Seven Days

    This writing sample came from a tiny, yet fun contest one of my favorite authors had posted on her blog. Sarah's trip to "Hickville" ended in a follow up display among the favorite entries, so it seems noteworthy enough to post. It's short, not so sweet, but a spiffy example of spontaneous inspiration.

Seven Days
By: Megan Butler

Seven days. She couldn’t believe it. Only seven days to go. Of course, the past twenty three days weren’t so easily survived either, but the final days served as the end. The unmistakable, surreal conclusion that it would all be over soon.

            Sarah could finally go home.

            “Now Sarah, it wasn’t that bad, was it?” Aunt Millie chirped from the driver’s seat of the 1986 station wagon. It jostled them around after rolling past every chip in the dusty lane.

            Sarah inconspicuously tapped the frame of her Aviators up the bridge of her nose to hide her disgust. “Of course not, Aunt Millie. That four hour walk through the farmer’s market should really do wonders for my calf muscles,” she mumbled, crossing her arms and kicking her legs up on the dashboard to keep them from sticking to the leather seat. It sure was a muggy mess in ninety-degree “Hickville”.

            Why are parents cruel enough to send their kid to the whacko relative’s house in No Man’s Land? Why did Sarah have to listen to a toothless man sputter about the real production of honey, bee vomit and all, while her aunt hounded her about picking out the right bell peppers? Like the stupid vegetable had the God-given power to motivate a change in Sarah's kitchen apathy.

            She knew she'd be washing the seeds out of that pepper anyway, because her parents had a life separate from her own. That life didn’t involve taking their kid with them to the Bahamas over summer break, so Sarah had to endure the redneck lifestyle of the country-loving hillbillies known as her isolated family. The outcasts.

            Sarah groaned. Those seven days couldn’t get here quick enough.

Poseidon -- A Short Story

Poseidon
By: Megan Butler    

               The lake always threatens to seep past its boundaries, further than any lake should ever go.

               Mom warns us not to get too close, since mini tributaries trickle through the drowning grass and threaten to muddy up our shoes. Even during the merciless peaks of summer, the lake only drops half a centimeter, three quarters at the most. Sparkles of sunlight wink at us from a safe distance, beckoning to cleanse us of our sweat stains and the exhaust fumes of Dad’s old push-mower.

               Because those things build character, apparently.

               There's something otherworldly about the lake and its boundaries, something I'd noticed ever since I was a kid. It has a mind of its own, whether in the heavy tresses of summer or in the dead of winter. 

               Tonight the sun doesn’t blanket us with its suffocating heat. Bouts of seasonal rainfall have replenished what little supply the lake lacked and nudged it ever so closer to our neglected swing set with the broken straps. I eye spurts of moonlight as they twinkle on a steady chain of ripples, growing steadier by the minute. The same breeze reaches our wind chimes intertwined with a birdhouse. I hug my arms closer to my chest. No, summer definitely does not reside in our backyard anymore, at least not for another half-year.

               It’s enough to urge me back around and force the whole stupid idea out of my mind.

               I guess it’s technically my fault that Molly’s bike ended up in that bottomless pit of dirt and water. If it weren’t for the rusted handlebar poking out of the surface with its curly and miserable tassle, Molly would have been convinced that Nessy had a midnight snack. But since the Loch Ness Monster decided she didn’t like little girls' bicycles, I’m now obligated to rescue the useless thing. Without Mom knowing, of course. Something about the lake sets her Mamameter on high alert.

               The porch steps rattle underfoot and squeal after me as I bend my knees to carry wistfully down the hill. It’s not uncommon for a twig to jump up and bite you when you least expect it. A plume of visible air envelopes my face and I walk through the breaths, their irregular rhythm emphasized by the chill in the air. Each step jams my shivering fingers together in the pockets of my sweatshirt. I haven’t exactly conjured up a plan to retrieve the scrappy bike yet, but I won’t be able to know the extent of the damage anyway until I reach the shore-not-shore.

