Nano Fiction, 1-2-3

Owing to the fact that I have written approximately ZILCH since . . . I can't even remember when, I decided to write some nanofiction. You can tell I haven't written in awhile, but if nothing else, it reignited the creative flame.

To all who have preceded me in doing this: I'm impressed. Tom, I hope that coming from a stranger, the fact that your nanofiction blew me away means a little something extra to ya.

The Smell of Fear:
As they leave under a blackened sky, the boy wipes a red river from his nostrils and says, “I get nosebleeds when I’m nervous.”

Garages:
She’d kissed him twice before today in the same stagnant parking garage, when her eyes prickle as he pushes in too far.

Month-to-Month:
December, he coughs blood into the Kleenex she keeps in the glove box. February, she leaves her keys in an envelope on the mantel.

Nano Sequence 2: Cosmic Jokes

"The Contest"

Rattling drinks, they agreed love was about power. She thought herself good, and waited for him to call her name. He called the lawyer instead.

"Vegetable"

Before the Corolla swerved, she bit her tongue biting the carrot, teeth peeling off the tip, and flinched thinking, "God, are my senses so dull?"

"After Brock Died"

An unlucky birdling remained dropped on the stoop.
It baked for a week.
Finally the cat died in guilt, and I picked up the shovel.

Nano writing is the new not writing

Katie, what a great exercise! I love yours - so poetic. Tom, again, I'm not surprised by the awesomeness of these. When you're both famous, I'll say I knew you when.

Here's my attempt. I think, for me, it doesn't matter if they suck or not, but that they managed to break me out of my moratorium on all things writer-rific (that's what taking classes, applying to grad school, and working full-time does to a person, apparently. Actually, Tom can attest that yesterday I spent the better part of an hour trying to win a time trial in MarioKart. Yes, my priorities are in order).

Thanks again, Katie, for this excellent exercise.

“The Nurse”

The deed, indeed, left something to them. But on his deathbed, he had looked at her ankles, and decided something else.

“Science”

His face lit up with cancer. Half the town had died. And left with it, he had to wonder, was it something in the water?

“Probability”

The airport was that way. She cried anyway. You never know, sometimes the plane just doesn’t land. Was it love, afterall?

Nano iTom

“Hunched”
Sunset in the grass; Aileen’s hunched, crying. I decide to leave. Standing, I remember her hair matted with rain, her wet lips kissing her husband.

“Chores”
She left yesterday, dresses stuffed in two red suitcases. Today I mowed, clipped hedges, chatted with Chet across the fence about dogs. It’s my fault.

“Sunday Morning”
I woke in a cold, empty bed, her pillow smelling like strawberries. She’s left a rose on the kitchen table. And a note, “Love you.”
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Here's my stab at it. This is a great exercise, Katie. Along with all the things you said in your email, I feel like the 25 words also force you to lay claim to your voice in a way long works don't. There aren't all those paragraphs to muck about in.

Katie, your first two are highly poetic and almost surreal in the way they reveal the moment and the plot. Your third also reads like a poem, but instead of surreal, feels grittier, more grounded in the conflict and character

This reminds me of a 6-word memoir site I saw a while back: http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords But let's be honest: unless you're Hemingway, there can be such a thing as too short.

Nano-Fiction (25 words)

Little Violence


"Drive-by Paintball"

Remnants of a redhead, widowed optimist, she waits for a friend. Slow car, half window, pop. Her temple blasted green: At least it happened to me.


"The Pitch"

Stunted boy, outgrown his brain, cocks his arm, kitchen knife clutched. Babysitter, nurse, all-time pitcher til now, freezes for the snap.
She doesn't blink.


"Rodeo"

At the wall, he stamps his brother's cigarette to dirt.
He'll take her from him.
This is what it means to root for the bull.

Lovely, Fulfilling/Gangly, Awkward

I have been very writing-busy as of late. There is an odd aspect of attending a writing workshop: they give you deadlines and then you write to meet them. It is a lovely, fulfilling way to live. I highly recommend it.

Actually, I've mostly been shirking my deadlines because I like to use the word shirk so awful much and don't get a chance in my non-writing life. I am supposed to be writing fiction, so I have been writing poems, obviously.

In fact, I will head over to Google Docs right now and post a poem or two (posting directly to the blog makes me feel gangly and awkward). It''ll just be a silly little first draft of a thing, but it is evidence that I am a writer.

There's a voice in my head, but I don't know if I like it just yet...

Hey all,

     So as we try and pick ourselves up and get back into the swing of writing (by any means necessary, including a swift kick to the arse, as Tom suggests), I was wondering how everyone is feeling about their ‘voice.’ Yeah, yeah, you hear it time and time again, but I am beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable with this alleged character I’ve developed. Do you ever find yourselves in a slump not over material, so much as the way in which a story is told?

