Saturday 16 June 2012

The Light That Finds Me

While watching an episode of the original series of Star Trek, I stumbled upon a journal post in my deviantArt account. Live-Love-Write, one of the groups there, has a weekly writing prompt, and to be honest I rarely give it much thought. This week, emboldened by the two pieces of fiction I've already completed and uploaded today, I looked at it.

The result is a post-apocalyptic mix of a true gentleman in a situation not unlike The Hunger Games (the first book of which I've read and truly enjoyed) and The Running Man (King at his best as his pen-name Bachman). It's not long, it's not even particularly good, perhaps, but it's a successful twisting of what should have been a wonderfully positive prompt. All of the examples they gave were about lights finding you in the darkest of times, positive things leading you onwards. Of course, I immediately wondered what it might be like if you didn't want the light to find you, if the darkness were your friend. This is the result.


100 Themes 035 - Hold My Hand

A love story, this time, and taking the theme completely literally this time. I really enjoyed writing this one and it's something I'm sure I'll return to. I know a lot of things have been set on Mars but I tried for a slightly different idea here.
Edit: My wife (who has an excellent blog over here) has suggested I make a sequel to this, continue the story. It's swilled around in my head for a couple of weeks and I think I have a solution. It's going to be a bit of an homage but I think I can pull it off.


100 Themes 034 - Stars


Well here we are. The writing bug is back, and feeling good. Each piece seems to feel more natural much better.

I don't plan these in any way. I generally start with a central idea, given to me by the theme, usually a twisted idea. Thought process for this one went 'Stars in the sky, stars on TV, stars sewn onto something as badges or embroidered (like Soviet stars), been looking at tattoos today, ooh, tattooed stars.' The whole story went from there.

Probably the first time a character in a story has surprised me by revealing something about themselves right at the end.


Wednesday 13 June 2012

100 Themes 033 - Expectations


I've been out of writing for a long time. My last piece was Easter, about two months ago, and before that it was a long old time.
My reasons for this sound, to my ears at least, mournfully self-pitying. However, as far as I'm concerned, this is my story and I'm sticking with it. My job has kept me very busy and I simply haven't had the mental space to write. I sometimes feel like writing requires at least two of these three: Time, willpower, energy. Pick two. I haven't managed to have two of those in the same space for nearly a year now.
Anyway, I'm on my way out of this particular job and hopefully moving on to doing some writing. I'd love to write a long piece again, using these little vignettes as mere warm-up pieces.

Let's hope this happens.

Written on two separate evenings, here is a piece of more realistic fiction. My wife said it's unlike a lot of my stuff, where I think there's usually something a bit weird or supernatural, or an odd twist. I suppose this has an odd twist, but it's not as twisted as most of my stuff. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think in the comments.

033 - Expectations

Jessica let the water sluice over her body, revelling in the warmth. Steam filled the air and the smell of her mint shower gel mingled with the warm-shower smell. Bliss, she thought.
While she washed, letting the foamy suds wash away the mire of sleep, her mind wandered. The day ahead was going to be busy; the call had come early that Overseer Simon wasn’t going to be in, and Jessica would be expected to take his place. It was at once thrilling and terrifying, with today being stocktake day and Mr Fujikama visiting from the Tokyo branch. One of those alone would have kept them busy, but both at the same time was a potential nightmare waiting to happen. Or, she reflected, it could be the thing that finally shows Management what a useless sack of shit Simon really was.

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