What does it all mean?

What does it all mean?

When I write a story, (especially flash fiction like this one, that I wrote on the spur of the moment for the A to Z Challenge) I often wonder what it means—what I as the writer meant it to mean, and how does the reader take its meaning.

I’ve written stories which I thought were literary, were the subversion of a myth, and been congratulated on writing a fairy tale; I’ve written about a boy suffering abuse and have had folks root for the abuser; I’ve killed a character and then had the readers wonder what he would do next.

The problem, as I see it, can lie in two things:

I suck at writing: My craft could be undeveloped enough not to be able to support my muse—the story hovers inside me, a shiny hummingbird, comes out on the page a slimy, slow-moving slug.

Counter-argument: Some of the folks get exactly what I’m trying to say—how do they see the hummingbird instead of the slug?

Reading fiction on blogs demands too much attention: And some readers just can’t focus well enough to read the whole story. They comment on the few words they have read, move on.

Counter-argument: Doesn’t that show my weakness as a writer, because I wasn’t able to grab the reader, pin him or her down till my story was done?

This leaves a very confused writer. Do I suck at writing? Do I give up writing fiction on my blog?

Over the last weeks of writing a story a day, I have come to the following conclusion:

I will keep writing fiction on my blog, because it challenges me, and I enjoy it.

Yes, the writing process is never complete without the readers and their reactions– but there is something to be said for perseverance.

If my craft is lacking, practice would help. If blogs aren’t the best place for fiction, well, they’re still the best place to play around and experiment. Most of the stories I have written during the challenge are in genres I wouldn’t have written but for the prompts I was sent.

It is all good.

So has this happened to you?

As a reader, have you ever come across a meaning in a story which you discovered was different from anyone else? As a writer, have you had a reader give you back a meaning to your story that you never intended?

An Old Man’s Teeth

I’m taking part in the Blogging from A to Z  April Challenge on Amlokiblogs, and am yet to write very many stories for that (I’m supposed to write 26 stories in 26 days) . I did a warm-up exercise for the A-Z project this morning based on a photo prompt, and here’s the result.

An Old Man's Teeth

(Photo by : Dietmar Temp)

He let his new fake teeth sink into each grape, red, plump with juice, empty of seed. This will feel part of your mouth soon, his dentist had said as she fitted him, just give it time.

But as his mouth flooded with the sugary bits of grape, flesh and skin and blood, he only felt plastic, and longed to spit the whole goddamned mess out, white acrylic teeth, chewed-up red grapes.

They can’t hurt you more, Burt, his wife soothed, I lost mine ten years ago, and am so much the better for it.

His teeth had their roots in him, they had torn apart sugarcane, cracked crab shells, opened beer bottles. They had munched on ice-cubes, clenching, had helped tie bits of string around the fence. And now they were gone, along with the strength in his arms, the surge in his loins, the memories in his head, his entire bloody spirit that made him race and lay bets and win. His win had gone.

For years his wife slept apart from him, and now it was time for his teeth. Sure as hell neither could hurt him no more, but a man is a man and can’t take comfort from such small things.

He squelched down the grape mush, and felt his new teeth with his tongue– hard, indifferent, insipid.

Like life, these teeth had to be endured, lived, day by day, beaten. He tore more grapes from the bunch and shoveling them into his mouth, began to chew.

Does Your Story Choose You?

Vrishchik Chaturvedi: Character Storyboard

The last few days, I’ve been researching my latest project, (I dare not call it a novel yet) and some of it has been nauseating.

I had to figure out everything possible about flaying  (don’t ask me why) and I was a little apprehensive–material like this would be hard to find, I thought. Apparently not. When I fed various sadistic keywords related to skinning a human body into Google, I was shocked to see the graphic details available on certain websites.

I have now borrowed books from the library which have diagrams and descriptions, and am making notes in between drinking camomile tea to keep myself calm. It is kind of hard to comprehend what humans are capable of doing to other humans.

All this begs the question (which someone asked me yesterday) : why do I have to write on a subject I can’t study with a straight face?