               A clump of moist earth catches my heel and propels me further than I anticipate. It squishes up the sides of my shoes with a sucking noise and throws me off balance. Before the mud can take me as its next victim, my palms splatter against the ground and interrupt the fall. The piercing smell of mud and damp grass lingers on my skin as I flick off the residue, an efficient yet angry attempt to pretend it never happened.

               The sopping noises don’t stop until the toes of my shoes tease the border of the lake. There’s Molly’s every happiness, bobbing closer to the surface of the barren lake like a lifeless body. Awesome. It would take a daring swim and a taste of pneumonia to pull it safely back to shore, if not a dance with the sea monster herself.

               The porch light casts a tunnel of dim light across the stilling waters. It hadn’t been on before. Dad probably got up for a glass of water and noticed the door unlocked, peeking out to see who the perpetrator might be. That would explain the gap in the blinds. But he didn’t come out, which means he probably hurried upstairs to put on three layers of clothes.

               So I had, oh, one minute or so to figure out how not to end up like a wet cat.

               A blanket of silence settles the tide, but it falls away when I refocus my attention and reveals an unsettling tremor across the glistening surface. Crescents of water resonate from the opposite shoreline, emanating from a featureless blob that moves back when I gasp. 

               That can’t be normal. Since when do people control large bodies of water like that?

               The arcs reach Molly’s bike and tug on the tassels, which seem to drag the bike in return, throwing it up and down in restless beats. It hits the glistening bank amidst lapping water and one side of the handlebar lodges into the mud. The waters recede and the bike stays put. The blob, however, doesn't. As the commotion dies, its creator grows and extends like the stem of a plant that’s fed by energy.

               It takes the shape of a body. Aware and full of purpose. 

               Watching me.

               I stare at the bike a beat longer before panic seizes my limbs and wraps them around the wet frame without my permission. The wheel bounces against my heels as I stumble toward the house, afraid to glance back. If I did, who’s to say Poseidon wouldn’t just walk on water and have a little fun swallowing me with his lake?

               The door opens ahead and Dad steps out, yelling something in raging tones that can’t break the blinding fear driving me closer, closer, closer. Anywhere nearer the house and further from the unexplained. I prop Molly’s bike along the railing and it clatters onto its side. I leave it--it's not like it can get any worse.

               “What did you think you were doing, anyway?” he asked hotly.

               I kicked my shoes off, nearly tripping. “Trying not to drown.”

               It’s pretty close to the truth.

               “You’re not wet.” Dad stops short, his hand floating around the doorknob. “How do you get a bike out of the middle of a lake and not get wet?”

               “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I murmur.

               I didn’t believe it myself.

    That’s pretty close to the truth, too.

Effective Dialog

"Words-
so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary,how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

                                            --Nathaniel Hawthorne

This is the part where I envision a few "Mwhaha's", but that's only if you're considering using your words for evil. Hawthorne makes a pressing observation with this quote, noticing how the construction of our words serves a purpose and a specific one at that. We worry about our writer's voice or our character's point of view or the goals we wish to convey within each scene all for the purpose of intriguing our audience.

Back in the good 'ol days, words were meant to communicate not just feelings but everyday things. Certain forms of poetry, for example, weren't just meant to woo courtly lovers; they could also express one's gratitude for an invite to a party, one's distaste of what another said about them the day before.

Words can do anything, more so if you know what to do with them.

I'm a fluffball addict. I like to flourish and type until every last word rounds my point. That has the potential to work in some instances where emotions run high or tension tumbles through run-on after run-on, but there are other times when the reader will start begging you to put them out of their misery.

Do it. It's really not that hard and it's kind of gratifying.

Let's take dialog, for instance. Those words probably hold more than any other cluster of diction throughout your piece. Not only do they reveal the voice we mentioned earlier but they reveal a character's habits and characteristics, how they interact with others. Dialog serves as the catalyst to get the story moving and my story had finally seemed to collapse under the weight of all those words.

So I decided I needed some help from this:

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass has many great tips for cleaving away the unnecessary weeds of your manuscript so that it can prosper in a greater light. Out of his many great chapters, one happens to be on your character's voice which--as I mentioned before--stems from passages of clean-cut dialog.

Clean-cut. Tight and meaningful, not bogged down by fits of pointless action.

