Category Archives: Just Write

The moon and shadow

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Just Write (belated catchup): June 9th

I have been somewhat slack in typing up any and all output from recent writing group classes so back to the meeting from the 9th. We spun together a story based on a three stage trigger – a set of three top-of-mind nouns, an imagined landscape, and a character we’d never really thought about before. So, here’s what came of that:

……

Lana jumped on the the back of the mech-bus as it began to move, her umbrella pulling itself shut automatically behind her. She didn’t much notice as the mirco evaporators briefly flared, harvesting and stray water molecules from the umbrella’s surface. Damn pilots she thought. Since they put through that AI upgrade you might as well forget the timetables. Behaving like those real drivers she’d read about from the past, coming and going as they pleased.

She sat. It was only five minutes to the University but she’d been out in that downpour for a while and the seats had the same tech as her umbrella. Weather was getting worse. More extreme even here. God knows how people coped near the equator now, those that were left anyway.

The windows facing her were all running ads. She realised that she’d forgotten to turn her pers-com to private and her presence had been registered. A sequence of commercials tailored to her began to run, isolated on the window in front of her. A set of texts for her study to be sent direct to her personal logs. A bag that matched her umbrella. So far, so predictable she thought, remembering why she ordinarily held her settings as private. Then the window filled with a desolate, grey expanse of rock. A voice: “ever think of starting again ?”. You’re not selling this, she thought. The shot panned to a solitary footprint in the dust, then up and away from the print to an American flag, firmly planted in the ground. With a start she realised this place to start again wasn’t here. It was the moon. They were trailing the colony program again. But why her ? She knew, or thought she knew, enough about the algorithms in the ads that tailored content and messages to individuals. Why did they think she would want to go there ?

……

In case you’re wondering my three nouns were umbrella, bus and University. I had intended to write about the moon but it somehow turned into a pre colonisation story (or the start of one at least). I enjoyed putting it together in the class and could have quite happily spent much longer in 2100 or thereabouts although I’m not sure there’s much new in the final result. Anyway, homework was a stripped back version of the exercise in the class in that each of us gave the person to our left a single word as the trigger for a story. Mine was “shadow” which resulted in this:

……

“Your father lives in shadow.”

“But he lives ?”

The question echoed around the chamber, bouncing back from unfurnished stone. The tomb was cool and still, the question remaining unanswered by the dead. Varane asked it again of the living.

“He lives ?”

“Aye, he lives boy. If dwelling in the shadow can be called living.”

Varane turned. Only Zamar would dare address him as boy, especially in this place amongst generations of his line. Zamar met the boy’s questioning look, narrowed his eyes as if silently appraising him, before speaking again more softly.

“When a man crosses to the shadow Varane he is lost to us. None has ever been reached, none returned. He may dwell there a day, a week, a year – your father is a strong man – but eventually we will lay him here.”

As Zamar spoke Varane paced the tomb, every couple of strides taking him past another generation, names from the past, names and deeds he’d been learning since he could read. He paused at the far end of the room and brushed dust from a name etched into the largest and oldest stone coffin: Ombrager. He lowered his head and whispered:

“How many ?”

“My liege ?” asked Zamar.

Varane lifted his head but did not turn. “How many Zamar ? How many of them…” he raised his arm gesturing at the row of coffins. “How many of them were lost to shadow ?”

“Varane…” began Zamar advancing towards the boy. “It is not yet time to know. You are still so young my liege.” There was a note of kindness in his voice.

“Not time ?” Now Varane did turn. “Not time ? My father lives in shadow and it is not time ?” He strode towards the older man jabbing a finger accusingly. “It is past time Zamar. For all you call me boy it is well past time. Ten generations lie here. How many Zamar ? How many were lost to it ?”

Zamar didn’t move and the two stood face to face in the middle of the chamber, neither breaking the other’s gaze.

“Ten my liege” he said flatly.

Momentarily Varane’s eyes betrayed his shock; a flicker that spoke of incomprehension and a touch of fear. Just as quickly it was gone and Zamar could discern nothing in his grey eyes beyond implacable resolve.

“All of them. Every Ombrager Varane. Some young, some old but all lost to shadow.”

“And none ever reached ?” asked Varane.

“None” replied Zamar gently. “No man passing to shadow has returned.”

Abruptly both men looked back up the tomb, the door had been shoved open and a slight figure stood silhouetted in its frame, light streaming around it. The figure stepped forwards into the tomb, planted hands on hips and grinned.

“Zamar has you right brother” she said. “No man has lived in shadow and returned. But I have.”

“Aurore ? Is that really you ? How… how can this be ?” Varane stepped tentatively towards his sister.

“It’s me little brother” she said. “I lived in shadow and I have returned.”

……

I may return to this (although that would entail working out actually what the hell the shadow is beyond some vague allegorical ideas) as I quite like it. I would change the names as the first couple were nicked from the French football team as I was watching them play in the World Cup at the same time as writing… the latter ones (Ombrager, Aurore) had more of a point relevant to events when translated. Sacre bleu. 

Dear diary…

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Just Write 19th May: Diary

It’s impossible for me to write the words “dear diary” without it calling to mind “Heathers” which remains one of my all time favourite movies. So many brilliant lines (the clip above has at least two belters in 90 seconds – “are we going to prom or to hell ?”, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count”) and wickedly funny. However, this post has nothing to do with “Heathers” other than the fact that my writing class this week was concerned with diary entries as a potential route in to creative writing.

Starting with the homework from the previous class… We were tasked with keeping a diary for the week but I didn’t do that, or didn’t do that quite as briefed. Inspired by the session on first lines from a fortnight ago I decided to just do an opening line for each day. This in no way reflected the fact that I had left the whole thing until an hour before the class began. No way. Don’t dare insinuate as such… Here ’tis:

Tue 13

I’ve kept a diary since I was 13 and know days that aren’t worth recording: today is one of them.

Wed 14

My new boss fixed me with another stare and leaned in close: “I was a combat soldier for 10 years so I’ve seen people struggle with similar things”.

Thurs 15

“The bomb disposal team are now investigating the car” intoned the voice over the tannoy as we descended another flight of stairs, walking past a sign that ominously declared: “no refuge beyond this point”.

Fri 16

A lovely surprise as one of the bands I had blogged about shares my post on their Facebook page and my blog stats go berserk. (By berserk I mean I get about 200 views in the week which qualifies as berserk relative to my usual stats.)

