. Spinning .

…to keep talking to Brad:

Something you say strikes him funny and he laughs that same fantastic sensual roll of knowing chuckle and you laugh too because you like the sound.

I don’t want to add much more to the story, and in fact have only added maybe eighty words total but they are, I think important; responding to the questions raised by the workshop as to credibility.  Consideration must be given to each and every comment, but it is up to the writer to decide what bears value in improving story, what he wants to present, what he wants the reader to expand upon by himself.

Among the editing and rewriting of this story, one thing kept coming back that I didn’t really think I needed to handle: why she did in fact even think of talking to Brad.  So, this is for Jim Murphy, and it is to the narrator’s credit that while it may seem shallow, remember the true turn of events.

Six feet two of suntanned brown and golden haired male body topped with seagreen eyes and a damned great smile fly through the years like so much dust to plant a crystal clear full color photo in your head.

I don’t feel the necessity to explain any more than this.  If you’ve been married many years and have one of those days and an old lover calls, I think you’ll understand.

Someone must pull the plug on me now that the faucet’s on full blast: The_Writest_1.pdf

I’ve been tweaking and twiddling with the last story and told myself that even with most of the deadlines of the better journals passed (writers take note: many are reading only three or four months out of the year, and have come up with many revisions to their guidelines, but that’s another posting), I would submit at least one story to the usual round of literary journals just to keep the process active.  In other words, you can write a zillion stories but if you never send them out, or offer them in some form to be read, what are you really doing with your efforts?

All this tweaking stuff is supposed to put a temporary stop on straight text writing so that I can get back into hypertext mode and fulfill the many obligations left hanging for a bit. Oddly enough–or maybe not so odd at all–it seems that even with the story tweaked until it’s screaming in orgasmic release to let it go already, I can only do so by dragging out the submission research and what-do-you-know, another story.  Metafiction at that.

It came out of the blue, although I do believe it likely was inspired by checking out the long list of places to submit and being met with more than the usual dreary news and longshot bets.

Don’t know if I’ll finish it, and it may just be a whimsy, but I find it a challenge as well: the premise of a really bad but self-confident writer upset with the system.  The challenge?  To write badly so wonderfully well.

I think, I think it’s done enough to consider sending out. Even though this is not a favorite of mine. Now to pick and choose my market.

Only_a_Phone  Call_Away_5.pdf

Who knows what lyrics linger in the mind to reincarnate as story? Dolly, Linda, & EmmyLou:

Lovers_Return.m4a

Between sessions at the Writers Festival yesterday and some creative time this morning I’ve reworked this story and looked again at the new one before I moved onto the Storyspace piece, The Hanging.  I’ve been away from it for quite a while and it feels fresh and new to me and luckily, is haunting me again.

So, with CW classes nearly over, and the many May deadlines for text literature so close, I’m polishing these two pieces up to get back into perhaps submitting them to some lit journals just for grins.  I need credentials.  For now, it looks like my best hope is still traditional means rather than the path of hypertext.

So, not necessarily final until the envelopes and cover letter are addressed, the latest on Walking Away.pdf

.

She was excited, even in the limousine, even as they entered the main drag through L.A. she felt the vibrant pulse of the people of the city.  The driver slowed as they neared the hotel, stopping several times as people with posters and placards crossed willy-nilly mid-block.  She tried to read the signs they carried but it was all too mobile, the shouting undecipherable in their exuberance.  She wondered if there was another conference going on that inspired such protest, for the crowd of mostly women did indeed seem seriously mad.

"You better let me come in with you," her friend Tom told her as the chauffeur brought the car gliding to a stop at the hotel’s main doors. 

"Why?" she asked.  "It looks like they’re waiting for the Governor or President or somebody."  They’d all jammed together, filling the sidewalk in both directions of the entrance to the Grand Hotel.  She bent her head but couldn’t see the signs they held up high above them through the windows of the car.  "If it’s a feminist thing–and I’m guessing it is judging by the amount of women here, then I’m safe."  She turned to him  and giggled.  "But you’re on your own."

The driver got out and she could hear him opening the trunk and taking out their luggage.  She heard him start to argue with the angry crowd.  "They likely thought he was driving their target in," she said.  She felt a bit sorry for him and anxiously waited for him to come around and open the door.

"Hope it’s not that remark you made about hating kids," Tom remarked.

"Pshaw," she said, "that was just a joke."

Suddenly the driver was standing there and opening the door to let them out.  She swung a long leg out onto the sidewalk, then the other as the driver took her hand and helped her to her feet.  He was saying something she couldn’t hear above the shouting. 

The crowd fell upon her with sticks and placards and the last thing that she saw coming at her, she read: "M.others A.gainst A.uthors A.gainst S.mall C.hildren.

A bit of tweaking, some fleshing out, though still no setting as suggested by my friend Carolyn, but submitted in this form for workshopping: Download Only A Phone Call Away.pdf

Wondering if I somehow miss relating the transition point of character in letting it rest upon the reader’s shoulders…

Wondering if in cutting down and placing trust I leave instead a worrisome enigma…

In other words, am I contemporizing my narrative to the point of writing head-scratchers lately?

