#tumblr writing workshop with betts

[books]

Writers! Assemble!

Calling all #writers on tumblr! We have something very special lined up for you here on @books this month: Your very own Betts (@bettsfic) is running a writing workshop!

Who is @bettsfic?

Betts has been on Tumblr since 2012, where she mostly answers writing advice asks but occasionally goes on reblogging sprees of fleeting hyperfixations. She’s the Editor-in-Chief of OFIC Magazine (@oficmag), a literary journal for original fiction by fanauthors. She also leads the Fanauthor Workshop (@fanauthorworkshop).

Beth's fiction has most recently appeared in The Write Launch, Barren Magazine, and Rivet Journal. She received the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant and was a Hudson Prize and Launch Pad Prose Competition finalist. Her work has been supported by the Millay, Jentel, and Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center artist residencies, among others, and she’s been teaching creative writing for seven years as a college instructor and a freelance writing coach. You can find out more at bethweeks.com.

What's this about a workshop?

A writing workshop is generally a gathering of writers sharing work and giving feedback. In this case, we’re hosting what’s called a generative workshop, which means we’ll be introducing core writing concepts and providing prompts for you to work on and share. 

How does this work?

Each Monday over the next four weeks, starting August 14, we’ll post a workshop post for the week at 10 AM EST. 

On Wednesdays, Betts will answer any questions you might have. Please send us your questions here on @books on Monday/Tuesday, so she can review them and prepare answers for posting on the Wednesday of that week.

Every Friday is Feature Friday! Betts will select work from the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag page, and we'll reblog it to Books. 

How to join:

You can get as involved as you like. Message us here at Books to be included in the tag list on each Monday workshop post so that you get a notification. 

You can also simply follow along quietly on the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag page.

Questions? 

Ask any questions you might have before we start here, and Betts will answer them here on Books through this next week.

So, sharpen your pencils, polish your keyboards, and follow the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag, and we'll see you in the writers' room <3

[cardcaptorsakura96]

Getting To Know You

Fandom: Supergirl

Characters: Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers, Lillian Luthor

Summary: Kara and Lena run into a familiar face while on a trip to Chicago. Whether it is a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

Word Count: 3,015

Chapter: 1/1

Trigger warning: There is a mention of a death in the story. It happens before the events of the story.

Notes: This is for the Writing Workshop Week 3: Stories of a Place with @bettsfic and @books

Lena huffed as she finally got the coat over her body and zipped up. She looked down and smiled. It warmed her heart to see her six month pregnant belly. It took years to get to this point. She cupped her belly and started rubbing it.

“I can’t wait to met you guys.”

She looked up looking for her other half. She smiled when she spotted Kara coming towards her now all button up in her coat as well.

“Sorry I took so long. Clark had more photos that he wanted to show of Johnathan’s little league game.”

“You know that will be us in a couple of months.”

Kara cackled which caused Lena to smile more. Kara’s smiles were always the best part of Lena’s day.

“I already told Clark and Lois to be ready for the tons of photos we will be sending them soon. Speaking of….”

Kara slipped her arms around Lena and caressed her stomach.

“How are our little peanuts doing?”

Lena looked up at Kara pouting while holding her belly.

“We are all hungry.”

Kara kissed Lena on her forehead and said, “Let’s fix that. We can go to Ceres Cafe which is a couple of blocks from here.”

She held out her arm which Lena eagerly grabbed and headed out into the brisk October winds.

As they walked, Kara asked, “Are you okay to walk to the place? I could always fly us there.”

Lena sighed and rolled her eyes.

“It is only a couple of blocks. I think I can make it.”

Lena looked up to Kara pouting. She tried not to, but couldn’t help to chuckle.

“I just you and our little peanuts to be safe,” Kara muttered.

“We appreciate your attentiveness. You don’t have to worry about us all….”

Lena stopped and stared across the street. Kara noticed her stopping and eyes started to bulge.

“Lena, are you ok? Is it the babies? Do we need to get you to the hospital? Do we…”

Lena turned around and placed a finger on Kara’s lips to silence her.

“Nothing is wrong. It is just… Well, look.” Lena pointed across the street. Kara followed her finger and groaned.

“Your mother is here.”

“It is not just that. Look at what she is doing.”

Kara frowned and said, “It looks like she is standing in line for something.”

“And you don’t find that unusual?”

Kara looked at Lena puzzled.

“I feel like I am missing something here.”

“My mother has never waited in line for anything. She always claimed her time was too precious and would send her assistants to get her things for her.”

Lena started to cross the street with Kara trailing behind her.

“Why are we going in the direction of your mother?”

“To see what she is doing.”

“Do we really have to? Anyway, I thought that you were hungry.”

Lena stopped and looked back at Kara with huge round eyes and a large pout.

“Our little peanuts and I want to investigate.”

Kara sighed and shook her head.

“Fine, we can say hi. But if she does something even slightly shady…”

“I know. I know. We will leave immediately if she tries something.”

As they walked across the street, Lillian looked up and noticed them. She looked startled. Lena smirked. She has hardly ever able to surprise her mother before. Once they were in front of her it was a weird feeling. It was like they were strangers instead of family. Lillian went towards Lena to try to hug her, but stopped after seeing the glare on Kara’s face. Lena was surprised to see a wince on her mother’s face, but it was quickly replaced by one that was passive.

“Lena and Kara. What brings you to Chicago on this fine day?”

“The Art Institute of Chicago did an exhibit on the planet of Krypton. We showed up in support along with Clark and Lois,” said Lena.

“Ah, I heard about that event. It was a good gesture on their part.”

“Yes, it was just swell,” said Kara.

They all started at each other awkwardly as the line moved forward over the next couple of minutes.

Lena cleared her throat and said, “What is this line for anyway?”

Read the rest on AO3

[thesoapgirl]

teddy

I named him “Teddy” because it felt right and I think I was 7 or so and I wasn’t very original. If I could go back, I would give him a cute name like Honeydew or Maple, but no, I went with Teddy because he felt like the quintessential “teddy bear.” Just, brown. Brown bead eyes, and a brown bow at his neck. I liked him because he was simple and he felt right. He didn’t feel like all of the other cheap stuffed animals I had gotten so far in life. I loved the satin feel of his paws, through which, I could feel the small beads that gave his hands and feet more weight than other stuffed toys. He was balanced, evenly stuffed, proportioned just right, and perfect in my eyes. I can’t tell you what else I got that Christmas morning or who even gifted him to me, but I can perfectly remember unwrapping him and holding him up, my living room light a backdrop for what I believed to be the most perfect stuffed bear. 

