The prompt was - farthest you had to travel as a child, alone.
I didn't have one of those abandoned childhoods where children spent hours upon hours entertaining themselves, bored of freedom , yearning for structure. Nope quite the opposite here. I traveled in a pack - a small nuclear pack. To be alone I would crawl beneath my bed - but this was an imposition on my cat who scratched a hole in the mattress' white underlining - - and climbed IN. No joke. Alone was a commodity in my house.
Monday, November 23, 2009
I'm cheating on my book club
A few months ago I got a facebook mail inviting me to join the Endless Summer Girlfriends Book Club - seeing that is was from someone I actually know (in the flesh) I jumped on board.
I am already a member of a book club (Tampa Bay Bookies) but figured - I love books! So I gave it a shot. Now granted I started in true LP style - skipped the first book...BUT have since read the second book (finished it last night) and already purchased the third and fourth books.
Have to check when the online chat is but am looking forward to it as the author is a part of the discussion. How great is that?!
Time to fly.
I am already a member of a book club (Tampa Bay Bookies) but figured - I love books! So I gave it a shot. Now granted I started in true LP style - skipped the first book...BUT have since read the second book (finished it last night) and already purchased the third and fourth books.
Have to check when the online chat is but am looking forward to it as the author is a part of the discussion. How great is that?!
Time to fly.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Prompt - Manual
If you were to write a manual what would be the product?
Well, I did. And it was a manual for a heart rate monitor. The audience was an older crowd - and I was told my main goal was to get across the point of the large red button on top of the small plastic casing.
I tested them too. Hooked each machine up to a device that would determine if each monitor was calibrated within a ceratin range. I do well with repetitive tasks - something about the rhythm of them lulls me into a catatonic, rainman-like state. At this particular task, my ears detected the rejects. Like a freak of nature, I set aside the abnormal machines without needing the confirmation of an ink-scratched beat. But that's me.
Well, I did. And it was a manual for a heart rate monitor. The audience was an older crowd - and I was told my main goal was to get across the point of the large red button on top of the small plastic casing.
I tested them too. Hooked each machine up to a device that would determine if each monitor was calibrated within a ceratin range. I do well with repetitive tasks - something about the rhythm of them lulls me into a catatonic, rainman-like state. At this particular task, my ears detected the rejects. Like a freak of nature, I set aside the abnormal machines without needing the confirmation of an ink-scratched beat. But that's me.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Take Two - POLICE
An attempt to follow directions - sort of...
Police
Well, shit. An error occured on the timer so now I'm off topic and not following the directions again. Grr...
F-it. I'm changing the rules. (Ha.)
Policing the halls you never know what you are going to see. Most teachers follow the unwritten rule of proceed with caution. Stopping every cell phone violation on the way to the bathroom would make an unsuccessful trip. Plus, telling people no and pointing out what they are doing wrong also bums out the policer.
...
Shit that sucked more than the first. More like a one minute bitch. (and no I am not calling myself a bitch :P)
Police
Well, shit. An error occured on the timer so now I'm off topic and not following the directions again. Grr...
F-it. I'm changing the rules. (Ha.)
Policing the halls you never know what you are going to see. Most teachers follow the unwritten rule of proceed with caution. Stopping every cell phone violation on the way to the bathroom would make an unsuccessful trip. Plus, telling people no and pointing out what they are doing wrong also bums out the policer.
...
Shit that sucked more than the first. More like a one minute bitch. (and no I am not calling myself a bitch :P)
Response to prompt on One Minute Writer Blog
So I just came across a new blog - new to me that is - called the One Minute Writer. A daily prompt is posted and then you commit one minute to respond.
Cool.
But today's prompt is something six word...blah, blah, blah. Did that last year - or the year before and I think you can tell from the tone of my voice - don't really want to do it again. Though I have been known to be wrong - it doesn't strike me to write today.
The six-word memoir I wrote was: Live life outside the lines sometimes. (Okay, I cheated - that wasn't it exactly. Really I think mine was only five words - hence the outside the lines thing - Life lived outside the lines. Though it reads more like an epitaph...)
So yesterday's prompt is: Fiction - Accident Here goes...
You say accident - I think pee, though trip is the most common type of accident I tend to encounter. Yup, tripped over a speed bump holding hands with my son. Actually made him faceplant into it. We were at the mall. When we both got up, Charlie with a fat bloody lip he looked at me with tears in his eyes and wailed, "Why?"
...
Well I have to say I pretty much bombed that one. I guess it was about a minute but that is hard to calculate and write. Once you get started you then have to stop. Hmm. Before I do my thing and change something I think doesn't work I will give this an honest shot. I do have a timer tomorrow I will use it. (As usual I missed something - and I have the gall to call my friend Skip- a-Step - The timer is right there on the page...maybe I will do a take two.)
But the major failure is that I failed to follow the prompt - a sophomoric mistake (though I knew as I was doing it I was committing it).
Here's the challenge - can I get myself back here tomorrow?
Time will tell
Cool.
