Exercise on a memory

One of my exercises that inspired me was where I had to recall a moment in my past and write it in the present tense.  I'm not sure what inspired me to write this piece, but here you go:

I'm really thirsty. I can still taste and smell the chlorine from the swimming pool water. The splashing and playful shouting of the pool downstairs is drowned out by the churning of the Slush Puppy machine. I think I want a red one. I feel water trickling from my hair down the back of my neck and my t shirt sticks to the still wet bits. I'm mortified as I have no money – I'm only 8 or so years old – and have always been told by my parents not to ask for things as it's rude. But I'm thirsty and Adam's mum, Felicity, has always been so nice to me. I stroke my throat, somewhat obviously, and find myself saying 'I'm thirsty'. I think I'm being clever: I'm not asking for anything, so I can't possibly be rude. This, I think, is a stroke of genius and I feel quite self-congratulatory. Pausing whilst wrangling her son, Felicity somehow manages to smile and scowl whilst saying 'if you want a drink you only have to ask'. For some reason my stroke of genius makes me feel ashamed as I mumble an affirmative and ask for a glass of water in self-punishment, not asking for the Slush Puppy I want because I've made Felicity feel bad.

TMA1

Just had my marks and comments back from my tutor about my first assignment.  I was very happy with both, and the comments were actually useful rather than just cursory which is great.

The assignment consisted of two parts, a guided freewrite (where you start with an image, theme, whatever, and develop it almost as a stream of consciousness) for which I chose 'a fallen tree', and a short piece of fiction inspired by, but not necessarily based on, the freewrite.

Here's what I wrote for the freewrite:

Blocking the path a barrier to passage, door guardian, sentinel of the dead, keeping watch over its charge. A bouncer at a club – roughness, aggression rather than assertiveness. The moment of falling before the impact – the straw that breaks the camel's back, broken thing not working as it should, fallen soldier laying on the battlefield, war of nature versus artifice, chainsaws and axes, humans destroying their environment, intention versus action. Gravity felling mighty behemoths, old, ancient, watcher of the passage of years – wisdom, venerable, powerful, knowledgeable. Giants looking down up us all. A messenger diverted to another path gets lost. A storm – nature's way of culling the weak. Survival of the fittest – the rat race: commuting in squashed underground carriages, no light for days, no life for years. Falling down with weariness – giving up, giving in, all too much. Cut down in its prime – not its time. Seize the day for tomorrow may never come, wasted opportunities, regrets, remorse and retrospect. The three Rs – learning the basics, so easy yet so difficult to grasp. Reaching branches flailing as the tree fails like a drunken old man kicked out of a bar, regretting what got him to where he is now and hating what could have been so much, much more.

In all I was pretty happy with it, it was about 50 words under the 300 limit so I could have expanded but I stopped once I had hit inspiration.

The fiction I wrote was:

Home

You stumble again, barely catching yourself on a nearby concrete bollard outside the Legion. Your trousers are covered in dirt and holes and semi-dried blood from previous falls of minutes yet only feet ago. Your scuffed, holey shoes let the puddle water soak your crusty feet. You want another drink.

You're not entirely sure why they threw you out; you might have been a bit loud but that didn't usually bother them. Perhaps it was when you grabbed that lass' bottom, but she seemed up for a laugh! Didn't she try and kiss you outside the toilets?

You stumble again only this time there is no bollard to catch you. Hands surf on the tarmac and you plough furrows in your own flesh before coming to a halt. You lie there, broken, a fallen tree.

Your kids are at home. By now they will have made themselves dinner, maybe done their homework if they can be bothered, and have probably broken into your six-pack of beer . Little buggers! Still, you suppose, you should have hidden it better: the box of Christmas decorations under the stairs was far too obvious. Had you hidden beer there before? You can't remember.

You give passing thought to getting up to try walking home again. It's not far but ten yards might as well be ten miles right now. And you're starting to get comfortable. Cold, wet, bleeding, tired, drunk. But comfortable. At least the kids won't wake you up if you sleep here. What time is it? You realise as soon as you ask that you don't bloody care.

Still, what if the wee bairns haven't found your stash? At least you could salvage the rest of the night if you can only drag your arse home. Face down on the path that smells vaguely of kebab and dog urine, beard tickled by the smattering of weeds that desperately claw their way through the pavement. You give your hands the vaguest twitch just to check that they're there and still working. They grudgingly respond to your febrile mastery. You want another drink.

