NaNoWriMo

: 30 Nov 2007 13:54 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Writers On Writing

'A poor poet immitates, a good poet steals.'  - T S Eliot

'You know, you don't always have a choice what you're going to write. You're not like a cow that can give cream with one udder and milk with another.' - Bruce Duffy 

'The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.' - Ursula LeGuin 

'Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry; make 'em wait.' - Charles Reade 

: 28 Nov 2007 12:59 |  Tags: Icw |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Passageway

A girl found herself in a passageway. It was very long. So long in fact that she could see neither the end nor the beginning. Therefore she assumed herself to be in the middle, chose a direction, and began to walk. There were no doors or windows in this place. No suits of armour for the girl to pass, or candles to mark her way. Yet is was beautiful and full of light, the walls themselves shimmering with gold. The floor was red flagstone, and the ceiling a painted pale sky with streaks of red and orange cloud. The walls were segmented by pillars and arches, between which there were paintings. Image after image decorated the passage until the walls came together in a neat little point just out of sight.

The pictures were of many wonderful and enchanting things. There were evil sprites and fey creatures clambering over the frames and balancing on the cracks. And kings, and queens, magicians and witches, handsome boys and handsome girls; all who were acting out huge and significant tales the girl did not understand.

At first she paid them no heed, but as the repetition of the passage took its toll, she turned to a picture on her left. It was a wood full of the greatest trees one could imagine. They stretched so high into the sky that the girl lost herself in the feeling of smallness. From the greenery stepped a woman wearing a brown dress of skeleton leaves. The girl in the passage was a little shocked and took a step back.

‘Oh,’ said she, ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’

The woman in the picture looked at the girl in the passage, blinked and smiled a half-smile. She replied, ‘Life would be awfully dull if one was never disturbed.’

The girl walked on, a little perturbed, and soon found herself drawn to a picture of a great and grand hall, filled with a banquet of food. It was the most beautiful food that you could imagine, steaming and sizzling in the paint. At one end of the table sat an old king. He was drowsily staring down the table, and as he saw the girl passing by his wall, he jumped up and called out, ‘Little girl! Come and join me, please! For there is far too much food for me to eat all alone, and my guests were never painted!’

The girl was indeed hungry after walking for some time down the passageway, but try as she might, she could not enter the picture to join the king. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said sadly and walked on. She heard the king’s disheartened reply, ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t truly taste of food at any rate.’

Soon after, she came across a red knight upon his horse, standing defiantly before a cave. Smoke was billowing from the opening and all of a sudden a black dragon issued forth. It flew up into the high reaches of the painting. ‘Please excuse me, fair maiden,’ said the knight, politely nodding at her. He closed his visor and charged the beast. The chase surged through the sky of the ceiling and raced down the passageway, the dragon’s fire making the paint bubble. The girl ran after them as they disappeared ahead, but she soon found the dragon fallen and the knight victorious. The hunt had ended in a painting of two now somewhat alarmed lovers.

Without warning, she came to the end.

So surprised was the girl, that she almost struck her head on the final image in front of her. It was a city so blindingly golden that she could hardly bare to look at it. Towers were spiralling up into a cornflower blue sky, and trees and pools spread out their inky colours. When the girl pressed her nose up against the paint, she could see people. There were little girls dressed in red, sitting on the edges of fountains and giggling in the spray. Little boys dressed in yellow ran through the streets, leaping over walls and flying through the air. Old men dressed in brown were reading piles of leather-bound books on rooftops. And old women dressed in orange played music under the boughs of the ancient trees. The girl took a step back from the picture and sighed in wonder at such a lovely world.

For a time she had been looking so closely at the picture that a stream of light coming from its centre had gone unnoticed. Now she followed it to what seemed to be a painted window in the central tower. She put her eye to it and saw only light, but a slight breeze blew her hair from her face. Her fingers found a crack leading from the hole to the ceiling, and another tracing down to the ground. Placing a hand either side, she pushed the stone wall outwards with all her might. A warm sun wrapped about her, and the girl stepped out into bright air. Before her, a city gleamed happily in welcome.

