“It was a dark and stormy night.”April 30, 2010

(first line from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time)

Today’s story comes from a vision I had when I woke up this morning, of a little girl (a princess, it turns out) navigating a sailboat over the ocean all by her self.  Basically, I started with that image and the rest just sort of fell into place, descended from the ether.  It’s a pirate story, another one for my eventual book of kid’s stories.  The only real difference I find between writing kids stories and not writing with kids in mind, is that I tend to want to end kids stories on a happy note.  Perhaps too happy, I don’t know.  But when kids are involved, it’s probably better to err on the schmaltzy side rather than confuse them or scare them to death with a big, existential reversal (or something) at the end.  At any rate, I guess I’ve been wanting to write about pirates for a while too.  Pirates are tricky because how do you write about something that’s been written about a million times before, and better than you could ever do it?  Hopefully, though, the story itself has enough quirks to keep it interesting and moving.

Well, it looks like this will be my last installment in these April chronicles.  What will I go on to write now, you ask?  I really want to finish this childrens story collection.  Then I’m going to start on new novel for young adults set in the very distant future, where most of the suns in the galaxy have extinguished, space is thick and sea creatures populate the universe–a boy and his family have been lost in space nearly his whole life–things get shaken up, plots get twisted, and the family’s only hope for survival is to find this mystical creature to guide them to one of the last remaining stars in the galaxy, where the rest of the humans have migrated.

Something like that.

Thanks to all of you who’ve been patient enough to make it through some or most of my story-a-day’s.  It’s been fun doing this.  At the risk of tooting my own horn, I’m proud to have stuck with this.  I’m coming out of this with a couple of good stories I can hang my hat on.  Not to mention all that I’ve learned (much of which is probably subconscious).  Maybe I’ll do it again someday.  Though probably not in the near future.

For now, I’m off to ice down my abused and overworked carpals–and dare I say, I just might take a break from writing tomorrow.

April 30 — The Banished Princess

“The line consists of an infinite number of points,…April 29, 2010

the plane, of an infinite number of lines; the volume of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume, of an infinite number of volumes… No–this more geometrico, is decidedly not the best way to begin my tale.”
(first line from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, The Book of Sand)

As you might guess, the inspiration from today’s story draws from Borges’ The Book of Sand.  In that story, a man encounters a book, like an encyclopedia, but with infinite pages–if you turn to an illustration, you should look well because you’ll never be able to turn to that page again.  All the words rearrange and say something new every time you close the book.

I’ve wanted to use this idea for a kid’s story for a while, and I never quite knew how to attack it.  I’m not convinced I’ve done it properly here, but it’s a try.  I hope it doesn’t come across as too didactic, but rather more playful and bizarre.

Thank you, come again!

April — 29 The Book of All Books

“Ask me a riddle,” Blaine invited.April 28, 2010

(first line from Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass.)

Today’s story is inspired by nothing more than the title: Exquisite Corpse.  For no particular reason, I woke up this morning with this title in my head.  (The term exquisite corpse refers to a collective poem or work of art, made by several people.)

I also woke up with the idea of a ghost, or zombie that comes back from the dead to turn in his master thesis.  Something about the constant confusion and oppression of writing a seemingly interminable thesis strikes me as Kafka-esque, so that’s probably why Franz makes an appearance here.

Only two more days to go…

April — 28 Exquisite Corpse

“The station waggons arrived at noon,…April 27, 2010

a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.”

(first line from Don Delillo’s White Noise)

Today’s story has two major points of origin.  First: yesterday I heard the poet Carol Frost give a reading.  One of her poems was about her mother, who suffers from dementia, and how she wasn’t able to read a clock.  I’ve been turning over a story in my mind for a while where I wanted to have a character who suddenly was unable to recognize symbols (numbers, words, letters, even images that represented other things).  I always envisioned this story as an absurdist kind of thing, but in spite of my designs today’s story came out as an exercise in realism.

The second point of origin is the title The Book of Words.  In college, a bunch of us thought it would be funny to write a sketch about a church where all the words are complete nonsense.  When people sing or pray or there’s a call and response, it would always be an illogical strand of words.  The main crux of the joke, I guess, was in exploiting the meaninglessness of actual words (as opposed to the actions they are coupled with); or maybe the point of it was the same as DuChamp’s famous painting of a pipe entitled “This is not a pipe.”  In other words, playing with the gap between objects/ideas/actions and the representation of those same objects/ideas/actions.  Maybe I’m over thinking it.

In addition, I also wanted this story to be an exercise in creating a shifting point of view.  So you’ll notice that, although the POV is third person, it glides back and forth between the man and the woman.  I’m not sure how or if this enhances (or limits) the story, but it’s there.

Thanks for tuning in, see you tomorrow!

April 27 — The Book of Words

“The final dying sounds…April 26, 2010

of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.”