You plant one hand, then the other, either side of your head dimly aware that one of them is in a puddle. You slowly, agonisingly slowly, lever yourself onto all fours. You've ripped your t-shirt, which is filthy and sodden. And where's your coat? No wonder you're bloody cold! You think about heading back to the Legion to get your coat but know Rab on the door won't let you in to find it. Bastard. A man your age should be treated with a little dignity and respect. Bastard.

You can feel yourself starting to get maudlin and know you need to focus on something or else you'll be weeping where you're not-yet-standing. You put all your energy into taking the weight off of one knee and quickly – well, as quickly as you're able – putting your foot down. Success. You repeat the trick and mentally give yourself a round of applause when you find yourself standing. You start again in a homewards direction.

You think about cuddling up to your wife when you get home, mentally catching yourself, cursing her for leaving you and trying to focus on that lass from the pub. Yeah, she would have appreciated a man like you. You could have shown her a good time if Rab hadn't chucked you out. Why did they throw you out?

A fit of sneezing distracts you and you stop to count them: three, no four sneezes in a row. That last one was sneaky. Well that's about as much excitement as you can take right now.

Distantly you can make out chimes from the town clock, and you struggle to concentrate but think you heard 11.45 – still early yet! Definitely crack into those beers once you get home.

You stumble again but a traffic cone, wobbling all the while, just about breaks your fall long enough for you to regain your balance. Not far till home now.

I enjoyed writing the piece, and noted in my commentary the similarities between this character and Shameless' Frank Gallagher.  I enjoyed working with the second person point of view, something I'd only tried once before at the workshop for the course.  I'm not sure I could sustain it for a much longer piece; it seems like a stylistic statement for the sake of it!  That said, I could definitely see myself using it for shorter pieces in the future, and also, perhaps, for select and infrequent characters in larger works.  I definitely want to try using the second person perspective in poetry.

The comments I got were fair, as was the docking of a mark because I didn't do any references (I have no idea how to reference a tv show!).  I want to try and build up this character a little for future exercises, though perhaps not assignments.

All in all, very happy with my mark, appreciated the feedback and can now concentrate on working towards the next assignment!

A treatise on aspiring writers

Ancient enemy of writers past
Akin to the new foe in appearance
As well as implication.
A pristine canvas, devoid of blemish
Anticipating the violation of creation.

Not much... I was interrupted!  That’s right: not much of a riddle but it does have a ring of truth about it.  The audacity of writing about writing is a gleeful blasphemy undertaken by us lesser mortals with the inclination, sometimes even the raw ability, to write.  What we lack is tenacity enough to put pen to paper or fingers to keys sufficient to produce something substantial so as to be worthy of the appellation ‘writing’.  We lack the discipline to, through routine, commit thoughts to permanency and justify waning time, opportunity or inspiration - each the co-conspirator of unproductivity - as being the real reason behind the blank pages and empty screens we leave in our wake.
The truth is that we are frauds, us Sisters and Brothers, Fellows of the Blank Page.  Because truly there is only one criterion on which declaring oneself a writer is dependant: writing.  Not the lofty, unreachable, elitist oligarchy that those who write for a living strive overmuch to perpetuate for fear of - what? - dilution of the calibre of their ranks?  Preposterous.  We can all be writers, and many more of us could make a living doing so than at present.  Indeed how often have we each read something - a poem, a short story, an epic saga of unfathomable proportions - and thought privately but quite sincerely: ‘I could do better’.  Perhaps we could.  Perhaps we even dare to espouse this view.  Perhaps the most audacious of us (maybe even mendacious) might even write a critique, one surely intended to warn fellow ‘aspiring writers’ of pitfalls to avoid.
We are frauds, all of us, our twisted, embittered, envious, frightened Fellowship of the Blank Page.  For we know, even if only dimly in the recesses of our creative minds, the truth: there are no aspiring writers.  We do not exist!  There are writers who are published and writers who are not.  There are writers of quality and those of none.  There are writers who are celebrated and writers who are not.  But there is not a one of them who cannot claim to be, unlike each member of our Fellowship, a writer.
Today my aspirations have been despoiled, pillaged by my inspiration.
Today I have become a writer.