The Wall

Here it is the last Friday of the month, which means it’s story time!

As a reminder, here’s the picture for this month’s prompt:

What did you think? Did it inspire you to come up with a story? A poem? Maybe a travel article? As seems usual for me lately, my imagination took a bit of a darker turn. And I had to do a surprising amount of research. Even so, I still managed to get it finished on the proper day this month. LOL


The Watcher On the Wall

My grandmother was fascinated by the end of the world and made it her life’s study. Don’t be too quick to judge, she wasn’t some crack pot, she was a respected university professor. Her specialty was end of the world mythology.

When I was younger I used to help her with her research and I have to admit it was intriguing to see how the different cultures believed things would end. It’s been predicted from as far back as the Mesopotamians, who believed the world was already slowly deteriorating and would end in the destruction of a corrupt society.

The Egyptians believed that after countless cycles of renewal, the world would dissolve in water, returning to its primordial state. The word apocalypse originated with the Greeks, who believed the world had already ended several times. But they, too, believed the ultimate end would come in water.

Surprisingly, the Norse Ragnarok, where the gods would battle Loki, the Frost Giants, Jormungandr (the Midgard Serpent), and the wolf Fenrir was not the ultimate end of the world as there would be survivors. The true end would come when the serpent Níðhöggr gnawed through the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil, bringing it and the universe down together.

Of course the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world on December 21, 2012 was proven wrong. But we still had the Christian belief of the second coming of Christ, who would face off against the Anti-Christ, Satan, a False Prophet, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse during Armageddon.

But in the end, it was none of those things. It was not fire or flood or war that brought us down, but a meteor and a man with too much authority and too little sense. There were other ways the deadly piece of rock from space could have been dealt with, but in his arrogance he chose to make a display of his nation’s power and blast it out of the sky with nuclear weapons.

He was successful in that the meteor shattered, so there was no devastating impact, but the meteor was riddled with micro-organisms that managed to survive the journey through space. Perhaps they were inside the meteor - we’ll never know, and in the long run it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? The radiation from the nuclear blast changed the microbes, made them into something... something we were not equipped to deal with.

The fallout of the fragments cut a wide swath through northern South America and half way up through the United States, releasing a virus that spared nothing and no one - humans, animals, plants - it came down as a mist, and everything it touched was affected. The lucky ones died. The unlucky ones ... changed.

In the beginning we thought it would be contained in North and South America. Although we lost communications with them after the first month we still managed to receive the odd satellite image. That was months ago - I still have nightmares about them. If there were any survivors in the Americas, they were on their own.

Strangely enough, those infected were not contagious, which gave the scientists hope the virus would have a limited lifespan - a virus shouldn’t be able to survive for long without a host but this virus was unlike anything we could have ever imagined. Though they hoped for the best, our scientists began to prepare for the worst. Reports started filtering down from England and along the coast of Africa, of dark misty clouds, like a swarm of insects, leaving trails of chaos in their wake.

There was no hope of reversing the damage the virus had caused, but the scientists were confident they had a way of repelling it, of making our land and our people distasteful to it. It was an enormous undertaking, spreading the repellent. They retrofitted planes and helicopters like crop dusters, seeded the clouds, urged citizens to bathe in the chemicals so that everything this side of the wall was covered, saturated.

The swarms - it was easier to think of the virus as a living entity at this point - advanced. A call went out for volunteers to man the wall, both to give warning and as an early test of the results of the repellent.

And now we watch. And we wait.


Be sure to stop by next week for the picture prompt for the month of April!

Of Rainy Days and Mondays ...

Seriously. Who ordered all this gloomy weather? It’s been like a week since I’ve seen the sun and my solar batteries were depleted about three days ago. There’s a rumour that we might get some sunshine tomorrow and maybe the next day, but I’ll believe it when I have to put my sun glasses on.

Or even be able to read a book without turning on the lights.

