It's been a little while since I've tortured myself with a new creative goal (still trying to make myself forget the debacle that was my 52 Weeks Self Portrait Project -- that one I still need to revisit and complete). This new goal actually scares the crap out of me, but it's perfect because it will only take me a month, and there is a public online community to whom I can hold myself accountable, even if I never meet any of them. I also have some friends who are setting the same goal, and if they achieve it and I don't, I would just be embarrassed. I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo 2013.
It's something I've wanted to do probably since high school, but back then I hardly ever wrote anything. I took a creative writing class and did well, but when I look over the few pieces I still have that exist from that time, I'm glad that my hard drive crashed twice and the bulk of that work is lost forever. I didn't really become seriously interested in writing until my early 20s, which is when I began to push myself to create more involved photographs, with actual stories behind them. At first, I never wrote any of the stories, just thought about them as I was shooting and editing the photos. Then I did start writing them down, just very short stories, little exercises. It took years before I became confident enough to actually post any of them publicly.
I'm a lot less shy about that now -- I have hang-ups and I have to make everything perfect, and I read and re-read and re-edit and flip out and scream at every story as I'm completing it, but I'm able now to get to a place where I can be satisfied with a piece of fiction that came from my mind, enough to share it with others. But! I've only ever written short stories. Stories that are short even for short stories, never a novel, never anything close to 50,000 words (the minimum amount for a NaNoWriMo submission). Sometimes I can hardly get to just 1,000 words. When I officially committed to doing NaNoWriMo yesterday, I started panicking a little almost immediately. How will I think of a plot interesting enough to carry for that long? How can I develop a character that manages to stay compelling beyond two pages? How will I avoid plot holes and stay original in my story? How am I going to finish this in one month...
I'm feeling a little better about it this morning. I woke up thinking about my story, after beginning a few notes yesterday (and for those curious, you are allowed to have outlines/plot notes/brainstorms about your NaNoWriMo novel prior to November, you just cannot have any actual prose already written). I think I've settled into a basic idea of what this story will encompass. It's a slightly old idea that's gone in a totally new direction from where it began. Some people may remember the self portrait I made back in May titled The Water Bride. I said back then that I had been working on a story to go along with it, an historical fiction set in the time period of British imperialism in India. The protagonist was to be a young English merchant's daughter. I worked on it for a few weeks back then, but I never felt too great about it. I wasn't very excited to see the words develop on the screen in front of me, and it became sort of a chore. So I left it behind and thought that I might never get back to it. But in thinking about what I would like to write a novel about, I kept going back to that photo in my head, remembering some of the very initial ideas that floated around while I was making it. Mythology and foreign lands and adventure. I had to work last night so while I was there, I just thought about where else I could go with this "water bride" character. I bought a legal pad after work and began recording all of the things I'd been thinking about, and I'm glad to say that I'm fairly confident with the spot at which I've arrived.
I don't want to talk too much about it at such an early stage, but it seems like it will be some sort of fantasy/period fiction set at the turn of the 20th century with undertones of actual and psychological horror. I do have a lot of ideas I need to sort out now... So for the next two months, I'm going to be extremely busy and pre-occupied. I will definitely expect to disappear from my blog for most of November, but I'll try to update when I'm not being driven insane by my own self. October isn't over yet though, and I'm going to have a lot to say about the coming weeks. 2013 has been kind of blah as far as years ago, but it looks as though its conclusion is turning out to be quite exciting.
Now if only this hot weather would disappear!!
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Egg Treasure
So about a month ago, I heard the new prompt for Round 11 of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction contest: write a story in under 600 words in which a character finds something he or she has no intention of returning. Due to the contest rules, I couldn't publish the story until after a winner was chosen, and now that that has happened, I can share my own story here. I worked very hard and continuously on it for three days, even printing it out and bringing it to work with me so I could edit it on my break. I had a lot of fun and will definitely enter future contests if those prompts inspire me as well. Disclaimer: Blogger doesn't allow the formatting to make this story actually look the way I wrote it (with line breaks and indentations), so if interested, I have the original .pdf that I can show. Thanks for reading!
I was walking, following little shreds of found objects in the dirt. Strips of newspaper and magazine pages, bits of colored thread and yarn, a discarded trail of human material left for the birds. My neighbor collected these things in shallow dishes placed around her yard: tiny pieces of shredded denim, leftovers from knitted socks, even locks of hair she pulled from her combs. She sat on her deck on Sunday mornings, offering me sweet tea when she caught me watching her. I watched her studying her birds, the orioles and robins that browsed through the ingredients she left for them. I watched her beaming at the new nest taking shape in the tree above her chair. She was so proud, and I so lonely.