First draft, new (started here in a couple of posts) not ready for prime time story:

Only A Phone Call Away.pdf

While I do not want to grow this story any longer, I’ve taken critique into consideration as well as my own thoughts on it and fleshed out the characters a bit to create tension that could reasonably be seen as heading toward the ultimate resolution.  Changed some words around, repaired some technical glitches, and while there’s more to be done, feel a bit more confident of the believability of the scenario without making it too cliche and obvious.  Emotions are difficult things to handle in writing; they can turn on a dime.

Walking_Away_- Draft #3.pdf

21 words longer that is.  I’d taken out about fifty about midway through, a few more to the end, then fleshed out the final meal scene. 

Here’s the first draft:  Walking.pdf

Here’s the second:  Walking_Away.pdf

Down the road, out towards the west where sunsets simmered like a ball of butter melting into an oatmeal desert, a shadow of a man jogged closer and closer in little flicks of black.  Yolanda dropped her arm back into her widespread lap.  He was far away and it would be too long for her to block the sun without the weight of her arm becoming painful. Every few minutes she’d glance up from the basket of jalapenos in which her fingers fiddled and picked. She’d select one and stab it with a threaded needle, drawing it up into a clustered ristra that she’d hang out in the sun to dry.  She held her fat fingers in a salute above her eyes again and leaned forward in her seat. The black specter bobbled in the distance. He’d made about a yard of progress.  In Yolanda terms, he’d grown from just a speck to maybe eighth an inch in height.  Wind whistled out of her in a long low moan, and she resettled herself into the wicker rocking chair.  She reached over and picked up the bottle of beer that stood on the small table beside her, brought it to her mouth and sucked it dry. She rubbed at the wet rings left on the table with her hand, then wiped it on her neck.  The wetness felt good.  She rolled the still cool bottle against the tops of breasts that billowed above a tight cotton blouse.

Cursing at the snowplow going by at fifty miles per hour spewing up the icy compact boulders of snow gritted with sand they just put down  for traction fifteen minutes prior.  What makes these morons think the sand will do the most good on my lawn?    Immediately following him is another, a less intelligent fellow who hadn’t read the rules of taking care of town roads in the winter; his plow is lifted, he sprays down sand like diarrhea behind him  on the road. 

There is a hell, I know it; I believe!  Plowman #1 will spend eternity following Plowman #2 in a race around a track that’s set up like for Daytona.  Well, that’s what I might do at any rate.

Allen calls me from his nice warm office in the city.  He thinks it’s best if he stays there tonight; the city he means, because of the inclement weather.  Sure, I say, it’s dangerous to travel, the roads are bad. Always acquiescent, I promise him I’ll miss him but it’s so much safer that he not risk coming home, just as Plowmen #1 and #2 come flying by, this time in the opposite direction. 

Allen, well Allen will be locked for all eternity in a motel room with his twenty two year-old and only soda pop and oreos to eat forevermore.  That’ll fix his escargot-loving gastronomic instincts.  And never, ever will he ever see beef Bourginone again.  Yeah, that’s Allen’s hell, fer sure.

And me, well since I resist the urge to sprinkle broken glass out on the road, or for that matter, in Allen’s Veal Marsala dinners some quiet evening, I do believe I shall be properly rewarded.  Sit me down on the right hand side of God Himself.  Gold throne–with raspberry velvet cushions, plump and soft–and maybe Plowman #1 to bathe my feet in oil–when he’s on a break from Daytona–and on my lap, a silver plate of oh-so deep dark chocolate bon-bons, all for me and me alone.

The grating metal noise attracts me far from reaching my house yet, and when I look out I see that yes, the sparks are flying off the plow as metal grinds on clear clean stone and wonder, as I pop another Peanut M&M into my mouth, if those tiny flashes of flame aren’t quite enough to melt the snow all by themselves.

Craig’s parents had that kind of faith, though he, even at fifteen, had no comprehension of why they chose to give up and take his sisters with them.  They’d said goodbye, wished him well, gave him whatever they could scrounge that might be useful to him and left him here alone. His mother had cried and begged him to come with them but there was reticence in his father’s farewell.  Craig felt his father would’ve  tried harder  to make this life work out  but torn between his wife and daughters and the waning hope for any kind of  happiness on earth again he  left it to his son, to Craig to find. 

In the new democracy that took form after the war, when literally the dust had settled and with the help of rains that dug themselves into lakes, the ashes were molded into cities, flattened into roads and smoothly grooved into parks and recreation areas and lawns.  And painted appropriately white and black and green; whatever they decided looked the most like what it used to be. Sometimes an artistic soul, emboldened by the relative peace and saddened by the perpetual grey of daylight sky, might offer to shape some trees to soften the angular environment. These would most often be painted green, but one fellow down on Center Street was from the Northeast.  His trees always were a blur of oranges and reds.  Very few in this area understood why, but let him be. Color was welcome.

In the new world order, every man and woman, every child of thinking age was given choice.  Sadly, many of the older folk who still believed in God and promises of Heaven, looked around them, thought a while, then chose to die.