A new story and and a new contest

I hope you don't consider this cheating.  I wrote a piece for Wendy Strain's new contest last week and now that it doesn't have to be anonymous anymore, I'm using it for the entry today.

Please consider entering the contest.  It's 500 words or less, to prompt, to be posted on Friday with voting over the weekend.

Here's the story -- mine is the one about the fork.  http://www.writeonwendy.com/perspectives-wow555-writing-challenge-story-time/

Almost Writing About What's on my Mind

So as I post this, R&A has had 9999 page hits.  Incredible.  Thank you.

I wasn’t late for the train today BUT it was raining so hard I was still tempted to run for it.  Never fear, there is still a bit of pride left in me.  I walked.  Then I wrung out my socks.

I plan on entering the Palm something or other screen writing contest today.  I was going to do it last night but I forgot.  Midnight tonight is the deadline.  Why am I entering a contest that I don’t even remember the full name of off the top of my head?  Easy.  I have an amazing script that doesn’t fit into most contests (35 pages), there’s a cash prize, and remember the first paragraph?  Pride.

I made the finals in last night’s 5 minute fiction.  Amazing to me how in just 4 paragraphs I was able to go from fairly normal and funny to weird and dark.  Feel free to vote for anyone.

I have a new favorite TV show.  I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.  Today it is time to look at Wash’s journal.

June 9, 1979 – New York City

As I wrote yesterday, I’m visiting my friend Frank in New York.  Today he had to go into work to proctor an exam and invited me along.  It’s been a few hundred years since I set foot in a high school so I readily accepted his invitation.  How bad could it be?

It could be bad.  But it was nothing like Guadalcanal or France despite the best efforts of popular media to convince you otherwise.

We were set up in the gymnasium of the Mount Jefferson High School for Rapscallions, Hoodlums, and N’er-do-wells where rows upon rows of desks had been hand carried from the various classrooms and painstaking placed in ordered rows.  At the front of the formation stood a folding table with two chairs, a pot of coffee, the instruction booklet, and a stop watch.

Many of the students who came in greeted my friend warmly, comrades rather than indentured servants, and the air was filled with such pleasantries as “Good morning Mr. McCourt.” Followed by his unmusical, “Morning Phillip.” Or “Morning Jennifer.”  I believe that for every Phillip there were seven or eight Jennifers.

He got the test started and we spent the next two hours giving everyone the evil eye.  It was great fun.  When the test was over the students tripped over themselves to bring the booklets up and escape into the city.  Except for one young man who was still hard at work.

Frank reminded him that time was up and he said, “Yes, yes.  I’m almost finished.”  Frank said, “You have to be finished now.  The time is up.”  The student raised his hand for silence.

This was interesting.  Frank went to the desk of the student and said, “I really have to take this now.  I’m sorry.”  The student scratched out several more answers and then put down his pencil.  “No worries.  I’ve finished.” he said.

Frank told him that he couldn’t take the test now because he had cheated and taken more time than was allowed.  As we walked to the proctor’s table, the student agreed that normally that would be a problem.  “But, this is different.”

“How so?” asked Frank.  The student looked at him, serious as could be, and said, “Don’t you know who I am, Mr. McCourt?”

“I do not.” said my friend.  “Nor do I care.  The rules are the same for everyone.”  The student shook his head.  “You really don’t know who I am?”

Frank said, and quite smugly I might add, “Young man, I don’t care if you are the son of the president.  You’ve taken too long and I can’t accept your work.”

The young man said, “Don’t worry.  I’m not the son of the president.”  He shoved his test booklet in the middle of the pile on the table.  “I’m nobody.” he said and turned to walk out.

I began to work on the pile.   Surely I could figure out which test had just been added.  I was interrupted however by the belly laugh of my friend and his arm on my shoulder.  “Leave it.” he said.  “He’ll be just fine in life even if he needs a little extra time.”

