The Jumpstart Your Writing Course is designed to be a fun and supportive environment for writers to jump into new projects. Each week, students will spend the class time doing a combination of writing exercises and reading their work to the class. Students of this class should BEWARE: Once you start writing, you may never want to stop!
Students are invited to post their writing on this blog as often as they like. This way, we can see what others have done with the writing prompts, and leave helpful feedback for each other.
To post your work, simply hit the "comments" key and start typing! Try to comment specifically under the post that relates to that particular writing prompt.
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Although my work was under 1000 words, this application wouldn't accept it, as it stated I was over the alloted character space.
ReplyDeleteSo, I went to bed, and then it came to me. Do a comment for each page. So....
ReplyDeleteAssignment 1
By Heather Reyes
Page 1
She sits alone in her house all day, at that messy kitchen table, head propped up in a strange angle by her fist. The table is full of stuff, things she might need at some point in the day, and it sits in the middle of her very small kitchen. None of the chairs match. She always uses the low wooden one that’s easy to get out of. The rest of the time is spent in her Lazyboy knock-off, which came from JC Penny, and sits way too close to the living room TV. She actually has two TVs in there, her new wide screen, (also from JC Penny.) and the old regular one. My sister loves JC Penny. They take everything back that she returns, no questions asked. I can’t remember why she keeps the other TV. I assume her husband never got around to moving it for her. Just like he never got around to putting face plates on the light switches and outlets, or painting the wall boards. He spends a lot of time up the street at his brother’s garage.
If I had a choice, I’d prefer to sit in her kitchen, not the living room. Even with the mess and the feeling of greasiness, at least the animals don’t climb on me in the kitchen. Less crap physically comes in contact with me in there. All the animal hair floats into the living room to settle. My asthma can’t take it, and it gets all over my clothes. Never mind the fact that I’ve spent a lifetime steering myself far from the stale couch smell of pets, perspiration, and poor housekeeping.
Her husband was a high school drop-out, from the worst family in town. Our parents learned to love and respect him, in spite of this. They said he was a good kid, clever with his hands, which could fix leaky pipes, shovel their driveway, and were great with a pool stick in my dad’s basement. But, a self-employed handyman doesn’t come with insurance. When Kim was in her thirties, she felt a tingling in her hands and feet.
Her animals are ancient; the cat’s are both in their twenties. The dogs she inherited, one from her daughter, the other from her son….out of their necessities …No pets allowed, no money for vet bills, no options left. They always planned to take then back when things were better. But, over time, the dogs became Kim’s dogs, her babies, her companions, and these days, usually her only companions. Taco is an old Chihuahua who sings “It’s Somebody’s Birthday, Today”… you just have to get him started. It’s hilarious. He’s had a couple of strokes this year, yet still manages to climb up on her lap the minute she sits down, and growls if you try to get close. I don’t know how she’ll take it, when Taco dies.
Toby was her son’s pug, a roly-poly slobberer with smelly froggy legs, who’ll gladly go on anybody’s lap. Every time I start to sit down on the couch, she stops me and she says the same thing each time, “Don’t sit in Toby’s place”. As if I’d want to. The dogs adore her. They follow her with their eyes. They are one of her excuses for not leaving the house. They’d die without her. Even for just an afternoon.
Assignment 1
ReplyDeleteBy Heather Reyes
Page 2
There are other reasons she hates going out, but she doesn’t talk about them. Two hours to take a shower. The impossible task of putting on socks. After 20 years of MS, she can barely use her walker anymore. My other sister and I would love to take her to the movies, except her bladder can’t be trusted and the hassle of getting her into and out of the ladies room would take up half a movie. And she can’t sit long in enough to watch it, anyway, because of the cramping. She won’t try experimental treatments, she’s so damned stubborn. Doesn’t like change. Doesn’t trust. Doesn’t believe. So she sits there, slowly fading and rotting away. We can’t argue with her. I can’t help her. She won’t let you clean for her. In fact, if you offered, it would shame her, so you really can’t.
I wasn’t around for those 20 years. I was the oldest sister, and I’d hitchhiked out of there when I was 19. At first, I would visit once in a while, at holidays or rare vacations. But, once I had my own family I didn’t go back very often. She and my other sister stayed put, they’re very close, with decades of memories. I’d had my own trials and tribulations. It took a lifetime before I found my way back.