Sat 17

It doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived here, riding up The Mall in the back of a black cab, watching Buckingham Palace recede through the rear window, still feels magical: like the opening credits to your own movie, the script as yet unwritten.

Sun 18

Nikki is claiming she will never drink again; I am silently congratulating myself on ducking the cocktails in favour of a humble beer.

Mon 19

Decide to start my homework two hours before it’s due which, if a diary is supposed to be an insight into character, is a pretty telling insight. Spend some time debating with myself whether it’s technically cheating to just write first lines for each day in a cunning attempt to splice together the task with something we were doing in the last session. Spend so much time debating it that a first line becomes as much as is realistic in the remaining hour.

I actually thought this worked out pretty well although it helped that some genuinely interesting things happened to me in the week – notably being evacuated to the sub vault of the Bank of England during a bomb scare. Perhaps I should try a one line diary over a longer period of time.

The class itself was a really enjoyable one with a nice mix of character profiling and some subsequent writing based, in part, on the diary idea. The character profiling involved writing up some basic details that we associated with a couple of random selected photographs: name, age, significant others, enemies, current problem etc. In so doing myself and my partner for the exercise came up with a slightly convoluted story about two Americans – Dr Chuck Brody and Charlie Wright and Chuck’s struggle to be honest about his sexuality. It wasn’t entirely serious and wound up a bit like an episode from “Days Of Our Lives”, the soap that Joey from Friends stars in as Dr Drake Ramoray. Anyway, part one of the exercise was a diary entry from, in this case, Dr Brody, about one of three scenarios we were given – in our case, fortunately, one of them was “having an affair” as we’d already made that part of the story up in developing the characters ! Part two was supposed to be more of a show-don’t-tell piece of prose just after the moment at which the affair had become known to both parties. Make of it what you will:

Trouble again today, I can’t keep this from Charlie for much longer. Met up with Milton as planned, the usual pretext for Charlie – we’re just catching a game of tennis after work. Went to that new place down town, La Scala. Figured she wouldn’t know, besides I think she was trying to sort things out with Grace tonight. But Leyton was there. Man what are the chances ? He saw us. We spoke for chrissakes, I made something up about double booking the court but did he see how close we were ? It’s not so strange, two guys catching a bite to eat and Leyton’s met Milton before so why am I freaking out ? It’ll break her, this on top of the custody battle. What was that joke she keeps making ? You’re number two Chuck, this has gotta work out – I can’t be a divorce lawyer with two divorces on my watch.

……

Leyton called the waiter over to get the cheque and then froze, fingers raised in the air. It was Chuck and Charlie. He was about to turn his raised fingers into a wave to attract their attention but hesitated. Charlie had quickly taken her seat leaving Chuck standing, a puzzled look on his face. She had already picked up a menu, raised in front of her face like a shield. Chuck sat down opposite her and studied the table in silence. Hadn’t he seen Chuck in here last week ? With that guy ? Milton. That was him. They’d been sat together, maybe poring over some documents he guessed, shuffled up close so they could both see. He’d said hello but they’d seemed offhand and Chuck had dashed off. Strange he was back so soon, he must have rated this place. Charlie was still buried in her menu but, briefly, it lowered as she let it slip from her fingers. It was hard to tell across the room but Leyton could’ve sworn she was crying.

As mentioned it all came out far soapier than planned. I think we’d set up a comedy (even with daft name gags – Milton Keynes and Leyton Buzzard) which I then didn’t really commit to in what I ended up writing so it sort of fell somewhere between a not very funny farce and a not very convincing drama. Ho hum. Lessons learned… and I guess that’s the point.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

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Just Write, Monday 5th May: First lines.

I have been a little remiss in posting updates following the last couple of writing class sessions so I’ll try to redress over this post and next to cover the 5th and 19th (we didn’t meet on the 12th). As my first line suggests we spent some time a fortnight ago covering, ahem, first lines. From a relatively straightforward prompt – man and woman meeting for the first time – I had:

She only realised she was still alive as he pulled her dead husband off her.

“I can’t believe it meant that little to you. It’s me, Sophie !”

“Hi, are you Michaela ? Thanks for filling in – I usually throw the knives from here but just relax, I’ll let you know where to stand”

Notably none of them will be troubling this post’s title as killer openings (typing this up I note that I’d scribbled “it is a truth universally acknowledged…” in the margin of my notebook, possibly as inspiration, possibly as an ironic nod to the limits of my efforts). However, I don’t entirely hate the slightly gloomy first one and the last one works alright in a light, knockabout way.

The main exercise expanded from a prescribed first line and, as usual, involved a quick five minutes of free writing. Opener was “why did you do that ?”

“Why did you do that ?”

“I don’t know.” I was pleading now, an urgent catch in my voice. My head was swimming and I tried to slow everything down, tried to make sense of it all.

“Come on !” he barked. He’d been growing ever more impatient, striding around the small holding cell, and now he leaned in close. “You must know Mr Reynolds. You do know.”

Silence hung between us. He didn’t move away and I held his gaze for fear that to look away might hint at guilt, might give him further cause to doubt me. Eventually he strode back across the room, his back to me.

“You withdrew £200 Mr Reynolds, on each of your three cards. Yesterday we have a witness statement that says you bought a new mobile phone but you were still in contract on your old one. You erased the contents of your hard drive.”

“I just don’t know…” I trailed off.

“And today, Mr Reynolds, we pulled your wife out of the Manchester canal. So I ask again: why did you do that ?”

I am tending to find that I’m producing work outside of the class – either as part of the homework or unrelated – that I’m more satisfied with and this wasn’t an exception. I like the discipline of being thrown a start point and having to produce something but it’s rare that it produces anything I’d necessarily keep. In this instance I was reasonably happy with the mood of the scene and the premise was okay (man genuinely not aware of what he may or may not have done despite large body of evidence against him) if not especially original. I suspect, however, that a terse, tight thriller is not going to be my calling…

I would like to write about…

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Anything that doesn’t contain the word “customer” or “segmentation” or “retail” or any of those myriad of corporate non-words that I regurgitate every day. That language that is never taught but which everyone in an office learns to speak. Going forwards. On the same page. Outside the box. Out of our comfort zone. All utter nonsense.

