Tag Archives: writing

SWC-2: The Watch Human

Posted on by under Stray Stories- Challenges, The Stories
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I looked out the window on the back yard and my heart turned to ice in my chest. The masters were in the back yard where they often took their afternoon bones brookside. Ordinarily it was perfectly safe, our town being accepting of small dogs in spite of the prejudice that ran through our country about them.

The shepherd gang had come into town last night, though, and it was well known they did not like our kind. The masters were surrounded by six large dogs whose fangs were bared. Mercedes our matriarch and alpha had drawn Jacopo and Snug behind her protectively, but I knew they didn’t stand a chance if left to themselves. This is exactly why small dogs purchased attack people.

I sprang to the back door and pulled it open using my opposable thumbs and sprinted out into the midst of the pack. In one hand I wielded my oak club. In the other a sharpened stave.

“Back off!” I hissed.

The Shepherd gang’s alpha circled in front of me twice with ears laid low. Then he spoke to my masters, “Don’t plan on staying long you Maltese scum! This town isn’t big enough for both our breeds. If you’re not gone the next time I come to town, I promise even your watch human won’t be able to protect you from me and my pack.”

As one the pack turned tail and leaping the brook they were gone.

Mercedes was whimpering behind me, “Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

THIS POST IN IN RESPONSE TO SANDMAN’S WRITING CHALLENGE NUMBER 2. TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE CHALLENGE CLICK HERE.

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge # 62

Posted on by under The Stories

So this post is an exercise in response to Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge.

I have been wanting to take up writing challenges like this again, and now I have some time to do it. This challenge involves writing a flash piece (usually under 250 -300 words) inspired by a picture. Here is this week’s photo.

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To read all the other submissions click on the underlined link above.

Here is my attempt:

The Bulletin Doorway

For the last week Tom had been drawn to the bulletin board just outside his physics classroom. It started as a tickle in the pit of his stomach on Monday. By Tuesday he was almost forced to stop and gaze at each of the pages stuck helter-skelter across the surface of the board. Wednesday and Thursday the the bulletin board danced through his dreams. With each dream Tom awoke in a cold sweat with the “@” sign strangely burned into his mind’s eye.

Friday came. Tom had all he could do to sit through physics class. When at last the bell rang Tom nearly knocked a girl in a green snow hat over as he barreled through the door to gaze, once again, at the bulletin board. Students jostled him as the mad rush to get to final period came and went.

The last bell rang. The hall grew quiet and then Tom saw the “@” sign stamped at the top of three bulletins tacked to the board. Each bulletin had two words on it. Tom read them aloud in order as he somehow knew he should.

“Now the… Visionary says…Be opened!”

The girl in the green hat whom he had nearly stomped in physics class stood beside him.

“I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out all week. You are the slowest visionary I have ever walked with.” She said.

Then she took his hand and the door opened before them. Without another question Tom stepped through and was gone.

Well That Was NaNoWriMo 2019

Posted on by under The Stories

Well NaNoWriMo 2019 has come and gone. That was quick! It was just like a dandelion…blooming one day and gone to seed the next. I thought I would have more time to be posting updates about my progress, but then I do tend to overestimate my abilities.

In spite of that, the month did exactly what it was supposed to. It saw me through another reading of the novel I am working to complete. I chopped about 6,000  words most of which were leading the narrative rather than letting the narrative lead. I also began a debate with myself over at least one chapter and its future in the novel….I haven’t decided which side of me wins this fight yet. DO YOU EVER FIGHT WITH YOURSELF LIKE THAT?

 

I also wrote about five scenes of backstory some of which will (I think) make it into the novel’s final form. Of course they will need to be rewritten. My first drafts are always….well let’s just say not fit for public consumption. My sister would call them “pieces of Drech.”

What I noticed is that as I worked hard to increase my level of writing productivity, my over all productivity level went up. I  started really paying attention to my blog life again. I accomplished a lot more art work than I usually do. My family started a semi regular game night and I got some of the big cleaning projects done  which I had been sitting on for a while. If this keeps up my family is going to want every month to be NaNoWriMo.

IF YOU PARTICIPATED IN NANOWRIMO OF NANOPOBLANO, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BENEFITS YOU REALIZED?

 

The Romans 12 Cycle: Encourager

Posted on by under Liturgy and Stranger Things, The Stories, Uncategorized

I sing the summer boys

Home. The clamoring crowds

With strong drink letter

Affirmations that at last

The series is in the bag.

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I’ll never say die.

Even when my heroes fall.

I’ll scale the mountains.

I’ll take the skies of midnight

Home in buckets made of clay.

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Shovel the neighbor’s 

Drive. Speaking life to the

Winter wind. In the 

Dark journey the truth now brings

A needle’s golden thread.

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I call forth the Spring.

A three-strand string binds the shards

Of broken mirrors. 

It makes sense of the damaged homes in

Reality’s tapestry.

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I am not a year

Nor a season, month or day

I am but minutes,

An eye for the thread leading

To the finished work, God’s hand.

