A little more development

I reread through my post from last night, and that little graphic designer just jumped out at me, screaming to be written about! I was thinking about how I wanted to write about her, and I was reminded of Julie Anne Peters as she wrote Luna. She has explained that she wrote the story from the perspective of the sister, not the title character, in order to show details about Luna that can only be told from an outsider's perspective. Had Luna told the story from a first-person perspective, the reader would not be privvy to some of the mannerisms that make Luna unique. I attempted this with my "shitty first draft" of my characterization of the graphic designer. I thought writing it from the perspective of a peer who is very different would allow me to highlight some of the quirkiness that sets her apart. Even though I haven't tackled the physical description of my graphic designer, I think this look into her room and workspace speaks volumes about the type of person she is.

She led me down a flight of stairs into a finished basement. I looked to my left and saw an antique piano flanked by a pool table and an air hockey table. As we walked a little further I noticed a foosball game and what I thought was a tanning bed. Wow, I thought to myself, these people must get bored easily. Why else would they need all of this… this stuff.
We had reached our destination, and we both paused in front of an unassuming honey colored wooden door with a brass knob. She turned the knob, and I saw that the front of that door was the only unassuming thing I would be encountering for the next few minutes. It took me a moment to take in the whole scene. First, my eyes were struck by the wall color. Or, colors, I guess is the more appropriate description. The wall facing me looked like a study in color theory by Kandinsky with concentric circles of different sizes brushed across it. Odd color combinations, too. Mustard yellow with pale gray and bright pink next to a sphere of cobalt blue with a dot of lemon yellow surrounded with brown. The other walls in the room were painted a solid color, at least from what I could tell. They were papered with photographs, large reproductions of words typed in different fonts, and sometimes just lonely letters held up by thumbtacks. Her walls were like life-sized cork boards. Anything that caught her eye must have made it onto her wall.
She must have noticed me surveying the room because she semi-apologized and semi-explained, “Yeah… I like to put stuff that looks cool all over my walls. Sometimes I look at it the next day and wonder what I was thinking, but most of the time…” she trailed off. “Most of the time… I dunno. I just like to look at cool stuff like that. It makes me think about what I want to create.”
I didn’t know what to say. My room was the complete opposite of this. I like order. A place for everything, and everything in it’s place. My walls had been a pale pink for as long as I could remember, and my desk was pristine white, with all of my office supply accessories sitting unused, neatly organized into a matching white holder.
Her desk was a mess. A chaotic, cluttered mess. Magazine pages ripped from their home covered the top. A newspaper was spread out with a half finished painting or art project of some sort drying on top. I could see a half-full package of 72 colored pencils about to fall off the edge. I noticed the other half of the pencils were strewn about the floor under the desk. Was 72 colors really necessary? I didn’t even know the boxes went up that high, I thought to myself. The last box of colored pencils my mother bought held 16 or 18 I think. But that was way back in 3rd grade. I don’t even think I’ve used colored pencils since then.
Her closet doors were half open, exposing a multitude of colors and fabrics and more mess. To her credit, she had a shoe organizer hanging off of the back of one of the doors. Of course, it held only 3 pairs of shoes. The remaining pairs, all seemingly 875 of them, sat in a pile at the end of her bed. No wonder she couldn’t find a matching pair this morning! There was also a slender metal hanger that I recognized as a tie holder. My dad had a few hanging in his closet. But she didn’t have ties hanging from hers. Instead, necklaces made of all sorts of chunky beads, some plastic, some wooden, some shells hung from the small hooks. I noticed a few bracelets too, and even some large hoop earrings. I don’t think there was anything delicate about her choice of accessories.
She cleared off a pile of clothes from her bed and motioned for me to sit down. I delicately stepped over the laptop sitting on the floor, and stumbled a little as I tried to maneuver around the dirty clothes, fashion magazines, and paint tubes strewn about in front of her bed. I positioned myself next to her, on top of a white, down filled comforter with lots of paint stains. I wonder if they were done on purpose or put there during one of her artistic frenzies. She opened her binder and placed it next to her textbook.
“Ok, let’s get started on this,” she said energetically.