The chapter suggests that the writer take a passage of dialog from their manuscript and strip it of its tags and its surrounding action. Then the chapter has the writer form each line into back and forth insults. Then lines of 1-5 words. Then a passage where only one character speaks, the other reciprocates with an unspoken response like a shrug, an expression, an abysmal nothing.

I tried each exercise for at least two of my passages and noticed how effective it had been in speeding things along and moving my scene from one point to the other. Best part? I didn't have to sacrifice my characters' interactions and, in turn, their personalities.

Words hold so much power when used in a proper context and in this case, when practiced to perfection. I suggest you find this book and make it your literary bible for the longevity of your manuscript. You won't be disappointed!

Conclusions

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations." --Augustus Waters The Fault in Our Stars

Here's what I love about this quote: it's a beautifully crafted way of saying "I can't find ways to express something great".You've got the shining image of potential in the stars, then the collaborative and glorifying image of the constellation itself.

We all wish to find expressive ways of conveying good thoughts and intentions. But the problem lies with the scorching potential, the scattered ideas that accidentally find themselves incinerated by their effort to find greatness.

Let's call these constellations conclusions. Whether it be a critical analysis, an argumentative essay, or something creative like a short story, I can never wrap up the points to my stories in clear and concise ways. Anybody else have this problem? Comments from professors range from "too much fluff" to "repeated analysis" to "poorly structured ending". Comments I long to see are "nice focus", "powerful consideration", "clearly defined point", or "Heck--this is just fantastic".

Seriously. Anybody else find themselves grappling for the same feedback?

After the umpteenth attempt at tying up the lose ends of my novel, I found myself on the final pages last week. I remained bogged down by the final pages until last night. Whatever I do, whatever Andrea says or whatever Reese does in response to Meredith's folly, it never seems to be enough in regards to connecting with the reader. So here's what I do: I stop writing. Conscientious of too much fluff, I lean back and breathe, think of how this may be too much and how some things--probably most things--have been mentioned before somewhere in the draft.

The big thing for me is that I want to get my point across, but I also involuntarily want to suffocate readers with words and words of reiteration and emphasis. But in reality, that doesn't have to happen. Readers can be spared of repetition's choke-hold, it's just a matter of knowing which words need to be one-hit wonders and which words hold the importance to entice the reader one more time.

Conclusions don't have to clear things up--they can be a precursor to the following adventures of the characters we fall in love with--but conclusions do need to be snappy to some degree, as I'm learning with each reread and each attempt at revisions.

This site has a great list of inspiring things to remember when concluding a novel. Now that I've read through them, my week-long battle with the end might have sparked a month-long war...

What If You Slept... - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What If You Slept...

"What if you slept 
And what if 
In your sleep 
You dreamed 
And what if 
In your dream 
You went to heaven 
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower 
And what if 
When you awoke 
You had that flower in you hand 
Ah, what then?"

           --Samuel Taylor Coleridge 

I'm taking this English Literature class. Never thought I'd see the day, but here I am regardless. Coleridge isn't our particular field of study right now--Blake takes that honor--but the introduction to our next lesson mentioned something about Coleridge and romanticism. Then something about opium and drugs and stuff, but whatever.

The name "Coleridge" had a familiar ring to it, then I remembered: I'd read a poem of his before.

My senior year in high school, Ringwalt would present a poem as a sort of "Bell Ringer" every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to get us thinking analytically about poetry. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I somehow came across this poem through one of those anticipated Bell Ringers.

And I'd forgotten how significant it had been to my novel until now.

I think it's brilliant when authors find a beautifully crafted piece of literature that they can place before each chapter as a precursor of what's yet to come. It ties the author's story to stories from the past and when I read this poem, it took all of my willpower not to break into the Mad Hatter's futterwacken dance. Coleridge's words spoke volumes about my main character's conflict in the book and how she'd have to face them. What her gifts were, the mysticism behind those gifts and the beauty of being able to imagine.

Andrea, my main character, dreams. I mean, we all dream, but she dreams like a manic individual who's life dangles by the frayed threads of a noose. She doesn't take a trip to heaven like Coleridge's speaker, but I guess you can say she pulls an Inferno-minus-the-religion while traversing through dark trials before reaching any form of gratification, mental release.