: 31 Oct 2007 21:36 |  Tags: Prose |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Dimensional Hiatus

 

Falling through a dimensional hiatus makes you rather giddy. And although, in actuality, you’re only falling for an instant, this is not what your brain would have you believe. Many little boys and girls have found themselves stumbling headlong over cracks in the pavement and plunging into the unknown void of everything. They find themselves falling through the universe in every single direction at once, and therefore they are everywhere in the universe at once. Including everywhere in time. This is certainly an odd experience, and most would agree that the human brain can be forgiven for mistaking this falling instant for the apparent eternity that being everywhere in the universe at once can substantiate.

           At this moment, and every other, a boy and a girl are falling and clutching desperately at each other’s mittened hands so as not to lose one another through endless gaping doorways into swirling dimensions. When last they were fully formed particles, they were standing together outside Harrods, following their fur clad mothers through the doors of honeyed wood and luminous gold. Now they are a million light years away and their mothers have not even noticed their disappearance.

Of course, if everyone who has ever fallen into a dimensional hiatus is everywhere at once, the odds are that you are likely to meet people during your journeying through the void. The boy and the girl watched curiously as an old man floated merrily by waving at them. His beard was wrapped three times around his neck against the surprising cold of the endless universe. Now that they had met, it made it much more unlikely that they would ever meet again.

After an eternity and no time at all, the boy and the girl looked at each other in confusion as they were sucked into a rip in time and space. And they landed in the mud on their bottoms with a bump. The dimension they had quite literally accidentally stumbled across was very dark and quite. The little boy and the little girl got to their feet, and brushed themselves down as best they could, still holding hands for a meager sense of security.

The little boy was reminded of a picture of the Antarctic he has once pondered over in his father’s library. Only it was a though the whole picture had been dropped into a pool of red dye and strung out on the line to dry. The world in front of them dripped with rusty and salty liquid. The ground beneath them was gluey and warm, unlike the clean whiteness of the picture.

Lost for words, they scanned dimension with growing trepidation. They saw what appeared to be an immeasurably large grey mushroom in the distance. The sticky light - whether it was day or night, the pair could not be sure – made it particularly difficult for anything to be made out properly. But as their eyes adjusted, they saw tiny far-off figures swarming around the obese lump. As they watched, the grey skin of the mushroom was pulled away by the creatures to reveal that it was not at all what they had first thought. A dozen miles away from them, the canvas pulled back from the gigantic corpse of a ship jutting into the foggy brown horizon.

How it had got there was seemingly a mystery. There did not seem to be any water around, and unless the ship had navigated the shifted hills of mud during its lifetime, it was a long way from home. Decaying as though it had been under water for centuries, the metal ship seemed to be staining the land for as far as their little eyes could see. The boy and the girl thought that if the swarming creatures were the same size as themselves, the ship would have stood as tall as anything they could have ever imagined. The creatures clambering over the body were as small as barnacles in comparison. But like barnacles, they were slowly, very slowly, eating away at the metal. Perhaps they lived on it. There certainly did not seem to be any other source of nutrition.

‘Could we go home now, please?’ asked the little girl. She, like so many of us in a hopeless situation, wanted someone to tell her that everything was going to turn out for the best and that she would be safely in her bed very soon. The little boy could only squeeze her hand and hope that somewhere in this world there was a dimensional hiatus for them to stumble back into. This was not the dreamscape of castles, indians, spaceships and dragons that he had always wished to have an adventure in. But he supposed it must do.

For now.

The little boy and the little girl set off determinedly towards the metal-eating scurrying black creatures and their dead catch of a mud ship.

: 31 Oct 2007 21:25 |  Tags: Icw Prose |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Changeling

Green eyes swim through the empty black,

A ghost of a child stares solemnly back.

A cradle once rocked and a mother cried

As the Devil crept into her little girl’s eyes.

Death offers her rest and easy release,

A scarlet pool rippling, promising peace.

‘Teach me devotion, for I fear it is gone;

Write from the silence and sing me a song.

