writing for dummies

I was only at the window for a fleeting second. Too dark to see anything -- the glare from the lamps turned the window into a giant plate glass mirror. All I saw was merely the same scene I had seen earlier that day when I went into the back yard to inspect my new property. I’d seen the shoes tied together hanging over the neighbor’s power line. As I stood in my room that evening, I tried to remember if that meant that someone in the house was a dealer or not. I’d walked away from the window and heard a crack just as I moved out of the frame. Turning around just in time, I saw the window neatly shatter on the nicely folded, freshly laundered clothing I’d set under the sill while I set up my room. Confused, I turned around looking for the source of such destruction, and I saw a hole in the wall with a metal fragment hanging out of it. Someone shot my fucking window!

I called the cops. Hiding under my desk, I greeted the detective they’d sent over and I told them what I knew. I remember thinking it was rather silly to keep using shoes on a power line as a discreet way to offer illicit services. The cops took down the information I’d given them, took their photographs and ballistics and left me to clean up the mess.

The window, now wide open, had only a holey screen to shield my stuff from inclement weather; it also let in a helluva lot more noise. Street noise, mostly at first. Also, I heard stuff I didn’t need to hear two days later. The guys were coming the next morning to replace the glass. That night though, the sound carried over from the same apartment that had seemingly fired into mine.

I heard three different guys talking, and I tried very hard not to listen, but they were loud and insistent. They were talking about that goddamned bitch who called the cops on them. One even said that the next bullet should go in her head. Freaked out, I spent the rest of the night under my desk. I kept hearing them curse me out. All they knew was that I was the dark-haired cunt who lives there and I assumed they pointed at my room and I resolved not to ever leave my desk.

That resolution lasted eight hours more since I don’t work from home. I left the house in broad daylight to go to work. That was nerve-wracking because I didn’t even know what these guys looked like. Never mind that my return trip home was in the dark. I came home bullet-less though, so that was good.

Every day I had the same paranoid fears. I even went to the drugstore one bright sunshiny day, bought a bottle of blonde hair dye. I felt ridiculous as I handed the clerk my discount card, but I knew it would at the least make me feel better. I walked home, all the way alternately trying to talk myself in and out of using the damned box. I got to the door, put my key in the lock, and turned it. Then I changed my mind again and turned around to find a guy standing right behind me on my doorstep. I felt the bag drop from my hands and the box fell out of it; I watched as it bounced down the stairs and out of view.

These four guys got nothing better to do than to sit around every morning in the mall food court. They’re no mall walkers, that’s for sure. These four guys get their coffee from the same visibly pierced, mohawked Arby’s dude every morning. They got important business to discuss. Mostly it’s war stories. These four guys got the thick Brooklyn accents, sometimes it’s hard to tell what they’re even talking about.

These four guys tell their tall tales of their heydays as mob bosses, so they say. They never throw words like Mafioso or mafia around; they just tell ‘em that in this Family they did it this way, this time the Feds got so-and-so, and they were stupid enough to get caught. But the past is past.

One day one of them gets up out of the chair. Just on his way to the bathroom -- his bladder’s been a problem the last few months, the doctor’s gonna look at it soon or something. The other guys sympathize. He accidentally hits the cup of coffee and it spills all over the guy across from him. He gets up and the two of them go at it, yelling at each other, trying to hit each other, screaming that their Family will take care of the other. Finally the other two calm them down and everyone returns to their seats just in time for all the grates of the nearby shops to go up.


based on RL experiences.

Hands
I went to have my palm read today. The woman glances at my palm, and back at my face. She looks at it again, and at my left hand, and sighs. “Someone has stolen something from you,” she says. “Your husband has been stolen.”

My husband? He is a very loving, attentive husband. We have twin boys, fourteen years old. We came over to the States together, we work together. He treats me like a queen. He couldn’t have been stolen.

I went to work. Wearing my white lab coat, I sat down at my table, sorted through my paperwork. Lots of testing to do today, lunch with the husband at 12:30. My friendly co-worker comes in. She appears nervous, and I don’t know why. Sighing, she walks over, takes my hand. Same hand as the psychic. “Someone has to tell you. Your husband, he is with another woman.”

I am shocked. Speechless. How? “What?” He is seeing that girl he’d been giving rides to, the one who didn’t have a car. She needed to go to Wal-Mart. He’d go with her. She needed a ride home from work. He’d take her.

Crumbled in an instant. My husband, once I knew moved out. She’s half his age. I’m his age. I’m old. I don’t know what to do. I’m all alone. Even the boys are against me now, because I’m lonely and I cry all the time. And the whore, she raises my sons. She left her husband in Mexico to steal mine. What did I do? I was a good wife. I raised his children, he loved me. He claimed he did. We were holding hands until the day before.

----

Does this need anything more?

( Handle With Care )
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Warning: This next story may contain triggers for those who were involved or affected by the 9/11 attacks. Please keep this in mind if you choose to read it. Thank you.

( Air Force Apocalypse )

( Okay, Mr. Seinfeld )
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( A Letter to the Sea of Japan )
( The Messenger's Education )

My dad was digging through some old hard drives he's thinking of selling and found some papers/stories I'd written when I was in high school. They're dated about 1998 or 1999, I'm gonna lean toward 1999. Read them and see how terrible I was at writing essays and short stories even then!

( Zillion Miles Away )

Note the formatting is off, and some spellings may be incorrect; I'm guessing I didn't make the errors, but the converting process from 1997 Corel software to 2000 XP Office might have done it. Many thanks to justaredherring for the assist.

( My Worst Dilemma )
Yeah, this must be dated from about 1997, then for the Ally McBeal and Caroline in the City refs....OH gods I watched bad TV even then!