✦ ✦ ✦
I was walking, following little shreds of found objects in the dirt. Strips of newspaper and magazine pages, bits of colored thread and yarn, a discarded trail of human material left for the birds. My neighbor collected these things in shallow dishes placed around her yard: tiny pieces of shredded denim, leftovers from knitted socks, even locks of hair she pulled from her combs. She sat on her deck on Sunday mornings, offering me sweet tea when she caught me watching her. I watched her studying her birds, the orioles and robins that browsed through the ingredients she left for them. I watched her beaming at the new nest taking shape in the tree above her chair. She was so proud, and I so lonely.
One Sunday, just before noon, she called me over, quietly, in hushed excitement. Her mouth was opened wide and dumb and she was flailing her hands, almost spilling her tea.
“Come here,” she implored, “come see!” Still swinging her tea with one hand, she pressed the other to her lips and, signaling silence, she called out another stifled plea, more sounds than words. Her eyes were wide. I stood up out of the shade and walked to her fence, stepped over it lightly and waited at the stairs by her chair.
“Come up here, there's an egg, look at the egg!” She could barely sustain the effort to keep from squealing. Her gardening stool was next to her and I stepped up on it to get a better view. Tucked in among the wool and fragments of Reader's Digest, it was there. Small and white, with dark drops of brown and black speckled across its poles. It looked warm and alone, and I didn't want her to have it. I wanted it in my hands only, cupped in my palms and moving slightly. I wanted to hold my breath and see if I could feel its heartbeat.
It was dark and still and my neighbor was asleep in her room. I was walking, following little shreds of found objects in the dirt, the discarded trail of human material left for the birds. Like breadcrumbs, I followed them up the stairs, climbed up on the stool and was met with the face of the mother bird looking back. Black eyes I could see in the dark, reflecting the moon glow off the clouds and staring at me in recognition or in anger. She shifted her weight and I could see the egg there under her wing, even whiter in the absence of daylight.
“I will have that egg,” I breathed, hardly moving my lips as I exhaled my promise. She bit and flapped at my hand, scratching across my knuckles with a shrill scream. It was easy to take that egg, easy to ignore the mother following me down from the stool, down the stairs, pecking at my hair as I stepped over the fence, cradling the little egg in my hands like a pearl. I could feel the movement inside it, the vibrations of insects trapped in a jar. The mother left me, and I curled up alone and happy with my egg treasure, a living jar with a child inside.
My neighbor remained sad that spring and her sweet tea tasted like salt. The nest above her chair was abandoned and her dishes of paper and fibers were full, but ignored. While thinking of the egg I stole, I skipped into her yard, smiling, and took a seat on her deck next to her chair.
“Come here,” she implored, “come see!” Still swinging her tea with one hand, she pressed the other to her lips and, signaling silence, she called out another stifled plea, more sounds than words. Her eyes were wide. I stood up out of the shade and walked to her fence, stepped over it lightly and waited at the stairs by her chair.
“Come up here, there's an egg, look at the egg!” She could barely sustain the effort to keep from squealing. Her gardening stool was next to her and I stepped up on it to get a better view. Tucked in among the wool and fragments of Reader's Digest, it was there. Small and white, with dark drops of brown and black speckled across its poles. It looked warm and alone, and I didn't want her to have it. I wanted it in my hands only, cupped in my palms and moving slightly. I wanted to hold my breath and see if I could feel its heartbeat.
It was dark and still and my neighbor was asleep in her room. I was walking, following little shreds of found objects in the dirt, the discarded trail of human material left for the birds. Like breadcrumbs, I followed them up the stairs, climbed up on the stool and was met with the face of the mother bird looking back. Black eyes I could see in the dark, reflecting the moon glow off the clouds and staring at me in recognition or in anger. She shifted her weight and I could see the egg there under her wing, even whiter in the absence of daylight.
“I will have that egg,” I breathed, hardly moving my lips as I exhaled my promise. She bit and flapped at my hand, scratching across my knuckles with a shrill scream. It was easy to take that egg, easy to ignore the mother following me down from the stool, down the stairs, pecking at my hair as I stepped over the fence, cradling the little egg in my hands like a pearl. I could feel the movement inside it, the vibrations of insects trapped in a jar. The mother left me, and I curled up alone and happy with my egg treasure, a living jar with a child inside.
My neighbor remained sad that spring and her sweet tea tasted like salt. The nest above her chair was abandoned and her dishes of paper and fibers were full, but ignored. While thinking of the egg I stole, I skipped into her yard, smiling, and took a seat on her deck next to her chair.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)