fun flash fiction

[bain_sidhe]

I've been writing a daily "momento" for several days now, and today's piece is something I thought people here might enjoy. I use a photo from a friends photoblog as my "inspiration" for each story (sometimes, the story is only loosely related, but having to come up with something based on somebody elses input seems to be doing good things for my creativity). This isn't for critique, I'm just exercising the write side of my brain. ;-) It'll go up on my blog a little later with the rest of my momentos, but you guys get a first peek:

Here's the photo:



and here's the story:

“This is the trickiest part of the route,” Wallace told his two children. “You can go around the Smokestack Shoals, but it adds a half a day to the trip to open water. That one there,” he pointed to the big one close enough to touch off the starboard bow, “is where you turn hard a’port and aim straight between…” He stopped as he noted his daughter Barb leaning over the side, staring down into the water and obviously not paying attention. “Barb! Listen up! You might not think you’ll go to the boats when you grow up, but life has a funny way of not working out the way you planned.”

She turned to him with an obviously fake look of rapt attention. “Yes, daddy. Turn left at the big smokestack and aim for…?”

He sighed and closed his eyes a moment. That girl’s gonna come to a bad end, mark my words, he thought. But at least Rick was taking it all in, and he was more likely to take over the trawler anyway, so Wallace went on. “Head straight between those two little ones, see there? This part of the dogleg follows an old industrial railroad, so you know there’s no shorter smokestacks hiding under the surface to punch a hole in your hull. Then, oh about two lengths beyond the twins – that’s what we call those two stacks, Rick, the twins – you make a turn back to starboard and go pretty much straight east. You’ll know when you pass the old coastline, the water turns black, and there aren’t any little eddies swirling around. Then you’re home free.”

Barb had gone back to leaning over the side, her thoughts obviously a million miles away. He didn’t know what he was going to do with that girl. Why couldn’t she be more like the grandmother she was named for? Calm, competent, dutiful, and a hard worker. But Barb had tired early on of Grandma Barbara’s stories of past glory, when both her grand-daddy and her daddy had been president, much preferring to listen to her great-aunt Jenna’s stories of her wild and rebellious youth.

He tried again. One more time, he told himself, knowing it wouldn’t be the last time he’d try, even though each time he said it, he pretended that it would be. “Living in this half-drowned world isn’t easy, girl. Nobody knew the polar ice would go so fast. Nobody prepared. Even so, disease and starvation killed more people than the water did. And the riots. And make no mistake, there are still people around who’d rather take what you’ve got than make it for themselves. Those that were left just had to suck it up, and do whatever it took to get by. Like running this fishing trawler out of Port Hartford. Your grandma did it, your mom and me did it, now it’s your turn. Nobody’s going to hand you anything on a silver platter, girl. You gotta give it all you got just to get by. It’s hard work.”

[oneighty]

1. Hahahahahahahaha. Excellent

I laugh because I was a commercial fisherman for a number of years. My little girl 'Baby Pat' about eight at the time often went crabbing with me in my 'Honky Dory" a very fast twenty foot long outboard.

Oh yes! She run the boat flat out go here go there wherever I be pinting too. She never miss putting me right next de crab pot jug. Early on in her outings with me I ask her. "Baby Pat if something happen to me out here can you find your way back to de dock?". "Yes Papa." She be telling me. I say; "Do you know where we at?" "Yes." she say; "We be right here."

Later we get the Vicky Mary a thirty two foot clam dredge. Oh yes she handle that boat too kiss it up to the dock pretty as you please. She was a great favorite with the fishermens and with me. Pushing forty now Baby Pat is.

My book is 'Voyages of the Vicky Mary'.

I like your story and your method. Excellent! Now you will tell us more?

180

[bain_sidhe]

3. Glad you liked it, and...

Oh yes! She run the boat flat out go here go there wherever I be pinting too. She never miss putting me right next de crab pot jug. Early on in her outings with me I ask her. "Baby Pat if something happen to me out here can you find your way back to de dock?". "Yes Papa." She be telling me. I say; "Do you know where we at?" "Yes." she say; "We be right here."