Later, I would tell people that I named him after the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, to make the naming seem more profound, like I had taken the time to actually think about the name. I wanted to show off my genius, how I knew the trivial fact of the origin of the name of “Teddy’s Bear.” When I was younger, I felt the need to prove myself, to show everyone how smart I was. But, really, I named him “Teddy” because that is what he looked like. He looked like the perfect teddy bear. 

Later, I would come to terms with the fact that not everything has to be perfect or profound or extraordinarily significant, and naming a stuffed brown bear with brown eyes and a brown bow, “Teddy” is perfectly okay and fine. Not everything has to have meaning. Not everything has to be special and unique. He is just a stuffed brown bear that I named Teddy because I was young and I had object recognition.

He has followed me my entire life. He has lived in many different places; in my bed when I was young and found comfort in safe and warm things that I could hug and talk to. He’s lived in closets when I was old enough to be embarrassed of the things I loved, and in boxes when it was time to move. He spent a whole year in a classroom, near my teaching desk, and now he spends time on my bookshelf or my couch or my desk because sometimes I like to pick him up for a second and put him down somewhere else.  

I have picked him up once again, just now, and I am looking at him more closely, 22 years later. He is still the perfect brown, although a little faded, with brown bead eyes, and a brown bow at his neck, the ends of which I have tucked into the main loop to hide the fact that I chewed on them when I was younger. It gives him a more sophisticated look; he has a bowtie now instead of a bow. We’ve both grown up. He seems lighter now, though, more fragile. 

For some reason, the texture of his fur is different, it has spread in some places, and faded in others, and for some reason the fur around his face now covers most of his brown eyes, making them seem closed. He looks tired, and I empathize with that. Me too, Teddy. I sniff him, and he smells like all things that live in closets and corners and boxes in the dark do. The satin on his paws has started to wear away, the fabric is thinning out, and for the first time, I look at the tag on his bottom, half of which seems to have fallen off as time has passed.

 Here is what I can tell you: the manufacturer is a company called KELLYTOY, located in Los Angeles. His stuffing is polyester and the little beads in his hands and feet are actually plastic pellets, and he was made in China. I can’t tell you what year he was made. I tried googling different combinations of “KELLYTOY” and “brown bear” and “2002,” but I didn’t find him, my Teddy, and that makes him feel more special somehow.

And, now, as I am holding him again, my chest tightens. We’ve both survived this long. He’s a little matted and faded, and well, so am I. I am looking at him again, and I am reminded of the magic I have always believed in. The magic that lives in between the letters of words. The magic that lives in the spaces between pages and kissing lips and deep breaths. The same magic that allows me to convince myself that this stuffed brown bear with brown eyes and a brown bowtie is proud of me. That he’s watched me this entire time, from the boxes and the shelves and couches and desks and he is glad that I am still here.

[starjaggeddream]

wrote this for week two of the workshop thru @books w @bettsfic , image ID under the cut

The Body of the Instrument

Today my fingers fumbled on the thin wire of my E string

because I kept staring at the dark, delicate tips

of my otherwise sand-colored wooden pegs. 

I was mesmerized, or maybe just distracted. I forgot skill. 

I forgot music. And I remembered that everyone 

will love me if I line my eyes and smile just right. 

In grade school I knew a girl who inherited a 

gorgeous, gleaming viola from her grandfather, a man 

who once played professionally. And then, second period, 

she broke it. Not some easily replaceable part ---

not a fingerboard or bridge, but the body 

of the instrument. I said, Oh just give up. And then:

Sorry. Actually this girl was my close friend. As it turned out, 

the luthier would say that the crack, the wound, 

that knife of air disrupting the wood and disrupting 

sound, could be mended. Well, whatever. I don’t think that 

viola ever sounded quite the same. Maybe she just got worse. 

I feel uncomfortable sometimes because I think

I got something else from my grandfather, some terrible 

tendency to grouse and bristle and shout. 

I think my tongue curls easy over cruelty, like his. 

These days, when I rub ointment into his face, 

creased and circles like dark, rough-cut wood, I count wrinkles. 

Measure the sags. Remember all the times

he called me fat and unsuitable. It is actually

a relief that old age has changed his colors. Even his eyes, 

once a piercing pitch black, have gone yellow and green. 

We went on a walk together today. 

Through a sand-streaked crack in the sidewalk, 

small ants bubbled and swarmed. How much can an ant

take after her progenitors? And can this wound really be

stitched together? Grandfather laughs, 

and we trample the creatures underfoot. 

[paulineagain]

For this week’s writing exercise, I sat down to imagining “girlness,” I was drawn to a very young character in my WIP: the daughter of one of the heroines. I imagine her here a little older than she is in the current story. She is disabled, realizing her asexuality and understanding that her status as a “natural child” will always mark her in early 19th century America. The standards that set her apart aren’t going to dismay her, though. Embracing our personal differentness without saying we’re sorry, especially for women and girls, is also a way to break the rules.

Thank you for including me – and all of us – in this opportunity @bettsfic and @books. It has been a great opportunity for me to dive deeper into so much that I love about writing.

Being born unable to hear came with a lot of rules. She knew that instinctively, never being told. Smile when people’s lips moved, even though they make no effort to be understood. Avoid nodding. They might be asking for something you cannot or will not give. Stick to your own, if you can. They make accommodations for you, and you for them.

The school for the deaf was far away. It was on a river, but nothing like the one back home, and the people were as cold as the weather. Dyed in the wool Protestants from Puritan ancestors, they wore their collars high and their expressions sour. Nothing like the people back home who she knew, again instinctively, her teachers thought of as indolent and lazy. Easy words of misunderstanding and dismissal.

She was called Joy here, even though her name was really Joie. The teachers corrected her with the signs for J-O-Y when she wrote her name in French at the top of her parchment. She would have to cross it out and write the hated letters given in terse movements of fingers gnarled by hard scrubbing and a lack of moister. These women seemed to have no joy, and she was often surprised that they could even spell the word.

Knowing another life, full of people who loved and accepted her for who and what she was, did not soften the hard edges. She came to the school at age ten and now, two years later, she counted days rather than months. Her mother, with a heart in the right place, said that five years away from all she loved would be enough. Seven, though, would be better. Joie wanted out now, and if her mother knew what they told her here she might agree.

Women could not, according to her teachers, achieve more than hearth and husband, home and children. They drilled this into her and her eager classmates. These girls, for the genders were separated in and out of class, giggled and passed notes about boys. Joie didn’t see the attraction. Boys were fine to talk to, and run after in a game of tag. Some of her finest friends were boys but Joie didn’t understand why girls fussed over them. Most of all, she knew she never wanted to marry.