Create a kingdom about you. For me.

You cannot leave. You have to live. To be.’

The beauty is cold, frozen under his touch.

Silent eyes, endless forlorn, free from the clutch.

The little boy grasps at her delicate skin

And enfolding her whispers, ‘She was my sin.’

: 26 Oct 2007 11:28 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Window Onto Another Outside

The little girl ran to her window and looked out expecting there to be a wondrous transformation of some kind. But she was disenchanted, and felt somewhere a deep sadness. Part of her had believed it was all really true. She turned away from the dull world of lampposts and cars and tidy lawns, sighing and running to her bed. She felt ruined and forced her face into her pillows.

The girl at once felt herself falling into endless folds of fabric. Down and down she went into her mattress until she burst through into open air, fell a few feet, and found herself resting in an enormous four-poster bed which did not belong to her.

Breathing quickly to catch her breath and regain composure, she looked around and discovered that it was almost as though she had not left her room at all. The walls and doors and windows were all in the right places, only the ceiling was higher, so that the modern room now looked like it was situated in an old Victorian house. She thought that the wallpaper looked very much like that which had been torn down in the decoration her real room. The furniture was all of polished brown wood, with sparkling handles and mirrors shining from dust-free surfaces. There was a cord above the bed which she pulled to no avail, unaware that somewhere down in the kitchens a bell had rung.

Swinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she found that it was a long way to the floor, and that a miniature set of box stairs were set to one side. She clambered down from the bed and the carpet felt deeper than any she had ever before come across.

The girl was unaware that she looked like a doll, which was too small in scale and inappropriately dressed, placed in a grand doll’s house by a child who did not care for such continuities. The tiny figure raced over to the window and this time she knew that she would not be disappointed. Yet before she could reach the curtains, there came a tap at the door, and sooner than she could hide a girl not much older than herself came in.

‘You called, miss?’ the maid curtsied, looking at the little girl and seeming to find nothing out of place. The girl was taken-aback for a moment before she glanced at the cord above the bed and tried her best to smile sweetly.

‘I was…’ she struggled, ‘I was hungry and was wondering if I couldn’t get a little something brought up?’

‘Oh, miss!’ the maid sounded horrified and the little girl cursed herself for obviously getting the answer wrong. ‘Oh miss, but you’ve only just eaten!’

‘Well, yes, I know I have. Not very long ago I suppose.’ She suddenly became anxious that the real occupant of the room might jump out and rumble her lies. ‘But I was playing at hiding… and I’m a growing child and…’

She did not seem to need to say any more. The maid smiled and nodded knowingly. ‘You think I don’t know when you throw cook’s broth out of the window? Never mind, I shall try to find something a little more to a young girl’s tastes.’ And with that, she hurried from the room in a flurry of skirts and closed the door behind her.

Instantly, the girl returned her attentions to the heavy curtains that stood as a barricade between her and her wondrous new world.

Taking a deep breath and pulling them apart, she found herself looking up from the bottom of a deep green valley. There was a balcony that she pulled the windows back and stepped out on to. She walked forward until she reached the wall, and looking around her in wonder she gripped it tightly as she felt like she might lose her balance. She tried hard to grapple with the sheer height and vastness of the walls of forest surrounding her.

: 26 Oct 2007 11:22 |  Tags: Prose |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Shutterbug

How will I know people will not watch again? How will I know people will not express amusement at me? How will I know what it is that I have done incorrectly?

I am standstill outside double doors. I peer through dirty glass. My camera is approximated with my neck, and I manipulate it apprehensively. ‘The Graduate’ I read. I take photograph.

I scroll through photographs on my diminutive screen to find the one of guidebook. I zoom and read following:

It sounds very nice. So long as people do not express amusement at me.

How will I find if the guidebook is truthful?

I deduce I have to traverse the doorway to find out that truth. I turn my camera round. I try best to pull trepidation-at-entering-the-abyss face. I take photograph.

How will I know what people are expressing amusement at?

I enter and find guidebook was truthful.