But today's prompt is something six word...blah, blah, blah. Did that last year - or the year before and I think you can tell from the tone of my voice - don't really want to do it again. Though I have been known to be wrong - it doesn't strike me to write today.
The six-word memoir I wrote was: Live life outside the lines sometimes. (Okay, I cheated - that wasn't it exactly. Really I think mine was only five words - hence the outside the lines thing - Life lived outside the lines. Though it reads more like an epitaph...)
So yesterday's prompt is: Fiction - Accident Here goes...
You say accident - I think pee, though trip is the most common type of accident I tend to encounter. Yup, tripped over a speed bump holding hands with my son. Actually made him faceplant into it. We were at the mall. When we both got up, Charlie with a fat bloody lip he looked at me with tears in his eyes and wailed, "Why?"
...
Well I have to say I pretty much bombed that one. I guess it was about a minute but that is hard to calculate and write. Once you get started you then have to stop. Hmm. Before I do my thing and change something I think doesn't work I will give this an honest shot. I do have a timer tomorrow I will use it. (As usual I missed something - and I have the gall to call my friend Skip- a-Step - The timer is right there on the page...maybe I will do a take two.)
But the major failure is that I failed to follow the prompt - a sophomoric mistake (though I knew as I was doing it I was committing it).
Here's the challenge - can I get myself back here tomorrow?
Time will tell
Sunday, November 08, 2009
A Prologue - WriMoNiMo Part 1
NiMoWriMo Novel
Life is never enough for Jez. Dissatisfaction is the predominant influence on her state of being. I guess one could say, it’s what keeps her going. It hasn’t always been this way, but it seems she’s stuck in a rut, and this one’s one hell of a rut. Like every classic Freudian, she blames it on her mother, and why not? It seems she’s the perfectly logical scapegoat.
The difference between a boy and a girl: A girl can get pregnant, whereas a boy cannot. A girl is sensitive, where a boy is not. A girl is soft and sweet and sensitive, a boy is not. Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, whereas boys are made of and and puppy dog tails.
A Prologue
A young girl growing restless of life as it is, the predictability of daily life tirelessly drones on mocking her boredom, her dissatisfaction, her curiosity with its routine sounds and familiar practices. Accustomed to life as it is, Amelia spent her prayers wistfully masking desires as true needs and wants. And before long, with enough thinking upon it, desires become reality. As it is said – be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. So as you may have guessed – this girl asked for change and change is what she received a change so dramatic that it would alter her life forever. Eternally alter the footprint of her life and the lives of those surrounding her – or as she put it - stifling her.
Fine linen folds crystallize remote edges of the pond in the late days of January, months after the last of the waterfowl headed south. Rough yellowed stalks rustle slightly from the movement of air. A back door slams – in part from the breeze but mostly in anger – and a high school freshman is granted access her rite of passage by a boy twice her age.
With God in her heart and Jesus nowhere near her mind, she goes to him, allows him to undress her; she succumbs to what many later decide as her greatest weakness. Long before she realizes the implications of the act she committed and had been a willing and eager participant Thom returned to his wife, leaving Jezebel. Alone, she cried. For the loss of her innocence, for her youth - forever altered but the magnitude of the decision before her.
Instilled with her grandmother's love for God - a God whose teachings still ring in her ears, whose touch is a cool dip on the tips of her fingers and padded, creaky plastic pressure beneath her knees both Wednesdays and Sundays. Made to feel she had committed a sin and not knowing what else to do, she agrees - though it was not enough to keep her from the furor.
A child is born in Bethlehem – not of an innocent, all-encompassing love but of childish want, curiosity, discovery, and desire; a departure from what is good and right.
The truth is, this mass of cells exists and Rowe vs. Wade has not yet come to be - though would not present a viable option if it had - seeing as though this was a sin, the greater sin would be to dissolve the mass without thought or talk of sin. So out of fear of creating a sin of God, she allowed herself to commit a sin of man and without a ceremony she bore a child who she unceremoniously then shoved off from the reeds by the edge of a cooling pond in the days leading up to Halloween.
But that’s not were the story begins – at least that’s not where I think it begins. Though for as long as I have been conscience of a story, that is where it has always begun – in my head – then again I have never been able to get it outside of my head. So let’s wind it back a bit and take a microscope to uncover the facts, to discover the nuances of the character that led to the pushing off of the baby in the reeds.
Growing up in Pennsylvania allows a girl a certain freedom that growing up in say New York City doesn’t. Suburban living prophesizes small town living – a town with only one stoplight is something to be coveted as it implies the need for only one stoplight, which as we all know that reality and necessity are not often the same. But all the same, she proffered change; here is how that change came about.
Life is never enough for Jez. Dissatisfaction is the predominant influence on her state of being. I guess one could say, it’s what keeps her going. It hasn’t always been this way, but it seems she’s stuck in a rut, and this one’s one hell of a rut. Like every classic Freudian, she blames it on her mother, and why not? It seems she’s the perfectly logical scapegoat.