She avoided telling anything but the most obvious when asked about her family, too. The people at this place would mock her for a mother who was a sea captain, an aunt who practiced medicine and a father she did know. Their rules said everything about her family was upside down and sideways. Everything about it was incorrect.

Her own ambitions, also unspoken, were wrong too. Joie dreamed of making her own way in the arts. Her love of portraiture bloomed here, perhaps the only thing that did besides the climbing roses on the shady side of the girl’s dormitory. She hoped to make a life for herself with her talent, and to one day say she had painted every rich Creole lady and praline seller back home. They all held their own fascination, and deserved a place in posterity.

Like the roses that chose the difficulty of a different path in the shade, but managed still to bloom in profusion each year, Joie imagined thriving. Against the odds, and all the rules, she saw herself thriving on her own. Like her mother who could aim and prime a cannon and her aunt who could save lives with surgery, their Joie would succeed. Just five more patient years, and the rules would all but be forgotten.

[djinnhatescold]

Writing Workshop Week 3: Stories of a Place

3 facts of public information:

Puntan Dos Amåntes, or Two Lovers' Point, overlooks Tumon Bay in the north of Guam.

The legend varies depending on who tells it, but they all agree that two lovers who were unable to be together tied their hair together and leapt to their deaths on this point.

There is a bell that matches other points around Japan that share the same story.

3 facts of private information:

The weather could not have been more perfect that day.

I was there with my father and brother.

Far below the cliffs swam a pod of dolphins. It was my first time seeing them.

We visited Puntan Dos Amåntes on one of the first days we were on Guam. From the moment I stepped off the plane I felt like I was home in the most bone-deep and sincere way possible a child of my tender years could endure. The smell of the jungle mixed with ocean, the impossible blue of the waters, and the soft sway of the palms conspired to draw tears from my eyes every time we left the hotel room. I couldn't explain it then and I can barely explain it now; it was like the island was asking me where I had been all this time.

Two Lovers' Point was the capstone of a beautiful park above Tumon Bay. Though it is the most popular spot for tourists on Guam, I don't remember any crowds or really anyone other than my father and brother being there. I remember a statue and a viewing area that looked different than it does today. I remember looking out at where the ocean met the sky. I remember my father telling me to look down, that there were dolphins below us.

I had never seen dolphins outside a zoo before. These ones were so far below us that it was hard to see them in the shadow of the cliff, but then they started jumping. These creatures, jumping for what I can only imagine as joy, seemed to be putting on a show for themselves, for how could they see us so far above?

[richardmurrayhumblr]

My Art On Tumblr

Build a beast

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/build%20a%20beast

Tumblr writing with Betts

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/tumblr%20writing%20workshop%20with%20betts

Cursed Costumes

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/cursed%20costumes

Storyboard films

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/rmstoryboardfilm

Britney Spears- The Woman In Me cover interpretation

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/733107437213728768/rmaalbc-artist-richardmurray

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MORE OF MY WORK WHICH IS ELSEWHERE UTILIZE THE FOLLOWING

Poetry or More

https://www.kobo.com/ebook/poetry-or-more-1

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Screenplays

https://www.kobo.com/series/jihi

Audiobook entries

https://www.kobo.com/series/richard-murray-tip-jar-audios

My Best Tumblr Post Through The Years

https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/tagged/rmyearinreview

#rmaalbc

[sweeteawrites]

He slipped through the chainlink fence, there's a hole in it that was made long before he got there and he's grateful for the unknown stranger.

He doesn't know how long he's been walking, neon dark blue, fluorescent lights line the city against the purple twilight, stars waning in the synthetic competitors' light.

He lives in the blue sector, and with the eternal night it creates an ethereal calm feeling to the city. He's never been to the other sectors, but he's heard mentions of what they're like. Red is always on edge, frightened and violent at a moment's notice, yellow never sleeps.

Blue, in contradiction to yellow, seems to always be asleep. He sees evidence of this as he walks, hands in his pockets. There's not much foot traffic. The few people that he does see ignore him and he ignores them. He takes no note of what they look like or consider what they're doing. Why should he care?

The buildings tower above him, stone and glass gray and blue as anything. Most people here choose to wear black- as if it were a city of shadows.

Sometimes he wishes that he lived in green- he's heard stories of how everyone there is relaxed and friendly, never short on conversation or generosity. Community, it's called. Family.

He doesn't know if anyone in Blue has friends, or truly regard the people that they live with. No one has the energy to care. He doesn't know when he last used his voice- he doesn't know if he even can anymore.

Even in his own home, his family doesn't talk. The only sounds are the humming of the heating and air filter.

He's glad that something fills the silence.

He wasn't born when the sun went out, but either way no one knows how or why it happend.

He's asked his grandparents, but they just said that one day it blinked out.

Everyone knows about Super Novas, the way stars implode and explode when they run out of fuel. When that happened, everyone thought it would take the Earth with it and they wouldn't have even a second to care.

Instead they got eternal night.

He doesn't think it's so bad, he looks up and sees stars, the rest of the galaxy arching overhead.

From what he's heard, the outer planets all flew away. Pluto crashed into Saturn's moons, Neptune is on its way to Andromeda.

Jupiter might still be there, but the storm in its spot has only gotten larger. It will explode at any moment.

The inner planets continued to float aimlessly around the white dawrf star in the nebula that the Sun left behind. Eveyone is waiting for Earth to finally gives out, or rejuvenate as the dwarf star explodes into a new sun.

Due to that star, Earth wasn't cast into the abyss of night, but the sky only has the rich purple glow of dusk.

The trees are dwindling now more than ever, but new plants are finding ways to survive. A lot of them phosphorescent and fungal.

Yellow Sector is the closest they have to true day light.

He trudges along the cement sidewalk, headache easing as be steps inside, which is lit by a dim lightbulb. Most of the people being born in the Dark Ages can't handle anything too bright, especially in the Blue sector, so it's kept only light enough to be able to see.

He climbs the stairs to his apartment, grateful for the heating as he had started to shiver.

[scamuel-likely]

Week 3 of writing workshop with @bettsfic & @books

Stories of a place:

The place I wrote about was Rokkō Island in Japan, and the surrounding area where I used to live.

I only used the common facts that anyone could find out.