Going forwards, to really get out of my comfort zone, to fully step change my thinking out of the box, I’d like to actually write about:

  • A story of grief and escape, Emily’s story as she comes to terms with the loss of her father and finds expression through their shared love of country music. A wise, sad, funny coming of age story I’d like them to say. I’d settle for less.
  • A knockabout comedy loosely based on The Wizard of Oz; a girl named Dorothy moves to London from Australia, landing in an upstairs flat as the woman in the flat beneath dies. She would meet, and date, three men lacking in brain and heart and courage before setting her faith in someone else; he, of course, would prove to be a fraud. There probably wouldn’t be winged monkeys.
  • Six stories, interlocking, set in and around Marylebone station. The conceit being that each story would start as a train arrived at each of Marylebone’s six platforms. The centre piece involves a chance meeting of a man and woman who, through a plot device yet to be established, end up killing a substantial amount of time together exploring the streets in that part of town. I guess it would be about falling in love, an exploration of those first moments as strangers realise a deep set connection. There’s a risk that this doesn’t so much tread as trample on Richard Linklater’s toes – if you haven’t seen “Before Sunrise” then don’t watch it, you will never need know my inspiration.
  • Me. Perhaps in a way that comes off as slightly less narcissistic than just “me”. I would like to tell my story, how I made some bad choices and ended up with a career I didn’t really want. How my body parts ganged up on me over a period of a few years and decided to fail, one by one. How my mind, previously relied upon as a trusted ally, joined the rebellion. How my so called career careered out of control (puns are non negotiable) and I spent a glorious six months out, re-evaluating, reconnecting, not thinking too much. How, during that time, I saw llamas in Amersham and, in that oddly incongrous moment, saw my life as mildly absurd but potentially wonderful. How the appearance of something out of the ordinary could help me see that everything might be seen fresh as out of the ordinary: family, friends, the school run, cleaning the bathroom even. I would write that as the happy ending, as the lesson learned, and then I would write the epilogue; that life’s not as neat as that, that sometimes when you return to where you saw the llamas it’s now just sheep and no matter how much you tell yourself that just sheep can be out of the ordinary too, it’s hard. It’s ordinary. It’s just sheep. Undoubtedly I would write using other metaphors and other analogies. Hopefully some of them would be better than that one….

……

My writing classes began again last week and, as promised, I’ve scrapped the old labelling of those posts in the title – I’ve even given these posts their very own category. The piece above was actually the homework for next week – write for 5 minutes or so from “I would like to write about…” as a trigger.

The bulk of the class was spent on an exercise in “show, don’t tell” (none of which I appear to have used above) which was surprisingly hard; finding means to reveal character or what someone is feeling through their actions. None of it was remotely in a shape to be shared here… so I won’t.

At some point I should possibly assert some kind of copyright on this blog in the unlikely event that I write something a) good b) that is read, and c) gets stolen. Whilst I investigate how I do that then take this sentence as an assertion that the work herein (herein sounds suitably legal) is mine and please don’t duplicate it or share it without appropriate acknowledgement of the source (i.e. me).

Just Write: Week 8, 17th March – part 2

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door

I opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it tight behind me. Shut all of it out.

The room was empty. Four grey, stone walls, with matching floor and ceiling. A single blue door facing me in the opposing wall, identical to the one I’d just shut behind me. I crossed the floor towards it.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it tight behind me. Shut all of it out. Went further inside.

This room was also empty. Four grey, stone walls, with matching floor and ceiling. It was a little darker than the previous one, the only light pervading from the cracks around the door behind me, less light leaking through to this room than the one before. Otherwise it was a replica. A single blue door facing me in the opposing wall, identical to the one I’d just shut behind me. I crossed the floor towards it.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it tight behind me. Shut all of it out. Went further inside. Further beyond reach.

The third room was empty. Four grey, stone walls, with matching floor and ceiling. The light was faint now, a pale glow describing a rectangle behind me, thin tendrils reaching into the room ahead. Enough to see that there was nothing to see except the familiar single blue door facing me in the opposing wall, identical to the one I’d just shut behind me. I crossed the floor towards it.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it tight behind me. Shut all of it out. Went further inside. Further beyond reach and reason.

The fourth room – was it the fourth room – was empty. Four grey, stone walls, with matching floor and ceiling. It was quite dark now, the brief illumination as the door opened quickly fading. It didn’t matter as there was nothing to see, nothing here. Reflexively I crossed the floor towards where I know will be a single blue door in the opposing wall, identical to the one I’d just shut behind me.

I opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it tight behind me. Shut all of it out. Went further inside. Further beyond reach and reason. Was this far enough to be safe ? Or was this too far to come back ?

The next room, number five or six or seven, was also empty. Pitch dark and silent and empty. I had no reason to believe there was anything other than four grey, stone walls, with matching floor and ceiling. A single blue door in the opposing wall, identical to the one I’d just shut behind me, would be there if I was compelled to go further. This far in it was easy to lose orientation: was this further in or the way out ? If I wanted to get out could I find the way ? It is easy to find a way in here, there’s enough light to find a way in to the darkness, but so much harder to come out when the darkness has stolen the light. I hadn’t intended to come this far. A blue door in the opposing wall or is it the blue door in the original wall ?

I opened the door and stepped inside.

……

I have cheated a little here. This isn’t the piece that I wrote in Monday’s writing class but it is the piece that I wanted to write. I’ve posted it without rereading or editing so I may well look back at it and hate it but this was broadly what I wanted to write. The class revolved (pun possibly intended) around a set of pictures of doors – we had to pick one, make some initial notes of ideas it suggested to us, and then write a short piece.

I had a number of ideas but zeroed in on this door pretty much immediately and also knew pretty much immediately that what it suggested to me was a series of rooms that were all identical, repeating, with someone (me) disappearing further and further into them. It was a fairly straightforward metaphor for depression.

However, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to commit to that in the general bonhomie of the last-lesson-of-term and we only had about ten minutes… So instead I wrote a cheery piece on the idea of being tortured in some far flung prison, loosely inspired by Abu Ghraib. It’s not the sort of thing I’d usually write and I don’t think it’s that good to be honest but, I guess, that’s in part because my heart wasn’t really in it. Anyway, for posterity here it is (I would definitely lose the last line looking at it again):

Just before they shoved me inside the blindfold was ripped from my face. Harsh sunlight pierced my skull and I reflexively shut my eyes, the light playing across the inside of my lids even after they were closed.

