Category: Daily

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Remember When I Used to Post Daily?

Today I’m gong to write against the clock for 90 seconds at a time. I’ve not done this particular exercise in some time and am a little worried I will suck at it. That’s not the point though, so I will press forward.

I changed it to 60 seconds because the 90 was a bit longer than I was used to and I kept expecting the alarm to go off each time I came to the end of a word. It was disconcerting and made it difficult to write fast.

Mist smothered the Texas Panhandle like a killer embraces his victim. You could imagine an overpass was approaching for many seconds before…

…you realized it was never arriving. Cars speeding past you disappeared like memories into the road ahead, and everything was either milk-grey or an unremarkable yellow.

The hawk snatched the fence post like it might some edible prey but instead landed. She ruffled her feathers to stay warm.

Martin stood on the plains; he was a crumb on a grassy smooth table top. The horizon clipped the sky like a ruler set on its edge.

Somewhere in the dark—if one looked carefully—a boney lank of dog or coyote hunched among the crispy beige weeds and sage.

I seem to have developed a theme here today. I guess that’s good considering I wasn’t even certain I’d responde well at all. I fear though that my them may make it hard for me to continue because I feel compelled to stick with that theme. So I’ve written this palate cleansing picece which

The gunship sunk to a roaring hover. Mini-guns sproted from the top and rotated into position to guard the ship…

Abandoned and hungry, Allawashon rose to begin another day of walking. She’d make it to the outpost fort by evening, but not before eating a mouse raw and killing her twin…

Yikes! I don’t know what my plan with the young lady above was/is, but I want to take a moment to apologize to her sister and potentiall to the mouse. I don’t know if either had it coming, but I hope so at least.

“Snow,” Eric said. “But not snow carpetting the field and smashing out all the features. Snow like a reminder that sometimes God likes to change the color of the earth.”

The grueling pace here is always a blessing and a curse. This stumbling blurb is all I could come up withfor this particular 60 seconds.

Ring. Click. Clear. Start. Write… Shit, that’s a pain some of the time. Like now when I thought that lead off would actually take me some where but it didn’t. Maybe my next blurb ought…

SHe was hiding. It felt like she was always hiding fr some reason or another. Hiding to stay out of the cold. Hiding to stay out of the light. Hiding to stay out of the road. Today she was hiding to stay alive, and so far it was working.

But it wouldn’t work for very much longer, because she’d spotted a reason to move. A reason so compelling that it made her scalp itch. SHould she stay alive one more minute or die trying to get the thing which compelled her?

I think I’l end this exercise here. I think it went well enough and I apologize once again fro not spending more time with this exercise when I can clearly be so prolific in a short time. Rather than dumping crap out on you when I can’t make myself compose a better story on those rushed days.

595 words on day 873

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Difficult to Indulge

Despite my poor performance of late—which is less poor than you imagine since I’ve written more than I’ve posted—I keep moving the chain forward a little bit at a time. I like when I get to even tens mark. I do that tomorrow, but because of how I create my evergreen file I actually typed ‘870’ today. It’s got me thinking ahead to the 876 mark. I think today I’ll see what inspiration I might draw from an earlier serial number.

Looks like I’ll be playing with:

Drangee Purple with Milk

    Musi stood at the gate of her patio greeting the day like a regular.

“Fine morning, I feel,” she said then sipped her milk-tamed purple tea. Madrigar looked up from his sweeping and smiled. After a lengthy pause—during which she finished her private thoughts and suspected he was doing the same—she heard him agree with a considered hum.

She laughed to herself at his response. They’d been exchanging similar quiet conversation each morning all spring since she’d been installed here at the west entrance to Run Dark Alley. “You always agree with me, old man.”

“I would not agree if you were not correct, miss.”

“But you always agree. Am I always correct?”

“When you commend the day, always.”

Musi lifted her teacup to Madrigar as a question. He nodded, so she pointed to her stack of large porceline cups as a second question. He shook his head and indicated the short clear glasses at the end of her counter.

“This Drangee Purple may be dark, but it is also mild. You could drink two this size and still take your afternoon nap.”

“I like to watch the colors swirl while I drink.” Then after scratching his forehead, “I’m doing my tallies; not napping.”

She winked away his lie. “It’s no problem to pour yours into one of the pinters I use for the ices?”

“Still,” he gestured again at the same stack.

###

Madrigar was difficult to indulge, but Musi tried every morning. If she offered him a thick slice from a still-warm loaf of Courthouse Rye he would only accept the crusty heel—”Unbuttered, please”. If, during the heat of the day, she walked over an insulated mug full of green apple flavored ice the mug would later be returned—clean—by one of his customers with great thanks for the refreshment. [One more example here]. [at first she thought he was being polite since he didnt have much money. But as the attempts wore on she treated it more like a game (also she became suspicious of his appearant lack of wealth)]

[when she first set up her stall she’d thought-arrogantly- that her business would boost Madrigar’s but over the months as she watched the flow of traffic she realized he sent her more patrons than she ever sent his way.]

469 words on day 869

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Unknotting

I should probably know by now that the eight o’clock hour is a dreadful time to try to write. Everything in this house gets ready into this particular hour. Kids eat breakfast and get dressed. Dogs need let out—seperately—and then need back in to eat—again, seperately. There is crying about clothes, about shoes, and about who sits in which seat today. There is last minute homework. There is unknotting of the hair…and crying. Even I have needs beyond writing which easily cross over from seven to eight.

When I notice the clock has ticked to a quarter past the hour I swallow and shrink and I slump into a chair. I skip through the index of things that need to be done looking for a suitable chunk of effort which might fill the remaining three quarters of the hour. A chunk once completed and paired with a promise to write better later tonight will get me ahead on the day. If I do that thing instead of this thing I’ll have won some small measure of the day.

The evening has only rarely proven good for writing. Occasionally I catch a breeze and blow into the eleventh hour with hardly a thought and no resevations about the late hour. The day is literally defined as the time held sacred for the day-job. This leaves me staring smack-dab into the bleary hoary eyes of the early morning. I’ve done this before; I’ve won this before.

245 words on day 868