1. The Rokkō Liner is an automated tram that transports people from the mainland to the manmade Rokkō Island.

2. Kobe was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1995.

3. Rokkō Island was made by taking the top off nearby mountains and compressing them to form new land in the ocean.

Tangled Up In Blue:

The tram snakes its way across a thin stretch of vibrant water, a thousand crystalline waves dance far below its metallic carapace. Inside, it carries precious cargo. The kind of cargo that thrums with the rush of blood and the spark of life, the kind that reads the morning paper and taps away at their cellphones. The tram is a noble beast, and it carries its task of transport out with no direction, no driver at its helm. It’s an entirely automated system, ferrying travellers from the densely packed mainland Sumiyoshi to the equally dense Rokkō Island. A commuter tram for many, as Rokkō Island houses few attractions and the heavy boom and bustle of harbours echo from its shores. This island is a freak of nature. It has been stitched together by the hands of mankind, mountains ripped from the earth and shoved into an orderly rectangular form. A picture perfect piece of the modern industrial world.

The tram, the Rokkō Liner, announces its destination to the passengers in singsong Japanese and again in a similarly musical yet somewhat mechanically clumsy English. Many, many foreigners, live and work on the island. Stacked into towerblocks and gated housing complexes, these expats make their livings in finance, shipping and translation. The early dawn illuminates a sea of suits, Japanese and foreign salarymen shuffling to work. Their faces are lined with stress and their company-issued tie clips shine in the newborn sunlight. One of them trips and falls, his briefcase letting loose a deluge of papers onto the pristine pavement below. He looks up at the sky, a tangle of telephone and electrical wires crisscrossing from granite apartment to granite apartment, and beyond that a vibrant cloudless blue. His suit is scuffed and he’s grazed his palm, but no one stops to help him up. So he’s left to shake himself off and pick himself up, as his spreadsheets and quarterly reports are pulled away by the soft morning breeze. He sighs and that too is snatched away by the wind. His boss isn’t gonna like this one bit.

His boss, the one who requested those quarterly reports to be on his desk by nine am at the latest, is sitting on the Liner reviewing a book his wife recommended to him, on Goodreads. He’s giving the thing, an American book called All The Pretty Horses, five stars. He’d sat down to read it one evening, with a glass of port in one hand and a cigarette in the other. After three refills of port and eleven more cigarettes he was done and, despite his insistence to the contrary, there were tears in his eyes. And tears freely flowed again when he conversed with his wife about the book over breakfast. Something about the book’s message of freedom and hope was inspiring, and made him hark back to the days of his youth. He was once a young revolutionary student who campaigned to end uniforms and for the school to stop getting funding from the nearby American airbase. He used to be a free spirit, used to wear a beret to school and sport Groucho Marx style glasses. Used to quote Karl Marx to teachers and Keats to fellow students. Used to organise film festivals, write in the local newspaper and mitigate street showdowns between young Yakuza members. And then he’d grown up. Life had caught up to him, forced him into a suit and pushed him through the sliding doors of a faceless office building. And he’d lost the joy in his life, crushed by timesheets and shipping mandates.

The review he was writing, on his wife’s account, was full of beautiful prose and cascading metaphors. He unleashed his creative streak, the one the grindstone of society had oppressed, and crafted an excellent essay-like review of McCarthy’s book. While writing this, his mind filled with such raw emotion, he let loose just one more tear. The teenager sitting across from him pretended not to notice him wipe it away with his shirtsleeve, which had been neatly ironed the day before by his wife.

The boss’s wife, an American-Japanese woman who’d grown up in Kobe, had first discovered Cormac McCarthy in a quaint little bookstore tucked away in the shadow of the Kobe Tower. The red light spilling from the tower reflected on the window display, dousing all its contents with an eerie blood-red glow. She’d taken shelter in there, as it was raining something awful and the karaoke bar she’d been at had closed early due to a leak in the roof. It was late at night, she was quite tipsy and in no mood for the noise and light of a train station, so she tapped on the window of this bookstore. It was closed, but light was spilling from a beaded curtain partitioning the shop from its backroom and her hurried and frantic tapping soon altered the owner. He was a man around her age, his eyes were ringed with the telltale dark circles of the sleepless. He wiped a stray eyelash away from his eye with one slender hand as the other fumbled for the door key. She wondered, somewhat drunkenly, if he was single.

He let her in, gave her a cup of green tea, and asked her, in excellent English, “What the hell are you doing dancing around in the street during a typhoon?”

She admitted to being a little drunk, and he gave her a blanket and a book, telling her to rest while he finished up his work for the night.

“Then what?” She enquired, but he clearly hadn’t heard her, as he’d slipped through the beaded curtain into the shop and was busying himself with the shelves.

Having no real other option, she took a sip of the piping hot tea and blearily glanced at the book.

The cover was well-loved, the spine supple and the edges fraying. Emblazoned on its front were the words: No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

She took one more sip of tea, and began to read.

Eleven years and a long marriage later, she’d finally recommended the author to her husband. She knew he loved old Clint Eastwood films, and she knew something of his creative side, remembering him writing her elegant haikus when they’d just started dating. They’d been quite distant as of late, with her time mainly spent working from home and his in the office. She knew full well he didn’t do anything of substance, it was all delegation. His boss would tell him something, then he’d repeat it to his own employees, mimicking his boss’s angry demeanour best he could. The stress of his job had been making him snappish and standoffish, so she thought a literary diversion might be just what he needed. And she was right. He openly sobbed into his miso soup when they’d talked about the book at breakfast, the tears mixing with the broth and dissipating like rain into an ocean.

The ocean the tram was crossing was prone to violet outbursts. This was mainly due to the fact Japan sits in between four different tectonic plates, making it prone to earthquakes and tsunamis. One such earthquake had occurred in 1995 and had wreaked Kobe. Water had been forced out of the soil used to build Rokkō Island, causing pavements to crack open as water bubbled onto the surface. The rush of underground water brought with it geysers of sand that burst pavements, tearing down towering red construction cranes and shiny new bridges alike.

The bookseller remembers that earthquake well. His shop had been flooded by a burst sewage pipe, and his parent’s house had collapsed in on itself, a supernova of rubble and debris. He had wandered through the wreckage days after the quake, trying to find anything that remained. Quite a bit of the ground floor walls still remained, jaggedly and abruptly ending at around shoulder height, giving way to a sky still grey from debris dust. His parent’s fridge still stood, remarkably, dented as it was. A lone survivor of the now mostly-unrecognisable kitchen. He swung open its door to find a mush of foodstuffs, mulched up berries, squished meat, crushed pasta, eggshells, juice cartons spilling their contents onto the rubble-strewn cracked wooden floor below. A line of orange juice ran through a contour in the wood and pooled at his shoe. He glanced at his reflection in its vivid bring surface, a colour pop in this grey world, a world still shaking from the events of the past few days.