A foot in the back of my knee forced me to kneel before I was urged back to my feet. I reached out my arm for purchase and grabbed at the door; a cool blue in a blank stone wall of grey. The door opened and I staggered in, managing two steps before sinking to my knees again. Adjusting to the relative gloom I blinked and glanced around, tried to take in where I was. It was a dark, square space, illuminated from behind me by the light streaming in through the door and ahead by a solitary bulb suspended from the ceiling. It hung above a simple metal chair in the middle of the stone floor. There was no other furniture save a large, deep sink on one wall, the tap dripping and with water pooling beneath from some rusted, leaking pipe. My eyes followed the shape of the pool as it edged into the room, finally reaching a carelessly tossed towel. The towel was stained red with something.

I was dragged back to my feet, weakly protesting, struggling in vain as they pulled me to the chair. Through the terror I realised the towel was stained with blood.

Just Write: Week 8, 17th March – part 1

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I’m splitting week 8 (final week of this term, *sobs quietly and wonders what to do on a Monday night*) into two parts as per last week. Not in any way because I think it is going to drive a sudden explosion in page views – it didn’t last week – but because I think the posts are a little more digestible.

Homework from week 7 was to visit a place that you regularly walked past (or knew of) but never went into and then try to capture how that made you feel. I thought this one worked out quite well but I am rarely best placed to judge my own work… so let me know what you think:

I expected it to feel like the 1980s; a place out of time. Not the 1980s of gaudy excess, streamers on Top Of The Pops, city boys with braces, but the 80s that was still shaking off the dowdiness of the late 70s.

Wimpy. Didn’t they all close ? Weren’t they seen off by McDonalds and Burger King and the caffeinated tidal wave of coffee chains that have flooded UK high streets for the last ten years ? Yet here it is in Amersham. It’s not the most likely place I’d expected to see it – not that I expect to see them anywhere anymore. Wimpy is frozen in memory for me as an unspecified place along the A1 – one of those unassuming service stops at a place like Newark or Grantham before we got the quasi-theme parks every twenty miles along the motorway that we have now. It used to be a straight choice between stopping now or holding out until Doncaster where there might be a Little Chef. This was Little Chef before Heston tried to infuse it with a certain culinary scientific sophistication; Little Chef when the choice of pineapple ring or fried egg on top of your gammon was sophistication enough. Heston hasn’t come a-knocking for Wimpy. Nor Gordon. Not even Jamie it seems.

It does feel a little like the 80s. Pushing open the door and stepping inside is a bit like stepping back into childhood. This used to be a treat, before we were convinced that getting a burger in a poly urethane box was more of a treat than getting one on a plate. The décor evidently hasn’t changed for thirty years, fake formica topped tables and wooden chairs. The chairs have taken on an aged, distressed look that, ironically, would now see them right at home in the fashionable coffee come lifestyle emporium Harris & Hoole a few doors up. The back lit menu above the counter looks much as I remember it as a kid, excepting the “mozzarella melts”. I’m pretty sure we didn’t know what mozzarella was back then, back when Chicken Kiev was the height of exotica. 

Behind the counter a beautiful, vintage Conti coffee machine rises proudly, all reds and polished steel. It faces off against a similarly old Carpigiani ice cream maker – you’d ask for a Mr Whippy, not a Carpigiani. They’re both immaculate, spotless, and have clearly been well tended these last few decades. It’s hard to shake the nagging, slightly sad, feeling that they will remain immaculate now as much from lack of use as from care. Where does Wimpy belong in a world of Baskin Robbins and Costa and the we-all-live-in-a-Manhattan-loft boho chic of Harris & Hoole ? My daughter has never once asked to go into the Wimpy on Amersham high street. Why would she ? There are no “happy meals” – registered trademark – here although I remember many happy meals in them when I was young. And me ? I’ve lived here seven years and this is my first time in. I’m only here to do my homework – the very act of which is itself a nudge towards the nostalgia of childhood that the entire experience evokes – and to be honest the coffee’s not great and I’m getting too old to eat bacon and egg rolls that often in the morning. I certainly can’t blame anyone for preferring the pretense of a Manhattan loft lifestyle to an 80s British bedsit either – I prefer it, this is absolutely not a rose tinted look back at some glorious forgotten past. Would we all rather hang out in Central Perk with Rachel and Joey than in Sid’s Café with Del Boy and Rodney ? The evidence up and down the high streets of the land suggests that we would.

There is something wonderfully incongruous though about Amersham’s Wimpy. It makes no sense – the brand is essentially dead, the town’s demographics are all wrong and there’s tons of competition – but it’s still there clinging on. I doubt I’ll go in again but I like that it’s there, a mental shortcut to days when burgers on plates was a treat. To childhood.

Just Write: Week 7, 10th March – part 2

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Week 7 of this term’s writing class pulled together a few of the themes from the last three or four weeks and focussed on one slightly larger exercise than usual. We all, without a huge amount of thought, came up with four potential characters – just name, age, and profession – which gave us a selection of about 30 to choose from. We picked two and then had to write three scenes – or, effectively, two scenes and a brief ending – with some direction.

First up was a scene in which the two characters are at either a wedding or funeral, second was the start of the overall story, and finally a few lines that suggested the ending of the story. We didn’t know about parts 2 and 3 before writing part 1 and, ultimately, we read back the work in chronological order (i.e. part 2 before part 1) rather than as written. I’ve reproduced here in the order it was written, however.

So I picked Joy, a 34 year old book shop owner, and Grace, a 21 year old student. This is what they got up to:

It was on occasions like this that Joy was given to rue her name. There was something toe curlingly embarrassing about introducing herself at a funeral:

“Hi, I’m Joy”.

There was no getting past it, no matter how sad she made her face, how remorseful her follow up words, there it was. “Joy”. On the least joyous occasion.

She was loitering near to the edge of the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, desperate to avoid an introduction. It was worse here – she’d barely known the guy, he just used to come into the shop pretty regularly. An avid comic reader she remembered. Thought it was graphic novels now she’d asked him once, you know “all grown up” she’d added with a smile. Apparently not. Comics, he’d declared, boldly reclaiming the word from her projections of childhood and the Beano and all that stuff. She’d barely known him but his wife had come to the shop, said it was his favourite place and asked her to come.