Because, like I told my questioner, I can’t help it.

The story has been haunting me for a while, three years, to be exact. It started with a voice that wouldn’t be denied, a character who spoke first in my notebook at a group writing session, then at a blogfest, and several times afterwards, including this week at another blogfest. His name is Vrishchik Chaturvedi. He is real now and has known it for a while– has said so, too. And his story is now taking shape, and tormenting me while at it.

I’m in control in the outside world, but he’s the lord of the world of my writing, and that is why I find myself, a girl who is afraid of the dark, who cannot sit through gory movies (not even relatively non-heavy-duty, harmless ones like I Know What You Did Last Summer), now writing about this guy who scares the living daylights out of her.

My story has chosen me, and I’ve decided I might as well get it out of my system.

So my question to the writers amongst you: Do you choose the story you’re going to write, or does the story choose you?

Let’s Go for a Walk, You and I: #atozchallenge

Wishes tied on strings

Let us go for a walk, hand in hand, in this temple lined with tombs.

Tombs of the heartfelt desires of the rich and the famous, who lived and died noble, a thousand years ago. No poor man stepped here, because to light a lantern in this temple, you needed to have a family crest, and no poor man had a surname, leave alone a title.

They still light all these lanterns once a year, attracting long-dead desires like ghost moths to the flames, and greedy eyes eager for things beyond reach.

Tombs of the heartfelt desires

No one buys lanterns anymore, says the girl at the temple stall, they’re too expensive, cost millions of Yen. The clips in her held silver elements tinkle with each nod of her head. Buy one of these papers and tie it to the strings hanging from the branches of this tree, with your wishes. People believe they come true.

But next year, you say, the priests will sweep them away, tying new strings, for new wishes tied on new pieces of paper, to be swept away again. And look how bare the tree stands in winter.

But that has always been the poor man’s way, I say, and what difference between a lantern of metal or stone and a piece of paper? It is the weight of the wish that matters– these lanterns may not fly. Maybe this paper will.

We tie our wishes to the tree. We walk out of the red-colored temple gates, to be greeted by snowflakes. You smile at the white notes of blessings that flurry and fall, try to capture them on your tongue.

I feel light. We walk in the snow, hand in hand, burdened no longer by the weight of wishes.

————————–

A to Z Blogging Challenge in April

This was a piece of fiction based on  picture prompts (from the Kasuga-Taisha Shrine in Nara, Japan)–something I hope to create on a daily basis during the month of April for the A to Z challenge, which basically requires 26 posts in 26 days based on 26 letters of the alphabet, one post beginning with each letter during the month of April, with Sundays off for good behavior.

So I’m asking you, my blogging audience, to challenge me with an interesting picture that you would like me to write on, and drop me story starters, each sentence/phrase beginning with a different letter (i.e. the first word of the starter must start with a different letter, from A to Z).  You can do this in the comments on this post. I’ll keep sending out this call till I have 26 pictures and 26 prompts that really challenge me!  The 26 posts will be featured on Amlokiblogs, my other writing blog.

Of course, when I post each prompt during April, I’ll link to you and explain why I chose it. You may also mail me the pictures and story prompts at atozstories at gmail dot com. You need not be participating in the A to Z Challenge to challenge me with either a story starter, or a picture, or both. The more the merrier! Last year I had asked for word prompts, and I got loads to choose from! This year, I’m taking it a step further.

Sign up for the challenge, (you know you want to!) and if you do, make sure you follow us on FaceBook and Twitter, and read The #atozchallenge Daily for updates!

How To Adapt A Well Known Story For Fiction

Life has gotten in the way of blogging this last month. But a new year is here, and I’m making a new beginning. All the writing-related guest posts that got derailed (due to my blog and life problems) will now appear in January. First up is the excellent post by author Bryan Schmidt, where he talks about adapting a well known story for fiction. Take it away Bryan!!

