Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.
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These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.
The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.
I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.
So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?
Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat; books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.
Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about; princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.
I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say; 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for', before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun.
Continue reading tomorrow here...
Fiona Robyn
OH, FRABJOUS DAY!3) Third place gets whatever's left (SHIVER or Synopsis Critique) and choice of *Reading Companion!
"So how the heck do I win already?" I hear you yelling at your computer screens. Patience, and I'll tell you!
There are multiple ways to get points and show BOOK LOVE :).
1) Already be a follower of this blog and comment in this post (1 pt!)
2) Become a follower and comment in this post (1 pt!)
3) Blog about this contest to drum up Book Love, and link to it in the comments (2 pts!)
4) Take a photo of yourself with your home library, and link to it in the comments (3 pts!)
5) Take a photo of yourself carrying a book to an unusual place or doing something hilarious w/ said book(s) (link in comments) (4 pts!)
6) Take a photo of yourself buying a book in an actual bookstore (link in comments) (5 pts PER BOOK!)
7) Review a book on your blog or on Amazon and link us to it (5 pts PER BOOK!)
8) Write an author to tell him/her you love them (honor system/tell us in the comments) (5 pts PER AUTHOR!)
So as you can see, there are lots of ways for points to add up :).
*"Reading Companion" prize choices (you may pick one of the following if you're a winner):
1) Fancy bookmark
2) Coffee**
3) Chocolate!
This contest will be going strong until Valentine's Day, so get crackin! After that, I will put all your points into a hat and pick some winners! The more book love you display, the greater your chances to win!
I can't wait to see all the Book Love you guys pay forward :). Thanks for being awesome!
** This part used to say "small bottle of booze," but I changed it after realizing I have no way to check ID that isn't totally unfun and lame. So, everyone likes coffee, right? Even kids? Eh? Eh? They did in World War II! My grandparents said so. Coffee it is!
That time is approaching, my friends!
Remember those old Tombstone pizza commercials? Where the guy asks "What would you like on your tombstone?"
Today is the first installment of something a little different on this blog: A Blog Chain entry! Some fabulous writers do this on a monthly basis, answering a single question and then creating a chain of awesomeness for their readers to follow. I've been reading The Chain for a while, and have always enjoyed hearing the different writer's perspectives. 
The lovely Abby Annis (http://abbyannis.blogspot.com/) gave me this shiny award today on her blog :D!