Not much to report for the wordage report. I had a kind of vague idea for last week’s prompt from Brazen Snake Books, but didn’t do anything with it. Which actually turned out for the best because it was very similar to the story Beware the Tiny Doors/ Alex Westhaven did, and she did a much better job. :-D

I got all excited when I found an envelope from Amazon in my mail box on Friday, but it was just my account statement for tax purposes, not the letter I need from them to go along with my ITIN application. Guess I’m going to jog their memory that I’m still waiting for it. *sigh*

If the weather isn’t enough to depress a person, my account statement sure was. It made me start to question what I’m doing here. Of course I haven’t exactly been promoting myself so if I’m not selling I’ve only myself to blame. And I’ve been using my lack of an ITIN as an excuse not to promote myself or expand my selling base. What’s the point if I’m not going to get the royalties I’m entitled to?

I think we all go through these periods once in a while, where we question ourselves and what we’re doing. A time of reflection, I guess you could say. And while I figured out a long time ago I wasn’t in this for the money, it would still be nice to know that someone out there is reading and (hopefully) enjoying my work.

But the thing is, it’s not enough to self-publish a book, you’ve got to be willing to put the time and effort into promoting it, and yourself. So like much like my friend Jamie takes a night off of writing to work on the business side of things, I’m going to have to designate a chunk of time to work on self-promotion. It’s not going to be easy, I’d rather wade through a leech infested swamp than put myself out there, but it’s got to be done.

On the weekend I read a few interesting articles to get me in the proper mindset. One of them I posted on my Facebook page (you can find a link for it in the bar on the right) and the other one was found HERE. I found this article in particular helpful because I suffer from a lot of self-doubt and negative thinking.

One of my big problems is putting things off until the weekend. My free time during the week is kind of broken up - an hour here, a couple of hours there, 45 minutes here - so it always seems logical when I want to work out something complicated to wait until the weekend when theoretically I have big chunks of time. Only something always comes up, or I get distracted, or I’m just too darned lazy.

So maybe I won’t just have one day/time to devote to the nuts and bolts of the writing business, maybe I might take a couple days . Self-promotion will be a big part of this, for sure, but I also want to start researching markets for my poetry and short stories. And submitting them. I’ve been writing more short fiction than long so far this year, and some of it’s pretty good. Maybe it’s time to start doing something with them.

Of Lists and Flix

Here's how distracted and muddle-headed I've been lately. I wrote this post yesterday, and then posted it to the wrong blog. Can we say D'oh?

Every time I go to type “wordage report” I hear in my head “creature report,” as in the Creature Report that’s included in every episode of The Octonauts. In case you’re not familiar with The Octonauts, it’s an animated children’s show about a team of underwater explorers - Captain Barnacles the bear, first mate Kwazi the cat, and Peso the penguin, among others - who explore under the sea, meet various sea creatures, and generally protect the ocean. Clearly I spend a lot of time with the granddaughter. ;-)

Anyway, this week’s wordage report is pretty slim pickings, especially when you take into consideration it’s been two weeks. One flash story for the Brazen Snake Books prompt that you can find HERE and a long letter to my sister.

Quite frankly, you’re lucky to have got that much out of me. Between a bad sinus cold that blew a hole in my eardrum and other assorted stumbling blocks life threw in my path, the last couple of weeks have been pretty stressful. And while I work well under pressure, stress is a whole other can of worms.

Sometime on Friday I made out a list of all the things I wanted/needed to get done on the weekend. It was quite a long list. The story wasn’t on the list but I wrote it in one session, despite the railroad spike like pain in my head. However, by the end of the weekend I was able to cross exactly zero items off my list. And here’s the reason:

A week ago Saturday my sadistically evil daughter had the hubby and I babysit so she and her hubby could go to the movies. That wasn’t the evil part. The evil part was leaving her Netflix cued up with the first episode of Stranger Things, a show she’s been recommending we watch. So we watched it. And the next episode. And part of the next. And when we got home I continued watching until 3 a.m. I finished watching the available episodes the following day.

Here’s where the sadistic part comes in. That’s all there is until the end of October. Now if you’ve had the pleasure of watching Stranger Things yourself, you’ll know that while they wrapped up the major story lines pretty well, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. And if you haven’t seen it yet, do so! If you don’t have Netflix already you can try it free for a month. Trust me, it won’t take a month for you to watch those eight episodes.

But back to my list. Despite my neatly written, well organized list, the daughter and I indulged in some out-of-town shopping therapy on Saturday. Then instead of tackling my list, I tackled the first six episodes of The 100, a show I’d wanted to see when it first came out, but it wasn’t offered on our regular TV channels.