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It’s been done. All too many times, if you listen to some. The story is world famous, well known. Many know its details by heart. Yet it’s compelling and you have an idea you know is different—one no one’s done before. So how do you keep it fresh? Adapting a well-known story for fiction has many challenges, but above them all is the issue of freshness, avoiding predictability.

There are some techniques which work well to invigorate the retelling:

1)      Use the original story as character history/backstory so the parallels are interesting but you don’t have to follow it to the letter—In The Worker Prince, my debut novel, because my characters are colonists to space from Earth and Protestants, they share the religious history of Christianity so the Moses story, which inspired mine, is prehistory. Some parallels from that story occur, when a prince discovers he was born a slave and helps the slaves fight for freedom, for example. But having established that as prehistory, I was able to depart quite a bit from biblical elements like the plagues, miracles, and parting of the Red Sea to tell a different, although familiar story. The inspiration remains the same but the story takes new and interesting twists.

2)      Change the timeline (order)– What if the events are the same but they don’t happen in the same order? Sometimes the order of events is not vital to the story and you can make new twists and turns just be changing the order of events and, thus, how those various events affect each other. It can lead to new conflicts and new undercurrents which didn’t exist in the original story and make it more interesting for those familiar with the story on which yours is based.
3)      Identify the core elements and throw away less important ones—In The Worker Prince I did exactly this: keeping the idea of one people enslaving another under a ruthless dictator, a prince secretly adopted from slaves, ideological conflict, and injustice but dumping things like the Red Sea, years of exile in a desert, plagues, etc. It kept the story familiar and grounded in the tropes of the original while allowing me to take it in totally different and surprising directions. Some scenes and events are vital for the story to remain familiar. The same can be said of key characters. Others can be thrown away or reinvented to keep things original and unique in your telling.

4)      Reverse roles, species or genders of characters—What if your hero in the original story was male but in your story becomes female? What if a human character becomes alien or animal? What about a robot? What about other characters? Can your sidekick become the love interest? What if your antagonist becomes a relative instead of  a social acquaintance? What if the characters take on bigger roles and multiple functions they didn’t have in the original? The differences between genders, species, etc. can then be exploited for new aspects of your story and new twists and turns different from the original in fun ways.

5)      Change the setting—Setting your story in a culture and context far removed from the original can provide interesting opportunities. I set The Worker Prince in distant space far from Earth with different aliens and plant species, etc. It allowed me to have technology and related problems totally foreign to the original Moses story and made for a more fun and interesting telling for me as storyteller and for readers. The same can be true of resetting the story in a different decade or era from the one in which it originally occurred. Imagine, if you will, a steampunk Cinderella or Sherlock Holmes in the 24^th Century. All kinds of possibilities present themselves.

All of these suggestions are about making the story your own. If you can find ways to do that, you can create a fresh experience and telling while utilizing powerful elements of the familiarity and themes of the original story. Grounding your story in a well-known tale, definitely has advantages.  But a little creative rethinking can make it even more powerful and draw in an audience of people it might not otherwise appeal to. It’s fun to work from a familiar foundation and structure. Especially if you love the story, it can stimulate the imagination. But if everyone knows the twists and turns and outcome of your story, why should they want to read it? I hope these suggestions give you ideas how the old can become  new and fresh in the retelling.

Bryan Schmidt

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the author of the space opera novel The Worker Prince, the collection The North Star Serial, and has several short stories forthcoming in anthologies and magazines. His second novel, The Returning, is forthcoming from Diminished Media Group in 2012. He’s also the host of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chatevery Wednesday at 9 pm EST on Twitter, where he interviews people like Mike Resnick, AC Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. He can be found online as @BryanThomasS on Twitter or via his website. Excerpts from The Worker Prince can be found on his blog.

‎3 5-star & 8 4-star reviews THE WORKER PRINCE $3.99 Kindlehttp://amzn.to/pnxaNm or Nook http://bit.ly/ni9OFh $14.99 tpb http://bit.ly/qIJCkS.

Writing Memories for Your Characters

Childhood Memories by Pigarot on DeviantArt

One of the first memories I have of myself is burying a lamb bone in the garden, hoping to grow a Meat Tree. I was two/three years old, loved lamb curry, and meat was scarce in our diet.