Just then she was startled away from her thoughts by a young woman entering the room just next to her. She’d somehow caught her foot on the small step on the way in and tumbled forwards, landing at Joy’s feet.

“God, are you alright ?” said Joy extending her hand, pulling the woman up.

“Yeah, yeah. How embarrassing !” said the woman.

“I’m…” Joy hesitated. “I’m Joy”. An apologetic smile.

“Thanks Joy, hi” said the woman, extending a hand. “I’m Grace.”

……

“No, no, no !” Grace exclaimed. “It just couldn’t happen.”

“It would !” retorted her uncle, turning back to the pile of comics on the table. “There’s precedent Grace.”

“Precedent ?” she snorted.

“Yeah ! There was that arc where the Marvel guys came in to the DC universe…”

“That was just money” she cut him off. “DC did it chasing sad old fan boys like you !” Her uncle cheerily winked at her. “Just money.”

“So you really don’t think Bruce Banner would team up with Bruce Wayne ?”

She rolled her eyes. She knew he was just teasing but they both loved these conversations, she wasn’t sure when they’d stumbled on a shared love of superheroes and the fantastic but it had kept them close now for a long time.

“Wayne’s a loner. Banner’s a loner. They work alone.” It was her final word. Almost her final word. “Besides, one argument and you’ve got the Hulk smashing up the Bat Cave and trashing all that hi tech gadgetry. Never gonna happen.”

Her uncle raised his hands in supplication, accepting defeat, and delighting in the act they’d created, each of them playing their part so well. Sometimes he thought it was all he had.

……

She found it tucked in his oldest pile of comics; she’d been leafing through, inhaling the dusty pages, remembering him. The pink piece of A4 fell out, a single name written in the middle under her birth date: Grace Jenkins.

The room flipped as she caught sight of her father’s name.

……

I enjoyed this exercise albeit I felt the results were a little mixed. I was pretty pleased with my first piece – okay the play on the character’s names is arguably a little trite but I thought it worked quite nicely. However, having made my characters meet in the funeral scene and, consequently, making it feel like the beginning of the story, I was then a little thrown by the instruction to make the second piece the actual start of the story. The outcome was that I pretty much jettisoned Joy altogether and it turned into Grace’s story and her, as it transpires, father (uncle). I didn’t intend that at the outset – it was making itself up as it went along.

Second scene works less well for me. I don’t know where the comic thing came from in the first scene and I kind of ran with it in the second. I’m not sure I’d stick with it if I was revisiting the piece overall. It was interesting though (to me) that I ended up with what was essentially a close father / daughter relationship that hints at some deep sadness to come – well, not really hints, he ends up dead. Fairly big hint. This is at the heart of the bigger story idea I have with the character of Emily from the last couple of weeks.

So, not an unmitigated disaster… but still not quite right in terms of the tone I’m looking for. Last week of term next week. Not long to get it right (fortunately there are more terms to come…).

Just Write: Week 7, 10th March – part 1

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Another snappy title… but I haven’t thought of anything pithy to replace it yet. Next term, next term. It’s hardly as if this site is optimised for search anyway…

Have divided week 7 of the writing class into two as there was a fair amount of writing. Part one then covers the homework from last time; writing trigger was simply “No”, he said. Again we were supposed to write early in the week and edit later. Again there was a reasonable amount of the former and relatively little of the latter. I did, however, find that what I’d written fitted together with something else that I had from a few months ago and both pieces spend some more time with Emily, whom we met a couple of posts ago. She’s in there somewhere although I’m still not sure she’s coming out quite the way she is in my head. Anyway, feedback and comments very welcome as this may – may – be part of a bigger piece eventually. Here ’tis:

“No”, he said. He always said no and she’d almost given up asking.

“Come on Wil, why can’t we just try it ? It’s only one song.”

“We don’t play country music Em. I don’t know how many times we have to go through this. It’s not what we’re about.”

“It’s not country Wil” she half heartedly protested. “I’d say it’s more Americana.”

“Americana ?” he sneered back. “That’s what you have at Starbucks isn’t it ?”. He grinned smugly at his own joke and, not for the first time in recent months, Emily wanted to slap him.

“So what are we about then ?” she said instead, pretending to ignore his ridiculous pun.

The smile vanished from Wil’s face immediately; there was nothing he took more seriously than the band. Emily couldn’t decide if he was more annoying when he was trying to be funny or when he was deadly serious.

“Suburban alienation” he declared solemnly.

Emily strongly suspected that the most suburban alienation he’d ever experienced had been when the guy in Tesco Express had taken one look at his fake ID and refused to sell him a bottle of Strongbow but she played along.

“Alienation ?”

“Yeah, alienation. In the suburbs.”

“The suburban bit is important ?” she enquired, tilting her head, bemused. He mistook it for a doe eyed expression of puzzlement and genuine interest.

“Oh god yeah. It’s like everyone in this town is sleeping, not really alive. I don’t belong here Em, I belong in the city but I’m trapped. That’s why I had to start the band, to try to wake everyone up from their sad and cosy lives.”

In ten minutes he would actually belong in double chemistry but Emily resisted the temptation to remind him.

“I’m not destined for Leighton Buzzard” he finished, moodily staring into the middle distance.

“That’s what I’m talking about.” Emily decided to try one last time. “Let’s do a Whiskeytown song. It’s about escape. They’re all about escape those songs…”

“Did The Clash sing country ?” he asked

“I guess not” she sighed. “But they did embrace a lot of styles…”

“We’re not doing it Em. MK Ultra will never be some hillbilly country hick band”.

…… 

“Play something !”

The shout came from someone at the bar, a regular maybe. The crowd were impatient now, sensing that the band perhaps weren’t about to usher in “a rock and roll liberation from comfortable suburban mediocrity” as the posters outside the pub proclaimed. Emily looked out at the audience and wasn’t convinced that they wanted liberating anyway; there were only five people there and she had a sense that the only mediocrity on offer was currently being served up by the band.

“Play something !” hissed a voice to her left. It was Wil, singer and guitarist in MK Ultra. The name had been his idea (“MK Ultra, like the FBI mind control experiments, like extreme Milton Keynes”) but he’d even got that wrong, she thought, it was the CIA not the FBI. The posters had been his idea too – emblazoned with “wake up Milton Keynes” across the top above a picture of Che Guevera, that suburban mediocrity quote running across the bottom. Emily remembered him picking them up from a local printers (“they need to look professional”) and then helping him add the band’s name by hand; he’d forgotten to include it.

Wil was crouched on his haunches trying to untangle a broken string from his guitar. They’d been half way through a cover of the Manics’ “If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next” which Wil had sarcastically dedicated to the educational establishment of the Greater Bucks area, before his top E string had snapped, bringing the song lurching to a halt.

“We can’t play anything” Emily hissed back. “What are we going to do with just bass and drums ?” She was the band’s reluctant bassist as Wil had insisted that she couldn’t play guitar and she had gone along with it, content to stay out of the spotlight. The five members of the audience had turned their attention back to the bar, a couple of them talking amongst themselves. One of them finished up his pint and began to pull on a coat.

“Come on Em, do something” muttered Wil, briefly looking up from his unsuccessful attempts to re-string. He looked desperate. Playing in Milton Keynes had been a big deal for him. Besides none of the pubs in Leighton Buzzard would let them play anymore.

“I only know country songs, remember ?”

Wil frowned but recognised that the tangle of guitar string that had now managed to wrap itself around his wrist was going to take a while to sort out.

“About escape, yeah ?”

“Yes”, she said, her heart suddenly accelerating. He gestured with his head towards his acoustic guitar propped up beside his amp.

“Just don’t introduce it, okay ?” he said. Then added, “or, if you do, then say it’s Americana.”

Just Write: Week 6, 3rd March

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It has just struck me, on week 6 of reporting back on my Monday night writing adventures, that perhaps the title of each of these posts is possibly not the most exciting hook…. Bit late now. Will look to rectify when I get to term 2.

This week’s class was broadly a build on the previous two in that it looked at characters, through the lens of archetypes, and dialogue. However, before we get into that here’s my homework from the previous week. With just “Yes”, she said as a trigger we were supposed to write a short piece early in the week and then return to it later in the week and edit. I found the former far easier than the latter – to the extent that I ended up writing two pieces. Voila:

The “fun” one (names changed to protect the innocent):

“Yes”, she said. 

“Ah… god, sorry. I didn’t realise”. So it did only open one way.

We looked at each other, me attempting an expression that wrapped up innocent ignorance, profuse apology, and a cautious smile to suggest that we-might-as-well-see-the-funny-side-eh ? I caught the look on her face, not so thinly veiled rage and exasperation, and rapidly dialed down my cautious smile. Aimed for even more apology. It was difficult to rein it in though and it was threatening to escalate from a cheerful smile into a mischievous smirk. All the more so as the torrential rain was now literally dripping off her face. Abruptly I realised I was standing there under an umbrella. This seemed somewhat un gallant in the circumstances, almost as if I was rubbing it in, and I half heartedly offered up its protective canopy to a now sodden Laura.

“Fucking hell”, she half sighed, half seethed. “I’ll have to go all the way round now”. I decided against asking her to mind the language in front of my daughter. Seemed churlish.

“Sorry Laura, I didn’t realise this gate only opened from the inside. I’m so sorry”.

“Well now you do” she said. “Of course it does, it’s a school gate. They generally don’t want people getting in”.

“I saw you running over…” I started before it occurred to me that this wasn’t likely to make things better. I paused but it was too late. She looked at me, an eyebrow raised in question. Quite a wet eyebrow.

“You saw me running ?”

“Er, yeah. I saw you running towards us, waving, but I couldn’t make out what you were calling…” It was the best I could manage.

“I think it was ‘hold the gate’” she said.

“Yes I suppose it probably was” I replied. “But I didn’t quite catch it and so I pulled the gate shut behind me.” Another unhelpful thought popped into my mind and before I could resist it I added, “It’s a school gate. You don’t want people getting in”.

With that, and perhaps now accepting that the back gate wasn’t going to open any time soon, she let out a final, exasperated noise – if the girls had been studying it phonetically it would probably have been “uurgghh” – and ran off back towards the front of the school.

“Katy’s mummy didn’t seem very happy daddy” said a small voice below me.

“No Nevie, she didn’t, did she ?”

“Was it because you shut the gate ?”

“I think so Nevie”

“And she got really wet ?”

“Yes Neve”

“She was absolutely soaking” she declared and after thinking for a moment she added, “And it was your fault really wasn’t it daddy ?”

I didn’t answer but instead turned my attention to getting us across the road to the car park and out of the downpour. As quickly as I could I strapped Neve into her seat, jumped into the front and pulled the car out onto the street. As we sat at the junction back on to the main road, waiting for a gap in the traffic so that we could make our way home, we both caught sight of Laura, now with Katy in tow, making their way back to to the car park. Katy, coat hood up, cheerfully waved at Neve. Laura, without coat, hood, or umbrella, did not.

“Daddy ? Would it be okay if Katy came round for a playdate soon ?”

“Let’s see Neve. Let’s see….”

……

The “sad” one (entirely fictional):

“Yes”, she said.

Later she realised she hadn’t really understood what she was saying yes to but everything had seemed to happen so quickly. Mum had asked her over and over:

“Are you sure you want to come ?”

She’d asked it gently at first but increasingly she’d pushed the question.

“Everyone will understand if you don’t. Are you sure Em ? Are you sure you’ll deal with it okay ?”

Later she realised that Mum had been looking for her own way out. Maybe she was trying to protect her or maybe she was trying to protect herself. Anything but face up to the reality.

“Of course I’ll be there Mum”. Quietly but firmly.

“It’s such a lot to deal with….” Her Mum held her gaze for a moment before looking back at the floor. In half a murmur adding: “You shouldn’t have to…”

Emily watched her mother, neither of them speaking for a few minutes. She noticed how tired she looked, eyes drawn, bags swelling beneath her lids. It struck her that her mum had looked like this for a while, not just since it had happened but before that as well. She just hadn’t noticed it before. It struck her that she hadn’t noticed anything. Tears rose in her eyes and fell silently down her cheeks at the realisation.

“Em ?”

Emily shook her head and closed her eyes, drawing her knees up to her chest and pulling herself into a ball. She shook her head to deny the tears but they fell anyway. The tighter she pulled on her legs, the smaller she tried to make herself, the more they fell; as if they were being squeezed forcibly from her.

“Em… Em….”

Her mother reached for her, wrapping her arms around her coiled frame. It was awkward at first, all there was to embrace were elbows and knees, sharp points of protection for the softly convulsing person within. Slowly though jagged bone gave way and her daughter allowed her to get close, returning the embrace, laying her sobbing head across her chest.

They sat like that until they both stopped crying. Emily’s mother gently took her daughter’s face between her hands and lifted her head up towards her own. Their foreheads nodded, touched and they rested there face to face.

“Your Dad…”

“Don’t Mum… Don’t…”

“Your Dad would have wanted you there Em, you know that ?”

Emily bit her lip and mutely nodded her assent.

“But it will be hard. It will be really hard. No one will blame you if you don’t think you can go. I won’t blame you.”

“I can’t believe… I can’t believe he’s gone”

Her Mum didn’t respond.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone Mum”

Later, when she’d learned all of it, she realised quite how difficult that moment must have been for her mother but understanding it didn’t make it any easier to forgive her. In that darkest moment she hadn’t realised that she wasn’t offered the truth and that the truth was darker still.

“Are you sure you want to come to the funeral, Em ?”

“Yes”, she said.

……

As mentioned earlier I found the editing (in so much as I did any) quite difficult. I have a load of notes for the second piece in particular which largely say things like “this bit needs work” or “change this bit”. I’m not entirely sure but I suspect that isn’t all that a decent editor does, is it ? Overall I was reasonably happy with both pieces. The tone in the first one is more natural for me and may form part of a series of (mis) adventures based around my six months off work whereas the second one was tougher. However, the second one is broadly a scene – or the beginnings of a scene – from a much longer idea for a story that I’ve had for a while. I hesitate to bandy the word novel around but it would be a story of that sort of length…

In that spirit the piece I ended up writing in the class, following some discussion about archetypes, was based on the same character as the homework – Emily, a teenager struggling to find herself following the death of her father, eventually finding expression through their shared love of country music (which, in itself, makes her something of an outsider in the UK). As luck would have it the archetype I picked out of a hat in the class was “troubled teenager” and the similarly randomly plucked situation for that archetype was “unexpectedly meeting someone whom they thought had died”. The result:

She turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door, reflexively looking at the matt for that day’s post. She barely had time to register that there was a neat pile of letters stacked on the table in the hall, not carelessly scattered across the floor, before she heard the sound.

Three chords softly strummed on an acoustic guitar, echoing up the hallway. Echoing out from the study: from Dad’s study. The same three chords rang in her ears as she walked cautiously towards the study door. It was that Tom Petty song he’d tried to teach her. F. F minor. C. Was that it ? Free falling. He’d loved it, said it was about him – something she’d never really understood until afterwards. Her friends had always teased her about it: “Got your cowboy hat Em ?”. She’d gone with it after a while and told herself that they were right. No one her age listened to that stuff; it was music for old men. Sad old men that left.

She pushed the door and stood in its frame and the playing stopped. A figure she knew, a face that she knew burned in her brain, looked up and smiled.

“Em…” he started.

“Dad ?” was all she managed before the room swam and she fell to the floor, that ghost was the last thing she saw before she fainted.

……

This was odd in the sense that, in the bigger story I have in my head, this scene doesn’t exist – he is definitely dead and definitely doesn’t come back. However, I was quite happy with it, particularly the internal dialogue bits towards the end which start to reveal a bit of Emily and what she’s been through. I may stay with her for a while, kinda irrespective of whether I think the scene is in my story or not, and see what she does…

The eagle eyed and musical amongst you will note that Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ does not go F, F minor, C but I couldn’t remember what the chord instead of F minor was… and nor could Emily so it was okay ! That song was never really in my head in relation to this story either but popped in during the class. It’s not a perfect fit for the story I have in mind but works well enough if you squint a bit (dial up the i’m gonna leave this world for a while section)… As I’m good to you here it is in all its glory:

Just Write: Week 5, 24th February

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Writing classes resumed after a week’s absence for half term with a focus on dialogue. If nothing else in the past few days it has made me appreciate that the placement of the “” speech-mark on a Mac is one of the few things that’s less intuitive than the standard keyboard position above the 2 found on most laptops. I digress.

Homework had been something of a spying mission; to eavesdrop on some real life dialogue, transcribe it, and note down what struck you in terms of its flow and tone. In a triumph for technology over ethics I achieved this by using the voice recorder on my phone and picked apart a brief piece of conversation that I recorded and, I should add, subsequently deleted. I won’t transcribe it here: it’s not something that I’ve actually written and was done only for the purposes of listening to how people really talk.

A number of (I guess, obvious) things were striking to me. Firstly, the extent to which conversation just doesn’t follow any readily accepted written convention – it really isn’t a series of “turns” by its participants. People interject and interrupt, brief sub conversations start up and die, people get off track, come back to the point, lose it again. Secondly, quite a bit of it is pretty dull. Some of this might be as straightforward as people playing through a set of social conventions (“hello, how are you ?” etc.) and some of it might be just, you know, that all of us have our fair share of moments being dull. Every single sentence that comes out isn’t a pithy one liner worthy of Dorothy Parker or Clive James or <insert your own favourite wit here>. Finally, pace was quite interesting to me as the cadences of people’s speech change dependant on a variety of things, from what they’re talking about to how likely it is they think they’re about to be interrupted, to the emotion they’re trying to convey. That’s a tricky thing to capture within written dialogue itself – without clues that might come off as clunky (she said slowly…).

The exercise didn’t entirely disabuse me of the notion that I like quite stylised speech in books and films; I don’t necessarily want fictional people to talk like real people, I want real people to aspire to talk like fictional ones. I guess the important thing is to try to write dialogue that reveals character. This struck me more as I took on some additional, self administered homework and picked out some random pieces of dialogue from work that I admire – specifically Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (if pushed, my favourite book), Armistead Maupin’s “Tales Of The City”, and Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X”. I’ve included the snippets as an appendix at the bottom of this piece – no copyright infringement intended and all that.

Whilst stylistically very different it was telling in all of them that, even taken out of context, you got some sense of the character that was speaking – it gave you something to go on whether it’s Michael’s faux melodrama, McMurphy’s glee and mischief, or the Gen X’ers self involvement (pot, kettle, black – I know but technically I am a Gen Xer). The voices are distinct.

