FF – GreenWorks

Thanks to Susan Rouchard, who supplies another great photo this week.

TW: Covid lockdowns.

GreenWorks

Trapped inside with nothing green visible through the window, Laurie can’t remember what grass looks like, or feels like under her feet.

She’s read so many books, the piles nearly block her view of rooftops and sky. Friends leave them outside her door, along with food, toilet paper, bleach. They used to leave empty promises too – See you soon – but the promises stopped.

Someone on TV suggested injecting bleach to inoculate against the virus, but it’s the insanity Laurie wants to escape. She chuckles. A more certain use for the bleach.  She stares at the bottle. It’s green.

Extroduction

(A reminder that the extro is totally optional – my stories are intended to stand alone, this is just extra info for those who wish to dig deeper.)

I avoid talking about those years as much as I can. It feels like a lifetime ago and yet, even typing this, all those emotions rush back in, the tears well and my hands shake. Still, as soon as I saw Susan’s photo, that’s where the muse went and I rarely succeed in steering her course. Laurie is fictional though, and her lockdown sounds bleaker than mine ever was. Greenworks, by the way, is a brand of green (both in colour and in its environmental claims) surface cleaner here in Canada.

I always hated those “we’re in this together” slogans from rich, powerful men who were often breaking their own rules anyway. We were NEVER all in the same boat. Some of us were riding the waves in luxury yachts with servants waiting on us hand and foot; some of us were clinging to the sides of a leaky dinghy.

Still, we are all on the same earth, and that’s how I like to interpret this song and the beautiful video that goes with it.

The Process of Friday Fiction

A few non-FF friends and family members have asked recently how my Friday Fiction process works, so I’ve been thinking about it and I thought I’d share the thoughts. If you’re looking for Fiction, move right along, this is a piece of introspective rambling!

Every morning, I check my phone. It’s pretty much the first thing I do. On Wednesdays, I make a point of finding the FF prompt picture. I get emailed when Rochelle posts, so I usually find the picture there. I don’t read her story, I just look at the picture.

Sometimes it’s hours before I have chance to write, sometimes sooner. Occasionally, a story idea pops straight into my head when I see the photo. More often, it percolates around and turns into a sentence. Sometimes that’s a piece of idiom, other times just a random phrase. Last week, it was “Rain stopped play”, for example.

That sentence might lead me to a favourite character (Melanie / Luke and Matty, etc) or to someone new. If I really come up with nothing, I can usually persuade Melanie to say something, but that’s a last resort. Whether preconceived or not, the character usually comes to me. Even if I don’t have a story in mind, I tend to start typing. It often feels more like transcribing than creating – the words pop into my head as though a character is speaking there. Call it a muse, inspiration, whatever; it doesn’t feel like hard work.

Oftentimes, the point of the story isn’t clear until halfway through. This week, for example, I knew Mum was shopping at the brickabrack store to fill a hole in her life, but I had no idea she was doing it to see Jim. In fact, Jim didn’t exist in the beginnign and I had thought we were about to hear about Dad’s reaction to her purchases. (For the record, he would not have been impressed.) But then Jim popped into my head and I realised why Mum was going there. It brought me full circle to how Mum was trying to brighten her life. I realised about the same point the reader does.

The process of writing the first draft took less than 5 minutes. Like I say, it’s more like transcribing than creating, and I can transcribe a lot more than 100 words in 5 minutes.

Tweaking comes next. I’ve been doing 100 word stories long enough that my first drafts usually come within 10% of target, so it rarely needs a major edit. In this case, I added Jim’s name at the start and polished up the echoes between the first and last paragraphs. That took me to 105 words, so I lost an extraneous bit where Mum also bought gifts at the store. Maybe another 5 minutes in total.

Sometimes it’s different. Sometimes I realise while writing that the story wants to be 500 words. At that stage I either ditch the idea entirely, or look for a nugget within in that’s actually what the story is about. It takes a bit longer, but still I never spend more than 30 minutes on the writing part.

That’s why I generally still post FF stories even when my life is busy and I haven’t got time to eat breakfast!

Creating the post, uploading to Facebook and InLinkz takes at least as long as writing. I draft in Word so there’s an onscreen word count function, then copy into WordPress before I set up tags etc. In total, from sitting down with the laptop to hitting ‘share’, it’s usually about 30 minutes, sometimes less, never more than an hour.

The real time-consuming part comes afterwards. Part of the fun of FF is reading other people’s stories. I never look at theirs before I post mine, but afterwards I read Rochelle’s story and then head to the linkup page to read a collection of others. It’s a long time I’ve managed all the stories, but I have my favourite writers, and then I read a random selection (roughly a quarter of the group) as they get posted over the next few days. I can keep up with comments from my phone, so I read every comment and try to respond promptly too.

