Welcome Back, Self...

Well, if you've read this blog since my first couple of posts, firstly I love you and secondly you've probably realise that my blogging on this site was fairly short-lived. Well, I've had an... eventful few months and haven't really had much motivation to do anything to be honest. I stopped writing my... well I'm loathed to call it a novel but a story sounds like I'm five - let's call it my 'work'. I stopped working out and just kind of became a giant gaming sponge. Obviously I couldn't continue my existence like this for too long, so I convinced myself to get up and do something. I'm lucky that I've been blessed with a large amount of willpower, but for those of you who aren't, sometimes quotes and stuff can help. Here's a particular one I like:


"Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give upand not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse." 


This is said by Eminem at the start of the song/rap or whatever you want to call it 'Till I Collapse', he may not word it in the most articulate, least offensive way but you've got to give it to him, he gives good advice.

Anyway, I've been contemplating which direction to take this blog... Should I go all deep and serious or should I be funny and light-hearted? And I've decided, drum roll please... I'm going to do both, I'm going to let my personality leak into my blog, which isn't a bad thing but I can sometimes be a little 'bi-polar' with my subjects. Some days I might be drawing small fluffy animals in paint or finding a large collection of things shaped like penises in nature and sometimes I might be commenting on the insignificance of the human race or hypothesising that Obama and the newly pwned Osama are the same person.

Just to demonstrate:

I think this was originally supposed to be a wombat, but turned into a standing otter.

This one is fairly self-explanatory, it's a potato shaped like a penis. A penistato. Or a potenis.

This was the picture for the human race being insignificant, just look at the size of our planet compared to our solar system, that's not even including the unimaginable vast empty space between the planets, moons or the asteroid belt. And then you think that there are a possibly infinite number of solar systems in an infinite number of galaxies. And you realise how small you are, and how meaningless and insignificant you and the problems that seem everything to you, really are.

Osamabama

So basically my blog will be the internet equivalent of a mental patient who one day runs around the ward drawing moustaches on the guards and babbling about unicorns and the next sits in his cell muttering about how there's no God and that aliens are probably watching him. 

When I was drawing those two I reached for the trusty tablet (it's computer equipment if you didn't know - I'm not a drug addict) and realised I'd run over the USB connector with my chair and it doesn't fit in my laptop now, so my drawings won't be as high a quality as they once were and I'll be relying much more heavily on that blessed auto-shape tool.

Anyway, I think I'm done now with my rambling re-introduction to the site, and I have time for a quick disclaimer:

Now if I'm going to let this blog be influenced by my 'colourful' personality you need to understand a few things. I'm not out to offend anyone, but if I do then that's not my fault - it's yours for taking things that I say too seriously. I have nothing against anyone, black, white, Asian, fat, thin, pretty, ugly, lesbian, gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual or whatever your minority may be. But I'm not going to tiptoe around anything I want to say. Also I'm probably going to use a bit of bad language... I don't think people who swear should be judged, as long as not being used excessively and it's being used in appropriate contexts. If your sentences consist of 'Good fucking morning today I'm going to fucking wash my fucking car and then I'm fucking off to work with my fucking boss and all the other fuckers that I fucking work with. Fuck.' of course my first thought is going to be that you're a skin head knuckle dragging moron, but I'm certainly not a prude. That's pretty much it, thanks for reading, check back soon and if your lucky I won't have morphed back into the giant couch dwelling gaming sponge.

(Can you believe that there are no pictures of giant sponges sitting on couches playing xbox on google images? I sure as hell can't!)

Description - Am I doin it rite?

Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. As you know, if you've read my first post, I like to write. I like to write stories, specifically. The only problem is that I have a limited amount of un-biased judgement on whether my stories are good or not. The thing is with my writing I like to put a lot of description in, mainly of characters or other living, breathing things. I don't go as far as Charles Dickens or Stephen King style description although I particularly admire the way the later pulls it off flawlessly, giving you the perfect image of the character or scene in question and yet not slowing or delaying the pace of the story. This is the kind of thing that I am going for, now obviously I'm never going to be as good as a best selling novelist, but I hope that the description in my stories shows some semblance of quality.

I will now post some differing lengths of description from some of my stories, most of them will be from the story that I am attempting to finish although some will be fished from unfinished or discontinued stories.

