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Flash Fiction: Somebody Needs Attention

Wordsmith.org and I are on a break.

Though I’ve enjoyed the freedom, I’ve missed the early morning wake up call in my inbox where the Word of the Day challenge awaited. I’ve forgotten the playful tease that comes in a real stinker of a word, felt lonely for the thrill in wrestling a word into submission, and longed for the surprise when a word lends itself to a poem.

I needed a flash fiction fix, but I’m not ready to recommit. So, I glommed onto one of Lisa Romeo’s writing prompts (from her Winter Writing Prompts Project). The word: bloated.

Nobody said re-entry would be pretty.

*****

Somebody Needs Attention

Rebecca held the curtain open with the back of her hand. The sunrise colored the sky with a fiery orange and shed light on the fact that nothing had changed. Bags of garbage still lined the sidewalks; they festered, split, and spilled out onto the street.

Mrs. Owen, from across the street, ate a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken it seemed, and Bobby Cooper, at the end of the block, must not have any real dishes. Paper plates and red plastic cups littered his stretch of lawn.  Rebecca’s next door neighbor, Stan, had tried to keep things neat by piling his garbage into a well-formed mountain, but one of the bags had rolled off and exploded onto Rebecca’s driveway. A shadow moved across the concrete and slipped behind the trash — a rat.

It had only been three weeks since the Waste Management workers first refused to fire up their trucks and clear the neighborhood, but already they made national headlines. Workers weren’t allowed to collect any trash, but the mayor insisted they had hauled somebody’s garbage and dropped it on the front steps of his house. The mayor’s front door was blocked, he said, and he was being held hostage by refuse. Still, he didn’t budge on concessions. It was like the New York City garbage strike on a small town scale.

Rebecca turned on the news, which showed two police officers outside the mayor’s house wearing face masks. Then, the news cut to the mayor, who sat inside and conducted a news conference using his son’s videocam. He drank his coffee and bragged that, with the internet, he could run the city from the comfort of his own kitchen. “Bring it on,” he told the camera, meaning more garbage Rebecca guessed.

The mayor reminded Rebecca of Vince Watters in high school. Vince played the clarinet, he wore high-waisted jeans from Walmart, and he got pushed around during lunch. Vince landed in detention one week, for fighting back, and got chummy with Darrin and Hendricks, two beefy outcasts who happened to be seniors. Vince marched into the lunchroom that Friday, with Darrin and Hendricks at his side, pointing fingers at the jocks who shoved him around and yelling “Yeah! Bring it on, dickheads!”

If memory served Rebecca right, the mayor played clarinet at his inauguration that year, and, like Vince, he puffed his chest when he was flanked by guards.

Once during the broadcast, the cameras fell onto the mayor’s wife as she wiped off the counter and poured him another cup of coffee. She cleared his breakfast plate and dumped the leftovers into the trash can, which seemed mostly empty. Her shoulders sagged and her expression was flat when she turned back around, but Rebecca thought she saw a hint of disgust in her eyes.

The mayor, however, beamed.

*****

For fun, click on over to this video from They Might Be Giants, called “I’m All You Can Think About.” The song plays just at the beginning, and is well worth the click.

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A Writing Group is an Anchor…in a good way.

From Zany Holidays Blog

I’ve been hanging out with a great group of people lately.

Once every two weeks, I pull my car into a small parking lot behind an old convent, run up two long flights of stairs, and sit down at a table with other like-minded individuals.

We are all writers.

I paid for my seat at the table and, in doing so, committed to a block of time that throws a wrench into my weeknight schedule of dinner, books and bedtime for two small kids. But, when I received an email asking if I wanted to return for the next session of Roundtables, I looked past my Mother Writer guilt to four reasons why these sessions are vital to my writing career:

1. I read my work out loud during each meeting. We all do. The group is run in a very egalitarian style. I’m nervous every time I read. Still, I love this aspect of the session for the exact reason that Delia Lloyd mentions in her Huffington Post article, “5 Tips for Productively Editing Your Writing,” (which I found via Lisa Romeo Writes).

Reading out loud, Lloyd says, helps you discover your voice.

You not only hear the repetition and the over-writing. You can also hear whether or not you sound too stifled, too casual, too funny or too sharp.

Besides finding my voice, reading my work to others forces me out of my comfort zone. Margaret Atwood says, “You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.” I agree. And, each time I read, I put myself out there as a professional writer and, in the process, gain more courage to be that writer.

2. I get instant feedback. In the January issue of The Writer magazine, Robin Garland interviews a story consultant and agent, Lisa Cron, and asks what makes a good story.

“A [good] story,” Cron says, “must have the ability to engender a sense of urgency from page 1.”

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com

Sharing my latest chapter with a live group of writers gives me a pretty good idea – right away – whether or not my story will keep a reader engaged.

This in-the-moment critique was new to me, but I’m beginning to appreciate the quality of it. Though, I know I don’t need instant feedback to continue with my rewrite, I don’t want to move on to the next chapter until I know I’m in a good place with the current chapter, not this time around anyway.

3. My draft reads more consistent. Writing a novel is daunting, and I procrastinate when projects seem overwhelming. For the last two years, I’ve worked in spurts on this novel and then put it down. When I did get back to it – after too long a break – the tension was lost. The draft felt fractured, unstructured, and too loose.

In just a short time, I knew that the feedback I received from the other writers at the Roundtable was invaluable. Finishing another chapter rewrite by the next session became a concrete deadline I didn’t want to ignore. And, with shorter breaks between revisions, I had less problems remembering where I left off and where I was headed.

4. I benefit from more camaraderie and support. I could tackle this novel alone, huddled over my laptop in the cold basement of my house. But, I focus better and am more driven to finish when I’m surrounded by the warm bodies of other writers.

Yes, I’ve met so many great writers on Twitter, She Writes, and (now) Facebook, and I wouldn’t trade those connections for anything — many of them have become fast friends and staunch supporters. But, we all live miles and states apart. While I treasure the ethereal influence they have on my writing, I need the presence of writers in close proximity just the same.

Sitting at that table has a tangible affect on my writing. I am tethered to my work in a new way that fuels my determination to finish this novel. And, my place in that group completes  another piece of my puzzle in becoming a writer.

~

What has a writing group done for you lately?

*****

Garland, Robin. “The Love of a Good Story.” The Writer. January 2011: 34-35, 55. Print.


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