I wish that were true.  I wish it didn’t matter how much time we given and that we could get a little extra if we really need it.  Maybe it would make a difference.  Make the difference between getting by and being alive.  Make the difference for those of left afterward who just want to know why.

When Right is Left

I’ve been away for a couple of days.  Sorry to have missed the posts, that isn’t how I like to roll.  I can see the argument for preparing posts in advance and then scheduling them to be published instead of doing everything “live.”

Yesterday was more interesting than Monday.  I went on a field trip with #3’s class to an old manor house.  It was nothing like Highcliffe Castle but it was still trey cool.

And I made the finals in the 5 minute fiction contest.  Please vote.

A reader asked, “Why do the English drive on the wrong side of the road?”  I’ll let Washington answer.

4/28/1924 Brighton, England.

I had the great fortune of encountering Sir Willem Henry in the pub this evening.  I had just started in the mash portion of my bangers and mash, a fresh pint of bitters at hand, when the door blew open to reveal my old friend.  He spotted me at once and soon we were engaged in stories of the old days.

Eventually talk got round to current events and I asked him what he was up to.  “You won’t believe me,” he said.  I assured him that I would but he, as usual, turned out to be right.  It appears that the crown is still trying to win back their dominance from the Americans.  I assured Sir Henry that ship had already sailed and he nodded, but retorted that, “There is always room for folly on a ship of fools.”

It took two more pints each for him to get through the whole of it but apparently the plan is to do everything the opposite of the Yanks when it comes to cars.  Make them leak constantly, hand assemble each one so they take forever to build, and make every intersection a circle.  (He had plans with him for several such circles in Brighton.)

The coup de grace, he said, was the global expansion of British influence in the form of a head-to-head battle over which side of the road to drive on.  I shook my head.  “That’s like the American’s refusing to go metric.”  He nodded.  “The only thing crazier would be a unified currency for Europe!”

We both enjoyed a good laugh at that and then spent the rest of the night brainstorming ways to make English cars the most unreliable in the world.

"What's the matter Colonel Sanders? Chicken?"

I made the finals in the 5 minute fiction contest lastnight.  Please stop by and vote.  You can read the stories too, if you like.  They are all very different.  It was a good prompt.

I have to make a decision about whether or not to stick with the new train station.  I’m actually a day overdue on that decision and will probably get in trouble with the conductor this morning.  Wish me luck.

Decision is made.  I will keep the new station.  I’ve seen several other people from the old station showing up the last couple of days and the parking lot is fuller.  I think things might be worse up north.

Found an interesting entry in Washington’s journal last night.  Thought you’d enjoy it.

August 8, 1958.  Mickyhollow, MS

Wonderful news.  I’ve sold the farm and am now officially out of the chicken business.  If someone ever comes to you and says, “You can make a million dollars with a chicken farm,” then you should look that man in the eye and say, “Balderdash.”

There are few creatures as vile and repugnant as a chicken, be they living or dead.  I for one will consider it to be too soon if I ever see the gizzard of a fowl again.

The young man that bought it from me – Frank Perdue’s boy, Frank, jr. – says he’s got plans that will change how America eats chicken.  Says he can make the million that eluded me.  Maybe he can.  And if so, good for him.  As for me, if I need to raise chickens to make a million I’d rather beg on skid row.

"Face the probability of your imminent death..."

2014.  A Strange New World.  I read a great post about choosing rituals rather than making resolutions.  I've never been big on New Year's Resolutions myself -- part of it is that the gym is always super crowded for a week or so, but mostly it's because of how much time gets wasted if you wait until the end of the year to make changes in your life.  If you want to spend less money, start now.   If you want to eat more pie, start now.  If you're going to write a movie, start RIGHT NOW.  Of course, if you want to take up procrastinating, New Year's 2015 is probably a good time to start.

I know today is supposed to be about TV but I've still got Hunger Games on my mind.  The setting was very easy to get into.  It felt alien and familiar and I've figured it out.  Ms. Collins drew from the world we all know and just changed a couple of cosmetic things so that the more outlandish idea -- the games -- would seem to fit.  The first thing she did was create consistent over-the-top fashion.  It was a great way to separate the haves and have-nots and the rich were so outlandish that they might actually belong at an Elizabethan Ball -- but in France.

The second was in the names.  She found a way to make everything very foreign without stooping to hard-to-follow accents or making up a language (both big no-nos in my book).  She took well-known names or words and twisted them up a little for her character names, creating evocative and easy to pronounce/remember identifiers.  I'm reading a book now that uses completely made up names (and fabricated colloquialisms) and it doesn't work.  It's very distracting and too much effort.  There are 10 characters with names that start "Ka" and the dialogue is filled with apostrophes -- should be KAstastrophes.

Effie, Heymitch, Katniss herself -- great names.  Peeta, Clove, Rue -- the familiar turned into something exotic.  Welcome to a world as vibrant as Ender's.  And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Speaking of which (odds), I’m a featured author today.

"Trust in me."

Today we celebrated a birthday in my house.  Birthdays are always great fun and one of the very times that everybody likes to get up early.  We open presents before school, before work, and when the tea kettle takes too long, before coffee too.  There was the usual collection of cool stuff, books, and checks but for anyone looking to find the perfect Christmas gift for a Nerf junkie I need to tell you – the “Nerf Zombie Collection”  is very, very cool.  The shot gun variant is semi-steampunk and fires 3 darts at once.  Hint, hint.

The other big news today is that I won the 5 minute fiction contest this week.  Thank you for voting, and an extra special thank you if you voted for me.  If you have never experienced an adrenaline rush while writing, I recommend you try this contest at least twice - the first so you get used to the panic and figure out just how much time everything really takes - and the second so you get to actually enjoy the stress of competing.

The November issue of Apocrypha and Abstractions is out but they spread the content out over a month of postings so my story won't appear until 11/21.  I'll post the link then too.  I'm still going great guns with nano - no burn out to date - and have had a couple of +2k word days.  It seems that many of the other folks buying groceries with non-writing jobs are backing off on their blogs to focus on the novel project this month.  I will not be doing that.

However, today I will not be writing about TV like I usually do because I haven't seen anything new to comment on or anything new in the few shows I have watched to highlight.  Well, there is one thing.  When you are writing dialogue for a script rather than a novel, less is definitely more.  Let the actors and setting show so you don’t have to tell.  Three lines in a book might only take three words in a script.  Trust the actors.  Trust the director.  Trust the snake voiced by Winnie the Pooh.

"Everyone isn't bad, Mama!"

So I'm pretty excited.  I remembered to enter Wendy's weekly #5 Fiction writing contest last night and was a finalist (you can vote for me here) this time.  Sort of by default - it was a light entry night - but it proved something to me in a personal way that I will never forget.  Discipline pays off in writing.

Let me say that again.  "Discipline pays of in writing."

It's been that kind of week plus, despite not feeling well, I went to our regular kettlebell class, so the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was a creative writing exercise.  But entering this contest is what I have purposed to do.  "Just get something down." I told myself.  "You need the experience or you'll never be a finalist."

I sat down and wrote.  Anything else would be quitting.

Stephen King's book, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft", touches on never giving up.  He describes coming home with his wife to a ratty apartment in a broken down car carrying a baby and a sick toddler (complete with SK description of the vomit that covered him) - knowing that she needed antibiotics and not even having money for food.  It was a low point, he said.  He'd been writing but without success.  He was on the verge of giving up on everything.  But there was an envelope waiting for them.  Inside was a check for more than he'd ever been paid for anything.  It covered the medicine, and dinner, and a new transmission.  It kept him going until "Carrie" exploded on the scene turning him into a sensation and one of the writing world's superstars.

No check for me.  No record breaking best seller.  Just a finalist in a small writing contest that I stumbled across.  Just a goal achiever who is perhaps a bit smugger than most of the world would think was appropriate, but any writer would completely understand.