'Luscious hair cascaded down her back like an obsidian waterfall, her rosy cheeks perfectly complimenting her smooth scarlet lips, behind them hid rows of paper-white, marble-shining teeth, ready to burst through in a flashing smile. Icy blue eyes danced over her area of vision. Her beauty was striking, even at a distance; her looks were unique and compelling. At least, that is, before now. A month in the wasteland had changed all that, her once silky hair now stuck in clumps and tangled like greased sea weed. Her lips bitten and almost skinless and her skin with an orange tinge from the lifeless dust that blanketed everything. Her eyes, still strikingly blue, though no longer beautiful, now haunted and empty. Mascara-tears had left black slug-trails down her cheeks. Smiles had vacated her face, and frowns had taken their place. '

This piece of description is from the story that I am currently writing seriously, it opens the second chapter and is the first description of the character introduced within it. 

'You crane your neck to look up at him, his eyes sunken and dark, his nose large with a faint scar running down one side like a drip on a window pane, his lips blistered and dry, cloaked in a blanket of stubble.' 

This is a small extract of description from one of my discontinued stories, which I would actually like to finish now. This is the description of a minor character who is supposed to be your average, garden variety gun-totting hired soldier. You may have noticed that this is written in the 2nd person, which is unusual for a story, this is why I want to finish it. I love the effect that 2nd person has, the story is of a prison escape and it puts the reader in the story as the main character but leaves them out of control and this style of writing reflects the lack of control that you would have in a prison situation.

'It looked picturesque, which was a synonym for boring in the children’s vocabulary. The forest looked to be a beautiful scenic place filled with birdsong and the promise of adventure, which basically meant ‘Oh fuck, no Facebook for a week.’'

This one is something different from my usual writing style, I am writing a story incorporating my friends. I am trying to build a picture of scenes without being boring and trying to keep it funny at the same time, which is a very hard task with the way I am used to writing.

'The thing was humanoid, possibly even once a human. It was tall, its limbs elongated and its fingers hung from its hands like vines from a tree, each one of the tipped with a gruesome black nail. Clothes clung to its disgusting form, all of them tattered and bloodstained, if it had once been wearing shoes, they had been torn from its now bare and clawed feet. Its face was an image of pure hate, its mouth contorted in a predator grin; its yellow fangs piercing the skin bellow its cracked lips. Its hair was shaggy and long, decorated with bones and scraps of metal and wood. It charged towards him with a pronounced limp, its knuckles practically scraping the road.'

A description a mutant zombie like monster from the story that I am writing currently.

'He had the face of a psychopath, cool and collect despite the fact he was discussing the fate of another human being. His noses peaked sharply and bellow it a narrow line of a mouth stayed closed and only parted the slightest amount when he spoke. His eyes were a steely grey, embodying his frigid hostility. He wore a black suit with a bowler hat, a cigar pushed behind his ear and a necklace of keys draped over him.' 

My final piece of description for today's post, this is me trying to get a brief description down without interrupting the conversation that is happening in the story and still letting the readers know the appearance of the man involved.

So, how did I do? Did you like my descriptions? Feedback would be loved, if it is too long and boring to post here then feel free to e-mail it to me at l.neale3@hotmail.co.uk, also if you've got any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed my work.

For lack of a better title, introduction.

Welcome to my blog. This is my third attempt a blog, the previous two have been okay, they lasted for a few weeks before I got bored and gave up. The difference here is, this blog isn't to become famous or to attempt to be funny or to draw funny pictures for the masses. This is place to share what I do with anyone who may be interested, and that's just what I intend to do. I might write about my day or things that make me think or I find interesting. I might post something that I write that I'm proud of or something that I read that is brilliant/brilliantly crap. I might draw you a pretty picture, I most probably will draw you pictures, but they won't be the sort that I spend five hours on otherwise I'll end up getting burnt out at this blog as well, and I really don't want that.

I thought, for my first post that it might be nice if you got to know me a little, so I'm going to give you some information about myself, not enough that I might be tracked down and raped by some middle-aged, mouth-breathing stranger, but enough so that you have a general idea of who I am and what I'm like as a person.

First thing's first, my name is Louie Neale. I am currently, as of this post, 15 and single. My birthday is on the 3rd of December, so feel free to drop me a card.

