Life in progress

Monthly Archives: March 2013


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Private Thoughts, Private World – Part 2

Incomplete Thoughts

Is there such a thing as a complete thought? When, as writers, do we know our meaning has been entirely understood by our reader?  Is it possible to have entire understanding between two people? After all, there are only so many human experiences, just as there are a limited number of stories, written over and over again from different perspectives. But still, I think not.

It occurred to me that writing a thought is like taking a step. No matter how many times you think you’ve taken your last step, come to the end of your journey, there will always be another step to take until you die. Then all there is left is for someone else to attempt to interpret your life, your steps, your thoughts.

JnT2


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My Opinion

In the spirit of the weekend, and in honour of a very special friend (you know who you are) here is an opera-singing bunny.

Image

You’ll either love it or it will keep you away from my scotch.


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Epilogue Rich Boy

Spotlights shine down like mother’s sun. Father’s love comes after in the form of drugs and liquor. Relive, rich man.

 

On stage, man raises his hand to the shrieking crowd, awed with humility at his fans’ adoration. Grasping the microphone, he thinks of father rolling in his grave.

He sips water from a bottle and shakes the rest over his head, a momentary reprieve from the lights’ insulating heat. Layers of clothing hide scars he openly speaks of yet never reveals. He laments mother’s death with his lyrics and thousands cry for his loss.

Father’s legacy follows him doggedly. Later, alone, man will consume that for which he distances himself from his own offspring. Let the child have his mother.

The boy within bows, singing of the love engraved in his heart.
To go to the beginning of this series click here

Disclaimer: This series is an unauthorized, semi-fictional story, based in part on the author’s imagination.


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A Letter to my Main Character

Dear Stephen,

You were a magician before I ever met you. Nevertheless, I handed you your tricks; your wand, your cards and your bunnies to be pulled from hats.  It was serendipity that you met the love of your life. I didn’t expect you to show up any more than she did. But oh, how I discovered you. We discovered you.

I’ve seen you through many troubles, frights and flights, I watched you dance and fall in love, I saw your joy and your pain. You surprised me and you caused me grief. Most of all I saw you grow as a man. You blossomed before my very fingertips.

Now you have outgrown me. You’re ready to move on. Though perhaps we’ll meet again in another tale, I have to let you go. I am happy to say it was a natural break. You have a life to live that doesn’t need me to tell it.

For now.

Giving away your smile
Your precious crooked grin
Fills me with pride and sorrow
In almost equal measures

Selfish is the heart who won’t let go
Allowing your wings to spread
You don’t need me
Though I created you from scratch

Grown and changed
You look upon me now with love
For what I have given
You have given me much more in return

Sakurai as Stephen Dagmar


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… One Man

Stale air fills sunlit kitchen of childhood’s end. Choking on father’s love fills the coming void. Look back, poor boy. Closed eyes reveal crystalline crimson sparks, drowning in tears of years gone by. Look forward, young man.

Man sits across from father at the kitchen table. Turning and turning a crystal tumbler tinted with two fingers of scotch in a puddle of its own condensation he listens to father’s wheezing breath.

“Give me some,” demands father.

Man regards father. It is the first time man has been alone with him indeed since he was a young child. Man recalls that setting with its backdrop of violence and self-consciously man touches his chest.

“Give me some,” father repeats. He stretches across the table for the bottle but man moves it out of reach. Father begins to cough with exertion.

In the refracted sunlight from the crystal glass man envisions his future, reflected in father’s dull eyes.

Man swallows the remainder of the scotch in his tumbler and stands.

“Give me some,” father chokes.

“Fuck you,” man answers.

Man carries the bottle to the sink. He considers emptying it but instead places it on top of the high cupboard, inches from the ceiling. For the last time man studies father’s dying face.

“I love you father,” man says.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

Final installment click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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At last!

Sixteen and a half long months since the day I began, I finished writing the first draft of my novel this evening.

I’m celebrating by going to bed.


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Advice from Kristen Lamb

Excellent advice about your antagonist!

Author Kristen Lamb's avatarKristen Lamb's Blog

One of the biggest mistakes most new writers make is they don’t understand the antagonist and how antagonists are used to drive plot momentum and ratchet up the stakes. Without true antagonists, there is no way to generate dramatic tension. One of the “outs” many writers try to use is “Well, my protagonist is his own worst enemy.”

Yeah, um no. That’s therapy, not fiction.

All stories need two types of antagonists:

The Big Boss Troublemaker

Since the term “antagonist” confuses a lot of new writers, I came up with the term, BBT. If the BBT is something existential (like alcoholism) then it needs to be represented by someone corporeal. In WWII, the Allies weren’t fighting fascism, they fought HITLER. Concepts need a FACE.

Scene Antagonists

Often allies and love interests will provide the scene conflict. Protagonist wants A, but then Ally wants B.

Today, we’ll use a “My protagonist…

View original post 1,267 more words


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Milestones

Life’s milestones come in so many shapes and sizes. While many are like gigantic boulders others can seem like pebbles at first. But even a pebble can create a ripple.

Today my firstborn, my baby, who has somehow so quickly reached a height of almost six feet and eighteen years of age, moved out. A huge milestone for him and what I thought would be a smaller one for me.

But now I find myself thinking about how empty my house feels, even though my other two children are asleep in their beds. There’s no one to call down the laundry chute to say good-night to before I go to bed. I’ll turn off all the lights without worrying if he’ll trip over anything should he get up in the dark. The ripples have spread, just as my son has spread his wings and proverbially flown the coop. Just like that.


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Private Thoughts, Private World

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Do you see the head of the dragon?

We all have our little private world, filled with thoughts that are seemingly impossible to express in words. Try as we might as writers to embellish, whether by attaching to them a likeness of something totally foreign to the initial thought or by attempting to capture something that is close… neither quite click perfectly in place.

Many times we find ourselves giving up, moving on to something else that seems closer to the human condition, as though no one else has ever felt exactly what we are feeling. And yet we have to wonder, maybe others were as unable to put across that particular idea as we were.

It’s those breakthroughs that keep us going though, isn’t it? When the sun shines on our idea – when we are actually able to put into text what we were feeling, and then our private thoughts, our private world becomes stuff of the outside world, no longer within us.

Free.


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…One Mother

Odd shapes shine on linoleum, on table. Wind outside splays triangles of leaves displaced on again, off again, the clouds whisk like milk boiling on the stove. Struggle, dear mother. Coffee dreams drown bourbon breath bathing father’s last wish. Struggle no more, precious mother.

Mother retrieves a crystal cut tumbler from the kitchen cupboard at father’s behest. Into it she pours the golden liquid until it brims.

Mother and father are alone, as they usually are since the children moved on, brother with his family, boy… mother thinks of boy’s wanderings as something that will certainly bore him eventually.

“Where’s my drink?” father demands.

“I’m coming!” mother cries with cheer.

(to be continued)


To go to the beginning of this series click here

Next installment click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.