Read/Write Challenge – Day 7

“It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks.” From The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, p. 358.

* * *

It was only one letter, but she carried it up the stairs like a sack of bricks. The handwriting on the envelope was the lady doctor’s, from Boston, the one with the liquid black hair and long brown legs. Dr. Navya Barsar. Throughout the summer and into the fall, Sydney had been Dr. Barsar’s silent shadow, following her at a close distance as she walked up and down the steep cliffside path into town.

If she closed her eyes, Sydney could almost hear the soft slapping sound of the doctor’s leather thong sandals against the bottoms of her feet. The doctor’s feet were a marvel. Finely boned and flexible, with elegant toes capped in little dark rounded toenails. They were painted a shade that, at first, appeared a glossy nut brown but, upon closer inspection, was a rusty purple, the color of the trembling wands of pollen at the heart of a stargazer lily.

Dr. Barsar arrived first, some weeks before her colleague, Dr. Nash, on a tiny motor boat from the next island, which itself was a short seaplane ride from St. Martin, the closest place with nonstop flights from the United States. Sydney had watched from the wharf as the doctor negotiated with the boat’s pilot to help carry her equipment. There was a lot of head-shaking, the man squinting in the sun and pointing up the steep dirt path to the summit at the center of the island. To the place where Sydney lived with Gamma Gay.

The doctor seemed unconcerned. She produced a floppy straw hat from her bag and, in the circle of shade it produced, peeled off two American dollars from a roll of bills. Observing the man’s unbroken scowl, she peeled off one more for good measure, and they were off, balancing countless canvas bags and metal containers like fishing tackle boxes on their arms and across their backs. Sydney had scurried along behind them, watching carefully to see if they dropped anything.

Read/Write Challenge – Day 6

“Without his life, each of theirs fell to pieces.” From Beloved, by Toni Morrison, p. 220.

* * *

Without his life, each of theirs fell to pieces. That was how Kyrin saw it, at least. Kiara wasn’t so sure.

She ran her tongue over her front teeth and grimaced for the mirror. Her mouth tasted faintly of blood and mint-waxed dental floss. She did not floss every day, but lied and told the hygienist that she did. To make it feel like less of a lie, she savaged her mouth with thrice-daily flossings in the week before a cleaning. The hygienist knew, but she didn’t call Kiara out on it. No one called Kiara out on anything. Not anymore. Big Daddy had always been the one to confront Kiara with an objective reality, one not of her own making. And now that he was gone, not one of them was willing to assume that burden.

Big Daddy was a judge. A justice, in fact, of the Michigan Court of Appeals. He died on a Wednesday morning, in the little bathroom adjoining his chambers. If given the choice, Kiara thought, one would surely not choose to die in a gray-tiled bathroom, beneath the harsh glare of fluorescent bulbs. One would not choose to inhale, in one’s dying breaths, faint wisps of Clorox bleach and ammonia. One would not wish, as one’s last glimpse of this world, a foreshortened grid of mildewed grout and a shoe-scuffed rubber baseboard.

All things considered, however, it had not been an unrespectable death. At 9:45 a.m., Presiding Justice Joseph Lee Hendridge put down the morning paper, donned his robe for argument, and rinsed his coffee mug in the bathroom sink. He was seized, as if by an invisible hand, sank swiftly to one knee, bowed his head as if in prayer, and collapsed. His body, curled peacefully in the fetal position, was found by his clerks exactly 25 minutes later.

Kiara had asked once, how Big Daddy got his name. She was told it went back to little Jesse Clark, the first foster child who ever came to live with Judge (not yet Justice) Hendridge and his wife, Ada Lucia, in their modest bungalow at the end of Wynona Circle. The judge was not a particularly large man–about 5’9″ or 5’10” and 185 lbs, give or take–but Jesse’s biological father was just a skinny kid, who somehow managed to get his 13-year-old girlfriend pregnant one star-filled night in their church parking lot. To four-year-old Jesse, there was “Little Daddy,” who he saw less and less frequently, and “Big Daddy,” who took him fishing and taught him how to read. There was “Big Mama” (though only 13, Candice Grimwald was a corpulent young lady, even before she birthed a child), who cried each time Jesse was brought to see her, and “Little Mama,” the diminutive Ada Lucia, who pulled a stepstool to the big butcher-block counter so he could help her make snickerdoodles.