While I don’t know if that particular memory would some day make its way into a story, I know quite a few incidents/scenes in my published stories have transformed from memory to page. In doing so, they may have lost some of their circumstantial  truth, but they have gained a fictional truth, and a wider resonance…I’ve been told by readers it made them feel it was them out there, that it brought back memories.

I think most authors use their childhood/growing up/adult memories in their writing. Most fiction borrows from truth. An author is like an hourglass, memories trickle down and become fiction.

But nowadays, I’ve begun to indulge in a new activity: writing memories for my characters. Using exercise from the book “Old Friend From Far Away” by Natalie Goldberg, which is all about writing memoirs, I pretend I’m a character, and then write down his/her memories—sense impressions of an event or a particular moment. Writing character memories helps in two ways: getting into the skin of the character, and also generating new material for my WIP.

Fiction is all about the game of pretend, and I’m quite enjoying this particular game that helps me shape characters and write scenes.

Have you ever tried writing the memories/memoirs of your characters?

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Rule of Three Fiction Blogfest

Sign up for the Rule of Three Blogfest, a month-long shared-world fiction extravaganza starting 5th October— with some great prizes, and of course, a lot of fun and exposure for your writing. This is one Blogfest fiction authors ought not to miss. 

Bad Movies Give Birth to Fiction

Alex J Cavanaugh decrees in his blogfest:

On Monday, September 19, post a list of up to ten of the worst movies you’ve ever had the misfortune to watch. Films that just oozed awfulness and featured plot holes so big you could drive a bus through them.

Alex's Worst Movies Ever Blogfest

So without further ado, I present the 10 worst movies ever, imho, but instead of writing about them, I’ll use as many of their titles in a piece of flash fiction (that would hopefully make more sense than the movies it was inspired by, lol.) Hopefully Alex forgives the liberty I’ve taken…(* I’ll run hide under the table right after posting this*

So here are my 10 worst picks:

1.   Heaven’s Gate (1980)                           2. Mommie Dearest (1981)

3. Showgirls (1995)                                     4.   Battlefield Earth (2000)

5. Sweet Home Alabama (2002)              6. Gigli (2003)

7.   The Room (2003)                                 8.   Derailed (2005)

9.   Alone in the Dark (2005)                   10.  I don’t know How she does it (2011)

So, ahem, now for the flash fiction:

Mommie Dearest, M.D.

Mother to Son, Mary Gallagher Stout

I don’t know how she does it, but Mommie dearest manages to derail my life every time she steps into it, which is often. By Mommie dearest, or MD (as I call her when I’m alone in the dark), I mean my wife Gigli’s mother.

Mine, bless her, gave up the ghost when I was still a fairly runt-sized boy, and just about the only thing I remember of that woman is the smack of her hand on my bottom.

MD uses big words like Heaven’s Gate, Hellfire, the Earth as a Battlefield Between Good and Evil. I’ve grown up with small words like cold, hunger, roof, money, food, knife, rain, dark, sun, blood, water, hate, winter, and done just fine.

So MD’s words are lost on Gigli and me, who, unknown to her mother, is a showgirl at a gig I got her in the next town, Muck City, in our sweet old state of Alabama. Gigli is what they call her there, and what I call her ever since I married her ten years ago. MD calls her Gertrude.

Just yesterday, MD stopped by, and tried yet again to take me to church, being Sunday and all. She calls herself my soul-doctor.  It has always been like that in my marriage; me, Gigli, and MD makes three.

I left, of course, so Gigli could deal with her mother like she always does. I got drunk as a skunk, and came back home hoping MD had left. Not.

So I went to The Room, where I take all ladies who remind me of MD, to be alone with them in the dark. Knife, blood, Heaven’s Gate, we did it all, as usual—me and the woman I found. I left her in a trash bag, the letters M and D scrawled on her pitted bottom.