(first line from Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road)

Okay, I’ve got a reading to be to soon, so I don’t have much time to comment on today’s story. I will say I wanted to do an exercise in having a character do a task while thinking about something. It’s a literary trick called Juggling by some.

It’s realism, nothing fancy. Hope you enjoy it!

April 26 — The Right Kind of Onions

“Their father never took them to resaurants,April 25, 2010

because he though it was a waste of money when they could open up a can of beans, sprinkle on Tabasco sauce, stuff their bellies, and it would all shit out the same way anyway.”
(from Daniel Chacon’s and the shadows took him.)

I’ll start by saying I’m exhausted.  And rather than deliver a drawn out story of my long day, (which by the way was a very good day) I’ll just enumerate the reasons for my tiredness:

a: woke up at 5 am to run a half-marathon this morning

b: went to Newport Pizza and got pizza and beer (and got half a glass of an expensive Trippel because the keg blew just as she was pouring it for me).

c: rushed to make it to a poetry workshop which I planned for SDSU.  It was very inspirational, and thank goodness I had coffee to keep me going.

d: met Amanda directly after the workshop at Shakespeare’s Pub, had fish and chips and a Bass, then participated in the pub’s trivia night thing.

e: came home and watched The Lightening Thief, (which was vastly different than the book) while Amanda slept.

f: forgot that I haven’t blogged today, and figured I should post before it’s technically still the 25th.

Here’s today’s story.

April 25 — Pygmy

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”April 24, 2010

…first lines from Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer prize winning Beloved.

The inspiration from today’s story comes from a real life tragedy about Alicia Parlett, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, who was only 28 when she died of cancer.  I won’t go into all the details, (you can read about it here) but what struck me most about this was the fact that she quit treatment knowingly, and even though she knew she would soon die she had a commitment ceremony with her boyfriend, who gave her his mother’s wedding ring.  Something about this stuck with me…not so much the dying, but the man’s choice to marry a woman, knowing he wouldn’t grow old with her.

Anyway, here’s the story.

April 24 — Immortal

“In the beginning there were thirty-six of them…April 23, 2010

thirty-six droplets of life so tiny that Eduardo could see them only under a microscope.”
(first line from Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion)

To be perfectly honest, I had a little trouble with today’s story.  Trouble insofar as I couldn’t think of anything to write about.  I’ve been wanting to do something with clones lately, so I figured now was as good a time as any.  Once again, I had the magazine Space Squid in mind when writing this–which means it’s an attempt to incorporate science fiction (cloning) with humor.

After writing this story, it feels more like a skit you’d see in the last half-hour of Saturday Night Live rather than a cohesive story.  (Okay, hopefully it’s not that bad, but I’m trying to play it down to lower your expectations.)

April 23 — Death of the Original Claude

“No, the cat had not come back”April 22, 2010

Although this isn’t the first line, it is among the first pages of Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

The genesis of this story is simple: our good friend, Brodie, has told us on several occasions that Amanda and I have a ghost cat living in our apartment.  Admittedly, I have never seen the ghost cat for myself.  However, this morning I half-dreamed that something had pounced onto the bed, something like a cat.  It kind of freaked me out for a few minutes, then I realized I probably had to write about it.

In fact, I’ve been having some very vivid dreams since embarking on the story-a-day.  Dreaming in narratives–like movies, with beginnings, middles, and ends.  At least that’s how they feel at the time.  I always wake up thinking I’ve just dreamed a perfectly formed story…only to realize moments later that it’s wildly incoherent and perfectly void of logic.  None of this has to do with today’s story.

Thanks for keeping up–only one more week plus a day until April’s over and I can ice down my fingers from all the typing!  Hope you enjoy today’s story.

April 22 — Ghost Cat

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”April 21, 2010

This is the first line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, The Hobbit (which was written specifically for children, by the way, unlike his later, six-book saga).

For a while now, a few years I’d say, I’ve been wanting to write a book of fantasy stories for children.  I don’t mean fantasy strictly in terms of the quasi-medieval, elf and troll infested milieu of The Lord of the Rings.  I mean fantasy in the most broad sense: a story world that could not physically exist.  Although, I concede that by this definition, Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis could be viewed as fantasy, since in the real world men don’t wake up having miraculously been transformed into insects.

The stories I have in mind do take place, more or less, in a present day, relatively familiar environment–but most of them have one or two fantastic elements.  In the story attached below, the fantastic element is the sudden appearance of the Eye-Closer, a being who functions something like the Sandman (though I wanted to put a new spin on this too-familiar character).

As a matter of fact, the term Eye-Closer character isn’t actually mine.  I heisted it from a Hans Christen Anderson story called Ole Lukøje, where the main character carries two umbrellas to show children when they sleep.  One is painted with pictures and makes kids dream sweet dreams.  The other umbrella has nothing at all on it and makes them sleep heavily and awake feeling unrested.

This story has been steeping for a while, but it’s still far from finished–though I think the broad strokes are there.  Anyway, hope you enjoy it.  Sweet dreams…

April 21 — The Dream Thief