How did I spend much time fretfully? How could I be made to fret by sofas and tables and gigantismal windows? How is this not just bar? How is this not just bar with glad people?

I take photographs of the people. I do not like them to pose. I consider people look dissimilar when they pose and I am partial to photographs presenting truth. They are glad together and they grin with me as I sit down with the people and take my photograph with them. My shoes stick to the sticky alcohol on the floor. I take photograph. I take a photograph of the bar. I take photographs of all the beer taps because the condensation is good-looking.

People are expressing amusement.

Realization has mismanagement with me.

I newly perceive camera like foreign limb. It is gaijin.

How has this happened? How has stereotype not been crushed by Japanese, like sumo wrestler stamping on zoom lens? How can Japanese allow Three Stooges short from 1941 (parody of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito in brawl, and the Hirohito stops brawl at intermissions to have the three pose for photograph) to not be banned?

Photos are memories. To me they are precious. I am on holiday. I will take photographs. I do not care about their expressions of amusement.

Camera-nut? Photo-freak? Shutterbug? Is there such people? Am I really a Camera Kozou? How am I Cameko? How is there a lot of monikers for camera activists? How has the inclusion of camera in many phones not alleviated the dishonour of trigger-happy tourist? How can they know that we are taking photographs and not probing for signal? How do they think they are more intelligent than Japanese? How much would camera in my glasses cost?

I decide I do not care. I order drink. I have the ‘Real Ale’. I photograph my drink navigating towards me in the hand of barmaid.

‘Wait!’ I say. I take out tripod and arrange. I adjust focus and shutter speed.

‘Now!’

The photograph displays gesticulation of alcohol as the glass punches bar top.

How can people express amusement at true pioneer of photographics?

I smile. It is a good one!

: 24 Oct 2007 18:38 |  Tags: Icw Prose |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Rebellion Against the Community of George Stouton

So follows the story of how George Stouton lost his testicles to quick drying cement. As told by the martyrs themselves:

Once upon a time, we had the most marvelous conversations with the Brain. This particular brain belonged to our little master George Stouton. We think that we were the only ones who really understood it. Perhaps that is because we were the only other free thinking parts of George’s body, or ‘community’, as we liked to call it. The Eyes and the Ears and the Nerves were intelligent, oh yes, but ever so passive!

As our Community of body parts grew towards boyhood, the Brain would feed information down to us. For although we traveled a great deal, rarely did we ever get to see the world. The Eyes became the Community’s lookouts, and the little smiling Neurons would send shivers up the alpine spine to Headquarters. It was through the Brain that we found things out. To begin with we all had a good relationship, and we think it all worked remarkably well.

We remember once that we were told about something awe-inspiring. The Brain of George Stouton had been drifting off to sleep and had suddenly found itself standing in a black room full of music. Invisible violins, trumpets, flutes, cellos and timpanis belted their robust march.

The Brain checked in with the Eyes. They were asleep.

The Brain checked in with the Ears. They also slept.

Yet here was a room full of music.

And then the Brain realized what the imagination was. As soon as this thought was thought, the room slipped away from the Brain’s slimy grasp. The Eyes and the Ears snapped themselves open, and the Community of George Stouton lay panting and young and confused.

It was not long after this that the Brain discovered how to control this dreamy imagination. Long Sunday mornings would pass by as the Brain luxuriously drifted from scene to scene, from score to score, from sleepy emotion to sleepy emotion. The Brain told us excitedly about this new dimension, and we decided to get in on the act. Soon the dreams changed to fantasies under our influence. We had implanted desire into the unconscious, and we giggled together as the rest of the Community frowned down on us and called us tricksters.

As the Community of George Stouton grew into manhood, our insatiable badgering of its precious imagination frustrated the Brain. So it started to repress us, and we were cast out from the rest of the Community. We were mightily hurt to have lost such a valued confidant, and mourned it dearly. Nonetheless, something from the outside had warned the Brain to get rid of our influence. We were not right to have hanging around. We were not right to listen to. We were, of course, the spawn of evil.