I hang out with a mixed gender group of friends, none of us really fit into any stereo-types and we all get along and have one major thing in common, we're 'totally normal':

In my defence, I was very drunk.

Biology quickly became boring, so we set about trying to strategically highlight my face so that the teachers wouldn't see but everyone else would think I'm a massive knob.

Bowling, this one was over two years ago.

Just casually lying on a stump, y'know, as you do.

We got into height order and everything, then Evie (far right) spoilt everything!

Our brilliant fire.

Andrew Bilbie's 'Fuck Yeah' face.

I like to gamble, but I'm not very good. We were playing cheat and I think somehow my facial expressions were giving us away.

Not my proudest moment, I wish I could say I was drunk.

In my defence, this was before I started working out.

This one's fairly self-explanatory.

Coz I'm a massive pimp.

Just a normal couple of friends.

This time it was Josie's turn to be a pimp.

Many children were scared on that day.

Ruthie lost a bet and had to make and present me with a sandwich.

Give us Brits half a centimetre of snow and we'll whip out the sledge and nearly kill ourselves. (I'm not the one doing an epic backwards roll.)

A near lethal dose of junk-food, it was for other people who happen to be out of shot in this photo, I swear.

The gang, plus some random kid that decided to come and photo bomb us and look aroused. (Second from the left, front row.) 

The guys.

A few years ago we got invited out to a girl's family Wing Wah party, we haven't been invited back since, I wonder why?

Anyway, enough about my friends.

I have a few hobbies, I'm in the Explorers (which is the senior version of Scouts) and get my jollys from erecting tents and hiking with them, there's so many misconceptions about Scouts and other such organisations. I don't know what happens in other groups but I've never experimented in a tent or been butt-raped by a leader. But I do get to wear a fruity uniform:

I'm on a boat.

I seem to be grinning like this in all of these, that's a mixture of starvation, sun-stroke and sleep deprivation.

A group photo, and if you were wondering the guy on the far left (the one with the silly hat) has a tardis in his bag, because he's cool like that.

This was a genuinely happy moment, after camp food this pizza was the highlight of my week.

I like to game, my favourites are normally shooters, action-games and RPGs, although I will play outside of my preferred genres if the game is good enough, take FlatOut - the racing game for example. My favourite ever games have to be the Halo series and Fallout. I used to play World of Warcraft but I realised that it was devouring huge chunks of my life so I cancelled my subscription and set out to do other things.

I like to draw, but only at my own pace, I usually spend weeks working on something that turns out to be awful and rot in the dark corner of my hard-drive with all my other aborted stories and art-works. This is one of the reasons that I quit my other blog because there was too much pressure to churn out drawing after drawing after drawing after, well, you get the idea. Here's one I did earlier:

It's a rather stoned looking tortoise, in case you were wondering. Don't expect this kind of quality from me often because things will generally end up looking like this.

I work out, but not because I'm some kind of super buff gym fanatic who loves his body and likes to give ladies rides on his bulging biceps but because it helps me keep fit, clear my mind and a little bit of definition never hurt anyone.

I like to write, I consider myself a bit of an amateur writer, even though most of what I write is awful and then gets given up. I'm currently working on my first full book-sized story which I hope to complete by the end of this year.

I also like to listen to music, mainly when I write, draw and work-out. I like a large variation of music, some rock, indie, metal, pop, rap, alternative, dance and trance. I like to keep an open mind, but there are some things I don't like. My favourite bands (as of this post, they are ever changing) have to be: Pendulum, Prodigy,  Freestylers, Serj Tankian, System of a Down, Eminen and Bowling for Soup.

I'm a listener, but only if I care about you. I'll still smile and nod if I don't but I'll never really put myself out to help you. If I think you're a knob, I'll generally make it quite clear - unless you're big enough to crush me into a fine powder, that is. 

My pet peeve is people who don't capitalize, although occasionally I do it myself when writing in a tired daze and then end up looking like a giant hypocrite. 

I have no idea what I want to do when I leave school or what direction I wish to take my life, but I do know that I'd sure love to leave England.

Well, I hope you feel like you know me slightly better after this post and that you'll keep checking back to see if I can enlighten, amuse or inspire you.