The names stuck. And so, to three generations of foster children to pass through the arched hedges of the little white house on Wynona Court, Judge Hendridge and Ada Lucia were known simply as Big Daddy and Little Mama.

And so it had been for the twins, Kyrin and Kiara, who arrived there one rainy afternoon in late May, two days after their father shot their mother in the chest and, as she lay dying, put the gun in his own mouth and fired.

Read/Write Challenge – Day 5

Hi guys, here’s what I wrote for Day 5 of our June Read/Write Challenge. Hope you’re having fun generating your own literary writing prompts. Keep writing!

“To reach the restaurant we had to climb down seven dimly lit steps into a sort of cellar.” From The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, p. 78.

* * *

To reach the restaurant we had to climb down seven dimly lit steps into a  sort of cellar. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Our small group shuffled silently down into the space and, as I reached the last step, I must have placed my weight on it in just such a way, because it gave a great creaking sigh, as it had not done for any of the others. Like a dog, I thought, like the rumbling, deep-throated whine my mother’s old border collie made when it saw you’d come to the last bite of hamburger, pinched between your fingers.

I slowly removed my foot from the offended spot, thinking a gradual motion was likely to produce the least noise. This had the effect of drawing the sound out–unimaginably–ascending octaves from a low thrum to the prolonged groan of a man in ecstasy to–quickly, in the last instant as, abandoning all stealth, I stepped back off of the step and crushed the toes of the little girl and her mother waiting behind me to enter the room–the piercing wail of a hungry baby, cut off and left ringing in the air.

As the sound ratcheted through the pillowy silence, my face burned in the dark. A dozen pairs of eyes turned accusatorily towards me. But at that moment our guide, who had crossed the narrow space below, threw aside a stiff square of curtain, revealing a tiny glass-block window, the metal grommets screaming across the brass curtain rod like a steam engine pulling into the station.

The pairs of eyes all swung around in unison, as a shaft of sunlight sliced through the room, revealing small round tables and curving café chairs. Each table was set for two, with little glass candle holders and crumbling paper cocktail menus. Flocks of dust motes rushed through the air as if scurrying from the light. Through them, I could make out a tiny stage, raised one step from the floor, and a green velvet curtain hanging crookedly to one side.

“Welcome folks,” boomed the guide, “to prohibition-era Chicago, and to the Sugar Jar, the speakeasy that time forgot.”

Read/Write Challenge – Day 4

Hi writers! Welcome to the first full week of free-writing in our June Read/Write Challenge. Grab a book, choose a first line, and WRITE WORDS NOW!

“My meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.” From “The Merchant of Venice,” by William Shakespeare, Act I, Scene 3.

* * *

“My meaning in saying he is a good man is to have you understand me that he is sufficient. Sufficient, as in, I cannot point to any one reason why you should not marry this man.”

“Okay.”

Madeline’s mother sat across the table, eyeing her over a narrow pair of frameless reading glasses on a thin gold chain. She nudged them up the bridge of her nose and returned to the brunch menu, suddenly gushing “Oooh, brioche waffles and duck leg confit, with bourbon-sherry maple syrup and fried quail eggs. Can you imagine, Maddy?”

Madeline didn’t respond.

“House-made Berkshire sausage and cheddar-sage biscuits. Honey-poached shrimp and locally milled grits. Really!”

It was as if just reading the items aloud was an acceptable substitute for physically indulging in them, something Madeline’s mother—looking trim and well-preserved in a salmon-pink wrap dress and real pearls—would never do. The waiter came and, after fawning some more over the elaborate concoctions (“Really so creative, so decadent!”) Madeline’s mother ordered a poached egg and toast.

Madeline ordered the same. The toast here really was exceptional. They brought it on a wood plank with salted butter and a tiny white jar of imported marmalade. The waiter turned to leave and, as a distraction or to delay the inevitable for one more minute, Madeline ordered two cappuccinos. Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Oh mom, splurge a little. It will save you from taking your calcium supplement.”

Her mother accepted this without comment, spread her napkin across her lap, and looked at Madeline, with the full intensity of her searching gaze; an intensity Madeline had been subjected to many times but had never grown accustomed to.

“He loves you, I suppose?” her mother asked plainly.

After just a half a beat: “Yes Mom, he loves me.”

The hum of conversation and the bump and clank of dishes being cleared from nearby tables filled the silence between them.

“And?”

