3 posts tagged “creative writing”
A one-page story for my last writing assignment this term. This assignment called for an anecdote, well-used sentence fragments, characterizing quotes, and imagery. One-page stories are HARD. I wrote five two-page stories before I found a concept that worked in one page. I had to sever half of the imagery, but I'm satisfied. I wasn't thrilled, but Sam was.
The Innocent
"Listen close now, boy," Old Nya croaked. "Some men go their whole lives thinking the world is theirs. Thinking they know the shape of it. Us Naeglish, we know different." Nya clasped her rheumy hands around her cane and laid her sagging chin upon them. Light still danced in her eyes as she fixed them on her grandson Jack. Jack smiled and stared back at her, listening intently.
"The world's full up with spirits. Every rock, every tree. These aren't the invisible gods of those Southrons, no. They hear your prayers and see your deeds, and they favor the innocent. When I was a girl, I could see them." Old Nya leaned closer, and Jack's tight-lipped smile spread into a gap-toothed grin. "I can't see them anymore. I'm an old woman, so they hide from me, but I know they're there. We all do."
From that day forward, Jack made it his goal to capture a spirit for Old Nya. Every day, he planted himself on the big smooth rock by the river, fixed his eyes on the widest tree, and waited. Jack prayed and watched until his eyelids drooped and the sun set. He knew it was only a matter of time until the spirit showed itself to him.
And eventually, it did. Jack leapt from the rock, quick as a spider, and brought a jar down around the writhing spirit, its mossy fists pounding on the glass in tinkling protest.
Jack ran back to Old Nya on springs, shouting and laughing all the way. When he reached her tent, he took one last look at the jar, but the spirit was gone. Vanished. Lost.
More writings for school. I doubt this will go anywhere, since I know next to nothing about Latin American Catholicism. Sam really liked it, so I thought I'd share again.
When the sun began to dazzle him, Juan ended his prayers. He looked to Paloma, who was curled up on a sunlit patch of soil. "Time to hit the road, old girl," he said. Paloma perked her ears, rose, and shook the dust from her silver coat. Dutifully, Paloma padded after her master as Juan climbed into his rig and started the thundering truck.
Juan drove west, following the rising sun's path across the morning sky. He'd been a truck driver for more than twenty years, and he loved his work. Juan was a solitary man, preferred to spend his days admiring the wondrous landscape of the Americas with Paloma as his only company.
Like many in his line of work, Juan's cab was covered from floor to ceiling with photos, candles, and statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe: a moving shrine to the Mother of all. Though his devotion ran deep, few would guess at just how personal his relationship with Guadalupe was.
Five hundred years ago, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan and asked him to serve. Juan agreed to his Lady's request, and in return, She blessed him with long life. Guadalupe warned that the quest would not be easy, and it may take him many lifetimes to find what he sought. Juan obeyed, cast aside his old life, and began the first steps of his sacred quest.
Juan
took jobs in every country in the hemisphere, favoring those that
demanded travel. People everywhere accepted Juan as a drifter: a man
without a family or a home. It was easy, then, to quest for Guadalupe's
lost artifact across the Americas, where Guadalupe promised his quest
would end.
Today, Juan felt a familiar twinge of warmth in
the back of his head. All of his tension seemed to expand and melt
there, covering his skull in a pleasant, tingling sensation, as if he
were bathed in sunlight.
Juan glanced at Paloma, who was staring at some unseen point to the northwest. Paloma's stance was eager and alert, her ears pointed and her legs straight. Her ancient frame seemed almost puppyish as she gazed far ahead.
"Well, should we go see
what it is, then?" Juan asked. Paloma thumped her tail in approval, and
Juan patted her back vigorously. Juan changed gears, sped up, and made
way for the radiant mountain range ahead.
Creative writing is not my forte. I can count the number of creative things I've written in the last 10 years on one hand. I have little snippets and ideas: I make up little stories about people I see on the bus, or take something a friend says and turn it into a crazy children's story, and will occasionally wax poetic while under the influence.
But when I'm forced to write, I can produce, even if the results are laughable. In the case below, I'm a little proud. I wrote this story introduction for my grammar course:
Deborah strolled along the shore, careful to avoid the icy tide. The sky was metallic and the wind whipped mercilessly at her tear-stained face, but walks like this were Deborah's only weapon against despair.
Deborah cared for her ailing mother over the last ten years. She had plenty of time to prepare herself for the inevitable, but when Charlotte passed quietly in the night, it was still a shock, followed by an icy numbness. Deborah didn't have the best relationship with her mother; Charlotte would point out Deborah's deficiencies on a daily basis, leveling double-barrels of unemployment and Deborah's single status against her. In spite of all this, Deborah found some comfort and purpose in caring for Charlotte. Now that Charlotte was gone, Deborah was a woman undone, with her mother's last insults tolling in her ears.
The sound of the ocean helped Deborah escape this dull ringing, and as she walked, she looked for seashells that might echo the sounds of their origin. Deborah owned hundreds of seashells, scattered throughout the shared cabin as if they'd drifted in with the winds. She'd learned the truth about seashells and their sea-echoes when she was still a girl, but these tiny treasures never lost their appeal.
Deborah found a small shell and held it to her ear. She heard a woman's faint sobs instead of the ocean's roar. Deborah dropped the shell and looked around her, but the beach was deserted. Convinced she was just hearing things in grief, Deborah set aside her silly thoughts and picked up the shell again. The woman's sobs grew louder.
"Hello?" Deborah ventured. "Who's there? This is a private beach," she shouted with a note of growing anger.
"Hello?" a soft voice, not her own, echoed from the shell. "Can you hear me? Are you really there? Oh thank god!" the young woman cried, and started sobbing again.
"I must be going crazy," Deborah muttered to herself, inspecting the shell closely.
"No, you've got to believe me, you're not going crazy," the shell answered. Deborah blanched and was quiet, listening cautiously. "Please, help me," the woman in the shell pleaded. "Please, I'm trapped!"
"What, you're trapped inside the shell?" Deborah said, and inspected it again.
"No! I don't know how this works. I've been praying for help, and now I hear your voice, and I guess you can hear me too," the woman in the shell reasoned. "Please, will you help me?"