I love feedback! Even negative feedback is good for me. I try to make my FF’s like icebergs – at least as much going on below the surface as above it – and I love it when people comment on some of those hidden meanings. But I also enjoy seeing other interpretations of my stories. Sometimes people find a whole other version I didn’t even know was there, and those comments are some of my favourites too! As I like to say, the Reader is always right.

Does any of this surprise you? If you’re a FF writer, what does your process look like?

FF – The Cabin

Thanks to Lisa Fox for the image

The Cabin

There was an old empty cabin on the way to school. We’d laugh as we walked past, daring each other to go inside and meet the ghost of Farmer Woo. He’d been killed by wolves, or on a moonshine run, or at the hands of pirates. We were 200 miles from the nearest coast, but that was just another part of the mystery.

Then one day, there was smoke from the chimney and a boy like us chewing grass on the wall outside. He’d come to stay with his Grandpa, he said. Did we want to come over and play?

FF – Alabama Man

All good things must come to an end! Our summer of respite is over, and Rochelle has launched us back into new stories with this picture from Vijaya Sundaram. It took me to an idea you’ll see in my story, but the story itself comes from an article I read recently. I have linked the article at the end.

Meantime, real life is about to take a big change. Sebastian starts school next week, full time into Junior Kindergarten. On a day like today, when Dominic had me up through the night, the cat has thrown up twice and Sebastian decided he needed to make a wading pool on the kitchen floor, I can’t wait! But I’ll miss him too, of course.

A quick reminder, if anyone would like to sponsor us for our walk in aid of the wonderful Sick Kids Hospital, we would be grateful for whatever you can spare.

Alabama Man

You think you know me, doncha?  Small-town Southern upbringing; little league baseball and climbing the water tower with a bottle of hooch on the fourth of July. I’ve seen those movies too. There’s nothing new under the sun.

That there’s no headline either, is it? Alabama man quotes Bible verse.

Here’s what you don’t know. Alabama man didn’t play little league, he was in beauty pageants. Alabama man didn’t climb the water tower, because he knew if he did, he’d jump. If he wasn’t pushed.

Alabama man grew up Alabama girl. But that’s not new either; that predates the Bible.

 

 

***

The link is here.

 

Summer Rerun – His World

When Rochelle asked for our favourite stories from back in FF history, I had an enjoyable morning reading back through my old contributions. I found some I remembered being proud of that didn’t chime so well this time around, some I’d forgotten entirely, and a few that I still love. One of the last category was this one – His World. Interestingly, it continues the grandparent theme of recent weeks.

I’m grateful to Rochelle for the opportunity to look through, and to rerun this one.

 

FF – The Best Soil

Another week, another picture. This time from Ted Strutz. I’m over 200 stories now, that’s more than 20,000 words in 100-word chunks and enough for a novella! Your feedback on this one is welcome. No offense is intended to either of the locales mentioned; everywhere has its good and bad parts, and its good and bad people.

The Best Soil

Her brothers, who’d never been further than Romford, described India as ‘the toilet of the world’, but Stacy liked the idea of endless curry, and helping people who had even less than her. Being thousands of miles outside their shadows wouldn’t hurt either.
The curry was a disappointment, tasting nothing like the real stuff back home, and some areas did smell terrible. But three weeks in, she found herself not minding. The love of the children she taught made it all worthwhile, and Stacy, against all her brothers’ warnings, found India a fertile place to plant some roots and grow.

FF – Running on empty

Why don’t I recognize Sean Fallon’s photo? I thought. I’ve been joining in with FF for over five years and Rochelle’s reruns are normally a chance for me to take a break and a trip down memory lane. Then I noticed the date: 15 November 2012. Eleven days after this.

All of which meant I needed to write a new story, but I already had the perfect one in my head. A memory, from roughly eleven days ago. I am usually a stickler for exactly 100 words, but today I’m struggling to get it down, so the current count is 120. I hope you’ll forgive me, or suggest where I can do some pruning.

EDIT: There. 100 words. I knew it must be possible. Thanks especially to Rochelle, for her suggestions.

Running on Empty (Genre: Memoir)

I was finally talking to an adult, discussing escaping to a spa, even just a bar. Then something spikey was thrust into my hand.
“Finn’s siren’s not working.”
I squeezed the toy. It whined like a distant cat fight.
“I think the battery’s dying.”
“We can take him to Grandad Dog’s garage.”
“I think we can probably do it ourselves,’ I said, removing the battery cover and accidentally pressing the ladder.
“Faaast and feeearless, I’m Fiiiirey Flynn.”