“And what, Mom?”

“This is the part, dear, where you assure me that you love him too, more than anything in the world. That you cannot live without him and will marry him no matter what anyone says.”

“Yes,” Madeline said, slouching. “Well I do. I love him very much.”

Their eyes met and held each other. Madeline squirmed.

“Of course you do, dear.” The waiter brought their coffees. “My god, would you look at them! Big as soup bowls, Maddy. What a treat.”

Read/Write Challenge – Day 3

Hi readers, on Day 3 of our Read/Write Challenge we take a look at The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula Le Guin. There is so much going on here! I had a hard time choosing just one feature to discuss.

One Thing (Okay, Three Things) I Noticed: The story defies genre. It describes Omelas, a beautiful town on a sparkling bay, surrounded by majestic mountains, and inhabited by a peaceful people with rich traditions and a seemingly perfect life. It is speculative fiction, in a “what if,” sense, but not true sci-fi or fantasy. It has elements of magical realism and fairy tales, but those don’t seem quite right either. Omelas is a place without government, war, political struggle, or poverty. But there is just one thing. The town has a dirty little secret that makes all of that possible. It is revealed to us–though we know it already–that privilege like this is built on a foundation of injustice.

The story also demonstrates the power of naming things. This is not “once upon a time there was a town.” It has a proper name, Omelas (fun fact, Le Guin came up with the name while looking at a sign for Salem, Oregon, in her rear-view mirror). So do the Green Fields and the Eighteen Peaks. Names make a place come to life. They evoke many things. Most of all, they tell us what features of this place the inhabitants find important.

Finally, this is a great example of metafiction, “a form of literature that emphasizes its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the reader to be aware that they are reading or viewing a fictional world.” Le Guin wants to paint a picture of a certain kind of place. She gives her readers some options here. Maybe the town is like this. Or maybe it is like this. Maybe the people do this, or maybe they do this, or this, instead. She invites us to incorporate whichever of these details do the trick for us as readers. By doing this, she reminds us that the place is not real-real. It can’t be, because she hasn’t told us its horrible truth. Le Guin then addresses us directly, asking if that terrible piece of information doesn’t make the place more credible in our minds. And it does. Le Guin achieves something powerful here. We are no longer innocent bystanders. In a way, we have helped her construct this world, from our own experiences. We are complicit.

One Idea: Write a story in which you describe a place, person, or event in different ways, addressing the reader directly and leaving it to him or her to decide which details ring true, which best serve the story.

I hope you enjoyed our first two weekend stories! See you tomorrow for more weekday writing!

Read/Write Challenge – Day 2

Okay readers, time for the first short story on our list, Ghosts,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. As promised, here is one thing I noticed about Adichie’s writing and one idea the story gave me for my own writing. 

One Thing I Noticed: The story is written from the first-person singular point of view. The narrator is a retired professor who runs into an old acquaintance who he thought died years ago. The two have a somewhat tentative conversation, and the narrator realizes how much their paths have diverged. Rather than tell us about the main character through third-person exposition, Adichie gives us his background story in bits and pieces, through the conversation and through the memories that the conversation sparks in the narrator’s mind.

First-person is a good point of view to use when blurring the line between what is real (here, what happened to the narrator’s family after the war) and what may not be (the visions of his wife’s ghost visiting him) because everything that is happening to the narrator is real, at least to him.

One Idea: Write a story about a person who does not believe in ghosts and is visited by one.

* * *

Read more here about Biafra and the Nigerian Civil War.

And check out both Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun and Chinua Achebe’s (author of Things Fall Apart) 2013 memoir There Was a Country.

If you would like to read ahead this month, here is the whole reading list of short stories. Happy reading!

Read/Write Challenge – Day 1

Shall we dive into our new monthly challenge? Here is my first 20-minute free write prompted by a line from a book.

“I woke up lying naked in my own bed.” The Samurai’s Garden, by Gail Tsukiyama, p. 53.

* * *

I woke up lying naked in my own bed. Well, almost naked. Pretty stripped down. Not dripping with sweat, as I had been earlier in the week, but chalky, covered in a salty frost bloom that was the remembrance of past drenchings. I stared at the ceiling. The same black drywall nail the paint had flaked off long ago stared down at me like a single star in a photo-negative sky. Mustering the energy from who knew where, I grasped a steepled paperback half-nestled beneath the wrinkled sheets and flung it at the nail. The book crashed down again and I had to roll away to avoid it, covering my face with the palms of my hands.