Along the way Andrea learns a bundle of skills. She learns how to answer Coleridge's pressing question at the end of the poem and she grapples with this ambiguous idea of having the ability to weave the unconscious with waking reality.

If it never becomes my precursor, at least you'll know it should be just by visiting my blog. :)

But until it dons the sacred shelves of bookstores everywhere, what would you think if you were able to pluck a flower from the depths of your dreams?

Side note: Coleridge also says, "Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling". How's that for romanticism?

Character Development

"Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again." --Louisa May Alcott

It works for writing, too.

Sometimes, if you've worked on a story long enough, the characters become your family, easily transported and accessed. The brain can be quite wondrous, right? Your characters gain qualities that are specific to them, some that drive you crazy and some that are endearing to the point where they can light up a smile. Characters are home, even if our ideal home turns out to be further away than usual.

Moving will eventually be the death of someone--"cough", "cough"--me, since you've got the whirlwind of stuffing things haphazardly wherever's convenient, fretting over forgetting what's impossible to mail, and making the treacherous ten-hour dash to your new destination (by car, in a monsoon, in the abominable death-trap known as Atlanta). You have the maddening task of dodging the first-time mover flurry, learning the basic ropes, unpacking the crap you probably won't ever use, and remembering how to breathe. Only after the busy stuff can you breathe...and/or sleep. It's your choice. Choose wisely.

All of this occurred on three hours of sleep, mind you.
   
Needless to say, it takes a lot to move from North Carolina to Alabama and to leave family in order to readjust, undergo a new lifestyle. When the mover blues have you suffocating in the dumps, a little taste of home becomes a necessity.
 
Here's where the cast of your characters comes into play.
   
I know that to be a good writer one has to be a superb researcher. I also know that I've done a lot of research on character development. Like, a lot a lot. All of our wise friends in the cyberworld advise that you make your character unique, give them realistic qualities and flaws. Try some people-watching--what better way to humanize a person than to observe an actual human being?
 
But if you've got a short attention span and a lack of personal discipline like me, these things may not work out. When it comes to building top-notch characters, when it comes to their relationships and their interests and their flaws, there's only one way to get to the heart of those genuine qualities, in my opinion.
   
Understand patience and understand time.
   
I mentioned a book I've been working on in a previous post and how that book's been on the shelves in my head for about five years now. One of my characters, Meredith, doesn't understand how to reason with people politely. She can force you to learn just about anything, but she can't entirely empathize, so much so that her idea of tough love is doing things and learning things her way or else you've got a bad case of stupidity. She's rough, she's fast-paced, and her words are sharper than a gusty-galed sleet storm.
   
Backtrack four years. In the first draft, Meredith had a knack for encouraging smiles and blinding optimism--nothing could stop that girl from finding the positives in a haystack of negatives. Oh, how things have changed twenty billion drafts later, am I right? Over the span of her long development, Meredith gained the strength to form her own voice and her own characteristics so I wouldn't have to hunt for them. All characters tend to do that for me once I find the patience and the time for them; when they gain that powerful nature that good characters should have, they're characters we look forward to seeing and living with whether we're in Alabama or North Carolina or freaking Antarctica.
   
Characters grow and when they do, they form a vibrant dwelling in your mind you can always go to when you need them.
   
Your characters are your family and they always, always welcome you home with open arms.

Essays, Anyone?

I recently remembered this essay of mine I wrote a couple of years ago in a high school English class. The prompt had something to do with building our own Utopian societies and I just so happened to have an idea in mind from a right-brained, left-brained lesson in my Art class earlier that morning.

The project really got me thinking about what would happen if we could only use one part of our minds and it's been suggested that I create something more out of it one day--there's definitely some potential! But I'll let you decide. Which side would you choose if you could pick the part of your brain you could fully operate in? Imagine the possibilities, the endless results to an endless world of corrections! Simply look for A Like-Minded Utopia under the Provoked Thoughts tab or Click Here.

Mr. Ringwalt, great prompt idea. I sure hope it's going strong two years later!