He looked just the same as he had on that rainy night in the bookstore, only now his hair was being eaten by wisps of silver and his shaded eyes were adorned by wire framed glasses, these two effects combining to make him seem scholarly and intellectual, though doing nothing to aid his never-ending quest for long term companionship. His parents, who had luckily been on holiday in Hokkaido when the quake had struck, had tried to set him with so many women in the past but nothing had ever stuck. He’d gone on a few dates with a girl in university but when her grandfather died she had to move back to Kanazawa. Their relationship slowly fizzled out after that, the fire of passion dying through increasingly rarer and briefer love letters and phone calls. Since then he hadn’t really had much luck with love, even going to a love hotel, just out of sheer desperation, only to find that sex was something he utterly didn’t understand, even when doing it. It was the human element that he fell for.

Take, for example, that woman he’d met when he was working late at the bookshop. Her tipsy little smile as she sipped her tea and opened No Country on her lap. Then the awe and raw excitement that flitted across her face as she read further and further. He had spoke a few more times to her that night, to refill her tea, to answer some basic questions about himself and to ask her where she lived so he could phone her a taxi. Her replies had all been witty and polite, and he’d etched them into his mind, despite her actual appearance fading into the obscurity of his memory, long since tarnished with taxes and neighbours and train times and the pressures of adulthood.

The teen on the tram didn’t want the pressures of adulthood. If adulthood made you cry on your morning commute, like she had seen that salaryman do just moments ago, she wanted no part of it. She was heading onto Rokkō Island to meet her girlfriend for early morning coffee. Her stomach was filled with a buzzing static that built and rose to her throat, making it hard to swallow. Not only had she called into school to tell them a family emergency had come up, which she had never done before, but she’d also slipped from her bedroom window and tiptoed to the train station in the waning night, which she’d also never done before. She was now sitting on the first train out to Rokkō Island, a doughnut in the shape of a lion in her hand. She bit into its adorable face, the soft sugary flesh splitting with the force of her teeth, spraying forth a tsunami of cream filling onto her hand. Another doughnut, this one a plump porcelain-like Hello Kitty face, with a jammy centre, sat in a paper bag on the seat next to her. It was for her girlfriend. The static in her stomach surged at the thought of that. She had a girlfriend. They’d met playing netball, it was a sweltering summers day and the tarmac had felt like lava when her palms had smacked down onto it after she had tripped trying to defend the net. After the ball had rushed through behind her, the girl that had scored, a very pretty girl with shoulder-length brown hair and sparkling eyes, had reached down and helped her up. She was so surprised that this girl, who was far better at sports and probably far more popular than she was, had helped her, instead of hugging a teammate or somesuch celebration. She was even more surprised when that girl cornered her by the changing rooms and gave her a tiny slip of Snoopy-branded notepaper. Etched on it in elegant gel pen was a set of digits. And a heart. They’d spoken over the phone a lot since then, and met for a few whirlwind dates when either school was competing. But now, now they were meeting up not in school hours, bunking to go to a boba & coffee place together. She felt so alive, like someone had lifted up her soul from her body and she was floating freely among the candyfloss clouds that hung in sparse bunches over the horizon. But there was a worry, a deep and suffocating one, that sat squarely in her chest and didn’t budge. It was the anger of doubt, of wondering if she was unnatural, of fearing her parents wouldn’t understand, of having to keep it all a secret. She finished the doughnut and wrung her hands together, her nails digging into her palms, making deep white marks that drowned out the static inside her.

“Miss, are you okay?”

It came from the salaryman. He’d put his phone down and was looking at her with deep concern through his thick-rimmed glasses.

“Yeah, yeah I’m alright.” She managed to stutter, her hands shooting apart and onto her lap.

“That doughnut for someone?” He, rather redundantly, pointed at the bag with the smiling Mr Doughnut mascot on it.

“Urm, yeah, it’s for a friend.” She said, mostly to the gum on the underside of the salaryman’s seat.

“Well I hope they enjoy it,” He smiled at her, a kindly tired smile, “do you read much poetry?”

The question hit her like a freight train. A salaryman asking a teenager about poetry? She was astonished.

“No, no I don’t really, sorry.” She spurted out.

He leaned forward on his knees and with an exclamation of ‘yoisho’ lifted himself out of his chair and motioned to see if he could sit down next to her. She nodded, like a frightened rabbit.

“Well you should,” he said, sitting down, “it can free one’s mind of all sorts of heavy burdens. Can I read you a haiku?”

She was strangely at ease with this stranger, and so mumbled, “Yes, you may”.

He cleaned his throat and read, from memory;

“Even with insects-

Some can sing

Some can’t

It’s an Issa poem,” he said to her, “ and I think it relates to you somewhat. You seem different to others your age. And that’s fine, I was different once. I was a communist! Or I thought I was at least. And look at me now, huh? Another cog in the machine.”

The machine of the tram ground slowly to a halt and the lilting voice of the automated announcer proclaimed they’d reached Rokkō Island. The few passengers flooded out from the train and made their way out of the station. Passengers going from Rokkō to the mainland queued in orderly lines at the side of the tram doors, waiting for everyone to exit before stepping on. It was an intricate and well-executed dance of etiquette and unspoken rules. The salaryman picked up his briefcase, loosened his tie a bit, and walked off towards the shining sliding doors of his office building. The teen half-walked, half-tripped her way to the coffee shop, her brain was alight with hope and happiness, and all the static washed away on the wind.

The wind had carried the man’s papers far far away and so now he sat in his puffy, uncomfortable swivel chair, awaiting his boss’s arrival with a glum look on his face. His cubicle neighbour and best friend, a man with dyed blonde hair and perfect teeth, was consoling him.

“At least he’ll give you saké, he does that with everyone he fires right?” The guy grinned, leaning over the cubicles.

“I’d rather keep my job than have a bottle of saké, if I’m honest.” His mate glumly replied.

“Well bossman isn’t even here yet, maybe he’s been chopped up by the Yakuza, or run over by a car or-“

And in walked their boss, his tie loose around his neck and an odd spring in his step. He smiled, yes, smiled at them as he passed. When the door of his office was shut, the two men looked at eachother, then looked around at the puzzled looks on the faces of every employee in the room.

“What the hell just happened?”

“I think you’re not getting fired. Or maybe we all are.”

Music began to drift from behind the boss’s door. American music. Rather old.

Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan.

[books]

Writing Workshop Week 1: Show & Tell

Hello, writers of tumblr! It’s @bettsfic again with this week’s generative workshop. 

Today we’re doing what might be my favorite class activity: Show & Tell. 

You might be thinking, do you teach kindergarten or something? No, I teach college. But my students are often weary, downtrodden 20 year olds who are more than happy to go back to basics. Tumblr—being a website of people who care deeply about things and share that passion with others—seems like a great place to host Show & Tell.

