• A few things you’re probably wondering…

Wandering Loulou

~ The wonderings of a wandering mind…

Wandering Loulou

Category Archives: Writing

30 notes to my 20 year old self

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by wanderingloulou in Life is good, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

30, advice, age, birthday, thirties, twenties, wisdom

On the cusp of my fourth decade, I’m feeling strangely Zen about my age having a 3 instead of a 2 in front of it. Which is odd because I’ve kind of always worried about growing up. I remember when my Mum told me I needed a training bra. The horror. Back then I thought I could cheat the system, just like Peter Pan had.

On my twenty-third birthday I thought I was old as hell. Past it. And I realise now that it wasn’t so much the fear of my own mortality, but rather the fear that the fun was about to stop. Being a grown up. Barf.

The thing is though, now 30 doesn’t seem so bad because, actually, the fun never has to stop. Well, unless you have kids, but hey that’s a different blog post! Thirties can be every bit as wonderful as twenties without any of the insecurity, self loathing or bad decision making. Hopefully.

I spent far too much of my twenties giving a shit about stuff, and not enough time giving a shit about the stuff I should be giving a shit about. What a load of shit.

And so in celebration of the remaining grains of sand slipping from my precious egg timer named ‘Twenties’, here are a couple of things I know now, I really wish I’d known then.

1.) Exfoliate regularly.

2.) Accept your body for the shape it is. The gym and starvation won’t stop you having curves. And why would you want to.

3.) Be strong for other people, but most importantly be strong for yourself.

4.) Aloe vera. Take it daily and everything will be better.

5.) Don’t eat too much sugar, it’s the cause of your acne and tiredness, plus it’s highly addictive and also bad for your teeth.

6.) Use an emollient cream, it’s the purest moisturiser you can get and won’t irritate your skin.

7.) Stop wasting your Saturday/Sunday morning with a hangover.

8.) Take milk thistle for a hangover.

9.) Don’t waste your time with friends who never bother to get in touch.

10.) Make time for real friends.

11.) Real friends love you even at your worst.

12.) Demand respect. You teach people how to treat you.

13.) Just because one person says your writing is crap and another person says your writing is brilliant, doesn’t mean the person who said it’s crap is the one you should listen to.

14.) You are not disgusting. In fact, sometimes you look quite pretty.

15.) Take risks. But don’t jeopardise your safety.

16.) It’s ok to make mistakes.

shoes and one sock

an example of a mistake

17.) Enjoy the quiet times.

18.) Be thankful for the good times.

19.) Remember the bad times will pass.

20.) Do things that scare you. Improv, solo travel, spoken word – try them, you’ll like them I promise.

a lady bike

hello, beautiful lady bike

21.) Buy a lady bike. Happiness guaranteed, every day.

22.) Not all men are users.

23.) Wait for someone who really floats your boat, don’t settle. (clue: he exists!)

24.) Read the small print. Particularly with credit cards.

25.) Some people are stupid.

26.) Your personality is the most important element in how attractive you appear.

27.) Dye your hair whatever colour you fancy. But always have a get out plan, and a good conditioning hair mask.

28.) To your parents you’ll always be their little girl, so go easy on them.

29.) Take Halloween seriously. Veeery seriously.

halloween vampire

serious.

Halloween ghost

seriouser.

halloween

seriousist.

30.) Only give a shit about the things that you should actually be giving a shit about. Like feminism.

Now someone pass me the botox and a big piece of cake…

Reaching the finish line

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by wanderingloulou in Life is good, Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

5k, bucket list, charity, color me rad, colour me rad, M.E., ME, race, running

Color me Rad finish line

When I turned 25 I started to reevaluate things. Suddenly 30 didn’t seem all that far away.
And so I did what any sensible person would do, and drew up a bucket list. My bucket list wasn’t huge – I’d rather not swim with dolphins thank you very much, god knows where they might stick their beaks, and I can’t bungee jump or skydive or anything else pant-shittingly terrifying due to the small hole in my retina that would become a very big hole if gravity were allowed to have its wicked way (it’s true). But there were a couple of things I wanted to get under my belt…

One of which, was to run a race. I dreamed of sprinting across the finish line as the crowds cheered, sweating in a way that gave me a kinda sexy glow and experiencing an extreme sense of elation. All of this, turns out, was completely unrealistic. Except the elation. That happened a wee bit.
Running a race meant more to me than losing a few pounds or being able to brag to less athletically inclined pals/family/strangers/stray dogs about the achievement. It meant I had kicked the butt of an illness that had changed the course of my life forever, disrupted my family’s life and stolen my teens.
And so the call came, “let’s do a 5k!” chimed my lovely but much fitter than me bunch of pals. It was on.
What’s the most tired you’ve ever been? Could you lift your arm? Could you speak? Also your head hurts so much sometimes you pass out, your hands and feet are like blocks of ice and your limbs ache constantly. For five years. And nobody knows why. That’s M.E..
I don’t want sympathy. I just want the world to know that it’s is real and people are suffering and the last thing they need is for you to tell them they’re probably faking it for attention/have school phobia/should try doing more exercise.