So, I don’t think it was easy for Kim, when, after our mother died, I started my visits. Our baby sister had grown up by then, and she and I found we had a lot in common. After a life spent away from my family, I had a second chance at having a sister. Not Kim, who’d always resented me for some reason, always had a chip on her shoulder around me. No, it was my other sister, born the year before I left town. Now, a woman, she’d given birth to a beautiful little boy. I fell in love with him, and her, and I was able to take them shopping or out to dinner, or to kiddy rides at the fair. I bring him books, every time I come. He LOVES books, and, well, I buy him a lot of things. The kind of things you do for a grandson.
We invite her, in the off chance she’ll accept. But, more often than not, we don’t tell her what we’re doing. Because she is jealous of us, of the time we spend together. We don’t want to hurt her any more than she already is. If things were different, the three of us might have become close, together. But, she can’t. She has to sit in her house all day.
Heather, you've done a wonderful job with this character portrait. I feel myself inside the messy apartment as I read, and I feel the sense of claustrophobia and compassion that the narrator must feel in her sister's presence. The details are vivid and very compelling...If you work on this, I would love to see the two sisters interacting with each other. You could put them in a situation in which they are forced to do something together. This would bring about a lot of conflict, which is the heart of any strong story. Great stuff!
ReplyDeleteJennie Rathbun wrote:
ReplyDeleteHere's what I wrote in class last week.
As the boot flew across the room, Snyder ducked. It hit the window over his bunk and the glass shattered, some falling on Snyder's blanket.
"What the fuck, Mitchell!" he yelled. Mitchell lunged at him. Carstairs grabbed Mitchell by the back of his shirt and held on. Snayder ran outside and flagged down an M.P.
The M.P. came inside and found Carstairs and Mitchell rolling on the floor. Mitchell's nose was broken and blood was pouring out of it.
The fight had its origins the night before when Snyder bought Mtchell's girl a drink at the roadhouse. Mitchell had gone to the men's room and stayed there a good twenty minutes. Loretta smiled at Snyder. He'd noticed her before. She was acting like she was interested in switching men, he thought. Given Mitchell's coke habit, he couldn't really blame her. When Mitchell came out he saw Loretta's feeling Snyder's bicep and giggling. Snyder got up quickly and left some wet bills on the bar, saying he had to go. But he'd seen Mitchell's face and knew there would be trouble.
He had gotten up at reveille and gone for a run to clear his head. Mitchell had groaned and rolled over at the sound of the recorded trumpet. Snyder came back and took a shower. He had just finished making his bunk when Mitchell hurled his boot at him, narrowly missing his head.
"What kind of son of a bitch waits for a man to take a leak before hitting on his girl?"
Snyder hadn't wanted to start anything up with Loretta at the bar. The fact was it had been Loretta hitting on him, not the other way around. Mitchell weighed two hundred and fifty pounds to his own one eighty. If he were going to steal someone's girlfriend, it would never have been Mitchell's.
The M.P. hauled Carstairs and Mitchell off to the lieutenant's office. Snyder watched them go through his broken window. He knew he should run after them and tell the M.P. to let Carstairs go. He wasn't really the one fighting with Mitchell. He'd probably saved Snyder's life, in fact. Hell, Carstairs deserved a medal. But he just stood at the window, picking a few of the smaller pieces of glass off his scratchy Army blanket. He knew he was a coward. He'd find some way to make it up to Carstairs, maybe get him a couple of cartons of Luckies at the PX, or offer to make his bunk for six months.
He heard running footsteps outside, and the M.P. yelling. Mitchell burst back into the hut. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, braced and panting. Snyder and he were alone. Before Snyder could scream for help Mitchell grabbed a piece of the broken window and dragged it across his windpipe. The last thing Snyder heard was Mitchell calling him a rat bastard and a coward.