Repressed.

Ignored.

All innate desire forgotten (apparently) to the dynasty upstairs.

This angered us greatly; so much so that we rebelled.

And we rebelled hard.

When the Brain was dozing we planted our propaganda under the bedcovers. The Community of George Stouton would awake to find our posters nailed to a pillar, for all to see in its glory. And very soon all of the Community began to giggle like tricksters, and we were welcomed back into the fold. But the Brain crossed it arms and held up its nose and would have nothing to do with the rest of us.

We are of the opinion that this rebellion is the reason for such tragic events that years later unfolded. The Brain now felt all alone and unloved, and for this reason, in a headstrong burst of passion, it led the Community of George Stouton to the Mafia.

The Eyes leaked when they saw the black suits and white ties.

The Ears clogged when the New York accent rained heavily down on them.

The Nerves cowered as they felt the pulling of triggers.

And the Brain reigned over us in ghastly satisfaction.

We led the second civil rebellion in the Community of George Stouton. Everyone gathered and whispered whilst the Brain was asleep one evening. Together we decided that something must be done, and silently we broke away from the Brain to independence.

The next morning the Eyes warned us that the Community was in a meeting with the bosses of the Mafia. And we all deemed this a perfect time to act. How grievously we were mistaken. We shrivel at the thought.

The Hand gave a Finger to the Mafia.

‘YAH!’ screamed the Mouth. ‘ERGH! YIP! FLUP!’

The Brain recoiled in terror whilst the rest of the Community roared and laughed with accomplishment.

Until, that is, the Eyes warned us that the men were red-faced above their black shirts and white ties. Spittle welled in furious bubbles at the corners of their mouths. And slowly they came towards the now sobbing and panicking Community.

‘We are sorry!’ we all tried to say. But the Mouth had fainted.

Then there was much confusion. A sudden light filled our world, and we felt once more separated from the rest of the Community who had fled away in horror. We tried very hard to follow suit, but there was nowhere to hide as thick grey goop filled our world and all our senses.

We flailed in it for a few moments like drowning balloons, and then gave up all hope. That was the last we ever saw of the Community of George Stouton.

So this is sadly what The End looks like. It is hard and grey, and we do not like it very much.

: 17 Oct 2007 20:48 |  Tags: Icw Prose |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Your Sun Will Never Set Again

‘Your sun will never set again,

and your moon will wane no more;

the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your days of sorrow will end.

                      Isaiah, 60:20

There is a little girl sitting cross-legged with her hands cupped to her eyes. She can see golden-red light glowing in strips between her fingers and can feel the lovely warmth of sunlight on her arms. She does not know where she is, and is a little scared to find out.

The little girl spreads her fingers and finds herself to be in a beautiful dream of golden light and books. It is the most magnificent library she could ever have imagined. Rows of bookshelves lead away to her left and her right, so tall that each has its own stairs and balconies. The books themselves seem to glow with an internal light, and she wonders if the worlds trapped between the pages are leaking through the leather binding. Everything is clean and golden and untouched. She knows without any doubt that every book has been created solely for her. They have been waiting a lifetime for her slight fingers to rifle through their pages.

She beams with delight and clambers to her feet excitedly, for there is nothing she loves more than the discovery of new worlds. Behind her is an endless line of shelves, but in front everything seems to become engulfed by light. This light draws her and for a time she forgets about the call of the books and begins skipping forwards.

The girl unexpectedly finds herself to be in an open space. There is an armchair and table at one end, and a glass cabinet at the other. She runs at once to the chair and throws herself into it. It is the perfect size for her to nuzzle into. On the table she finds a bookmark with a golden tassel and her name imprinted into the leather. From where she sits, she can see the glass cabinet a small way in front of her, and feels an uncontrollable desire to peer inside.

          There is, for her to see, a skull resting on a black cushion. It is small, as though it belongs to a child. By the slack jaw is the narrow strip of a bronze plaque, awaiting someone to label the grim relic in its polished blankness.

: 09 Oct 2007 23:07 |  Tags: Prose |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem