I am giddy with hope and worry. This is the first, but how many will there be - I hope many more to come.
SO - if you have any good ideas on ways to organize, structure or coordinate this via blog, then please do not hesitate to offer me your ideas. Some might be reflective. Some might be short stories, some longer stories, some could be poetry, some might be fantastical, fictionalized history, biographical, autobiographical, about your environment... etc. I will try and organize them as best I can... but for now, I have no clue.
I am guessing it will just have to evolve. Because I have no idea how it should be... maybe that is the way God felt in the beginning... that is if there is one.
For the assignments themselves, sometimes I will suggest a page length. Sometime I will leave it open. Sometimes I will suggest a style or from a certain point of view... etc. If you want to deviate, I am excited to support your creativity, but sometimes writing along certain guidelines might foster better discussion if we have writing that is comparable. This may not hold true always, but sometimes, and for now, I have no way of knowing when those times occur or look like, etc.
But onto writing:
In about 1000 words, write a story about a loud silence that is difficult.
Hope that is specific enough and open enough.
Due Date: October 25
Click here to post your writing
12 comments:
Hi all,
so how do we share our writings?
Do we even attempt so?
Will posting our writings as a comment, work?
What do folks think?
Also,
What about the assignment...
too long? not enough?
too vague? too constricting?
I could add more components that help give direction and a start.
such as, and only for an example here, "make it a horror fiction piece," "Make the main character talk to him/herself with no other characters involved," "The person is trapped," "The setting is at night," "The setting is in a city," The setting is during the day," "The setting is in a cornfield," etc......
I thought about coming up with something, but then I felt that I would be stifling the creative process... but let me know what you all think.
Thanks -DABB
I think for the first few - to get the hang of it - a vague topic is a good start. I haven't written in a long time and so I'll likely start with easy stuff- stuff that is familiar to me. And I think for this first one it won't follow the recommended length either. It's not like we're being graded. =) I want to share but I suppose it's not a bad idea to sometimes not share if that seems necessary for a particular person - for whatever reason. will it get too crowded if we share it all in the comment section? I think as we go along we should add some fun details to the requirements. and of course just keep up with comments on the whole process. i love it so far!!! I think I'm done with mine already- just need to think on it and read over it a few times. how's everyone else coming?
Hello! I knew I'd be behind from the beginning - just got the assignment today. I don't mind posting and reading work in the comments section unless someone thinks of a better way.
Open-ended is definitely good. As a non-fiction writer, I need to warm up to writing anything with characters or plot.
A "loud silence", huh? Time to ruminate...
we don't all know each other yet - introductions for the benefit of me and jct?
Hi, so I have casually talked about this idea to a few people - and I think as people decide to participate, it is a good idea for me to introduce folks.
So - I will write about my connections.
JCT is a friend from Johnson City when I was a student at ETSU. We met in a fall semester Literature class when I was a sophomore, and I was ballsy enough to go and ask her for a ride home. She said yes, which was the extent of our friendship, until one day when (I forget who asked who) it was proposed that we go to Books-A-Million for coffee. From that, many outings over coffee occurred, and at some time, we ended up discovering that we both loved swing dancing. In the spring of the following year, we planned a swing dance number for a dance recital. When I decided to transfer schools at the end of the summer of the dance recital (originally headed for Olympia, WA), we promised to keep in touch by writing letters and have successfully done so since then.
I count myself lucky for I had an amazing group of friends in high school that I have never been able to recreate. Chelsea is one of those high school friends. We were connected via soccer and several classes shared together. When we left for college, we more or less lost contact with one another. In the summer of the dance recital, we just so happened to run into each other at a Phish concert and a group of high school friends decided to meet up after the concert. We reconnected that night and when I ended up not going to olympia and Detroit instead (What was I thinking?!??) I stayed with Chelsea at her Aunt and Uncle's house in Indianapolis since it was on my way north. My one night brief visit turned out to be quite the adventure when my car broke down and she, I and a random mechanic ended up fixing my car into the evening at the mechanic's garage with his tools (what an angel, eh?). In the end, we repaired the car and I was on my way to Detroit the following morning. Ever since then, I have been operating on the once-in-a-blue-moon correspondence schedule, only recently in the past year and a half have we stayed in regular contact with one another.
So, I get extra assignments???
A speck, just something leftover, not even a second thought, mere garbage from a simple interaction, was flung out into a darkness so starkly opposite its origins, into a silence so silent no one could exist there and whisper of its eerie lack of sound. For hundreds of billions of miles this unwanted byproduct traveled through the quiet, in a line as straight as only God could draw. The speck did not pirouette; it did not twirl. It did not stop to catch its breath; it did not stop to snap a picture no matter how scenic or beautiful the scenery. It moved as if fleeing. As if banished. The quiet cold enveloped the speck. Ate it. Swallowed it. Never consumed it; never killed it, for onward did it travel. No faster, no slower, just onward.
And as it began to enjoy its simple linear existence, nearly eight minutes into its life, an obstacle emerged in its path. To the speck, this interference loomed large quickly, and although it never knew it wanted to continue its simple journey prior to this roadblock, once the hindrance appeared, the worthless object knew without a doubt that it only wanted to continue undisturbed.
However, in the time it took the speck to arrive at this realization, it was too late; collision had become unavoidable. In seconds as fellow specks where caught up ending their short lives with impacts into dust and cloud, this speck was granted a few more seconds of life, and although the cold had left, the sound remained lacking. The speck sped onward and in what seemed like no time at all, the speck approached a grey mass, radiating a greater heat. It passed through a panel luckily missing dark globs. The final thought of the speck as it slipped by flits of dust dancing in the air, “so loud, so much,” and it collided into a pink softness and died.