Imagine living your life in a prison cell, I thought. Even a spacious one like this, painted some sunlight-catching Sherwin Williams shade called “fawn” or “buttered bread.” Even one with a four-poster bed and 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Even one with a flat-screen TV tucked elegantly into a framed white bead-board recess in the wall. Even one with light-blocking curtains and central air. In the end, no matter how well-appointed the cell, you wanted to leave. And you couldn’t.

I had been lying in that bed for the better part of two weeks. Criminals on TV received sentences of 30 years to life. I wondered how they managed it. Perhaps, if asked, they would tell you the first two weeks are the hardest. After that, you find God. Or you lose him forever. You come to terms with things.

Do the electrical impulses in the brain that signal a desire to be free eventually stop firing, I wondered. Do they sizzle like a licked-finger-pinched match? Or do they just lie dormant, like a blossomless orchid, dry and forgotten on a windowsill but with creeping air roots still blindly plumbing the space all around for nourishment?

I wasn’t going to find out. Nelson had spoken with the doctor, called ahead to check the emergency room wait times. I was going to the hospital. It was Christmas Eve.

June Read/Write Challenge

Hi writers! Ready for a new monthly challenge? In June I’ve decided to take a break from trying to create a finished product each day (because–whew!–it’s exhausting) and focus instead on maintaining a daily writing habit, generating new material, and seeking out inspiration.

So our June challenge has two parts:

Part 1: Weekday Writing 

For the writing portion of the challenge, let’s try this. Each morning (or afternoon, or evening, or whenever you can squeak time to write into your busy schedule), grab a random book from your bookshelf, open to any page, point without looking to any paragraph, and choose a sentence from that paragraph as your first line. Then free-write for 20 minutes, no more, no less. No pressure to turn this into anything, no editing, no judgment. This is about habit-formation. This is about diving into your writing without overthinking things.

Part 2: Weekend Reading 

There are nine weekend days in the month of June and I made a list of nine short stories by women authors that I want to read and learn from. Women authors because, let’s face it, a lot of the classic short stories we read in school are by men. I also want to expand my horizons a little. I have my favorites (Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty) but I want to read more diverse points of view.

In a recent TED talk on the power of stories, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had this to say about the power of stories:

“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.” We have so much to learn from stories, stories told my many voices, not just on the craft of writing, but on the nature of being a human being in this world.”

I’ll post each of the stories on my weekend reading list for this month. Whether you read along with me or create your own list, I encourage you to jot down one thing that you noticed about the author’s technique and one idea that the story gave you for your own writing.

StoryADay May Recap

So writers, how did you do with StoryADay May? I have to say that my first StoryADay experience went much like my first NaNoWriMo experience. I was so enthusiastic at first, churning out stories in those first couple of weeks, but then life began to creep up on me. I went out of town twice, was busy at work, went to my kid’s T-ball games instead of writing. I was so disappointed with myself for “failing” the challenge.

But let’s think about that. At the end of my first failed NaNo experience I still had 15,000 words, a solid start to a novel. I had learned some strategies for fitting writing into my daily routine. And I was eager to try again.

At the end of StoryADay, my scoreboard looks something like this:

  • completed stories: 10
  • stories I made a solid start on: 11
  • story ideas I jotted down for later: 5

StoryADay, like NaNoWriMo, is a great challenge because, even if you fail abysmally, you are still generating new work. You’re still setting a PR for the challenge to try to beat next year. So, whether you wrote one story or 31 stories this month doesn’t really matter. You were a writer!

Now, on to the next challenge!

StoryADay May – Day 31 – Your Story

Ah, the bittersweet end of a month of storytelling! Whether you finished one story or 31 this month (more later on what “success” means when it comes to these monthly challenges), I hope StoryADay challenged you to write more than you otherwise would have. Our last prompt is, fittingly, all about wrapping up an big project.

Day 31 Prompt: “Write a story about a creative person who has just completed, or is in the throes of completing a massive creative effort. (And yes, this can be autobiographical). You could take us through the manic process of trying to finish up the work. You can show us their post-event hysteria/collapse. You can have them reflecting on the effort. Pay attention to the physicality of it. Go anywhere you want with this. It doesn’t have to be serious. It can be self-indulgent (you’ve earned it!)”