GREAT dialect writing!!! Full of flavor, but still understandable enough for us "outsiders" to follow. Are you from the south coast? (Because it sounds cajun to me.) This book "Voyages of the Vicky Mary" is the self-pulished one you mentioned in the mission statement thread? How are you selling it?

And, no, there's no more. That's it for this story. Now I've got to move on to the next one. My whole goal right now is just to write a story every day. Has lots to do with overcoming my own hang-ups - When I try to write a "real" story - one that could be submitted somewhere - I choke. So these aren't for publication, and aren't intended to be polished or extended. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'll never go back and put flesh on the bones, but I can't think about that, or I'll start editing and rewriting and re-editing and re-re-writing and re-re-editing... and never write another original word.

And, in my past attempts at writing, this inability to move on also lead to a fear that I'd never, ever have another idea... hence, making it even MORE important that the one I was working on be PERFECT.

So my "daily momentos" are meant to do two things - take the pressure to be perfect off, and prove to myself that I can come up with new story ideas. That's it.

Now I have to go watch Commander in Chief! Back later.

[oneighty]

5. South Santee River

East of the inland waterway South of Georgetown and north of McClellanville, South Carolina and home of the elusive Swamp Fox Francis Marion.

Dialect is Gullah. My wife is a from McClellanville and when I first met her and the family they spoke the dialect. I learned the dialect from my friends Mose and Lewis and Thomas. Mose and I often ventured forth into the creeks and ditches gathering clams and oysters.

'Voyages' is self published and was printed by a local company. I had one hundred copies made. I have ten left; five I am saving for my grandchildren. Many of them were given to fellow DUers. No I did not sell them. 'Voyages' was a labor of love. My most recent effort is 'KAZUKO' a brief and true love story. Now at the printers; twenty copies.

Like you I avoid re-writes having learned the harder I try the worse it gets until I wind up with garbage and toss it. Frustrating.

180

PS. I been so busy talking bout ME I forgot. You have a very nice web site. I have it bookmarked and will be visiting.

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. Very nice

I enjoyed reading it

Is there more?

[bain_sidhe]

4. Nope, that's it for now.

I'm on to the next story!

If you want to know, this is the image I have to work with:



Gotta go, Commander in Chief's on!

[JitterbugPerfume]

6. i love your method

(using a picture for inspiraton) I hope you do not mind if I "borrow"it

No need to stare at a blank page with that kind of inspiration

On edit---incidently, do I recall correctly that you said once long ago that your user name is pronounced Banshee? Seems like I remember that but at MY age---who knows!! hee hee hee

[bain_sidhe]

7. I'm having fun with it!

Prior to this, my "method" was simply to imagine the significance of various objects arranged around a "theme." My first theme was "mucking out the moat." It stemmed from a online novel writing group who gathered at what we called "the castle" - so the idea there was to imagine something tossed in the moat, and tell in just 500-1000 words, the story of the "moment" that caused it to be thrown in (hence the name "momento"). And, btw, this was years before anybody ever heard of "flash fiction" (and the exercise was my idea, so I like to pretend that I invented flash fiction, LOL - one of the six of us must have talked!). I only did two of those, though, because I'm not a big fan of fantasy OR historical fiction. Other themes I've used were "Grandma's trunk" - assume everything she saved, she saved because it was important to her. Then imagine finding "mundane" objects, and answer the question "why in the world would she save *this*?" I did a brass button, a bit of lace stained with blood, an invitation to a garden party and a little hand-stitched bow. My next theme was the debris around a space station that had been destroyed. I only did one of those before coming up with the photoblog "inspiration", so my first one of those combined the two.

The problem with just "making up" an object was that, for some reason, the objects I came up with tended to be related to stories I'd already thought of. Using somebody elses "objects" forced me to stretch beyond ideas I already had.

And, of course, feel free to use any of the above methods! They all worked for me at various times.

Yes, bain sidhe is pronounced "banshee", although the more common gaelic spelling seems to be bean sidhe (bean meaning woman, bain (or ban) meaning white or pale.) The banshee historically was the spirit of woman, wailing over an impending death or doom. But banshees were also supposed to be white or pale, sometimes to the point of shimmering or glowing.

