Writing.
Creative writing, short stories, general musings.
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The Monsters Under Your Bed
Everyone tells you the monsters under your bed aren’t real. That’s not true. The monsters are there alright, but they’re more scared of you than you are of them. How do I know? They tell me. I’m their therapist, you see.
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Daughter of the Wood
The trees whisper as she walks among their branches. They seem to part their boughs in graceful bows, sighing softly as she treads lightly, barefoot on the cushiony carpet of fallen leaves, moss and pine needles. She is the Daughter of the Wood, or the Wicked Witch, some children in the village whisper amongst themselves quietly, when they think she can’t hear them. She pays them no mind, contented in her solitude, in her modest house at the edge of the village, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, an old, harmless crone, shuffling about here and there, and tending her garden. The company of the forest is what she seeks.
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Not a Moment to Waste
Be impatient
Be free
Run wild
Climb trees
And dance in the light of the moon -
The Call of the Sea
The pull of the sea was hypnotic, an invisible rope tugged by an unseen hand. He couldn’t help but let go of his mother’s hand and run down to it as soon as he caught a glimpse, when he crested the stony bank that led down to the shore. It was a glorious feast, all laid out for him, the beach empty but for the two of them. He drank in the smell, the sounds, the salty spray swept inland by the relentless, wild wind.
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Rocket Powered
They waited in line for the first flying cars. The waiting list had been full for months, but still they came, queuing around the block since 3am for the chance to be one of the special ones, the anointed, the chosen few, to get their faces on TV, for this was An Event. Interviewed by the techno-optimist reporters who spoke with breathless excitement, relaying the hype for their oligarch-owned TV stations: never mind that you don’t have health insurance; you too could one day own a flying car.
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Someone Who Writes
In author Matt Gemmell’s video series on writing a novel, he sets out one of the fundamental roadblocks to becoming a writer: writing, and writing regularly. That’s it. That’s the only qualification that makes you a writer or not. You have to actually get on and write. Doing this consistently though, that’s the challenge. To approach it like work, to sit down and do it even when you don’t feel like it, when you feel stuck or uninspired. Many of us, not just writers, would recognise ourselves in Matt’s honest videos, I imagine, and so I really appreciated Matt’s insightful post on what he’s learned from writing 300 short stories in as many weeks.
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Self Service
My local library has a self-service counter, as most libraries do these days. Four touch screens equipped with scanners for taking out, renewing or returning books. I guess it makes the process more efficient and leaves the librarians free to focus on other things (and probably means the council can employ fewer librarians too). I’m not sure efficiency is the point of libraries. When I’m reading, browsing or selecting books I am happily inefficient, and have no desire to increase my efficiency. Perhaps people who listen to their audiobooks on 2x speed would disagree, though.
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Swimming Pool
Floating in my swimming pool
I cannot hear you when you call
The sounds are strange here underwater
And I float alone -
Jump
It looked far higher from up here. That was the thought running through Josh’s head as he stood astride his black-and-turquoise mountain bike, at the top of the footbridge that served as a launch point for anyone attempting the jump. The boys had erected the ramp a few weeks ago, using the natural incline of the mound around the storm drain, digging up the soft dirt and piling it on top until it formed an excellent jump. You had to admire their ingenuity. It wasn’t supposed to be here, but now that it was, its popularity was spreading. Every day after school, kids would come from far and wide to have a go on “the drain jump”, as they called it (not very imaginatively, in Josh’s view, but who was he to complain?).
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Claudette
Content warning: suicide, abusive relationships
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you
I hate you
I love you -
Great Men
I was thinking about Shakespeare. What is it about the works of one man that enables them to endure through the ages, when so much else is lost, forgotten or fades into irrelevance? Certainly the list of reasons to admire Shakespeare’s work is endless: the universal themes, the clever use of language (to the point where so many phrases we commonly use in English today are attributed to him), the innovation. That he was a genius is indisputable, although I’ve never liked that word. It implies some mystical quality that only the anointed can hold, unrelated to any skill acquired through years of effort. Not to mention it is a label far less readily assigned to women.
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Blogging Like Ursula K. Le Guin
I am working my way through reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog, which she began in 2010, at the age of 81, and continued right up until 2018. She passed away the following year. I am reading through the archive in chronological order, starting with the older posts.
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She Spins
She lies in wait, a solitary sentinel upon this web she has woven. For hours she has spun, carefully, deliberately, weaving patterns learned by instinct and millions of years of evolution to craft the perfect trap for her unsuspecting prey.
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Optimise
While I was busy living
You were trying to optimise
Your work
Your relationships
Your leisure
Your pleasure
Every aspect of your life
So you could spend time on what really mattered -
A Cursed Place
The first sign that something was wrong was the bones we found. They were blackened with age and crushed easily underfoot in a way that was different to the ones we’d grown accustomed to finding elsewhere. We children were no strangers to human remains. All of our years of travelling had turned up old bones in various states of decay, and we ignored them mostly, having no use for them.