The pink softness blinked upon impact and slowly, timidly opened and Paul awoke. A pain in his skull stabbed over and over, like a knife in a black and white Hitchcock movie, as if cranial plates shifted, collided, and rifted in a tectonic fashion. Was it only last night? A river of time had flowed since then, a night of dead sleep, like a rock: heavy, lifeless as if buried for millennia. Yet, his body roared out in disbelief, rang out a hollow tone of emptiness, moaned for that which is no longer, croaked that it was still alive.
Paul lifted himself on one elbow, the springs in the couch creaked, and he looked at the empty wine bottle, askance and on its side as if it laughed so hard at Paul that it fell over with a bellyache. Paul stretched out from the couch and righted the bottle so that it no longer mocked him and pulled the blanket up closer to his chin. Dust floated in the late morning sun streaming through old windows in need of cleaning and settled on nothing. His hand somehow found its way over his eyes as if to block out the day, to block out reality, to block out the truth of the matter: she had not called.
The phone sat silent in its cradle. He squinted into the unwanted morning light streaming into the window. Mornings on Sunday always reeked of a silence redolent with stillness, but today the phone rang in silence and he was sure that only if it actually rang would he be free of its racket. Laying there in the loud silence, his headache keeping rhythm with its pounding, his thoughts were screams in vain attempt to drown out the sounds of the phone sitting silent in its cradle. He fell off the couch onto his feet, stumbled over to the phone jack, yanked the cord out, ripped the plug out of the socket, twisted, and sat on the floor with his back to the wall. The silence pressing in on his head, ridicule, retelling a story he had already heard too many times. He turned and found that a whiskey bottle, Makers Mark, called out to him in the silence like a friend; Paul took it and embraced his friend. As the phone rang out its silent cacophony, it did not let Paul forget that for his entire life, Paul had no idea who his real mother was, why she left him, why she didn’t want him.
Now, twenty-three years later, he decided the time was right to seek her out and had arranged to meet her yesterday at a local diner. He arrived and waited. He reassured the waitress that, no, he was fine, someone was planning on meeting him any second, so he would wait. He told the waitress that same line too many times until she knew not to ask anymore even though no guest walked through the door and took a seat across from the young man. The look on his face, made her come up to him after he had sat there for half an hour and tell him that the cup of coffee, which had been refilled countless times and now sat cold on the speckled tabletop, was on her. He turned to her, but his look went through her like she was smoke, glass, or optical illusion. She felt cold and sad when the boy turned his head to her and she could not shake the queasy unsettled feeling he left in her stomach. Eventually he got up and left, and she felt a silence settle in the diner as he left, as if he sucked out the very air in her lungs, the very sound of the chatter of the conversations taking place at the various tables. She stood there watching him leave, unable to catch her breath trapped in a silence screaming at her to do something.
enjoy.
no rule against posting early? i keep looking mine over.. changing a word or two... i might post early as well. I can't say I love the format of reading things in a narrow column and it took me 2 days to notice you had posted at all. thanks for the intro and what did you mean about extra assignments?
The space is clean and modern, almost cheerful. The benches that line the wall feel hard and unyielding, but not unpleasant, as I look around to notice a type of receptionist desk missing its receptionist. There’s an adjoining carpeted room with more stiff furniture and a television and then also, a door with a sign. The past 24 hours are a little vague in my memory, as they should be. I’m sitting with my two best friends. Is no one else around? Where is the receptionist and why are we waiting? It’s August 19th.
There are no decisive feelings or thoughts in my body. In fact, I’m not sure I’m even really aware of having a body. My mind registers a thought and immediately breaks it into a million tiny pieces that go floating around the cavities of my mind. I don’t bother to try to put them back into a coherent thought. It doesn’t seem important. I revisit the carpeted room and the door with the sign. I notice my friends. We drove here. Why did we all drive here? I know the answer but it breaks apart to float around while I move my focus to the wallpaper. And then I think of my shoes. But that’s not a good one either so it breaks apart to float. The door with the sign keeps pulling me in. And why aren’t we waiting in the more comfortable room? Time is slow and methodical as each item registers separately. It’s the job of an inventory manager. The carpet is gray. Check. The television is on. Check. We’re still sitting on a hard bench. Check. Still breathing? Check.
The sign wins and tells me its door leads to the family conference room. I imagine serious people saying serious things to cause families to fall apart. Falling, falling – Oh look, I’m here with my friends. I have such good friends. They were the ones with me last night. I love my friends. Quirky how she wouldn’t let me drive myself. Aren’t I fine? I’m fine. Where is everyone else? Everyone or someone is missing. Who am I missing? There goes that thought and what a boring color tile. My parents once tiled a kitchen floor. And didn’t I help tile my kitchen floor. I did. That was awful. I don’t want to tile a kitchen floor again. Or any tile work for that matter. It ends up crooked when I do it.
Intentional pause for….nothing.
No thoughts. That last stretch was enough. Avoidance is so much effort.
Back to it then.
Tile. Check.
TV. Check.
Sign. Check.
We sit so close we’re probably touching but I can’t feel them. We’re looking everywhere but at each other. If anyone talked it wasn’t heard. They are likely having a harder time with the silence than I. I have my inventory work to do.
The three minute wait is over and someone leads me back to see my day old baby. He’s swollen and silent as the machines work efficiently to keep him alive. And I cry with joy to be able to see my perfect baby.
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