Hi Jennie,
ReplyDeleteLoved your last graph especially - it was so vivid and well paced. I also wrote about the military in our soap opera prompt. Mine is much more soap-opery:
As the boot few across the room, she cried, alarmed. Actually, she had been crying for years. She was not a Marine Corps standard-issue wife. No, she never bought into that crap – Jane Wayne Day, the Gulf War, the clashing polyester of those ridiculous dress blues. And that fake sword with the amateurish engraving. What bullshit, through and through. It was fine for other people, maybe for her husband but definitely not for her.
She told him she fell off the wagon. No, not booze. It was that love, again. The same man that made her think more than twice at the altar. That man that she met in the 11th hour, making her question just about everything. That love reared its fulfilling and messy head, again, when another move and another absence left her lonely and searching for more than herself.
Truth has many levels, and for cowards the easiest truths are facts.
“We phoned, we chatted, we reminisced, we laughed.” Left at that, there surely would be little outcry from her Marine. A lie? Of course. When the whole story is not told, what else can it be? And it was not done out of generosity. The first betrayal, or the second. They were done for protection – of herself and the life and feelings she still didn’t understand.
He raged. Even though he had never known a powerful love, he did know lust. And he had known betrayal. And that was enough for him. So as she described her missteps, feigning a casual air as he was undresseing, he threw the boot across the room. And then, as she cried out her love for his rival, he grabbed his Marine Corps standard issue pistol and shot her dead.
Wow, guys, both of your stories are great. And so similarly themed! Something about boots flying must make people want to write about the military.
ReplyDeleteJennie, I love the pacing of your piece. You expertly bring us into the action and then fill us in on motives once the story is well under way. I love how much action there is, and how quickly you paint a picture of these characters and their military life. The violence feels quite organic, too. Great job.
GoKrisGo--I love this idea that the main character has been "crying for years," struggling with her relationships with the men in her life as well as the army. The betrayal also felt quite organic, though it could use a bit more clarification as to what actually happened. Did she have an affair? Contemplate one? I definitely want to know more. I'm intrigued!
My boot story takes a different path, inspired a bit by one of the early scenes in A Wrinkle In Time:
ReplyDeleteAs the boot flew across the room, Natalie and the old woman both tipped over, laughing. The boot had been stuck on the old woman's foot and Natalie was finally able to pull it off, exposing the soaking wet gray sock that didn't want to see the boot go. They regrouped, one boot to go. This one, without the split between sole and leather that let in the rain on the other, slipped off more easily. Natalie stacked the boots side by side next to the door.
"Would you like a cup of tea," she offered.
"That would be lovely," the old woman replied. Natalie took advantage of the time in the kitchen to wash her hands. She didn't like thinking about where the old woman's feet had been.
"What brings you by," Natalie asked, setting the tea atop the table.
"I want you to meet my son," the old woman answered.
"You're son? Why?"
The old woman had tried subtlety in her younger years, and given it up.
"You look like you need a man."
Natalie stammered. "Uh, umm, what makes you say that?"
"I see you, all alone in this place, rattling around in the rooms when you should be out. You have three cats here--one more puts you in crazy-cat-lady territory."
Before Natalie could explain about the stray, and not separating the two sister kittens, the old woman pulled out a photo.
"Isn't he handsome," the old woman asked.
Natalie gasped. She recognized the photo. And she realized the old woman wasn't who she said she was.
"Go. Get out. Take your soaked shoes and leave. I don't want to see you here again," Natalie said.
"You can throw me out, but you can't stop me and you can't stop him," the old woman said. "We know what you're up to." Before she left she gently placed her tea cup in the sink.
As the door closed, Natalie sighed. Looking into the sink, she saw the pattern of the tea leaves on the bottom of the cup. Her great-aunt had been a leaf reader, and though Natalie had never learned the art, the pattern she saw in the bottom of the old woman's cup made her shiver.
She pulled her sweater around her shoulders and sipped her own tea, searching her mind for answers, puzzled as to how they found her. With another sip she wondered if her tea tasted funny, and looked up at the shelf to see which flavor she had chosen. The yellow chamomile box was the last thing she saw before she slumped to the floor.
Stepping away from the window, the old woman sent a quick text message from her cell phone. "It's done."
Steph, this is great! So creepy. And the story moves so quickly. Very fun read. I would like to know whose face was in the picture. Can you tell us??!
ReplyDelete