Four More Two-Sentence Maquettes

I know I’ve been stumbling through much of the last few weeks of writing. Bad timing and schedule interuptions have eroded my morning habit so much that I’m finding I struggle to to write when I formerly I did not. In part, I believe I need a serious planning session for each of my recent discoveries, but I won’t have the time for that till after Christmas. Until then I’m mucking around in a near empty jelly jar. What you’ve been reading lately is the sound of the knife rattling around in those corners.

I’ve also been reading more than usual.

Some two-sentence maquettes ought to grease the skids a bit…

John wore all his weight in his reddened face. His belly stretched the holes of a new belt every six months, but his cheeks and his jowls and his neck and even his forehead and ears summarized who he was and how much he weighed.

Aunt Jane cooked to make people happy. She wore her blonde hair up and out of the way, and a smudge of flour always decorated her chin and apron.

John looked up to most men, but what he lacked in physical stature he made up for in productive energy—painting portraits and scenes not Napolianic complexity. Men who couldn’t care less of another’s appearance often noted how neatly trimmed he kept his light brown hair.

I’m worried I have a thing for hair. Maybe I should do eyes?

Jane’s large brown eyes centered her soul for most women, but John found them glassy and uncommunicative. Her tits and low-cut blouses should have had him fumbling to help her at every opportunity; instead her cow-like eyes insisted she thought only of herself and turned him away.

299 words on day 620

Piece-mealing Terminus

http://mcqueconcept.blogspot.com/2010/11/shore-leave.html

In four hours the sun will be up and Acetylene Avenue will be empty. But now, at 2AM, the beer doors call for sailors on shore leave and the crate-filled scotch pits crowd with Walkers and Fliers looking to make a little money besting the other at Mahjong or Cribbage. Shallow hulled party boats and make-shift taxi scows hang a body length above the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd looking for gaps. When the cannot find any they make them by crushing low and pushing off the empty-pockets to board paying customers.

Every other corner or so an armed constable stands watch in the roadway. They’ve got standing orders to thump or shoot and to not give a shit which works best.

The dragon-hiss of welding torches building, mending, and parting out skiffs and cruisers plays bassline from the boat houses and open-air docks to the melody of drunken revelry of the avenue.

159 words on day 619

Two Two-Sentence Maquettes

I’m writing dark on light tonight instead of my usual bright on black…and now I’ve stopped that shit. Oh, sweet Jesus that’s better!

John could make his face smile without turning up the corners of his mouth or flashing his white teeth. He wore his black hair military-short which kept his greying temples a secret at a distance.

Jane would have made a great Hippie had she not been born in the late 80s. You wanted to see her in a peasant dress and hemp sandals; you expected ribbons mixed with her straight brown hair. Instead you’d most often find her wearing a babydoll tee with the Bat Signal or a Rubik’s Cube on the chest, low-rise cargos, bare feet, and a streak of pink dyed into her bangs.

139 words on day 618