I believe I can succeed in this course...as long as I get to make my own rules.
Writeriffic Lesson 6 Assignment: Newspaper
WHEW! I had several story ideas based on articles (which I may continue to develop) but I ran with this one that came from a homework session at my local MIDTOWN DELI. Each section of the day's paper was at a different table and being read by a vast array of characters. Yet we were all under one roof, reading about what was happening in our little town...
Initially I had 700 some odd words. I let it cool and fought dismay as my word count initially went up, not down.
Two painful character cuts later, I made the 300 mark.
I am submitting that version and then returning to my drafts to invite those two characters back into my diner while I shine the tables up a bit.
::ASSIGNMENT POSTED BELOW::
THE MILLCREEK MALLARD: SATURDAY EDITION
Sports & Weather lay abandoned on the table nearest the window. Grant had placed the paper over his laptop like some kind of theft deterrent when he left to reckon with the coffee he’d been drinking all morning. Not that anyone here would steal. He knew that, and somewhere deep-down, he knew it was himself he hoped to hide under that paper-thin shield. What would folks in Millcreek think when they read how much he’d stolen from them?
~
Sitting upright, Jen resisted the chair’s embrace where she perched. Flipping swiftly through Lifestyles, she paused to wring the last drops of Earl Grey into her cup. Clipping one of the hundreds of announcements due to be printed this weekend wouldn’t change anything, but clipping this one may slow the avalanche. Jim, who understood half the town got their news from his one, coffee-splashed paper, had graciously agreed to her maiming of the diner’s copy. He brought scissors with her tea, and she noticed, a pastry she hadn’t ordered. Jen smiled to herself, “Consolation croissant”.
~
Ed and Mary split the Comics and sipped their coffee, his half milk and full of sugar, hers slick black. At 65, Mary still went straight to SlyLock Fox. She solved the mystery before Ed was ready to trade. He preferred to read from first square to last; no skipping the boring strips, either. Mary sipped her coffee and smiled at Jim as she waited for Ed to finish .
~
Jim wiped the tables and shuffled the scattered paper back into one packet. With a satisfied nod, he cut the lights and locked the door.
He loved his little corner of Millcreek and the people who shared their lives with him. As he walked home, Jim whistled up towards the clouds…
“The sun will come out tomorrow…”
The Artist’s Way Assignment: The Censor
I chose to sketch (and paint) my inner censor, then use its description as a writing prompt.
My rough draft (because I’m working on getting okay with sharing them):
I imagined my Censor as a many armed thing. It wears my wedding ring on one tentacle, a watch on another. In the grip of one flange is a bottle of bubbles and in that bottle the mom I’m supposed...the mom I want to be.Perhaps there is a mop in one tentacle and a set of car keys in another. Two weigh the difference between a teacher’s Apple and a stack of textbooks, they fail to find a balance. The last one is empty and placed across my mouth. I have named my critic Samctimony.
And another- not necessarily final- draft:
MANY-FLANGED SANCTIMONY
Around one tentacle, stretching long
Sings a ticking timepiece song
To another feebly clings
A pocked and tarnished wedding ring
In the next, child's bubble wand
And four children of whom I’m fond
Mop in one flange, unstick the floors
When that’s finished, chores galore
Tossing car keys to and fro
This one bellows, “Time to go!”
One long tentacle dials my phone
“Call them all before they’re gone!”
One is measuring when I look
the gap ‘twixt reading and teaching books
One last tentacle holds a key
Placed to my lips, it shushes me
The critic inside, no one trick pony
I will call her Sanctimony
Tabelle Außenseiter (to the Table of Misfits)
To my right: an accordion (& trumpet...& cow bells!).
To my left: a young man with autism named Odin.
The seating was communal, the meal was German.
Odin and his mom were about the business of building happy memories in the wake of deep and recent loss.
Odin said to us “Something terrible happened to my grandpa- he passed away.”
With Odin there was no pretense, when he needed salt, that’s all he needed and he sought it out with determination. When he thought the candles would be fun to blow out, he blew them out. We smiled and wished we could be that free, too. Sharing a meal with O was an extra scoop of joy.
Odin’s mom is made of strong stuff, yet she remains uncalloused. She leaves any excuse to be overwhelmed on the table and instead invests in the lives of her son and many others.
Jannik was our golden waiter. From a foreign land and eager to fill our cups, he was more than hospitable, he was truly kind. Employing Odin as his sidekick in the quest of lighting (and re-lighting) the dining room candles, he was neither put-out nor patronizing.
And there we were, as a family, celebrating a milestone that shouldn’t exist, (if statistics were given the last word).
Thankfully, Mercy and Grace reach further.
At some point it dawned on me that I’d been treated to a real-life misfit meal...set to accordion music, no less.
So you guys...you were all there, too, in my smile and the delight of it all.
I share with you now a picture of that table and some of the music (where Odin makes a quick cameo appearance)
PS- I am growing a tad concerned that I’ve fallen and bumped my head or somehow slipped into an alternate Hansen-esque Utopia: I was just informed that a marching band checked into our hotel today
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