Speaking of basics, let’s first talk a bit about…

The Writing Identity

The goal of many writers is to become better at writing. While I think this is an admirable goal it’s also a complicated one, because good writing is entirely subjective. Everyone has their own definition of what good writing looks like based on their knowledge base, history, and personal tastes. And so I often encourage my students, before they begin their journey of becoming a better writer, to step back and ask themselves, “What does good writing look like to me?”

And that’s the thing: you can’t really become a better writer. You can become a more patient writer, with the ability to write and revise multiple drafts of a work. You can become a more ambitious writer, with the ability to write longer stories and deeper themes. You can become a more detailed writer, with the ability to render images and the small details of living that maybe other people don’t notice. Writing is a skill that requires practice, but it also requires joy. You have to enjoy the work more than you fear the potential for failure. And to enjoy the work, you need to honor yourself, your interests, and your ideals. In other words, to become a better writer, you have to become more you.

I remember when I first started writing, I frantically sought out writing advice. I clung to simple adages and rules: active verbs are stronger than passive verbs; remove words like “think” and “realize” and other indicators of your characters’ interior experiences; take out adjectives and adverbs. If you were to adhere to all this advice, your writing wouldn’t become stronger, it would become colder. You would write like Hemingway. There’s nothing wrong with Hemingway, but Hemingway already did Hemingway, and that means you’re free not to be Hemingway. 

Don’t we read to feel closer to people, to experience that which we couldn’t otherwise experience? The beautiful thing about prose is that it’s the only medium that conveys consciousness, because language is the way we contain our thoughts, and writing them down offers others the chance to understand them. E.M. Forster in his book Aspects of the Novel says that the only difference between a character and a person is that a character’s secret inner life can be known, but a person’s can only be understood in observed behavior. Novels are stories of consciousness; biographies are stories of deeds. 

In my early days as a writer, those inane adages of “good writing” began to weigh on me, and I found myself frequently opening a blank document and telling myself, “I’m just going to write something for fun, for me, and so I don’t have to follow any rules.” Every time, that lawless thing I wrote would become better than anything I’d written when I followed the rules. And in this case, “better” means I was proud of it; in writing as close to myself as I could, I was able to help my technical skill reach the level of my personal taste. 

Good writing advice doesn’t spout shallow adages of what should be, it tells you all the things that could be; it opens your mind to possibilities and techniques. “Should” restrains creativity; the entire point of writing is to be creative. To be creative means to make something that has never existed before. And so one of the first things I tell my students is: You already know everything you need to know about your own writing. You already have good and important stories in you. You just have to sit down and write them.

“Show, Don’t Tell”

One such adage that still really gets to me is “show, don’t tell,” which a lot of writers believe. Many people take it to mean that you should describe the exterior circumstances of your narrator in order to allow the reader to interpret meaning. Instead of describing how your narrator feels, these people would rather have you describe their facial expression. But if you’re so interested in rendering the exterior rather than the interior, you’re better off becoming a director. 

Others take it less literally: you show your story instead of tell your story, which, sure, is a valid personal belief for your own work but it’s ambiguous and impractical, and also denies the nature of people to tell stories. Fairy tales and fables are stories that are told. Telling stories came long before showing them.  

In some ways, “show, don’t tell,” can be useful. If you spend a thousand words of character A lovingly and carefully describing every detail of character B, you don’t then need to say something like, “She was pining for him,” because you’ve allowed your description to do that work for you. So no, you don’t need to say it, but maybe you want to. Maybe you want to make it inarguable that character A is pining for character B; you don’t want a reader to say, “I think she’s paying that much attention because she wants to kill him and she’s looking for his weak points.”

And so that’s what it comes down to—choice. Ultimately, writing is about making decisions, and those decisions are stronger when you understand all your options.

Behind the adage is a more difficult truth to swallow: prose is both infinite in its potential and also frustratingly limited, because you have no control over your audience. You can lovingly describe every snowflake that falls in a blizzard, and your reader will be taking their own meaning from it—for people who can mentally visualize things, it’s the images their mind conjures; for those who can’t, it’s a mass of facts. And there are also those who are sleepy and missing details, or who are skimming to get to the bits they’re most interested in, or who accidentally dropped their book in the bath and now the bottom half of every page is warped and unreadable.

Or you can say, “It snowed.”

No matter what your beliefs are on “show, don’t tell,” the truth is that it’s a false dichotomy. The very nature of prose is to navigate this divide. Some stories call for more showing, for example when your narrator is at a distance, when we don’t have much access to their thoughts or feelings. Other stories will ask you to tell, especially if we’re deep in your narrator’s head and they’re giving us everything. Showing lends itself to setting, imagery, and plot. Telling lends itself to character, voice, and style. One is not inherently better than the other, in the same way that a screwdriver isn’t better than a hammer—the tool you use depends on the task at hand.

Any time you encounter a trite rule in writing, it’s usually pointing to something much greater and more fun to think about. In this case, showing and telling are two integral tools in meaning-making. For this week’s activity, we’re going to use both show and tell to make meaning.

Prompt time!

In Donald Barthelme's essay “Not-Knowing,” he calls objects magical. “What is magical about the object is that it at once invites and resists interpretation. Its artistic worth is measurable by the degree to which it remains, after interpretation, vital.” 

So what does that mean? Although this essay is a hot mess (lovingly), part of its intended work is to be a mess. In fact Barthelme describes the mess of his desk and allows it to define him. It’s covered in coffee cups, cigarette ash, unpaid bills, and unwritten novels. In reality, those objects are just objects, but when rendered in prose, they give us an impression of this particular world and the character within it. The writer renders; the reader interprets. The things we own, that mean something to us, are also things that can define us. Who is the person who carries a leather wallet embossed with their initials, with the inside holding credit cards and a stack of neat bills? Who is the person who carries a canvas wallet with a faded Punisher logo on it, attached to a chain, and the only thing inside it is a Subway rewards card?

Objects are important. Especially in this world we live in where so many things have become virtual, tangibility will always be integral to us. We are a species that reaches out and touches. We like to hold things in our hands. We love things which cannot love us back. 

For this week’s prompt fill, I want you to find a magical object for Show & Tell. Ideally, it’s something with a long personal history that’s important to you. Maybe it’s the object you would save in the event of a fire, or maybe it’s something you lost long ago. 

First, I’d like you to show us the object by describing it. Then, tell us the story of it.

You can write about how you acquired it and the memories it conjures. Allow yourself to link and associate memories and feelings. Don’t box yourself in too much—just see where it takes you. 

But you can also put a spin on it. Here are some ways you can do that:

If you want to try fiction, you can write the same story about your favorite character’s beloved object, or you could completely make up an object and its history. 

