The rain falls by my feet, the drops fall and make drawings upon the floor that change and seem to move, closer, closer.

Below me, that noise again, like a breath that lingers in a throat of a stitched mouthed corpse. I’m aware I’m still blocking the door. The candle by my hand flickers and my shadow remains absent. Thankfully. Hands fall aside. Dust. Floor is brittle bone. The rattle grows louder, almost crawling though the keyhole. My heart thumps inside my ears. This must stop! My candle is tired. One hand rises to my neck and pulls the twine from inside my robe and my fingers taste the metal key. I stand, count a minute, by the door, the rattle holds her breath. I unlock the door.

My feet feel the change of flooring, thicker dust; my toes are numb and black. I do not walk, just shift from one foot to the other. Forwards, down. Down in a much bigger room. Portraits of her with no eyes are all around. Every time I turn she does too! I feel fingers on my shoulders, but turn to see a fleeting shadow. It moves across the wall and rests a moment on her faces.

There’s breath to my left. Rattle. I startle to one side. A cold mouth presses against my cheek, I close my eyes.
I open them in front of a mirror, she’s stood behind me, and her hands clasp my neck.

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

Lair Like Me...

Within this blanket of white I cannot tell which way is up, which way is down? I ask them but they never answer me. They promised me that they would end it. But they, the wolves, circle me so that I can’t move. So that breathing seems a task, afraid of being heard or not being heard.

            The cold is burning my skin, but I am beyond feeling it. I can only feel the snow, wrapping around me so very tightly. I'm not asking for it, I don't even know if I could manage to ask for any more, my bloodstained hands seem always to be calling back to the promise that I made to him. That one fine morning when his face was still and calm, the way it stayed that way until the snow was pulled up over his face and around my body. The long journey I did not cry out, they did not like that.

            There are voices all around me and the clinical smell of talc is there too. The whispers are like ribbons, bonds that fluttering in the wind, whipping up all the white into the air, like when ghost play in the snow.Where am I looking now, into the wolves’ jaws, up into the sky? My eyes can't focus any longer and my mind can only see paper-thin skin on a thin hand. I should not have lied, like a blanket of snow. Softly, softly, calm down. Hold my hand, it wont hurt. Slid the knife quietly, child. Burning my skin. You promised me you’d end it! Liar like me! I can’t breath. The wolf uses its needle teeth and pierces my arm. The white relaxes me and slips into a liquid, hot in my blood. Melt the snow. Melt my mind if you can find it.

            The wolves seem satisfied and say I should be okay now, nice and quiet for you anyway, John. They are wrong. But they know they are liars too. They pull the snow blanket from over my head and turn to leave after tucking it around my restrains. I breathe in, for it is all I can do, in, out, in, out. Staring and the ceiling, wishing it was sky again. They never let me see what is really there. They never let me remember what it was that I did to you.

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

Like us on Facebook

My e-Books

The Blind Kings Sons (£0.99)

Harry Potter and the Gothic Genre (£0.99)

My art @ Deviant Art