Describing Women Pt. 1

Writing Exercises | Moose 

So the next part of my most recent 'Phase' in my plan to improve my writing skills is to describe women. This is my attempt to be more specific in my attempts to describe people, and, from what I learnt last week, I believe that there is a major difference between the two. 

Here is my first attempt this week, and my first of two on this post.

Wearing a thick black coat, with fur on the perimeter of her hood, she was sat on the busy train looking through her dark brown eyes. A fidget, she was not able to sit still, and was presently playing with the brown strap on her grey bag, currently resting on her lap, with the nimble fingers of her right hand. Her eyes were darting back and forth, moving between very random things in front of her as though something important was going through her mind, something that only became more obvious as she began to play with the strap more ferociously, continually lifting it out of its button on the front before returning it back with the ease of someone who had practised this over regularly, a habit she immediately falls to when stressed. Finally, she left the strap open, before swiftly reaching into the front pocket to find her phone, which she brought to her eyeline. As she focused on it more intently, starting a pattern of pressing premeditated keys before scrolling up and down, she bit on the inside of her mouth, scraping up and down on her cheek with her teeth; this creased up the corner of her mouth and was likely the reason for the number of wrinkles that surrounded her lips. Her brunette hair, shaped with a fringe, was thin, enough that you could see the roots with ease, and with a few strands of grey hair which had been influenced by age. One could reasonably assume that she had died her hair within the last couple of months, though not for any other reason than the fact that it seems like a regular thing in an all too self-conscious society. She put her phone back in her bag before closing the strap for good, and gently placing it on the floor between her legs. She suddenly seemed more relaxed, as though she had just dealt with the issue that she struggled with through the tapping on her phone. Still biting her cheek, she stared ahead of her at nothing in particular, before turning to the man on her left, folding her arm as she did so, and started quietly talking to him.

This was a piece that I really struggled with. On the one hand, it was a piece I really enjoyed writing on the train, and as soon as I had finished, I was genuinely impressed, in my head, by what I had written. And then I read it over, and everything that I tried to convey had not been shared. Through a lot of editing, though not too much to prevent its originality (editing is a phase for the future), I cam up with the above. Turned out ok in the end, though I might be biased by the fact that it was terrible before.....

Stood in a long grey coat, and with her hair tied behind her head in what could be described as a professionally messy style, she gave off a genuine elegance in her confidence. This was a woman who was comfortable in who she was at this point in her life. Whether this was influenced by her choice to save lives in her job as a nurse, obvious by the Navy trousers and comfortable walking shoes that she wore, or because of her popularity, suggested by a journey in which she was never short of someone to text, or even the result of her beauty, carried with exuberance and highlighted by her Sky blue eyes that begged for the intimacy that one can only gain on a comfortable bed on a Sunday morning, it was obvious that she was content. It was not clear if she knew how lucky she was, but that did not distract from the fact that she was currently happy, and nothing else mattered as a result.

At this point, the woman got off the train. I really wish I had more time to describe her, to understand her. Those eyes were really something unique.