( Iran Hostage Crisis )

There are footnotes for this paper -- this was when the internets were new to me, and I didn't know everything on the internet (there was just one back then) was not exactly objective. I didn't include the footnotes cause they didn't copy and I'm lazy. ALso, the citation style was just bad.

Note this paper was also written in 20pt font. Yes, the paper was supposed to be 10 pages. It was 7 with the 20pt font. I win at life. I did get an 85 on it though. I win.

The light reflects off her sunglasses as she lays back, just her toes and face sticking out of the water. Though slightly muffled through the water, she can still hear the bagpipes playing, and the drums rolling as the band plays “Amazing Grace.” No choir, but the song doesn’t need one. Her cell rings, ignored or unheard over the pipes.

The last time she had heard live bagpipes had been years earlier, at a friend’s funeral. Today’s pipers had assembled for the same purpose but she refused to attend this one. Everyone had tried to talk her into it, but she would have none of it. Instead, she disappeared for a few days. Checked into a neighbouring hotel (Las Vegas was very accommodating like that) and listened to the pipers. And now she waits.

The pipers end, and they begin their exit out of the graveyard. She hears them playing a bit of exit music. The next sounds are unsurprising yet startling, but she does not move from her relaxed position. As the bagpipers make their way down the street, playing, she hears the sound of gunfire; a bit of a battle is going on in the cemetery. She smiles, listening to the cacophony of screams. She would miss him, and the others that were foolish enough to get gunned down. But that was their choice, and this was hers.

( Read more... )

I came up with a new concept for the second part of the novel. Well, the second and third parts. The first was told in third person. But it's dragging its feet, so I figured I'd sum up (there is too much ;) -- tis what I get for writing a court intrigue story). So I brought in the protagonist from the third part and had her tell what she knew of the events that followed.

( Politiques et famille )

and two more I wrote last night.

Fried Expenses (45)

“A $100 dollar burger?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.”

“They better butcher the cow in front of you. Silver platter, too.”

“Oh, get this, the manager says you can’t add ketchup or mayo.”

“Then I better be able to slather it with the blood of virgins.”


Newsprint (71)

The bottle sits there, nearly empty. The lid is nowhere in sight. The water is gone; its remnants, the last mouthful spills over onto the table, coating the newspapers in an attempt to escape from the bottle knocked askew. The ink ran off the papers so that when her hand landed with a squish onto the dampened print, the palm absorbed the words. The same words that had led to this.

I rather like this piece. I like the interaction between the two characters, and as usual I have one of my patented twist endings. Enjoy!
Welcome to Botany Bay (874)
( Read more... )

Not sure if this is a good way to end it. Not sure HOW to end it. Critiques welcomed as usual.

( Stunned in Biloxi )

This short piece, 33 words, Untitled.

Milk and baby powder. There had been a baby nearby recently. The scent was slightly curdled and it bothered her some, but at least she was not allergic. Perhaps that was a shame. She picked up her bags and moved a few chairs down.

dedicated to the good friend and story title contributer the_epic.

( the shipwrite, 762 words )

The concept for this one I came up with in the shower this morning and it yelled at me til I wrote it down.
( Repentence )

Chapter 10; pieces of this toward the end are missing from my notebooks so I had to reconstruct from memory. I think I got most of it right, not that you guys would know, huh?

Anyway, this is Chapter 10 of the novel. For those of you who are new or have forgotten, click the novel tag to find the pieces that are on here. The first four chapters are available here. Five through ten are available on this journal. Please, feed back but remember this is mostly unedited.

( Politiques et Famille )

The clock ticks, it's just a watch but it is a time piece. Set five minutes ahead so the wearer can make it to work on time; it is in the wrong time zone at the moent. Sitting on the tray table it taunts its wearer, knowing full well it is incorrect. She ignores it til the battery goes out on her phone then changes to the correct time, eliminating the five minute advantage. (73)

"Here there be deciduous."
"What?"
"Deciduous trees. Ya know, the kind that shed their leaves in the fall --- the leafers come looking for them."
"Well we're in the right climate for them but you seem amazed."
"All I've seen here are the evergreens. Oh, and some stripped remnants of trees, they could have been deciduous. Harvested for softwood lumber, no doubt."
"What is softwood anyway?"
"I think it's the opposite of hardwood."
"Very good, Mister Smarty Pants. What is hardwood?"
"Tree?"
"You don't have a clue."
"Never said I did!"
"What's the pont of all this?"
"Oh, I don't have one. Did I need one?"

I love the twists and stuff, I'm able to add a lot more clarification to the stuff that happens in Chateaus.

( Politiques et Famille, 9 complete unedited. )

Ten will be up this evening, most likely.

"I am sitting here, calculating how much time I waste doing this, watching this insanity pass by; but it's really not insanity, it's more like inanity that drives one to insanity."

"Inanity, huh?"

"Indeed."

"Why do you think it's inanity?"

"It's boring, repetitious, and annoying."

"So why do you do it?"

"Because it helps me get to where I need to be."

"And where, may I ask is that?"

"I'm an aspiring writer."

"Aspiring?"

"Did I stutter?"

"Why the attitude?"

"You came up to ME, interrupted ME, interrupted my quietness; made me remove my headphones."

"I'm sorry. You seemed..."

"Well, I'm not."

"Again, I'm sorry I interrupted you while you were--are you writing about me?"

"Yes. I observe."

"Anything good?"

"Well I've only written a single question."

"What's that?"

"What posseses someone to walk up to a stranger in a cafeteria and strike up a conversation?"

"I don't, normally."

"So what possessed you to make an exception for me?"

"Oh, no real reason. You just looked lonely and left out."