Genesis of a story

I read of the Short Story Competition for Bloody Scotland's International Crime Writing Festival three days or so ago.  Theme 'Escape'.  Three thousand words.

Knew, if I was going (which I am) I really would have to enter.

'Escape'  ... hmmm ... nothing sprung immediately to mind, except perhaps to remember that my next novel, third of a trilogy, has to tell Luke Darbyshere's story.  But I'd already told myself I fancied trying something in first person. Owed it to myself to write something brand new.

I can, usually, do drabbles.  Practise weekly hundred-word shorts which almost inevitably become serials, but I have always found longer stories daunting.   And almost never write without a prompt or three.  'Escape' didn't quite do it, on its own.

I began one too-close-to-the-private bone which would turn into a rant if I wasn't careful. Abandoned that.  Yesterday picked up Naomi Epel's 'Observation Deck' which was a Christmas present from one of my sons.  Selected, not entirely randomly (i.e. discarding what I didn't fancy) three what I thought were prompt cards, before realising that they referred to chapters in the accompanying book.

These were 'change your point of view', which I'd already done, ‘find the music’ which I haven't yet done but will find useful when I need it (it's worked before) and finally, 'observe a ritual' which, although I know it'll be something the MC does, I don't have a clue about at the moment.  I also decided to set the scene amidst something I do know something about, so as to better ground the 'voice'.

And this morning got up at 5 a.m. and wrote the first 255 words.

To be sat upon and let to ferment.

Conversation over a pint

“The first was that Eddie Cochran song –"
“Blimey – that’s going back a bit.”
“Teens, yeah, but the sounding like something else, the mis-hearing, came later ... Seventies, ‘Winter of Discontent’ and all that.  Which reminds me, did I tell you about when we went to see Richard III at Stratford, Robert Lindsay?”
“Yeah you did ... discount tents, yeah?”
“Aye.  The Eddie Cochran one was more annoying – kept sounding like ‘ASLEF carries on ... and things do go wrong,  just follow steps one, two and three ...”
“ASLEF?”
“The railway union.   On strike, and forever in the bloody news.  Later, it was the ‘terror pork chops’ ...”
“Wha-a-t?”
“Tape you did for me.  Bon Jovi.  Turned out he was saying something about Tarot cards ...”
“Right ...   It was Dire Straits did it for me –"
“Oh yes, that sexy voice –"
“Not so much that.   More sex gone wrong.   Going wrong, potential for.  Teenage again ...”
“Don’t know what you mean ...”
“Well, something to do with the girl I was going out with at the time ... he kept going on about ‘I recall my fall from Grace’ and I could see myself, if I ever did make any progress, making such an almighty cock-up of it that she pushed me out of bed!”

[This written for Word Prompt no.35 on House of Writers - http://houseofwriters.ning.com/]

Triple benefit - prompt, novel and blog post

Last night, re-reading an earlier part of 'Susannah Elphinstone' (that's the working title;  it might end up as 'Longer Shadows Reach' if I can get permission from the poet to quote him) led me to realise I needed a description of the adult version of my MC.

I wrote a note to remind me and left it on my laptop.

This morning, an email from Kerry Logan of Thinking Ten telling me today's 'on location' prompt was 'a bedroom facing east'.

Perfect.

Mind mulling over possibilities as I walked up to buy a paper, scribbled phrases before I ate my breakfast, brain given its work out over the crossword, then upstairs to spend just a little more than ten minutes getting the bare bones down.

'Tis done.

Fits snugly into novel;  now posted on T10  - and I've also got a subject for today's blog challenge.

And it isn't even nine o'clock yet.

Definition - a favourite drabble

Over at John Xero's 101 Fiction today, one of my favourite Prediction pieces

3xT10 flashes - Baby clinic

The pair of them stood in front of me, joint accusation, joint virtue, and all around conversation dropped to next to nothing as every other woman in the room wanted to hear what they were going to say to me.

