10 minutes, four words, one story

 

Daniel was pale and silent in the back of the car.

For some reason this morning, when we pulled up and I handed him his schoolbag, I tried to hug him.  He resisted, but I noticed he was trembling.  He wouldn’t make eye contact.  He sloped off, eyes downcast, dragging his feet through the school gates.

I had been bringing him to the school since the parent teacher meeting.  If his mother tried he would lie on the ground and scream. I was the authority parent, the tougher one. The look of hopelessness in his stricken face didn’t cause me to falter.  When I commanded him to get in the car he would get in.  When he walked through the gates of the school without a wave I would pull off.  I would arrive at work at usual.  I would attend my meetings as usual.  Maeve, or indeed Daniel, were not to know that I’d hardly eaten since I’d taken on this task.  His face came between me and even my morning coffee.  Tea and a little toast in the canteen at lunchtime was all I could face. 

I wondered how we three were going to face the excesses of Christmas.  How would we behave? What would we talk about?

205

 

22 New Year Resolutions

 

 

 

What was the most memorable writing tip you received in 2015?

 

What is your writing resolution for 2016?

Have you seen these 22 gems compiled by former Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats?

1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Follow Emma Coats on Twitter here

Five minutes - Four words – One Story

Write Something over Coffee every Monday - WriSoCoMo

 On Monday 16^th November…….

 

The taxi pulled up at 5 AM. In the seconds it took to get to the passenger door she staggered, buffeted by the storm.

She could hear the driver lug her bag into his boot. The car shook as he slammed the boot and shook more when he threw his big frame into the driver's seat.

 ‘It is my belief,’ he declared, ‘that the end of the world is nigh’.

 He turned to look at her - ‘Where to my love?’

 

 

 

 ‘The airport’ she said – still trying to struggle out of her hooded jacket.

 She found herself looking at a big plastic daisy on his dashboard.

‘So - you're into flower power then?’ She asked wearily.

 ‘Hah – Daisy can spot a morning grouch a mile off,’ he said…..

ENDS (122)

 

Fifteen minutes -Six Words - One Story….

Write Something over Coffee every Monday - WriSoCoMo

On Monday 9^thNovember…..

Eva sat at the kitchen table clutching her teacup. The large window had steamed. She asked Rosie to wipe it with kitchen towel.

Outside it had stopped raining. The sycamore was laden with dripping gossamer. Gossamer was woven into the sodden lumpen grass.  The path glistened with moisture.

The sky had descended almost on to the house. It was black to the east and west but a shaft of light stretched south to the road. Eva would watch the road now till he came.

 

Rosie had gotten an email to say he was coming. Rosie wanted her to take toast with her tea but the knot in Eva’s stomach was growing. She leaned too close into the window - and her breath – or was at her tea –steamed it again.

‘I can’t see’, she called out to Rosie.

Her voice sounded plaintiff and weak. She cleared her throat.

Rosie came back with a wad of kitchen towel.

‘Eva,’  she said gently – ‘Come sit by the fire – you look cold.’

‘I can’t see out from the fire,’ Rosie said. ‘Why is the window so steamy?’

‘It will clear,’ said Rosie, ‘it's so early, you don't usually get up at this hour.  He won't be here till noon Eva – come sit by the fire.’

‘I must watch,’ said Eva. ‘I need to catch the first glimpse of him. I will know everything once I see him.’

 Rosie wiped the window again making a big circle beside Eva.

She touched Eva's hand.

 ‘You are cold,’ she said.

 ‘This is a cold dawn Rosie,’ Eva said

ENDS (265)

Twenty minutes, eight words, one story.

National Write Something Month (NaWriSoMo) has begun.

 

 

 

 

This morning in the Orchard cafe, writer Triona Walsh is busy developing the stunning plot for her second novel.

 

Meanwhile she challenges me to write a flash fiction piece, in 20 minutes, using the following prompts.

 

1	Occupation	Doctor	Pilot
2	Name	John	Mary
3	Event	An accident	Cup of tea
4	Emotion	envy	sadness

 

So here we go..............

NaWriSoMo

 

 

Mary stares into her cup of tea. It is grey – dish cloth weak – as weak as she could make it. The doctor said it was critically important to drink several pints of water every day. She can't face cold water - so her day revolves around enormous pots of tea. Half a teaspoon of leaves to one large teapot.. Dehydration was how sadness was affecting her - the doctor said. So Mary has a goal – one thing she can do - drink tea.

John and she can hardly look at each other since the accident. His thing is digging. The doctor said he needed to exercise. Mary has become paralysed but John has become agitated. He can barely contain himself. She can hear him digging now - the spade making contact with the stony soil of the garden. She hates the sound. The beds have been dug and re-dug. The vegetables have been harvested and given away. Every autumn leaf is being swept as it lands.......

 

At 11 she will bring him a coffee. She will put it on the bench. She will put a biscuit on the saucer. She will watch from the kitchen as he breaks the biscuit and put it into the bird table. He will stand with his back to the kitchen window lest she might catch his eye. She will see how bony he had become and how his elbows stick out under his rolled up sleeves. She wonders if the day goes faster out there than it does in here. She envies him activity. They never speak now. She can focus on only one thing now - tea.

Both are trying to learn how to wait. When lunchtime comes she will put a sandwich somebody else has made out onto his bench. John will probably not eat that either.

On the hour, every hour, he will go to the radio he had set up on his bench and listen to the news. He will check his phone too for news on social media and emails.