Learning to run isn’t easy. At first I began to wonder if I truly did have two lungs as I had always been led to believe. Gasping, panting, sweating and wobbling in my running tights ain’t pretty. Times got tough, until I listened to a podcast from one of my faves, Trish Blackwell. “It’s going to hurt,” she said, “expect pain.” She runs marathons and stuff.
I expected it. Bring it, I said in my own head (mostly). I ran in the rain and felt like Action Woman. I ran in the blazing sunshine and felt like I was going to Pass Out. I ran right up until the big day, and then I ran some more.

Hi, I'm Action Woman

Hi, I’m Action Woman

If you aren’t familiar with the Color Me Rad concept let me explain – you run 5k while simultaneously being pelted with multicoloured powder. The atmosphere on the day was electric, everyone was itching to get running. Before I got to the track I’d felt nervous, but soon excited anticipation took over.
I ran most of the circuit with my pals, each of us taking turns to be the encouraging one. About 4k in I slowed down to a walk, it was baking hot – the blazing sun made me feel like I was cooking alive. With the finish line in sight I picked up my pace again. Just as I was approaching the last bend, and an assault of yellow powder – during which I thought I might be able to slow down a little – I heard a familiar voice shout my name. My dad grinned and waved at me from the crowd, then pointed his camera at my sweaty, slick with hair-masque (to protect my fake blonde locks) head. I had no idea my parents were going to be there.
I had no choice, this wasn’t about me anymore. This was about my parents, about people who have M.E. today and the people who had sponsored my run. It was also about the teenage me. Which I guess is technically me, but whatevs. It was symbolic.
With everything I had left I sprinted to the finish line. My sportiest pals who were waiting at the finish line cheered me as I crossed, and the sky exploded with pink and blue and yellow as everyone threw their bags of powder into the air. Best. Feeling. Ever.

color me rad powder
Sure, it’s only 5k, but I’d done something I never would have thought possible. That’s a nice little tick for the bucket list.
And the other two things? Get published and go to Paris. One tick, one tick about to happen just before the big three-oh….

Better get started on that new bucket list.

(photos thanks to the lovely Ash!)

The eternally rad Ash (on my back)

The eternally rad Ash (on my back)

Fiction: Derelict

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by wanderingloulou in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, fiction, horror, stories

Occasionally I find that I completely forget about a story I’ve written, until someone else mentions it. That’s what happened with this particular piece of fiction – it’s something I wrote for a horror stories under 100 words competition I entered.

If you like your horror short and stabby, pick up the ebook by Popcorn Horror, where you can read the other story I submitted.

Derelict

“Leave her.”

I’ll never leave her.

I wrap myself tightly around her frail body.

He places various implements across the bedside table, one after another.

She shakes and judders violently.

“Leave her.”

Never. I barely recognise my voice.

I hold on tight, clinging to her pale forearms. I can’t let go.

He murmurs low inaudible words. But I won’t let go.

My claws scrape her arms, legs and cheeks. Drawing thick red lines of viscous blood.

He thrusts the crucifix in my face and I collide with the ceiling.

Then falling, falling.

Alone again in the black abyss. All alone.

Fiction: Face in a Jar

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, edinburgh, fiction, flash fiction, surgeons hall museum

A little fiction inspired by the weird and wonderful exhibits of Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall Museum…

Amongst the many strange items in my Auntie Meg’s house, by far the strangest was a face in a jar. In her younger years, my aunt had taken her manic grin and unsettling squint across the globe to collect trinkets; scorpions set in glass poised to sting, black shrunken heads that dangled on string, grimacing puppets with ghoulish wide grins from places like Sri Lanka and Nepal. Upon her return she crammed the objects into the shelves of her tiny home, and over the years they had grown as old and as forgotten as Auntie Meg herself. As a child I believed that if you stayed inside the house for too long you might one day find yourself sitting on one of those creaking shelves, or tucked away in a dark bedroom corner gathering dust, find that you too had become one of the trinkets.

The face sat on the mantelpiece suspended in a jar of yellowed water, quite still and appeared to be asleep. One day when she left the room I found myself creeping closer to get a better look. There was a small sticker on the side with 1917 written on it and I remembered she told me it was a solider who had died in the First World War. Pale and red haired like me, his eyelashes looked so very delicate, preserved and softened by time, pressed against the wrinkled skin under his eyes. Those were the lines of a man who cried, there was no doubt those eyes had known tears. I wondered if they had known love too. Perhaps that was why he cried. His cheeks were bristled with stubble that had stopped growing almost a century ago. Twisted nostrils, skewed and black from the bullet hole that killed him through the left side of his nose, thick old fashioned sutures pointlessly held the wound closed. Shutting my eyes, I inhaled; the smells of burning, gun powder, dusty roads, hot dinners, hot sweats, bodies, then in the end the smell of fear. When I looked again two brown eyes, black as the barrel of a gun, stared back at me and I jumped before I realised it was only my own reflection in the glass.

Still he slept, another century of dreams from his jar to come. Curious I reached for it, tentatively feeling the smooth glass against my fingertips, knowing I shouldn’t but I wanted a closer look. I wanted to know all of this man, to see what happened where his forehead stopped, where his skull should have been.