‘Er, Mrs Stoneman ...’ Sister Weston, hating my guts but not wanting to let the vicar’s wife see it.

‘It‘s miss.’  And my face matched my name, the ‘stone’ bit at least.   This was a battle I’d fought several times already.

‘Oh, it’s ... it’s just a courtesy title ...’  The starchy rustle of her gown, the creaking of her highly-polished lace-ups, the pursing of her lips - not one iota of courtesy in intent.

‘I find it insulting.   I’m not married, don’t want to be and certainly do not merit the title.’  I reached into my pocket for the packet of Woodbines I knew was there and without taking my eyes off her, pulled one out and put it between my lips, closed the packet and replaced it in my pocket.

Right on cue, she said ‘Oh Mrs ... er, Miss Stoneman, we don’t want to smoke around baby do we?’

And beside her the vicar’s wife reached into her own pocket, pulled out a lighter, flicked it to flame and while extending it to my cigarette said, ‘Whyever not, I need something to help me through the day.’

You could have heard a pin drop.  

Actually that’s a lie, because if it had dropped the same time as the pupil midwife, poor little kid, dropped the metal dish, in such a way as to cause the nappy therein to tip and spill its contents – what had that child been eating?! – you wouldn’t have heard a thing, especially as her screech, of horror, followed the clatter pdq.   Mercifully, Sister Weston was struck dumb.  

Her face was a picture though and I remembered then that it was a new vicar’s wife, or rather the wife of the new vicar, only arrived on Sunday (I just knew they always came into the clinic, regular, presumably to sign us up for christening and all the other shit.  I’d always ignored them.  Up to now.)

Anyway, this one was no sweet-natured flowers-and-soup type vicar’s wife.   Had her wits about her, well and truly.  Before Sister could open her mouth the she’d said to the poor little pupil midwife, ‘Don’t cry, it’s only piss and shit, tell me where the cloths are kept and I’ll clean it up, then perhaps you can take me round to tell me who’s who.’

The rest of this week's posts for Thinking Ten

Words Inc. (Wednesday)  joint, gown, pocket

One Word/Sentence Two (Friday) In the second sentence include the following word: dish

Plot Thickens (Thursday)  taking on an unfamiliar role

 

 

Two by ten flashes

The agony and the ecstasy - wasn’t that some film title?  Or book? - whatever, it just about summed up this place on a Wednesday afternoon.

Baby clinic.

Barbaric really - all infants being stripped off down both sides of on one long table and taking it in turns to be placed in the scales, under the beady eye of Sister Weston - called herself Sister but who knows what she really was, when she’d just sort of insinuated herself a few months before the war ended, when everyone was too tired to care very much about anything.  

And when the very existence of babies was a cause for suspicion, and counting back and trying to work out when hubby had last been on leave.   And there’d been more than enough coffee-coloured babies for it not to be a shock any more.   Cause for gossip, yes but shock - no.

Anyway, the agony, if your baby hadn’t put on weight, the ecstasy if it had, never mind if it was looking a right ugly little bruiser.

Every bloody fortnight.

The day wasn't supposed to go like this, let’s face it my whole bloody life wasn’t supposed to go like this but some things just seem out of your control.   And it’s no good doing the ‘if only’ stuff because you can apply that to almost every day of your life and believe that things could’ve been different – and yes, they could – but the point was now, where you were now that mattered, that was real.   The you had to get on and deal with.

So.  Here we were again at the bloody baby clinic.   Here I was sandwiched between two women, one of whose husbands claimed flat feet and the other was a pen pusher in some government department so neither of them had been anywhere near any fighting.   Their babies were of the bruiser variety too – well fed, because it certainly wasn’t their genes.   And me in the middle with my skinny little cocoa-coloured Leon.   No ring on my finger and his father ... well, I told everyone he was dead, but the truth is I only ever saw him in the dark (and he wasn’t that easy to see then!).   And now, like the Sea of Galilee, every woman in the place was moving away from me as Sister Weston bore down on me, with the vicar’s wife in tow.   Jesus.