If you want to try something experimental, you can write a story from the perspective of the object, and maybe its beloved thing is you. 

If you want to try poetry, write a poem of your object. This is a separate lesson, but T.S. Eliot’s concept of an objective correlative may be illuminating to consider. 

The purpose of this activity is to dig through your memories and/or observations, connect them, and use something external to conjure meaning from them. You begin with what your object is and it will eventually lead you to what it means.

Questions? Ask ‘em here before EOD Tuesday so @bettsfic can answer them on Wednesday. And remember to tag your work #tumblr writing workshop with betts if you want her to read your work and possibly feature it on Friday!

And, for those just joining us: @bettsfic is running a writing workshop on @books this month. Want to know more? Start here.

[cardcaptorsakura96]

And Then There Was Her

This is for Writing Workshop Week 2: Paying Attention that is being hosted by @bettsfic on @books

Summary: Lena makes her usual morning walk until she runs into an unfamiliar face

As Lena looks out her window, she sees that it is raining and sighs.

“It has been raining the last month since I have gotten to National City. Whoever said that it never rains in southern California must not have lived here full time.”

She came to National City to escape Lex with his constant manipulation and torture. She just wanted a fresh start outside his overbearing shadow. However, Lena had fallen into the same routine.

As she heads out, she notices the same old things. The gray sky emptying tons of rain on her shoulders prompting her to hurriedly open her red umbrella. As she walks, she sees the mail man trying to hurry from house to house with his parka not doing a good job of protecting him from the elements.

“I am surprised she hasn’t gotten a cold by now,” Lena muttered as she kept on walking.

After she passed the houses, she starts seeing the different businesses around town and her usual fellow commuters. There was the lady in the yellow raincoat and same colored boots walking while looking at her cell phone. She bobs and weaves around the other commuters.

“I still don’t get how she is able to read that thing without bumping into anyone,” said Lena shaking her head.

She hears screaming in the distance. It was the local butcher arguing with his wife again. The screaming always have to do with what the specials of the day are. Today, they were arguing about whether they should have a discount on spare ribs or cow tongue.

Lena shuddered and said, “Whoever thought cow tongue was a good idea?”

She breathes a sigh of relief when she reaches her destination: Noonan's. It was the best breakfast location in the area.

Once she got inside, she quickly got in line. She sees that the same three people are ahead of her today. A man in a blue suite talking on his phone about an upcoming court case, a man listening to his headphones, not really aware of his surroundings, and a young mother trying to wrangle in her toddler while she tries to place her order.

Lena decided to do what she always did when she realized she would have a long wait, read work emails. She was able to complete two by the time she gets to the register.

“Do you want your usual, Lena?”

Lena winced when she heard her name. She didn’t like that the staff had become overly familiar with her to call her by her first name. However, she knew she shouldn’t be surprised since she was in this place every day. Sometimes, she visited twice a day.

Lena sighs and said, “I do want the usual, but I also want to get the cake special that you were offering.”

“Oh, you mean the free birthday cake if you can prove that it is your birthday?

“Yup, that is the one.”

Lena didn’t usually celebrate her birthday. Her family found that sort of thing very trivial. However, this was her first birthday on her own and didn’t have anyone controlling her. She wanted to celebrate her independence and dammit she wanted to do it with cake.

“So, that special was very popular especially since we gave the option to order and verify your birthday online. All of our cakes are sold out for the day.”

“What!”

“I know. We didn’t think the promotion would do this well. We are extending the promotion to tomorrow if you wouldn’t mind waiting until then.”

“It would be too late then,” said Lena softly trying to hold back tears.

“It is always the same. Nothing every goes my way.”

“Actually, she can have my cake.”

Lena turned around and was stunned by who she saw. It was a woman with long wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes that were unfortunately partly hidden by her glasses. She was wearing a pink wavy dress. The thing that stuck out to Lena was her smile. It could light up the room.

“Oh, I couldn’t take your cake,” stammered Lena.

“What is wrong with me. I never get this tongue tied.”

“It is no trouble at all. I had originally got this for my sister. Her birthday is today. I was supposed to meet her, but her fiancé surprised her with first class tickets to Paris last night, and they will be gone the next two weeks.”

“At least let me compensate you for the cake.”

The woman chuckled. It sounded like music to Lena’s ears.

“Honestly, you would be doing me a favor. Noonan’s cakes are good, but I doubt it will last until my sister gets back.”

The woman handed her over the cake.

“Thank you so much…. What is your name?” stumbled Lena over her words.

“My name is Kara.”

She held out her hand. Lena felt herself blushing.

“Idiot! It is just a simple handshake. Get yourself together!”

“My name is Lena.”

Lena felt her pants vibrating which jolted her out of the conversation.

She answered her phone and snapped, “What!”

“I am sorry Miss Luthor. There was an incident in the lab…”

“Say no more. I will be right there.”

“Of course, the one day I meet someone interesting I can’t stick around.”

Lena looked up sheepishly at Kara and said, “I ummm… have to run….work stuff. I umm… hope I see you around.”

She started blushing hard as she quickly exited the restaurant. She had never met anyone that has made her feel this way before.

“Is this what it feels like to have a crush?”

Lena mulled over that single thought as she walked to her job not realizing until she got there that she walked through the cold rain without an umbrella.

[houseplantonthedesk]

Pie eyed September nights

Fresh piercings, my ears bejeweled, a passing fancy for a contemporary paragon of a hero on the screen, the serotonin boost from vicariously living through two lovers' frisky flirtations in a piece, the thrill of the remaining hundred pages of a book, tiny joys seep into my days of an adversity.

The world, it crashes every night in my room as I try and shut my eyes. The noise of a bang in my head makes my heart go fast, I run out of breath and lie open eyed. My legs, they ache from walking through February to Fall, I try to catch a breath and hold my stance. The peepal tree leaves dance all night, casting shadows on my bedroom wall, as I try to fall asleep and not lose my mind to the thoughts that come alive like a nocturnal bird on the rise, probing with its beak and a shrill cry.

Like for the nuttiness of sesame seeds hidden in a chocolate biscuit, and the thin layer of ganache fused with hazelnuts in my sundae, I try to reach and look for signs of life in the joys that seep when the sun rises. Akin to a parched wayfarer on the golden sand running toward a mirage, I count my steps and seconds to these trivial glad tidings. I dance in their magic till I am soused, slushed, full and blitzed by their merely fleeting spell. And wake up besotted, and yearn for a beau ideal. I am bruised, and drunk, and on my knees, lost and longing for a love and a life. Gashes open and bleeding to coalesce and paint the ground a scarlet shade of my pain.

