Posted on

Flash Fiction on Wednesday: Cold

There’s a new website in my Google Reader: Fiction Writers Review. Writers can find a plethora of information, stories, and great blog posts there. Plus, they have a blog series by Celeste Ng called “Get Writing,” where she posts an exercise to get your muse off the couch and back to some serious calisthenics. This week, Celeste suggests writers turn to the tabloids.

Looking through the tabloids is a lot like waiting for Wordsmith.org’s Word of the Day – you never know what you’ll get – and, seeing as it’s Wednesday, the timing was perfect to use the tabloids as a spark for a little flash fiction.

*****

Cold
(Based on this post, called “Magnetic Boy,” from Weekly World News)

Standing outside, Nicholas Baker – even at ten years old – could see that his mother had lost it. She used to get mad if he ran outside without a jacket, when the air was just a little bit cool. But now, she was insisting that he stand in the front yard, naked from the waist up, in the middle of winter.

“She’s looney,” his older sister, Emily, had said about their mother just a few days before. “Mental.”

“You are what you say!” Nicholas yelled back at first, because he didn’t want to hear her call his mother crazy. Though, he figured she might be right.

“Mom, Nicholas is shivering,” Emily said now. “He’s freezing.”

His mother adjusted his arms up and out to his sides and then stood back to look at him.

“Mom!” Emily shouted.

“Shhh,” she said. “Hold still, Nicky,” his mother told him. “I have to get this picture just right, otherwise we won’t win.” Then, she wiggled her hand toward, Emily. “Hand me some tablespoons,” she said.

Emily rolled her eyes and bent down to grab a handful from the silverware tray that sat on the ground. The wind kicked up. Nicholas’s teeth started to chatter.

“At least let me get him a coat, Mom.”

“No. If his skin is warm, the metal won’t stick. You know that. Now just be quiet and let me work.” His mother’s hands moved in swift diagonals across his chest. She shifted spoons around into various shapes. Her eyes flashed and she was breathing hard.

This wasn’t the first time he stood out in the cold while she lined him with kitchen utensils. Ever since they found out he was attracted to metal, or that metal was attracted to him, his mother had glued herself to the internet in search of contests on sites like Ripley’s Believe It or Not. She took picture after picture and drove to the post office every weekend. Nothing ever came of the pictures, so Nicholas started to wonder if it was really such a big deal that a set of keys sitting on a  table would jump into his palm if he held his hand over them.

“You’re like  Jedi Knight!” His mother had told him. “Like Luke Skywalker living in Cleveland, Ohio,” she’d grinned.

“Worth money,” he’d overheard her tell his Aunt Judy on the phone.

His stomach felt sick, and his head was frozen like a giant ice cube. He told his mother that his fingers were numb. She cupped each of his hands and blew on them, promising that in two more minutes she’d make him the biggest cup of hot chocolate he’d ever seen.

He didn’t like being a Jedi so much anymore, and he wondered if Luke Skywalker ever felt this bad. But, he did his best to smile for the camera, thinking maybe this would be the last time.

Posted on

Sweaters, Shoes, and Books: More on Letting Go

Last Sunday, I wrote about cleaning out and clearing out and making way for all things new. Part of that process includes a giveaway: gifts from my shelves to yours.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about, “hey, I just cleaned out my closet and wouldn’t you love a few of my pill-ridden, old sweaters….” And, no I won’t raffle off those doc martin wannabe shoes, the ones with monster heels and rounded toes that oozed “cool” ten years ago but now holler “red nose, balloon animals, and Lucky the Clown.” Those things, I will toss or burn, thank you.

What I am giving away is a book near and dear to my heart, On the Fly: Stories in Eight Minutes or Less.

This book represents my writing journey in many ways. Some of my early pieces appear on the pages and signify my willingness to put myself out there.

The book’s premise is based on writing prompts, which is a technique I depend on, often, to urge me forward into creating new pieces.

And, the book as a whole is the product of a collaborative effort between an amazing group of women writers. We called ourselves the Lit Star Collective.

We published this book not for profit, but in order to document our time together, to showcase the work we had done, and to spread the word about the kind of writing that can happen in a very short time — well-formed images and prose can emerge, like tiny treasures, from a flurry of words when you let go of inhibitions and dive into the work.

On the Fly is a book of flash fiction, flash narratives (a term coined by Lisa Rivero), and creative nonfiction. Each piece originated from a prompt (given by our instructor, Ariel Gore), was written in eight minutes of timed writing, and is presented in either its raw form or a peer-edited version. Sometimes the prompts were one word; sometimes they were a phrase. Always, they inspired great writing.

As a teaser, here’s an excerpt of a piece by Catherine Anderson, a devoted Mother and a prolific Writer. She blogs, at Mama C and the Boys, about raising multi racial families (by birth or adoption), single parenting, and the writing that evolves from those life experiences. In On the Fly, Catherine expands on the prompt, “Where I’m From.”