I’m tired now, and if you know me, you’ll know I’m a man of few words. I like it straight and narrow. So the next time MD stops by, she comes with me to The Room, and I don’t care what Gigli has to say about it. I’ll make an honest, spiritual M.D. out of her yet.

———-

A to Z Stories of Life and Death

If you liked this piece and would like to browse through more of my work, check out  A to Z Stories of Life and Death, available on Kindle and Smashwords.

P.S: The story came from the movie titles and the picture, and I took it down as it came. It is not meant to offend sensibilities.

To Finish Is Also a Painful Thing: Fiction

Hourglass Sketch: Photo Credits: Rebecca Rentz.

To start something new and not finish is a painful thing, said Mrs. Winter, her pencil poised above thick, sand-creamy paper.

No such compunctions for Mr. Winter, though, who at that very moment had given up on sawing through the log for the artist’s stool for Mrs. Winter. A ready-made stool would do just as well, and not create half as much work or dust, said Mr. Winter, his gecko hands folded in front of him. He walked through the puddles of half-finished projects he had left in his den, and sought out the fireplace to smoke a pipe. He could wait a few more days (or weeks, or months or years) to meet Mrs. Winter with her new stool.

Mrs. Winter sketched out an hourglass, then added a leak— sand trickling, grain by grain, out of the bowl above into the bowl below, and from the bowl below on to the floor. That’s my life, said, Mrs. Winter, folding her gecko hands in turn, lonely blood flowing out on the cold, waiting snow. She kept sketching, and forgot about lunch.

Mr. Winter fell into a nap by the fireside.

When it was time for dinner, Mrs. Winter got up, tried to stretch out the cricks from her back and shoulders, felt them rise into her head, become an ache. Her sketch was done, the very first draft of her painting.

Getting fitted with a gecko’s limbs was a small price to pay to live longer, to climb out of any disaster, to finish everything that had seen a start.

But just then, the ground beneath her feet shook, the pens on her table rattled, the water in her glass sloshed out, the glass rolled over and smashed on the floor.

Downstairs, the large head of a stag Mr. Winter had hunted many decades ago dropped on his head and knocked him out. He never knew what got him.

Mrs. Winter felt every blow, heard each pot and pan in the kitchen crash, absorbed the thud of something heavy, a tree or a pole, as it flattened her garage, felt the table and then the roof plummet on her, beating her to slow but conscious pulp.

To finish is also a painful thing, said Mrs. Winter, blood dripping on her hourglass sketch with its penciled black-and-white blood. She closed her eyes, and presumably joined Mr. Winter for the first time in years.

———

A to Z Stories of Life and Death

If you’re intrigued by this piece, you can find more of my work in A to Z Stories of Life and Death.

———Fiction authors, take a look at the

Rule of Three Blogfest

The Rule of Three at Renaissance

a month-long shared-world fiction extravaganza starting 5th October— with some great prizes, and of course, a lot of exposure and constructive feedback for your writing. This is one Blogfest fiction authors ought not to miss. Go ahead and sign up!

Patricia Lynne: Being Human

Being Human, by Patricia Lynne

I write quite a bit of short fiction on this blog, some of which resulted in A to Z Stories of Life and Death.

This week I’ve decided to switch it around a little–still short fiction, only I’m not writing it.

On the 25th, I hosted Stuart Nager’s flash fiction, and today I give you Patricia Lynne, whose book ‘Being Human‘ is making a quite a splash just now. If you haven’t heard of it, I suggest you follow the link here and take a look! Without further ado, I present:

Stars In Her Eyes Flash Fiction by Patricia Lynne

The first thing he saw was the stars. They shined brightly, filling the inky blackness. For a moment, he admired them. As he watched, one shot across the sky. A voice murmured in his head, a memory flitting to his forethoughts.

Look honey, a shooting star. Let’s…

The memory disappeared before it could finish. He tried to recall it, but it was gone. More memories followed, disappearing before he even had a chance to recall them. A knot of panic filling his chest, propelling him to his feet and into action. He ran as fast as he could, racing the disappearing memories and trying to reach… Where was he going?