     Well, I’m taking a literature course with the infamous Shelley Jackson (she’s totally mind-blowing, do some googling and learn all about her crazy hypertext projects and tattooing of novels on volunteers, etc), and basically we’ve been prompted to respond to each work we read with not an analysis or critique, but rather just something ‘creative,’ using one or more of the author’s techniques for inspiration. Perhaps we like the structure of the piece, or the subject matter, or tense usage, tone, whatever. Well, this week, as I mentioned in an equally blabbering email to all of you, we have been tackling a Samuel Beckett trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. And I’m totally hooked. Generally, I prefer my authors to still be breathing, or at least lukewarm in the grave (how morbid, my bad), but I’m definitely connecting to Beckett’s style more so than anything I’ve recently read. I think the guy’s absolutely hilarious, totally immersed in his characters’ own heads, so much in fact, that many of them don’t even have fully developed bodies, or exist in a space and time that’s real. But who cares, because their inner musings are so damn good! So I tried my hand at writing in a style similar to his, and thought that I’d leave you an excerpt of a longer piece I’m working on (this too, is still in very rough form…I thought it and then wrote it, and haven’t spent much time editing/looking it over just yet). It sort of goes along with Molloy’s obsessive thought process, as he oftentimes goes off on tangents about his own bodily functions. And while Kim is probably sitting there, shaking her head, I must give my little ‘self-saving’ speech. I don’t actually think/believe a lot of this (Keep that in mind when you reach the final bodily action…I’m not that bitter or gross or overly emphatic, haha), but it fits with many of Molloy’s discussions about himself; he’s a fan of discussing his urine flow, lack of hygiene, and the unending assortment of awkward things he does with his penis. Oh, and the ending is not a cry for help; Molloy and most of Beckett’s characters are always sort of on the verge of death, or at least not being alive in the typical sense, so that’s where the last line is coming from. I’m totally up for not being on the verge of anything outside of living. So it’s a little gross, maybe a bit crude, and not like anything I’m used to writing. But hey, here’s my mound of clay for the week…

The Push-Pull

     My body is a network of give and takes. Look at my hand, the left one for certain, of which I write, among other inviolable acts. It begins by pushing the pen, trying and yet almost always failing to lasso the thoughts from the skull’s centrifugal mess onto the tablet. It tenses (of ‘it’ I refer superficially to the hand at stake, though it is inevitable to keep the mind from following suit), forcing itself harder and rougher upon the utensil, which in turn drives onto the page, carving out brail-like imprints of cursive. Each press hurts more and more, my hand resisting acknowledgment of such force’s origin, (likely stemming from the depths of my not surprisingly self-afflicted entrails) until it hurts just so that I must throw the pen, shake and shake and shake my hand, an almost cathartic exorcism (aren’t all conjurations liberating, you ask? Surely not, but my story is of particulars, and time forbids me from expiating). Soon, the blood reemerges from hiding, knuckles lose their precarious egg-shell hue, and all that’s left to do is inhale. I must reel in the perspiration that has formed on my brow, swallow the words on the page, or perhaps at this moment, only smudges remain. It matters not. Hell, I even gorge on the luscious trail of black ink stains, from the pisiform to the tip of my pinkie finger. I sit up, look at the physical evidence of yet another expulsion, and pull it all back in.

     So, too, does the push-pull phenomenon occur with my sneezes. At first, the nose departs from its routine, obedient nature atop my face, setting off a slight twitch. It is a warning sign, but one in which there seems to be no preventative measure for what shall unavoidably ensue (Though I do encourage you to take note of the fools who mistakenly believe to hold the cure: bright-light-seekers, tongue-biters, nostril-spelunkers, and screamers of ‘pineapple pineapple pineapple!’). Then, like a sudden rip current along a jetty, frenetic inhalations suck the rest of my body into the moment: ribs becoming irresolute, bottom lip repelling downward from its superior, eye sockets hosting an exorbitant measure of emotional juice. Time stops. Well, I’m lying, and you should be grateful that earth revolves around the sun and not my bodily functions. But I stop—doubtful that my heart does, as the myth would have it, for in this moment alone, I am nervous, powerless to the will of my booger canals. But before I can ponder, I am hurled into the throws of release, an expulsory action of air and bioparticles. When it’s over, I survey the damage (never consistent from one act of sternutation to the next), and suck back in whatever gelatinous remains dangle near my septum.

     And why, how can I come to speak of this push-pull experience without the most obvious of them all? Yes, the love button, tucked away under layers of skirts and nylons and undergarments—should one choose to be so dress-code compliant—a place where men’s fingertips magnetically repel, though they have been told time and time again by their health teachers (and partners, female friends, magazine articles, television shows, blogs, surveys, specially designed condoms…oh, what’s the use) of its finely enervated composition. The clitoris, the beacon of release amidst an underworld of retention. It is apparent on the female fetus, just fourteen weeks after a mother’s missed menstruation. And speaking of blood, how it flows, right here, engorging this glorious protrusion until it stands firmly at attention. And so it is pushed—more accurately, touched and rubbed and stroked—until the rest of my body cannot continue to function properly, thus directing every ounce of focus to this fleshy nub. And then. Much like the sneeze, burp, bowel -movement (must I go there now? What shame), a release overtakes my very being. The aftereffects leave me with a frost-blue tingle running the course of my femoral veins, halting only after my toes have cramped; I become the victim of erotic paraplegicism. But recovery is a must, and after minutes of cunt-clenching, skin-quivering bliss, I pull back into reality, and let the sexual flatlines of everyday life carry me along.

     And so why discuss my most intimate bodily occurrences in such depth? Because with each expulsion, I leave myself. Or my perception of what most think is a self, a fully composed and functioning human being. At times, the escape is exciting; at others, it begrudgingly sucks me in. Nevertheless, it is during these moments of self-examination that I am able to look upon the body which holds me in tact (though not without glitches), and see it for what it’s worth. Its worth, you ask? Why, I fear, that like a close friend, I am on the threshold of being no more.