Prompts from Thinking Ten

On Location (Monday) a health clinic 

Take It Away (Tuesday) The day wasn't supposed......

The blacksmith's wife

Now avalable from Lulu - this forty-one episode illustrated tale which was generated from weekly three word prompts appearing on the Friday Prediction [which will on 1st February relocate to http://predictionfiction.blogspot.co.uk/]

A lesson in inequality

The body belonging to the single foot resting its gritty weight on my clasped hands heaved and he had to grasp the top of the wall to steady himself.
‘Ow, bloody hell you stupid cow, what’re you playin’ at?   Stand still I told you!’
The hem of his prickly woollen jumper brushed the tip of my nose, tickling, and I moved my head from side to side, trying to use the self-same bit of jumper to scratch it, but then he stretched a bit more and it moved higher, leaving me sniffing.  I remembered reading about a Japanese torture where they kept putting a drop of water on the end of your nose but your hands were tied so you couldn’t scratch.   I could scratch now but he’d fall for sure and would be even madder and I wanted him to like me, to be pleased I was here, helping him.
‘You nearly done?’  I didn’t like the squeak in my voice as I craned my neck up.
‘Nearly.  Would’ve been finished if you hadn’t kept bloody fidgeting.   Another one.’
I braced myself, back against the brick wall, arms rigid, knowing, from before, that there’d be an imbalancing and another heave as he twisted and threw another empty beer bottle the four feet it needed to go to be sure of landing on the grass – no point in going to all this trouble only to smash it.
‘How many’s that?’
‘Um ...’ I peered round his legs, the one I was supporting and the unsupported, swinging one, ‘that’s six I think.’   I didn’t know but he usually stopped at six and I was cold and fed up and my hands hurt.
‘OK, I’m jumping down.’  But he said it at the exact same time as he did it and his elbow caught my mouth, pinching my bottom lip between tooth and bone.   Instant taste of blood, like sucking a door key.
‘Right,’ he said, all full of himself, bending and gathering them up, ‘I’ll take them into the Offy.   Should get six shillings, which is four for me and two bob for you, ‘cos I did all the work.’

Yesterday's Thinking Ten challenge: 
Take it Away (Tuesday):  The (fill in the blank) heaved and he/she had to....

Thinking Ten is back again!!

After a few weeks hiatus, when Life and it's myriad challenges got in the way of its hitherto smooth and enthusiastic operation by Travis, Kerry Logan has volunteered to resurrect Thinking Ten.

Since 2010, previous to which I could write efficiently and grammatically but had done nothing in the way of creative writing, I have relied on three different sites to develop and hone those writing skills:  Six Sentences was the first, leading me from surprise that so much could be said with (apparently) so few resources to the making of many good friends, several of whom I have met at various gatherings in America (another first for me)

Thinking Ten requires a different approach.
Themed prompt words: On Location (Monday), Take It Away (Tuesday), Words, Inc. (Wednesday), Plot Thickens (Thursday), The Friday Times (Friday)
Canvas (Saturday), Capstone (Sunday)   each  spur a quick thought of a subject and then a frantic ten minutes trying to get the beginning middle and end mapped out.   It IS worth sticking to the rules, because that's the challenge of it, but there is then the opportunity to edit and tidy, thus avoiding embarrassment.

And I have found a third, equally and immensely valuable, site to be Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction where the challenge is to write just one hundred words which incorporate three prompt words and require writing in the 'genres of horror, fantasy or science fiction', none of which I could do, or was interested in doing, to begin with but the stretching of imagination allied to the very limited word count - and there's a week in which to hone it - has proved extremely beneficial, as well as, with 'The blacksmith's wife' a lot of fun, (not to mention the enjoyment to be had from reading all the other posts.)