It’s been a good week. I rode my bike to work three times, only missing a day because I had no way to carry my rock climbing stuff with me on Thursday.
The first day of riding nearly killed me, as my legs just weren’t used to it at all. After three days, the trip is already immensely easier, and I’m actually really enjoying myself. It’s nice to get a little bit of exercise before and after work, and I’ve had a lot more energy overall this week. With the traffic I have to go through while driving to and from work, it’s nearly as fast, if not faster at times, to ride a bike, so this is definitely something I’d like to keep up.
I bought a camera a couple of days ago, a Canon SD1100 IS. I haven’t had much of a chance to take it out yet, but I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen. This is the first camera I’ve had with image stabilization, and it seems to be worth the extra cost so far.
Thursday night, a friend and I went to see Wintersleep, an indie rock band from Halifax. It was a fantastic show, even worth standing in a crowd of drunk idiots to watch.
Unfortunately, their opening band, The Most Serene Republic, weren’t great. The lead singer looked like he was trying too hard to be quirky, and they sounded really messy most of the time. I just listened to a few of their studio recordings on their MySpace page, and they actually sound pretty good, so maybe they just have to get their live act together.
I’ve attached “Laser Beams” from Wintersleep’s Welcome To The Night Sky album for your listening pleasure.
Lifehack.org posted this the other day, and I thought a few of you might find it useful. It’s the Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource, and while calling it the ultimate resource is more than a stretch, there were a few interesting applications listed I hadn’t seen before.
The article consists of:
9 Free Apps Every Writer Should Consider
10 Online Apps and Services Every Writer Should Check Out
10 Sites Every Writer Should Bookmark (Besides Lifehack)
30 Lifehack Posts Every Writer Should Read
5 Online Communities Every Writer Should Join
I’m still going through the links, but I can definitely recommend the first two items: Q10, which I’ve written about previously, and Freemind.
The results are in for the Whispers short fiction contest. I, unfortunately, didn’t place, but I’m okay with that. The contest closed with 73 entries, the majority of which I thought were of quite high quality.
The winning entry is really good, and I somehow missed it when I was reading through. I read the entries before and after, but I must have skipped over it in my RSS reader. It’s worth a read.
Also, congratulations to Paul for being a Reader’s Choice runner-up. Out of that many entries, and that much talent, it’s definitely an honour to be mentioned.
I like these flash fiction writing prompts. They’re great little jump-starts for your creativity.
The contest called for a 250 word maximum entry inspired by this photo. Here’s mine:
Closure
I cradle the urn in my arms, like one would a blanket-wrapped newborn, the icy metal burning against my bare hands. A yellow field of grass surrounds me, shuddering in waves from the morning breeze.
“Nothin’ fancy,” was Dad’s only request. That may as well have been written on his tombstone, had he wanted one. He lived a simple life, working as a shopkeep in a small town. I always felt like he was wasting away here, discarding his dreams and ambitions to live Mom’s life, but maybe he was on to something. Maybe once you find peace, there’s no longer a reason to struggle forward.
The cremation took place one year ago today, but when I think back it’s as if I’m still standing there watching. The thick smell in the air, like a musty campfire. The intensity of the heat as the box was slid in. The whole process takes the romanticism out of death. There are no harps, no moments of clarity, just an old, dead man in a cardboard box being pushed into a furnace.
I placed a FedEx sticker on the side of his box. He would have enjoyed that.
I dig a hole in the ground, gently tip in his remains, use them to bury the roots of a young seedling, and pack it with the loose soil.
May you someday comfort others with your shade as you did for me all these years.
——
I wrote this entry immediately after the contest was announced, but it’s just been sitting on my computer for the last couple of days. I like it, but there’s something I can’t seem to put my finger on that’s bugging me. A tad disjointed? Too sappy or clichéd? Not particularly interesting? I’m not sure, but I decided to send it in anyway.
Be sure to have a read through the other entries. Jason’s contests always attract a lot of great writing.
The street was empty, void of cars and people and life. The thin mist in the air parted ever so gently as I walked through, closing in again behind me as if blocking my return.
That’s when I saw her. A woman, strangely bright amidst the surrounding darkness, almost blinding, staring into me with eyes that could shatter glass. Her long yellow dress and black locks of hair were undisturbed by the breeze.
“Do you dream?” she asked me.
“I did once, but I’ve been awake for so long. I’ve no time to dream,” I said. She seemed to fade a little with those words. I could feel her sadness in the air, and it stung my eyes.
“Will you come with me?” she asked, holding out her arms. They looked so warm, so inviting.
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
The cracked sidewalk pushed up against my feet. My hand instinctively reached out to the filthy cement wall beside me, and I glanced at my surroundings. Everything was grey. Grey buildings, grey sky, and grey newspapers abandoned on the street. Why was it so hard to let go?
I pulled my hand back from the wall and rubbed the grime between my thumb and fingers. It was the dirt of days passed and lives lived. Other peoples’ lives and other peoples’ days. My life was tidy. It left no mess behind. It left no trace.
I looked up to meet her gaze and gave a slight nod.
Her dress started to flap wildly around her, as if we were standing in a hurricane I couldn’t feel. She laughed heartily as her hair, that black shining hair, grew longer and longer, creeping along the wall and across the sidewalk until it was wrapping itself around my legs and arms. I could feel each strand tightening around me as it pulled itself up my chest and over my head. My last vision before the hair closed over my eyes was of her, standing radiant in the darkness, so bright it hurt.
Darkness surrounds me, but a dull ambient light shines through from outside. The air tastes stale and musty, reused, and it’s suffocating. There’s a way out somewhere, but I’m disoriented. Which way am I facing? Which way should I head?