When he finally stopped running, he didn’t recognize the house before him. Despite that, he found himself moving towards the door. Energy hummed at him, pushing him away. He fought against it, knocking on the door until a light flared overhead.

“Darren!” The woman at the door grabbed him, hugging tightly. She pulled him inside, the energy fading from the invitation. “Why were you knocking? Did you lose your key?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

He glanced at his unfamiliar surroundings. Was this home? A whisper of instinct said yes. It said this woman before him was important to him. But the reasons why were gone, vanished with his memories. He felt something else take the place of the memories, a pulsing and thumping that vibrated through him. It resonated in his stomach and as instinctively as he knew this house was his home, he knew what it was: Hunger.

“Darren?”

He looked at the woman. “Yes?”

“Where have you been?”

“I don’t remember.”

He could tell she didn’t like the answer, but she didn’t comment on it. Instead, she sighed deeply, as if the action hurt. “You’re filthy, come on, I’ll help you clean up.”

As she led him through the house, the hunger pulsed louder. It burned through him, yanking on him and demanding to be sated. His eyes locked on the back of her neck. So easy…

No! He banished the idea. He couldn’t hurt her. But he was so hungry. He swallowed, his mouth feeling on fire.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” she asked when he softly whimpered.

He tried to find words to describe the pain he was in, how the hunger burned him. But her eyes had caught him, locking him in. In awe, he stared, forgetting for a moment the raging hunger and pain. Her eyes sparkled like stars and he swore he saw his missing memories. Each moment filled her eyes, telling him of his life – their life. It sucked his breath away.

“I love you,” he whispered.

A smile filled her face, eyes sparkling more. “I love you too.”

He lunged for her neck.

————–

Being Human by Patricia Lynne will be available on Amazon, Smashwords, and hopefully Barnes & Noble and other retailers August 30^th 2011. Thanks for reading.

email: patricialynne07@gmail.com

Twitter:  @patricialynne07

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/patricialynne07

Show me a Rhythm and Love me a Dance

Crystal Blue Angel Wing Copyright Shadoweddancer

Each morning I write, sometimes days based on word prompts,  picture prompts on other days. Here’s the picture and the piece I wrote in the last ten minutes:

————–

Show me a rhythm and love me a dance, he said to her, his feathers ruffled against the cold breeze.

Now why did he say that? He had forgotten sensation in the time he had spent away from the human world, which could be an year, an aeon, or a few seconds in the silly vocabulary they use to measure the immeasurable, which is a point, after all, a line, a circle, a sphere, a spring all at the same time.

They sat suspended between times, between worlds, and it is this that intrigued him, that he could feel it all–how cold it was outside the cave, the softness of her skin embedded on her soul, the taste of her last meal of asparagus and wine, just before she left her world in his arms, this famous singer-dancer-entertainer.

He sensed it all, but could not decide if he liked it. He had moved so far away from like and dislike, from the polarities of that world.

But there was nothing for it, he had to wait before the gates opened again, and in this wilderness between worlds, this cave was all he could manage. Not much harm in letting the sensations take him for this breath of time, and then he would carry her to the gates, and return to pick up his next charge.

But that is not what happened.

The singer-dancer-entertainer woke up in her home, a few seconds later, coughing up wine, startling her guests who had begun to mourn her.

He found himself in the dark, reduced to a dot of existence, a cellular tissue of awareness. A mistake. All angels knew feeling was a mistake, they’re not supposed to feel, just be.

Now he must be born into this human world. Must learn, through pain and sensation, to rise above both. He must remember.

———————-

A to Z stories

If you’re intrigued by this story, look up A to Z stories of Life and Death,my ebook of short stories just like this one. Many thanks to Rachel Morgan and Alex J Cavanaugh for featuring this book on their blogs. I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of the blogging community, and would like to thank all those who visit my blog and cheer me on. Writing is sometimes a hard, lonely job, and I’m happy that other than the satisfaction that comes from the process of writing, I’m fortunate enough to be given so much love.