Every hour. On the hour. He only allows himself to look once an hour.

Mary’s phone stares blackly at her beside the teapot...................................
ENDS

Check out Triona's progress here http://trionawalsh.blogspot.ie/

Write Something Every Monday for November

Inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) @TheTrionaWalsh and myself have decided to meet in the Orchard Café and Write Something Every Monday for November.

We will set a timer. We will write randomly for 15 minutes.  Then we will do a quick edit and blog the result.

Here is my first attempt:

Coffee is a good start to writing something. Sit still for a moment with my coffee – put my two feet on the ground - feel contact with the earth - just for a moment. My feet will very likely end up round my neck as I tackle the words but that's okay. So to start - a coffee – a blank page - a pen – feet on the ground. What happens? Something always happens. First it's contrived - I'm doing an exercise, it had better be good, smart, witty, quick......

But then I spy a woman in a pink baseball cap balancing two lattés on a tray. An older woman, leaning heavily on a stick, follows carefully behind her. The baseball-hatted woman puts the latte’s down on a nearby table and pulls out a chair for her companion.

The older woman takes a while to sit - takes ages in fact. Finally her stick is positioned safely under the table. She straightens her back and gazes serenely at the lattés. Her hatted companion has taken a call on her mobile - she is pacing to fro nearby – she looks agitated. She can't hear properly so she goes outside. She marches backwards and forwards in the garden talking furiously.

The older woman’s eyes never leaves the lattés. The froth has subsided on both. She strokes the glass of the one nearest her with her finger. I know she won't raise it to her lips until her companion returns.

Outside the hatted lady’s face is flushed. She paces among the Halloween Ghouls oblivious of their presence. (250)

 

Are ye here for the jazz?

Hail Queen of the Late Night Radio

Returning to the subject of songs that get stuck in one’s head – there are two very firmly lodged in mine since Sunday the 6^th September. 

On that day I travelled to Monaghan Town to attend the Blessing of the Graves ceremony for the first time in nearly two decades.  On my approach I was startled to discover, several miles outside the town, that cars had been parked along the roadside.  A stream of walkers were trudging steadily forward as though towards Croke Park.   Too late to similarly abandon my car I resolved to pull in temporarily when I got closer to the graveyard and deposit my Lily in its pink ceramic pot onto the footpath – but as I got near I was waved vigorously onwards by the Gardai.  I eventually parked at quite a distance from my destination. I considered abandoning Lily as she was heavy - but instead I put her in a sturdy M&S carrier bag and entered the stream of humanity.  

Each time I put Lily down for a rest I was overtaken by scores of people. As I walked down the hill in the hot sunshine into the townland of Laturcan, where three sloping graveyards meet in a triangle, I was amazed by the crowds.  There were groups at almost every grave.  As I passed the Old Graveyard, which dates back to 1790, the hymn ‘Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star,’ began to crackle through a loudspeaker system.  I could see to my left, at the grotto in the St Joseph’s Calvary Graveyard (which dates to 1925) a makeshift altar and an assembly of priests surrounding the bishop. 

My destination was the New Graveyard.  I finally got into line beside my people by the second refrain.

O gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid,
We sinners make our prayers through thee;
Remind thy Son that He has paid
The price of our iniquity.

Virgin most pure, Star of the sea,
Pray for the sinner, pray for me.

On my last visit, a mound still betrayed my mother’s recent interment. Today the surface was flat.  One simple wreath lay on fresh dark compost that had been perfectly groomed by her sons.

 

Lily, who had begun life in a small plastic pot by my mother’s bedside, looked cheerful and uncompromising in her new situation as the final refrain of the hymn rang out.

 

 

And while to Him Who reigns above
In Godhead one, in Persons three,
The Source of life, of grace, of love,
Homage we pay on bended knee:

Do thou, bright Queen, O star of the sea,
Pray for thy children, pray for me

 A steady stream of people continued to enter each graveyard, dressed in Sunday finery, ferrying children, carrying stools for their elders, coats over their arms and redundant umbrellas. 

No-one spoke much as the readings were read. More hymns were sung.  The rosary ensued. Priests and ministers of the Eucharist fanned out, trudging up and down the paths, trying to reach into every grave with a spray of holy water as families blessed themselves.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over. 

The masses began to surge again, back towards the town, back to abandoned cars, calling out to each other, spotting old forgotten friends, shaking hands.

‘You can’t be in Monaghan today and not go to the Harvest Blues festival,’ I was told.

I got carried along by the tide through Old Cross Square. 

As we strolled up Dublin Street the mourners seemed either to vanish or change focus - to morph somehow into hard core blues aficionados.  

We stepped into the darkness of a pub. 

And there she was. Clara Rose, the Queen of the Late Night Radio. She was in full voice, with her mammy singing backing vocals, belting out the Sam Cooke song – ‘Bring it On Home to Me’.

 

I found myself seated on a window seat with a great view, delightedly clutching a pint, when a northern man beside me leaned in and said ‘Are ye here for the jazz?.

 ‘No’, I said, ‘for the Blessing of the Graves’.

‘Och aye’, he said nodding sagely.

The rest of his response was drowned by their roof raising finale ...

One more thing

I tried to treat you right

But you stayed out, stayed out at night

But I forgive you, bring it to me

Bring your sweet loving

Bring it on home to me, yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)

Yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)...

 

 

Have a listen to Clara Rose and Lizy here