The difference between a boy and a girl: A girl can get pregnant, whereas a boy cannot. A girl is sensitive, where a boy is not. A girl is soft and sweet and sensitive, a boy is not. Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, whereas boys are made of and and puppy dog tails.
A Prologue
A young girl growing restless of life as it is, the predictability of daily life tirelessly drones on mocking her boredom, her dissatisfaction, her curiosity with its routine sounds and familiar practices. Accustomed to life as it is, Amelia spent her prayers wistfully masking desires as true needs and wants. And before long, with enough thinking upon it, desires become reality. As it is said – be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. So as you may have guessed – this girl asked for change and change is what she received a change so dramatic that it would alter her life forever. Eternally alter the footprint of her life and the lives of those surrounding her – or as she put it - stifling her.
Fine linen folds crystallize remote edges of the pond in the late days of January, months after the last of the waterfowl headed south. Rough yellowed stalks rustle slightly from the movement of air. A back door slams – in part from the breeze but mostly in anger – and a high school freshman is granted access her rite of passage by a boy twice her age.
With God in her heart and Jesus nowhere near her mind, she goes to him, allows him to undress her; she succumbs to what many later decide as her greatest weakness. Long before she realizes the implications of the act she committed and had been a willing and eager participant Thom returned to his wife, leaving Jezebel. Alone, she cried. For the loss of her innocence, for her youth - forever altered but the magnitude of the decision before her.
Instilled with her grandmother's love for God - a God whose teachings still ring in her ears, whose touch is a cool dip on the tips of her fingers and padded, creaky plastic pressure beneath her knees both Wednesdays and Sundays. Made to feel she had committed a sin and not knowing what else to do, she agrees - though it was not enough to keep her from the furor.
A child is born in Bethlehem – not of an innocent, all-encompassing love but of childish want, curiosity, discovery, and desire; a departure from what is good and right.
The truth is, this mass of cells exists and Rowe vs. Wade has not yet come to be - though would not present a viable option if it had - seeing as though this was a sin, the greater sin would be to dissolve the mass without thought or talk of sin. So out of fear of creating a sin of God, she allowed herself to commit a sin of man and without a ceremony she bore a child who she unceremoniously then shoved off from the reeds by the edge of a cooling pond in the days leading up to Halloween.
But that’s not were the story begins – at least that’s not where I think it begins. Though for as long as I have been conscience of a story, that is where it has always begun – in my head – then again I have never been able to get it outside of my head. So let’s wind it back a bit and take a microscope to uncover the facts, to discover the nuances of the character that led to the pushing off of the baby in the reeds.
Growing up in Pennsylvania allows a girl a certain freedom that growing up in say New York City doesn’t. Suburban living prophesizes small town living – a town with only one stoplight is something to be coveted as it implies the need for only one stoplight, which as we all know that reality and necessity are not often the same. But all the same, she proffered change; here is how that change came about.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Developing a Thought
My mind has been on hold for quite a while and I am not sure what's to blame but figure finger pointing isn't useful anyhow, so I'll drop it, and stew.
She's a character forming in my mind - she's been there before but this time I feel compassion - where before there was only distaste or maybe apathy. So compassion is good - at least it is a feeling, it can grow. Apathy must be the worst emotion - can it even be called an emotion? Isn't it more of a non-emotion?
Either way I am moving toward something, slowly. It's growing and that's good.
Fiction is funny - it gives you the freedom to let go - it's like a psychological release, permission to lie, but somehow I no longer feel the fictional freedom I did when I first discovered this truth. Maybe I've dissected the worm too many times and can no longer see it for it's expanding and contracting.
I'm hoping the thing that is stiffling me is stage fright...so I'm going off line. What I need to write is too close to home to put it all out there. I worry too much about the intended audience and how my work will be perceived, so I don't write. I do in journals - on scraps - on saved bits on this computer, that flashdrive, but somehow can't complete a thought.
A regrouping is necessary, because the story I have to tell is mine, and it's fiction. It scares me and it delights me - it makes me want to cry. And finally I have gotten to the place of compassion. So now I've got to write.
She's a character forming in my mind - she's been there before but this time I feel compassion - where before there was only distaste or maybe apathy. So compassion is good - at least it is a feeling, it can grow. Apathy must be the worst emotion - can it even be called an emotion? Isn't it more of a non-emotion?
Either way I am moving toward something, slowly. It's growing and that's good.
Fiction is funny - it gives you the freedom to let go - it's like a psychological release, permission to lie, but somehow I no longer feel the fictional freedom I did when I first discovered this truth. Maybe I've dissected the worm too many times and can no longer see it for it's expanding and contracting.
I'm hoping the thing that is stiffling me is stage fright...so I'm going off line. What I need to write is too close to home to put it all out there. I worry too much about the intended audience and how my work will be perceived, so I don't write. I do in journals - on scraps - on saved bits on this computer, that flashdrive, but somehow can't complete a thought.
A regrouping is necessary, because the story I have to tell is mine, and it's fiction. It scares me and it delights me - it makes me want to cry. And finally I have gotten to the place of compassion. So now I've got to write.
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