[sybylla]

8. What a wonderfully creative concept

I've been trying to wrap my head around flash fiction lately with very little success. Few people have been able to define it for me.

But I love the idea of starting with a found object and creating a story around it. As a genealogist, I've found objects and have had to imagine their importance historically, but I've never thought to turn it into a creative writing exercise.

I've bookmarked your blog and look forward to future entries.

Thank you for sharing your writing and your ideas.

[bain_sidhe]

9. If'n you want

I could post a couple of the "mundane objects" momentos so you can see how *I* did it, if you think that would be useful. OTOH, I don't want to stiffle or interfere with your creativity. Sometimes I think it's best to come at it without any preconceptions.

But thank you for the ego-boo! (As the authors at sff.net call them.)

[sybylla]

10. Thanks, but you don't have to.

I can ferret out the "how-to" part. I think the lack of preconceptions is important so I'll see if I can turn your idea into my own exercise.

And you are welcome on the ego-boo. (love that term!) As a writer, I know how valued ego-boos are.

I was so excited by your blog that I have shared it and your post with my writing group. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say about it. I'll share future ego-boos as they come along.

[bain_sidhe]

11. wise, I think. n/t

[bain_sidhe]

12. The follow up - several centuries later

The picture:



The story:

Jenna finished covering the trench for the night, then sat on the edge of the tarp to watch the sun set behind the hulks on the horizon. The colors reached into her hind-brain, affecting her far more than sunset on her own world.

I don’t care what anybody else says, this world is in our bones and our blood. Nowhere else will ever be “home” quite like Earth is.

Her friends had laughed when she’d told them of her plans to join the archeological dig on Earth for her graduate work. “Come on, Jenna,” Crinne had scoffed. “You know what they say, Earth’s a great planet to be from. Why would anybody ever want to go back? I can’t think of anything more depressing than excavating the rotting corpse of the cradle of humanity.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite a corpse, even centuries after the Great Change and the die-off that followed, and the diaspora that had followed that Yes, as ever more land area was made uninhabitable, enclaves of technological survivors had battered their way through the light-speed barrier to reach the stars, never to return. But those ancients had not neglected their duties to their homeworld; along with their starships, they had created crops that would grow in the quickly warming tundra, and given them to the humans who stayed, reverting to old lifeways. Even now, there were agricultural communities on the great plains of Siberia and the Mid-Northern Territories, saved from primitivism by the fusion-powered vehicles and machines those starfarers had left behind.

Those communities were being forced ever southward, now, as the polar ice began to grow back, as the earth began to regain its human-friendly equilibrium. Another few centuries, and humans might once again cover the surface of Earth.

That was why this project on the coastal plain was so important. Digging through the silt left by the receding sea, excavating the lives of that last generation before the Great Change, kept undisturbed by the ocean until just this last century. Learning to understand them, and the way they lived, learning to avoid making the same mistakes as humans repopulated Earth. It was hard work, no doubt about that, and she wouldn’t live to see the retaking of her ancestral homeworld – but her descendants would. And one of them will probably be named Jenna, too, she thought wryly.

Still, not many humans wanted to be reminded of their ancestors’ follies by even visiting the ruined world, let alone working there. But Jenna had always felt more connected to humanity’s birthplace than her friends did. Even her name was from Earth, handed down through the generations to maintain her family’s ties to their history. Rare was the day, during her childhood, when some elder did not remind her that they were descended from Kings of Earth. Though the details were lost in the mists of history, they remembered that much, and vowed that they always would. So she had cousins and aunts and uncles with odd names – Barbara, Wallace, Laura, George, Herbert, Richard, Prescott, Ellis – names her friends laughed at, and that she had hated as a child.

But now… well, she still hated her name, she had to admit. But her body felt the rightness of this place, as she sat, watching the sun set. The smell of the air, the colors of the land and the sky, even the gravity… her body knew this place she’d never been before. Knew it, and called it home.