Unlike Stranger Things, this show is well into its 4th season and there’s (I think) 13 episodes per season. So that’s a lot to catch up on. I’m going to have to learn to pace myself and get organized if I want to get anything else done.

Maybe I should put that on my list. ;-)

Quotable Quotes - February 27 through March 3

02-27
The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
~ William Faulkner

When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.
― Connie Willis

02-28
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
~ William Faulkner

Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.
― Drew Goodman

03-01
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
~ Oscar Wilde

A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it.
― Ian McEwan

03-02
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
~ John Steinbeck

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
― Beatrix Potter

03-03
My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.
~ Susan Sontag

I write
Not
For the sake of glory
Not
For the sake of fame
Not
For the sake of success
But for the sake of my soul
― Beth Nimmo

Of Good Intentions and Story Derailments

Is it just me or are these wordage reports not only perpetually late, but actually have very little of wordage in them? Well at least this time I finally have some words to report.

Two thousand and twenty-seven. That’s how many words I wrote last week, not including emails, a rather lengthy letter to my sister, and blog posts. That’s pretty good considering my mind has been a dust bowl lately.

However, the story was supposed to be a light, fluffy, humorous piece written for the Brazen Snake Books Weekly Story Prompt. It turned into something a little more complicated and a whole lot more serious. Seriously? *sigh*

Last week’s prompt concerned a fountain in a park, and the habit young girls had got into of taking selfies of themselves kissing the stone frog that was attached to the edge of the fountain. Originally I thought about writing the story from the frog’s POV and how he was cursed by a witch and how no matter how many girls kiss him he’s never going to be free because he’s gay.

Trust me, it was going to be really funny.

So I started the story. I cursed my character. I had him sitting in the park, enduring the slobbery kisses from giggling girls. And then I realized my story was at a thousand words, it was really late, and there was no way I was going to make the deadline. Oh, well. Tomorrow was another day and I could finish the story at my leisure for my own amusement. Except that the next day I made it up to two thousand words and I wasn’t done yet.

I only have myself to blame. I started writing some back-story for the main character and he became a whole lot more interesting. And then the story itself turned into a quasi love story and took a darker turn and then I found myself questioning the sex of his love interest. I’ve written gay characters before, that wasn’t the problem, the problem was the whole point of him being gay was for the humour of the situation. Since this is no longer a funny story, I’m wondering if the situation the love interest ends up in would work better if it was a woman instead of a man.

Or maybe not. Even in this day and age there’s still far too much discrimination going on, and gay-bashing, and just plain ugliness. And there are way too many messed up, angry people out there. Should I give the story a happy ending? A tragic ending? There’s a thought, the story could take an even darker turn and become really tragic. Hmmm.

You see how easy it is for me to derail a story?

Maybe what I need is a bigger train. ;-)

Prompt Me - The Wall

Did you have fun with last month's prompt? I hope it inspired you to write something interesting!

This being the first Friday in March, here's a new picture I hope will spark your creativity:

Remember, you can write anything you like: a story, a poem, even a non-fiction piece.

I'd love to see what you come up with, so when you're done feel free to email it to me at crward(dot)author(at)gmail(dot)com. With your permission, I can even post it here so others can enjoy it too.

Good luck, and have fun!

Quotable Quotes - February 20 through 24

02-20
Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
~ Maya Angelou

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.
― Washington Irving

02-21
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
~ Anais Nin

I like the idea of coming up with a story that never existed before, but I don’t really want to be in charge. I don’t want to be famous. I guess I like the idea of sitting in the dark and knowing that I created the thing on screen, that it’s my story, but, like, no-one else has to know it was me. Does that make sense?
― Melissa Keil, Life in Outer Space

02-22
I suppose there must be idiots who dream of signing deals with publishers while fully intending to drink martinis in cool bars or ride around on skateboards. But the actual writers I know are experts in neurotic self-torture. Every page of writing is the result of a thousand tiny decisions and desperate acts of will.
~ Helen Garner

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
― Natalie Goldberg

02-23
However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.
Trust your demon.
― Roger Zelazny

02-24
Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t “try” to do things. You simply “must” do things.
~ Ray Bradbury

Why am I compelled to write?... Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger... To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit... Finally I write because I'm scared of writing, but I'm more scared of not writing.
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa