Author: Douglas

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Day 56: Drawing on the Write Side of the Brain

Is it too early for me to learn to draw?  I find myself increasingly jealous of the talents and skills of artists.  I don’t want to be a painter or well thought of talent, but it would be fun to be able to sketch stuff.

Art and photography are quite an inspiration to my writing in the last month.  I wouldn’t want to under estimate the efforts of these creative folks, but I find that achieving the same outcomes with words to be tough.

With words I have to balance the dullness of complete and precise description with the tone and emoting of a scene.  The words draw the reader in the proper direction, but never to the exact destination.  Subsequent words hone and focus the scene.  With drawing you really can go all the way there–if you want to.

But I can’t imagine how I would wordulate something like “Monsters Inc.”  That’s the challenge I posed to myself when I first started not really doing anything with “The Bringer of Mist”.  I am glad to have written more on it here and expect to continue, but I just don’t think I could capture the full feel a cartoon movie provides.  In some circumstances you could get away with blatantly stating, “Hey these are cartoons.”  Then you could iterate as needed.  But that’s just not the style of writing I am going for in my work.

I’ll just have to keep working on it.

Word count: 240

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Day 55: Mr. and Mrs. Crazy

Dammit where’s the humor you ask. Not really sure. I consider myself rather funny in person. Though I’ll note that it’s a situational conversational sort of humor that plays mostly off the expectations of the audience that I won’t say something tactless to get a laugh. But I do.

In the following dialogue the names have been changed to protect the identities of myself and my wife.
Jane closes the exterior door in the master bedroom.

“I left that open to cool the room off,” Joe says. “It’s finally nice enough outside to get away with.”

“You weren’t going to leave it open all night were you?” asks Jane.

“I don’t know. What do you care? You used to live in a tent.”

“In the mountains. Far away from the crazies.”

“The crazies?” Joe asks.

“You know what I meant.”

Jane is nearly in bed. Joe is stripping off his shorts and crawling in next to her. Jane nods to the light on in the bathroom behind him, “You’re not expecting me to get that.”

“…”

“I wasn’t the last one in there.”

“Ugh, you could of mentioned that sooner.”  Joe thumps out of bed and turns off the light.  “That’s why I wanted the door open, so the crazies could come in here and turn off all our lights. And put my socks in the hamper. And close the closet door. And put the seat up every damn time. That’s what the crazy crazy people do you know.” He crawls back under the sheets with as much drama as possible.

Joe turns off the light and Jane say, “There’s definitely one crazy person in here.”

“Ohh, there’s for sure one crazy person in here,” Joe agrees.

“Night.”

“Night”

“I love you.”

“You better.”

Word count: 270

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Day 54: The Second Approach to Epiphany

In the previous “The Approach to Epiphany” I wanted to describe Johnathan Goffe’s walk up to his sister’s home.  The narrative spun of topic and did not return well even once I noticed, made note, and tacked the other direction.

In this I’m am going to take the same photograph and apply it to entirely different characters.  Should be a fun exercise.

Wednesday Walk was strange.  High branching trees colonnaded the narrow lane emphatically.  Icy fog obscured the leafless canopy making it seem even more lofty, more universal, than Sophia already imagined.

The wet winter air held mysteries from her nose.  The Walk smelled clean as far as Sophia could sniff it out–and maybe it was–but she knew the world outside this oaken corridor hid pungent wounds needing healing.  The limp day-old snow helped hide them too.

But mornings like these couldn’t muffle sounds.  A spoken word, a closing gate, a toe catching on a stone would all rush to her on the moist air and she’d hear them as precisely as her own thoughts.  She could be the perfect eavesdropper finding out lovers and holding their secrets secret–or not.  She could spy on honest men and thieves alike.  She could hunt up twittering mice like an owl.  She could do all these things if only there were sounds sounding.  Even the couple ahead was quiet.

Sophia knew she was coming to something too quickly.  The blind sky and the mute fields compelled her patience.  Even her numb fingers told her to to wait–to be not hasty.  If she arrived too early, too unprepared, this thing would not yet be, might even cease to be able to be.

In defiance Sophia picked up her pace.

Word count:  278