Inheritance

Where I’m from, is mapped out all over my nose. Bulbous, just like Pepe’s. Loved that man. As grandparents go, he mapped that out pretty well too; if I live to be old enough to see these boys have children of their own. The French-by way of Guadeloupe-sailor and storyteller with chocolates and exotic perfume samples hidden in his silk robe for me to find in his suitcase every other December when he came to visit. You have to forgive a few things, like how he espoused that black people were beneath him, and Jewish people were, too. It becomes tricky to understand how come his mistress of twenty-five years was half black and half Jewish. Look deeper inside my cells and you will see his wife, my Meme, curled up in a little ball in my abdomen abandoned over and over her entire life. First, by her mother who died of typhoid when she was three, then by her father who left her in a hotel room with a cousin he didn’t know so he could remarry. And then every day she waited for Pepe to come back to the marriage he had consummated on land….

…There’s more. Of this narrative and of other amazing short pieces.

On the Fly includes several other writing prompts, too, that will stir your muse. If you’re a writing prompt junkie, or if you’d like a peek into the works of sixteen women writers, leave a comment. On Sunday, May 1st, my pals at Random.org will choose three lucky winners who will each receive a copy.

To read more of Catherine’s work, you can visit her blog or follow her on Twitter.


Posted on

A Chiropractor’s Dream

When someone throws out a writing prompt challenge, I generally accept.

Back in January, Susan Bearman kicked off her Annual Writing Contest on her blog, Two Kinds of People (2KoP). Susan is the master at writing about “the folly of arbitrary divisions,” as she says (case in point: this post on Fan vs. Fanatic). And, she makes it look easy. Her open prompt, “[p]ick your own favorite Two Kinds of People topic and write about it,” gave anyone interested all sorts of flexbility. But, what I learned in trying to tackle this prompt was that, well, Susan is a master.

My submission didn’t win – congrats to Deborah Carroll who did (you can read her essay here) – but it was a fun exercise. So, I’ll share: my two kinds of people.

*****

The Chiropractor’s Dream

A guy named Tim Ferriss wrote a blog post a while back describing how he can travel carrying 10 pounds or less. “The name of the game…,” he says, “is being ‘fashionably light.’” I’ve never been called “fashionable,” and, in my mind, “fashionably light” doesn’t even compute. Mr. Ferriss’ post on traveling contrasts with my own practices and solidifies my belief that people on the move fall into two separate camps: those who pack light and those who pack.

I don’t travel light — not on vacation, not when I go to work, not when I return home from the supermarket. I’ve never been a Den mother for any Boy Scout (the closest I’ve come to any Scout is paying seven dollars for two boxes of Thin Mints), but I pledge the Boy Scouts motto just the same – Be prepared – and therein lies my problem. I’m notorious for filling every pocket of a purse and occupying every inch of dead space in a bag. And, while I’m fully prepared for any and all emergencies on a given day, my inability to pack “fashionably light” sometimes leaves me looking and feeling like Igor in “Young Frankenstein” – humped over and eyes bulging.

I could blame my proclivity to over pack on being a mother. My kids are young, so I offer plenty of good reasons why I carry extra notebooks and pens, snacks, bottles of water, and one (or two) bags of tissue. But, “the kid excuse” does little to explain why my bag for work weighs almost as much as my four year old daughter. No, my days as a pack horse began long before I became a mother.

I was nine years old when I received my first invitation to a tea party. My best friend from down the block asked me over for the afternoon and suggested I bring a few of my stuffed animal friends. Like many kids, I possessed a whole slew of stuffed companions, all of them important. With a tender heart and a lot of patience, my mother helped me load each bear, bunny, and doll into several paper sacks (they wouldn’t fit into just one), and she asked if I was sure my friend meant for me to bring so many.

“Oh yes!” I said, emphatic, the word “few” being a relative term in my world even then.

We filled the back seat of her 1979 red and white Mercury with my bags of friends, and she drove from our house at the top of the hill to my friend’s house at the bottom. For all I know, she put the car in neutral and coasted down the hill, we lived that close. Then, she gave up five more minutes of her time to help me unload.

When I read a post like the one Tim Ferriss wrote, I dream of being a minimalist, of standing upright while I walk to work, of gliding through an airport with, say, a free hand to wave at a passerby. I stare longingly at small travel bags in stores like REI, and I run my hand across the face of a cute little clutch at the mall. And sometimes, like last week, I succumb to the dream. I buy a new bag with the sole purpose of downsizing, of lightening my load and correcting my posture.

But, my motto always gets the best of me.

Downsizing is a temporary fix.
Leather stretches.
And, that new bag I’m carrying is getting fatter by the day.

*****

What about you? Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a woman thing. Remember George Costanza and his wallet?….

* The above photo comes from www.moviemarket.com. Search under “Marty Feldman.”

[tweetmeme]