The main exercise in the class wasn’t so far removed from my extra curricular work. We were given a randomly assigned line of dialogue from a book and had to work it in to our own free written (i.e. ten to fifteen minutes, whatever comes) piece, ideally with a focus on a conversation. It turned out that I knew the book that my line was from – still not sure whether this was a good or bad thing – and once that was in my head it was difficult not to reference it in some way. So, here it is, with apologies to a couple of old school friends whose names I shamelessly plundered in this piece:

“Three pints ? said Arthur”

“At lunchtime ?”

John sat bolt upright in the bed as he called back the line.

“Let’s not do that”.

“Why not hoopy froods ?” asked Dan.

“We did it last week, remember ?”

“Did we ?”

“Yeah, Willsy was passing that paper round in the back of Latin. Hobbo never suspected a thing.”

“How far’d it get ?” asked a now interested Dan.

“Vogon poetry I think. Definitely past the towels but then Jenkins cam in about that Maths thing for half term and I think he knew we were up to something.”

“God, Jenkins… There’s a guy that doesn’t know where his towel is.”

“What do you want to do then ?”

“Is this a cheese shop ?”

“No ! Not again” all of them said in unison.

“What have the Romans ever done for us ?”

“No, seriously, no Python.”

“Ever wonder why girls never talk to any of us ?”

“It’s a mystery my friend, a mystery….”

Looking at it now it didn’t quite do what I wanted – I had a fairly specific memory of some sort of school trip and a group of lads working their way through a Python recital. It’s in that spirit and some of that comes through but it needs a little more flesh to strictly qualify as prose I think. It’s pretty bare boned at the moment. I also appear to have misremembered the cheese shop sketch as I don’t think the words “is this a cheese shop” are actually in it. The fifteen year old me would have known that. The jump off quote (which I cheated a little by breaking into two lines) is from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy; a book which my friends and I did indeed used to quote at each other.

We also did a quick fire exercise with just the line “yes”, she said as a start point which we had to follow with one line to try to express a girl/woman in a variety of emotional states. This yielded the following (none of which I was particularly taken with):

“Yes” she said. “I wasn’t sure how we’d recognise each other, that’s why I mailed about the carnation.” (shy) 

“Yes” she said. “You’re the little brother, I’m the mummy and you have to pretend that you’ve been really really naughty” (bossy)

“Yes” she said. “It’s what he asked. Turn it off” (sad)

“Yes” she said. “I have had enough, we’re going home” (moody)

“Yes” she said. “He does do that but I won’t leave him” (stupid)

That exercise was a five minute thing at the end and I struggled with it. Of the five the bossy little girl was the only one that really came easily and that’s largely because I have a six year old daughter who, on occasion, does say things like that.

However, all in all, another enjoyable week and much to ponder.

……

It would be remiss of me to not mention that one of my fellow classmates has just co-authored a book that has just been published. It is a non fiction piece on the subject of assisted dying and, amongst other things, compiles some heart breaking personal testimonies on the subject.

It’s an emotive topic but, to my mind, the law in the UK as it stands is wrong on this and we should seek to help people choose the manner of their dying with compassion and dignity. I wish Lesley well with her book and ongoing campaign work.

There are more details here at Dignity In Dying and, for the book, at Assisted Dying: Who makes the final decision ?.

……

That promised appendix (and once again – this is not my work (I wish !) and it’s reproduced solely for reference)

Random snippet from Tales Of The City (Armistead Maupin):

She managed a grin. “That might be nice.”

“Try to control your ecstasy, will you ?”

“I might not be here, Michael.”

“Huh ?”

“I think I’m going home to Cleveland.”

Michael whistled. “That’s not close to death. That is death.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense right now.”

“You mean” – he threw his napkin down – “I just wasted a whole chicken making friends with a transient ?” He stood up from the table, walked to the sofa, sat down and folded his arms. “Come over here. It’s time for a little girl talk!”

Random snippet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey):

“It’s your roll, Cheswick.”

“Hold it a minute before he rolls. What’s a man need to buy them hotels?”

“You need four houses on every lot of the same colour, Martini. Now let’s go, for Christsakes.”

“Hold it a minute.”

There’s a flurry of money from that side of the table, red and green and yellow bills blowing in every direction.

“You buying a hotel or you playing happy new year, for Christsakes ?”

“It’s your dirty roll, Cheswick.”

“Snake eyes! Hooeeee, Cheswicker, where does that put you ? That don’t put you on my Marvin Gardens by any chance ? that don’t mean you have to pay me, let’s see, three hundred and fifty dollars ?”

“Boogered.”

“What’s thum other things ? Hold it a minute. What’s thum other things all over the board ?”

“Martini, you been seeing them other things all over the board for two days. No wonder I’m losing my ass. McMurphy, I don’t see how you can concentrate with Martini sitting there hallucinating a mile a minute.”

“Cheswick, you never mind about Martini. He’s doing real good. You come on with that three fifty, and Martini will take care of himself; don’t we get rent from him every time one of his “things” lands on our property ?”

Random snippet from Generation X (Douglas Coupland):

The first chink of sun rises over the lavender mountain of Joshua, but the three of us are just a bit too cool for our own good; we can’t just let the moment happen. Dag must greet this flare with a question for us, a gloomy aubade: “What do you think of when you see the sun ? Quick. Before you think about it too much and kill your response. Be honest. Be gruesome. Claire, you go first.”

Claire understands the drift: “Well, Dag. I see a famer in Russia, and he’s driving a tractor in a wheat field, but the sunlight’s gone bad on him – like the fadedness of a black-and-white picture in an old Life magazine. And another strange phenomenon has happened, too: rather than sunbeams, the sun has begun to project the odour of old Life magazines instead, and the odour is killing his crops. The wheat is thinning as we speak. He’s slumped over the wheel of his tractor and he’s crying. His wheat is dying of history poisoning.”

“Good, Claire. Very weird. And Andy ? How about you ?”

“Let me think for a second.”

“Okay, I’ll go instead. When I think of the sun, I think of an Australian surf bunny, eighteen years old, maybe, somewhere on Bondi Beach, and discovering her first keratosis lesion on her shin. She’s screaming inside her brain and already plotting how she’s going to steal valiums from her mother. Now you tell me, Andy, what do you think of when you see the sun ?”

I refuse to participate in this awfulness. I refuse to put people in my vision. “I think of this place in Antarctica called Lake Vanda, where the rain hasn’t fallen in more than two million years.”

“Fair enough. That’s all ?”

“Yes, that’s all.”