Lifting him toward me I could feel the slip before it happened. The jar out of my hands smashed across the hard wooden floor. The silence that followed seemed to stretch for ninety four long years. Liquid and shards and a lump of soggy flaccid flesh lay sadly at my feet face down, the gristle behind the face now on show. Auntie Meg appeared in the doorway, she looked down and sighed.

“That was your great-grandfather.”

 

 

 

 

Four thoughts that don’t help writers one little bit…

09 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, creativity, writers block, writing tips

It isn’t easy being a writer; a pretend one, a real one, an aspiring one, a struggling one…none of those are easy. The writer’s path is a hazardous one, like some nightmarish yellow brick road littered with rejection, existential crises and strewn with the headless bodies of munchkins (did I say munchkins? I meant manuscripts).

Continue reading →

Taking editing advice from Orwell and Vonnegut

03 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, editing, writers block, writing tips

writer with old fashioned typewriter
You may have noticed things have been a little quiet on the blogging front for me recently. Or maybe you haven’t. (What, you mean you haven’t been sat by your computer awaiting my next exciting instalment with baited breath?).

Well, let me explain…

Continue reading →

Ten things to do when you’re not writing…

06 Monday Jun 2011

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, writing tips

Writing is hard work. I spend a lot of time not writing. Even on a ‘good writing day’ I only spend at most six hours out of an entire twenty four whacking out words on my keyboard into a vaguely logical/meaningful order (that’s right, I said good day).

Read more and find out how to make the most of your non-writing time…

Continue reading →

What’s your type? Audio, visual and kinesthetic writing tactics

25 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, writers block, writing tips

Recently I have been struggling to get to grips with structure, that slightly dull but entirely necessary feature of any story that must at least be given a little consideration before you sit down to write.

Not to generalise, but I wouldn’t say planning is the forte of most creative types, most of the time we are far too busy with the fun stuff. Like procrastinating in the pub.

Check out how knowing your writing style can increase your productivity…

Continue reading →

On Failing (and not giving up)

15 Sunday May 2011

Posted by wanderingloulou in Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

creative writing, writers block, writing tips

Rejection and being a writer go hand in hand, everyone knows this. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

Find out how failing could actually make your writing better…

Continue reading →

Louise Boyd

Louise Boyd

Top Posts & Pages

Tasty adventures in Portugal: A trip to the market
5 tasty treats you absolutely should eat in Paris
Hen party at the Hidden Lane Tearoom
Curry, bhajis and dosa at Edinburgh Mela
A photography course in Edinburgh: the joy and terror of stepping out of your comfort zone
Tasty lunch idea - Avocado on Sourdough Bread
Super simple prawn stir-fry
Curiouser and curiouser…an evening of beer and chocolate
Reaching the finish line
30 notes to my 20 year old self

Recent Posts

  • 5 tasty treats you absolutely should eat in Paris
  • A photography course in Edinburgh: the joy and terror of stepping out of your comfort zone
  • 30 notes to my 20 year old self
  • Reaching the finish line
  • Fiction: Derelict

ale beer birthday Bite Magazine Black pepper cabbage cafe cake cheese chicken chillies chocolate chocolate brownie churros coffee Cook Cooking courgette craft beer creative writing creme egg cuckoo's bakery Curry delicacies dinner easter edinburgh fiction flash fiction flat white food foodie Francesinha garlic Gluten Free goose barnacles health healthy holiday Home horror ice cream immune system leith lovecrumbs lunch Madrid market meat mercado do bolhao nutrition onion oranges Porto portugal pub recipe restaurant sandwich sardines Scotland seafood seasonal food sheffield soup Spain spring greens steak stout takeaway tomato travel treats writers block writing tips

Twitter Updates

  • RT @MagicalgirlMia: Late congrats to Mysta for 900k!Your streams make me smile every time 🧡#MystArt #900KMystakes https://t.co/DNXHOtZURU 5 months ago
  • RT @Fulgur_Ovid: Happy birthday @uki_violeta! Noctyx wouldn't be who we are today without you so here's a special message from me, @alban_k… 6 months ago
  • RT @huhu1012: GN😴💪 https://t.co/YqWT21YvkU 6 months ago
Follow @wanderingloulou

Archives

  • February 2015
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • May 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • October 2011
  • August 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011

Pages

  • A few things you’re probably wondering…

Al fresco dining A wee bit of what you fancy Beer Cafes Canonmills Chocolate Cookery classes Delightful drinks Eating out Edinburgh eats Food festivals Foodies Food markets Glasgow eats Healthy stuff Leith Life is good Madrid Mexican Music festivals Portobello Portugal Recipes South Queensferry Stockbridge Takeaway Taste Tasty travels Uncategorized Writing

Blogroll

  • Discuss
  • Get Inspired
  • Get Polling
  • Get Support
  • Learn WordPress.com
  • Theme Showcase
  • WordPress Planet
  • WordPress.com News

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 501 other subscribers

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Wandering Loulou
    • Join 51 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Wandering Loulou
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...