This blog is for fragments of fiction

That I've written and rewritten, but never took to their conclusions. Or maybe I have, and that conclusion is here on yet another blog.

I really want to be writing all the time, thinking about writing all the time, and lately in between all the narcissistic photo-shoots, that's what i have been doing, editing, editing, editing, and occasionally writing something new.

I've started an RPG slash fiction thing (link)  in order to have something more to look forward to from my gaming experiences, which are like all afternoon, or evening writing prompts, anyway.

This blog however is for my more "literary endeavours". Stabs at fiction, chapters from unfinished novels, screenplays, short stories. I can finish a poem, a movie review, a personal essay. But can I finish a short story? It seems nigh impossible.

However a readable draft is something I think I can do. Good openings are my specialty. it's the rest of it that is difficult. I'm always onto something new.

So without further ado (almost wrote "adieu", which I think would infer something altogether different) here is a silly fragment I wrote ages ago...

I'm a wee bit obsessed with Hamlet, and did this fragment in Ophelia's voice. Ophelia being someone who must have kept a journal.

I always meant to do a whole bunch of these entries, as well as other Elsinorian diary keepers, specifically Polonius, The King, and Horatio.


Ophelia's Mistake

August 12th 1432

Dear Diary,

I should never have given him my panties. Damned Hamlet! He was always a bit crazy, maybe dangerous. I mean he'd already killed 6 men in duels by the time he was 20. Always wearing that leather jerkin, and I swear to God he always had the biggest codpiece in Denmark. Sigh, he's been wandering all around Elsinore wearing my best silk undies on his head for 3 days now.

Horatio, that queer duck, who follows Hammie around like a lost puppy told me that he even wore them when he went to the graveyard and dug up the bones of his old fool: Yorick. Now there was a funny old guy, that Yorick, I remember how his off colour jokes about the Wife of Bath,and her tub of dirty English river water used to make us all laugh at the court. Makes me think of my brother, Laertes. He never got the jokes. He's a dear, but so serious, can't take a joke, always thinks people are making fun of him. Sigh.

My father who is more of an old busybody than my mother and granny ever were, stopped by my chambers this morning. The old duck is nearly as obsessed with Hamlet as Horatio, or me. He should take care with his intrigues, I fear he is playing a young man's game, and he is no young man. Many at foreign courts think him my Grandfather, when we travel, and well, he could be in age, at least. You know, Diary,  I almost told him that those were my panties on Hamlet's head, but he seemed not to care about that. He still thinks Hammie wants to marry me. What a sight our wedding would be, Hamlet with my panties upon his brow. Maybe I should wear his codpiece as my own bonnet. Alas, it will never be I thinks.

I guess that's the sad sad thing, I don't think Hamlet ever wanted to marry me, and well I guess I did love him. And he will be King some day. He never seemed to want to go all the way. While I could tell he enjoyed my ample bosom, I sensed that he always wished I were more of a waif, thin, like his not so old Mum. When she was my age, Hamlet was already 6 years old: a Queen whilst barely a woman was she. Makes me feel old and I am just twenty. But now, I just want to take his letters back to him. Such filthy dirty fun things that they are, I don't think he meant a word of it. Just wanted in my panties.

Ha. I guess he got there, though maybe not in quite the way either of us wanted. He's just wearing them as his bonnet.  We never got past the petting before he left for his studies (such as they were, acting, oh grief, acting has ruined poor Hammie!) He was always very courteous before he began his University. As a student he has really become a bit of a nutter, I mean every time I try to talk seriously with him; he gets this glazed over look and starts talking in whispers to himself, and yet almost as if there is an audience, just over there, aside from us.

Is that not odd, dearest diary? 

I am suspicious also of his new friends Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. They seem more Horatio's "type" is you get my drift. Especially Rosencrantz, with all his "Just call me Rosie", or " The English Rose". I mean he's Dutch as far as I know, and my English is better than his, mine being middling at best. I hope he can disentangle himself from all these hangers-on. I feel they will betray him, given the chance. Oh now I am so vexed. worked up, as it were. All this cloak and dagger. Hamlet seems to think life is some great game, there's the rub, though. It is and it isn't. Why should my mind be wiser than Hamlet, and my heart such a child's. Sigh.

Sooth! I will do it, take back those letters, I think. Then I will go for a nice long swim in the pond. 

Oh Diary, I do hope I am not making a mistake. xox - Ophelia.