I start writing, one letter at a time. Each pencil stroke echoes off the walls of my enclosure, returning muted and dull like an underwater scream. The letters form words, but they’re wrong, cacophonous and extraneous. I toss them aside and start anew. One step forward and two steps back.
There are some good words now, strong words. I place them in piles. Nouns and verbs directly in front and adjectives close to my right. To my left are punctuation marks. I keep them gathered in a bag, so not to lose the small bits. My thoughts come in small, broken chunks. Every comma and period will be needed. I place the adverbs behind me and try to forget them.
With the rules of grammar unfolded in front of me, I start arranging the words together, but they just don’t fit. My mind is a small allen wrench, unwieldy and painful to use. Through perseverance and patience, the first sentence finally reveals itself. Soon another has formed and another. I have to run to keep up, throwing word after word on the end, leaving behind a trail of characters, scenes, and ideas.
Mid-stride I hit a barrier and tumble to the ground. This path has reached the end, and the story can go no further. I can push my hand against the edge, and it will give to my force, but it won’t break. Trying to tear it open proves futile; it will not rip. My only choice is to pick up this trail of words, one by one, like a breadcrumb trail home, and start again.
The goal is to write a scene, of a maximum 250 words, based on this picture. My entry turned out mildly strange, but the contest is entitled Weirdly, so that works.
Sacrifice
A man stood before an abandoned orchard. Black, twisted trees stretched out of the ground like fingers from a shadowed beast trapped below, a stark contrast to the pale grey sky.
He pulled a crumbled mass of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, flattening it with the palm of his shaking hand against a rock on the ground. His eyes burned as he focused on the picture. The colour from the field had bled up into the trees, striping them a yellowish green and blending the image together, yet it still revealed the exact scene he saw before him. Every time he closed his eyes and tried to drift into sleep, that image haunted him.
He rose to his feet and stumbled from the path toward the nearest tree. After six days without sleep, his legs moved like thin, brittle twigs. He brushed his hair back. It clung to his fingers like wet moss.
“What am I to do?” he asked in a weak voice. “Why bring me here?”
His questions were met with a cold silence. No birds in the sky called out, no insects buzzed below, and no branches creaked in the wind. It was the silence of something waiting, the silence of expectation.
He reached the tree and ran his hand down its leathery bark, his fingers leaving a trail in the moisture on the surface. Laying down at the base of its trunk, he watched the sky disappear as he sunk deep into the grass.
I wrote a little more of my NaNoWriMo manuscript tonight. After I fell behind on it in November, I basically just ignored it for the month. Whenever I opened it, I felt like I was trying to catch up to the competition, and it put me off. I’m sensitive that way, I guess.
Anyway, I thought I’d post the first little chunk of it here. It’s just the start of the opening scene, and it’s mainly dialogue, so it’s probably not the best piece to excerpt, but I thought parts of it were funny.
Untitled
“Not that one, you idiot,” said the coffee mug next to the computer.
Mark Dryer stared at it for a moment, opened his mouth to ask it to shut up, but thought better of it. Coffee mugs don’t talk, and he really wished this one would understand that. Only a few days ago, he had been living in quiet bliss, having gone through his entire life without anything inanimate speaking to him. It was one of those simple pleasures that one doesn’t cherish until gone. He nudged the mug away with the end of his pencil and tried to focus on his work.
The square his mouse was hovering over had the number three written on it, and it was surrounded by five blank squares. He held his breath and pushed down the button, and as he released, dozens of squares on the board lit up with red bomb icons.
“I told you,” said the mug, “and you did not listen. This is a simple game. I do not understand why you continue to fail.”
Mark sighed, closed the program, and glanced at his clock for the fifth time in the last minute. The final hour of a work day always seemed to last a lifetime, especially when trying to ignore your newly developed insanity.
“You do understand that the number is a representation of how many bombs are surrounding the square, yes? They are meant to be there as a guideline. You are to use those numbers when deciding which square is free of bombs. Why do you keep taking random guesses?”
“I understand Minesweeper!” Mark shouted at the mug.
“Good for you,” called a voice from the other side if his cubical wall. “Maybe next month you’ll master tic tac toe.”
“I was talking to…” Mark began, but decided it wasn’t the right time to reveal his talking glassware.
Trent’s head popped up above the wall, his glasses nearly falling from the tip of his nose and his curly red hair sticking out from under his baseball cap like the squashed remains of a giant centipede under someone’s foot. “We’re the only office monkeys left in here, man. If you weren’t talking to me, what were you talking to? Your stapler?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not insane,” said Mark as he lifted the empty mug with two rulers and dropped in into his filing cabinet, sliding it closed and locking it.
“I wonder sometimes,” said Trent, as he climbed down from his chair. “It’s nearly five. I’m out of here.”
Mark shut off his computer, wishing he could just throw it out the window instead. Since he started this job, one year ago, each day seemed to drag on longer and longer. He had been so sure of where he wanted to go in life. There was no doubt in his mind, when he was offered this position, a copy editor for Makeshift Publishing, that it was perfect for him. Now that he was here, filling out useless paperwork while trying to stay awake through endless hours and endless days, he didn’t know where he belonged.
“Are you going to the pub tonight? Half the company is going to be there. It’s Thursday wing night,” Trent said, as if he couldn’t possibly fathom the idea of someone resisting chicken fried in week old oil and dipped in store-bought BBQ sauce.
“I think I’m going to pass tonight.”
“Wouldn’t want to cut in to your big night of television, would we? Sometimes I’m shocked you even manage to get out of bed in the morning, after the wild nights you have,” Trent said, disappearing around the corner.
The Weekend is Here