 

 

The Romans 12 Cycle: Teacher

Posted on by under Liturgy and Stranger Things, The Stories, Uncategorized

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In the lavender

By the lake I write the

Stories. Very few will ever read. Too busy

With the summer sun to learn.

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Autumn annotates

The footnotes of falling leaves.

The mountains are my 

Tablet. I write with the ink

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I sip hot coffee

By the fire, a book in hand.

I thread the needle

With my  tinder thoughts in the

Winter land’s cold hard facts.

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Speak forth the gentle

Green of reason threaded through

The broken mirrors.

Pieces make sense reflected in

Reality’s tapestry.

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I am not the year

Nor a season, month or day.

I am but minutes

Unmasking the threads

To the finished work, God’s hand

 

 

The Romans 12 Cycle: Servant

Posted on by under Liturgy and Stranger Things, The Stories

I stir lemonade,

Sigh and wipe my weary brow.

I wax thankful then

As summer solicits for

The seasons’ warrant.

Rake the leaves. I’ll burn

This body to dust, if that

Is what it takes. I’ll

Do it gladly. My heart is

Woven in the mountain skies.

I am winter’s snow.

You will find me in the work.

No matter how dark it

Gets, I will be the finger

Which pulls the thread no one sees.

In Secret Spring’s green

I snip the weak threads. I break

The mirror. I sweep 

The pieces into place. Glimpse

Reality’s tapestry.

I am not the year

Nor a season, month or day.

I am but minutes

Who work the threads leading

To the finished work, God’s hand.

The Romans 12 Cycle: Prophet

Posted on by under Liturgy and Stranger Things, The Stories, Uncategorized

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A hot summer day,

Once again I read someone

Else’s mail. Sipping

Lemonade as I crochet

Edges of reality.

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The leaves fall. As I

Count the dry bones, I breathe forth

The silence of death

Woven from mountains and skies

Which hem in the Beloved.

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My breath twines with snow

Yet to come. They rebuke me

For seeing the dark,

But what choice was I given?

The winter is my needle.

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Spring’s my thread of green.

New like the shards of broken

Mirrors. Pieces placed

Like manifold wisdom, glimpse

Reality’s tapestry

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I am not the year

Nor a season, month or day.

I am but minutes

Who count the threads leading

To the finished work, God’s hand.

NaNoWriMo 2019: I Don’t Believe In Fate Except In…

Posted on by under The Stories, Uncategorized

I am sitting here in my new home office (which is the same as my old home office just with less junk). I have been poring over story details and thinking about my writing process this afternoon.  For those of you who are theologians I am a Wesleyan Armenian not a Calvinist which in layman’s terms just means, if I am asked to choose between the idea of fate and free will I am going to lean towards free will every time. I am not a big believer in the idea that you cannot escape your fate. I am a big believer in the idea that you get to play a part in your destiny.

That said when it comes to the writing process, as I put pen to paper it feels more like I am just uncovering a story that is already written, not creating something new. The story is new to me, but I feel like it has been floating around  in the spirit realm somewhere just waiting for someone to stumble upon it and give it form. I almost feel fated to write this thing….and so you see my problem.

Does anyone else feel this way as they put their own pens to their own pieces of paper? I anxiously await your input.

NaNoWriMo 2019 & The Writing On the Wall

Posted on by under The Stories

My mentor wrote to me after my last blog post and commented that it sounded from my recent writings like I was discovering writing as a spiritual practice. I think that is an accurate assessment of how things are changing in me.

My initial philosophy of writing was, “writing is a vehicle by which you communicate to others what you think.”

When I started blogging I realized that was a fairly self-centered way of writing. Blogging taught me about the nature of writing and reading in the midst of a community, and how important it was not just to say what I thought, but to listen to the voices of others as I mixed my voice into the community. This second philosophy of writing was, “writing is a vehicle by which you participate in community.”

That second stage philosophy has turned out just to be an oasis to stop at in a much longer journey. I have come to the place where writing is a method by which I begin to wonder what God is doing in the deeper space between the words. It is becoming an exercise by which I  am trying to contextualize  motives and mysteries…the heart of the world, my own heart and in the deepest iteration of the work ,the very heart of God. “Writing is a spiritual practice in which you discover God.”

Our church has recently developed a manifesto. We have published it on place cards for every member of the church to have at home, and we have created giant pieces of art to hang on our walls so that people can read our purpose as they walk around the church. I call it “The writing on the wall.”

I have come to understand that “The writing on the wall” is God’s specific marching orders for us as a church. As I am part of the church these marching orders apply to me. It is necessary that I discover what my position in the church is so that I may understand what part I will have in carrying out these marching orders. Writing  this novel now is contextualizing what my role will be in the future as a member of this church, as a soldier in God’s army and as a citizen of that heavenly domain to which we all hope to attain. It is so much bigger than the novel, and it is the novel all at the same time.

Sounds like a spiritual practice to me and man it is more than I bargained for.