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Writing resembles stone masonry more than you might imagine. There's heavy lifting, smashed fingers, and at the heart of it, the process means hoisting one word on top of another to an effort to build something. I guess most masons start their day with the first few rocks that come to hand. Pile them up, see if they stick together and look okay. My writing day begins with a few words arranged into a pile as a warm-up before settling into more serious -- and/or paying -- work. This photo was yesterday's story prompt, and this was the result. Story #1 It wasn't fair, he thought, and there was no view at all to speak of. A gust of wind moved over the empty buildings and pushed something metal into protesting movement. The harsh crying of crows echoed across the unmown lawns. He looked back along the overgrown driveway, but the little blue Honda was not coming back for him. Story #2 Former religious retreat available for unique development opportunity. Large parcel with nearly 750 feet of deep-water river frontage, the Fairview property was host to a high-end restaurant as well as a private residence before falling vacant. With classic local river-stone construction on main buildings, the property includes a small chapel, an enclosed gazebo, and main lodge as well as several outbuildings, including work-sheds, bunk-house, and utility shop. After the sound of wind swallows up the heated clicking of the car and the killdeer and red-winged blackbirds have resumed their gossip, the place grows larger than a first glance can absorb. The overgrown pea-gravel drive stretches a long way back to the main road. The black pine-trees standing sentinel along the property lines dwindle into the distance. The river at the technical "front" of the property (water takes precedence) sparkles at the bottom of a steep slope. The boathouse -- or perhaps a neighbor's house -- shows as a postage-stamp of roofing material among some trees at the river's edge. The former lawn between the front terrace and the fine view of the river looks like a vast and waving hayfield. The river seems too distant to reach by foot: surely the nuns didn't rush down that hill or climb back up, no matter how sultry the summer. Did they stand with their hands on these warm, round cobbles -- the pink and buff sandstone somehow flashy, for all the weight and work of construction -- and watch the shiver of heated air rising between here and the cold river water? I'll be away from the blog for a bit, but thank you for stopping by. In The White Album, Joan Didion writes, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children to the sea...We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience." Yes. And -- it's also just kind of fun. Here's a writing exercise (sort of like warming up for a long run) that makes me glad to have this as my actual job. Story 1 At the stroke of sunset, when the rain had cleared and the dancing stopped, she left behind only a shoe. Story 2 After an extensive search of a seventeen-block section of Gulf Boulevard, the crime scene techs found only a single shoe to mark the brief, violent struggle. Although the abduction had taken place during broad daylight, at a public beach, in front of a dozen witnesses, no two people agreed about the description of the van. No one had thought to jot down a license number. In the long minutes while the group decided that they had, after all, seen a crime, the big, light-colored van disappeared north on Gulf Boulevard. Much later, each of the witnesses would remember the delay while someone sorted a cellular phone from a purse -- it had been switched off because, of course, they were on holiday -- and then the efforts to punch in the unfamiliar emergency number, and finally, that interminable struggle as they tried to convey -- offering the wrong details and pointless explanations while everyones' accents worked at cross-purposes -- the terrible thing that might have just happened as they watched. Story 3 "Shoes!" her voice was heavy with contempt. "Who needs shoes? We are at the beach, girls!" Addie didn't bother to argue. In this mood, her mother couldn't be reasoned with. Instead, Addie set the beach-bag down and said, "I'll be right back, I saw a shell." Her mother gave her a thumb's up, as if to say, "THAT's the spirit!" before dropping the hotel towels in the sand next to the beach-bag. The woman danced ahead of Addie's younger sisters toward the water's edge, and then paused to address all three of her daughters. Using the throbbing, theatrical note that set Addie's teeth on edge, she pronounced, "Isn't the ocean simply magical, girls?" |
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