I smiled. Fast and fearless is all very well, but you’re not fooling me. I know all about needing to recharge the batteries.

 

FF – Freedom

Rochelle’s own picture for our prompt today, and while I’m here CONGRATULATIONS to our great leader who recently retired from the job, ready to focus on the career!

There is a beautiful cacophony as I type – Dominic is grumbling at his jungle, which is singing back to him. About five of Sebastian’s toys are also singing / talking, an he is giving a running commentary on the game he’s playing with them. I cannot hear myself think, so this story is influenced by that, together with the fact it’s written in five word bursts in between dealing with one or other of them! The story stands alone, or as part of the series here and here.

Freedom

Whenever a black sedan pulled into the lot below, Sandy felt sick. And in the rainy dusk, every sedan shone black. She turned back into the dinghy motel room.

He won’t come, she told herself. He doesn’t know where I am.

And if he did, he wouldn’t be in his own car; more likely he’d fly like she had, and rent one.

He could be driving anything.

She turned on the radio. Music drowned out the rain, the tires splashing into the parking lot, even the sex nextdoor, but it didn’t stop the voice in her head.

I’ll find you.

Friday Fiction – Behind the Facade

I nearly didn’t get to contribute something for C.E.Ayr’s FF prompt today. Although the boys gave me a hands-free naptime, I had to use it to mow the lawn and then the cat decided to take advantage too. Plus the prompt said a whole lot of factual stuff to me and not a lot of fiction. But eventually Pepsi decided it was time for a wash, so I started typing and this is what came out. My story is under the prompt – feel free to skip the random non-fiction musings that precede it. EDIT: Oooh, I forgot – language warning!

The first thing that sprang to mind from the picture was how much it fits the FF motto (from Henry David Thoreau) “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. I also wondered whether the mural preceded the dilapidation of the building, and whether it was put there as a sort of graffiti or an official attempt to prettify the neighbourhood. And I wondered why there aren’t more things like this around.

And then I went back to the Thoreau quote and I started thinking how what might be true for writing prompts isn’t necessarily true for everything. Take the Seaworld debate, for example, where what you see is an amazing and fascinating whale show, but what you’re looking at may (or may not, I’m not trying to open a wound here) be torture and animal cruelty.

Which got me thinking about the wider scope of that too. At the weekend we saw a snapping turtle by the banks of the lake where we happened to be walking. Jon and I were probably more excited than Sebastian, because he couldn’t really be expected to understand the novelty of the situation. He’s seen turtles in the zoo, roughly that close, and he’s never been on a lakeshore walk and not seen a turtle, so how could he know this was special. Even I don’t know how special it is – are snapping turtles a fairly standard occurence in Ontario’s cottage country? Or were we extremely lucky to find one? (Here’s what Ontario Nature says about that)

All of which ponderings didn’t lead me to a story. Luckily, the old “start typing and see what comes out” trick did. 😉

Behind the Facade

Isla smudged “mardi gras” across her eyelid and blinked at the mirror. Not a bad job, considering she hadn’t worn makeup in almost two decades. It wasn’t really her colour anymore; she might have felt more comfortable with a subtler shade. But comfort was for cowards and prisoners. Tonight, Isla was wearing a dress that came up too far on the leg, down too far on the cleavage, heels that said she wasn’t walking and mardi-fucking-gras eyeshadow.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” said her husband’s voice, but she couldn’t hear him. Six feet of earth saw to that.

Friday Fiction – Untitled

Long intro alert – skip down to the picture for my FF story if you prefer.

Last week’s Friday Fiction story prompted a lot of judgements about Wilf’s grandkids, so I thought I’d share another view of the cabin on the island – click here if you didn’t see it and would like to.

This week’s prompt is a repeater – my original story link is here. I decided to go ahead and write something new though, and that story is below the picture prompt (photo copyright Madison Woods). I hadn’t read / remembered my old story when I wrote this one, but now I have, I’m pondering the significance of the running theme, and smiling at the importance to me of the original post.

I couldn’t think of a fitting title this time, so your feedback on that, and on the story itself, is very welcome. My sincerest apologies and condolences if the loss of a baby is a sensitive topic for you. I found this article from Huffington Post / The New York Times incredible, and incredibly moving.

[untitled]

How many friends had warned her, “You won’t remember a time before you were a Mother”? Certainly, there was nothing before that moment when the doctor frowned, took Bea’s hand and said in whispered words that deafened her, “No heartbeat.”

But was she a mother now? A childless one, encircled by misery where there should have been diapers and toys, tiny fingers and too-loud cries. She picked up the plaster-cast footprint and held it to her heart, then pulled back the curtains to stare at the moon. They’d named her Celeste; another angel in heaven, another star in the sky.