[kameonerd566]

Writing Workshop Week 2: Paying Attention

I'm a week late on this one bc I was traveling last week ;0; I'll put it under the cut

Today I've been trying, probably a bit too hard, to pay attention. I wanted to notice something magical today, like a bumble bee, or a baby's smile, but I didn't see any.

Instead, I paid attention to the raindrops on my car windshield. The way my hair sticks to my neck when it's hot outside. How the minutes drag on like hours during work meetings.

I would have much rather paid attention to the warm sun on my back, laying lazily across the beach. It would have been much nicer to breathe in the the sea shore: salty and alive. To hear the seagulls flap their wings overhead; To look up and watch them glide across the horizon.

Instead, I'll have to settle for the chatty turkeys outside my living room window, while I sneak in a nap before the evening.

I'll have to settle for the taste of ceramic, as an ihop coffee mug clinks against my teeth. I never quite know how to explain how much I love that.

I'll have to settle for the moon in my rear view mirror, bright and full.

And at the end of a long day of paying attention, I'll realize that maybe there was magic all along. I'll pay attention to how thoughts spill into my notebook like a snake scrawling wildly through ink. I'll pay attention to how, even now, the gentle rhythm of computer keys has its own kind of magic.

[paulineagain]

Curious that you should mention New Orleans in your post this week, Betts. It was the first place I thought of when I saw the assignment, and the only place I ever long for aside from the sea. So I chose a little musing from a legend of that place who features prominently in my WIP. My gut tells me he was not the kind of man to muse much, but fiction is for standing things on their head, isn’t it?

He would always think of the city as home, though he was not born here and rarely spent much time living within the ramparts. His home was in wilder places, Barataria, Galvez and soon somewhere even further away. He stopped on the cypress plank sidewalk and closed his eyes, breathing deep as if he might be able to catch one last memory with the smells all around him.

The Mississippi River gurgled by beyond the levee. It wasn’t an illusion that the river ran higher than the solid ground he walked on. That was always the conundrum of this place: how did she stay above water? He laughed to himself as he looked to the street with its muddy puddles of standing water. “Sometimes you do not, eh ma belle?”

Swinging his cane, he continued to walk west toward the heart of the city. He tipped his hat, a formless beaver topper with a wide brim that kept his ears warm in the gathering cool, to those he passed. Soon it would be winter and time to move on, but a few more days in this mysterious, sunken place was worth his time.

It was then, as he passed people with a silent greeting, that he realized no one seemed to recognize him. Once, possibly a lifetime ago, he had been famous. He was called a savior of the city then, as were his previously maligned comrades. Even Major General Andrew Jackson gave him thanks by name in a grand speech to the city’s populace. He and the men he called brothers were elevated from hellish banditti to heroes. A brief moment it seemed, but one worth remembering.

The smell of fish stalls and river mud mingled as he drew closer to his city’s center. Women barked out the quality of the catch on the tables before them in loud, common voices. Close by the oystermen from Grand Isle did the same, making a cacophony of eager sound. Every one of them was vying for the American dollar which was still new to this place where reales and picayunes had long been standard currency.

“We are not what we were,” he said, shaking his head and waving to the vendors while passing by.

He turned left onto a street that rose subtly away from the river. Here homes took the place of the businesses on the levee road. The brightly painted shutters of each reminded him of tropical birds standing still in lush trees. Nothing was quiet here. The wind off the river blew the sounds of market day up the street, and the homes sang out the colorful songs of those who lived there.

Thinking about a particular home, where he had often known welcome and happiness, he paused once again. Looking at a nearby street sign, he realized this was not Rue Conti. “Perhaps for the best,” he thought to himself. “What good would it do to trouble Madame Docteur after all? I am no longer welcome in the bosom of her family.” A rueful chuckle rumbled in his throat. He adjusted his cutaway, made of mulberry serge, and continued on.

His introspection kept him from attention to the street, and it was only at the last moment that he jumped back to avoid the spray of mud that flew up behind a buggy pulled by two horses. He looked over, imagining the slight was purposeful, before realizing that he did not know the carriage.

“You are still agile, my brother.” The voice was familiar and would have been soothing without the reference to his age. “I am most impressed.”

“Enough of that, Pierre. You needn’t gloat for I find that you will always be older than I.”

“Such is the fortune of our birth.” Pierre, clothed in a black redingote that was beginning to show its age, stepped to his brother. He smiled, causing his left eye to close involuntarily. This facial anomaly was a lingering sequela from a stroke Pierre suffered years before. “Are you ready for church?”

“If we must.” He took the arm his brother offered him. “The need for Mass does not stir within me anymore.”

“Nor I, but it will keep the ladies of our household happy.”

He did not reply to this but looked ahead to the Place des Armes and the great Cathedral of St. Louis beyond. It was an imposing structure, shining white in the gray sunlight of autumn. Even though he had no heart for the Church itself, he felt a fondness stir within his chest at the sight of this building. “It is the heart of our home,” he said without thinking.

“What was that now?” Pierre turned to his brother with a quizzical glance.

“Give it no thought.” He looked up at the sky and then tugged at his brother’s arm. “Come along now, frère. It will soon rain, and Mass will not wait as we know.”

Pierre chuckled, put his curiosity aside and hurried across the square still arm and arm with his brother.

[rmfantasysetpieces1]

Training Ground

from Richard Murray < rmfantasysetpieces1>

[Pea whistle blown] Come on guys. Make the laps. Get here on time. Do the drills. Come on guys. Do it like this. [Pea whistle blown] Come on guys. Get here on time. Do ten more laps. Do the drills. Come on guys. Do it like that. [Pea whistle blown] Come on guys. Long training session today. Come on guys. Start with the laps… Now the drills. Do it like this. [Pea whistle blown] Come on guys. Do the laps. We will improve. Do the drills. Remember this technique. Come on guys. I wish we had our own pitch for one season… [Pea whistle blown] Come on guys. Make the laps. Get here on time. Do the drills. Come on guys. Do it like that. [Pea whistle blown]

for @bettsfic writing workshop week 4, imperative narrative

https://www.tumblr.com/books/727539839941165056/writing-workshop-week-4?source=share

#rmsoccer #tumblr writing workshop with betts

[djinnhatescold]

Writing Workshop Week 1: Show & Tell

It is a bracelet, a golden cuff, that sits on Imanie's dresser. Some would call it gaudy, with its gold filigree swirls that shine as bright as brass and its large ruby set into the center. The ruby bears scars -- scratches on its surface and tiny chips on its vertices. The hinge, clasp, and chain could use cleaning and polish, but Imanie rarely has time for such trivialities these days.

She rarely gets a chance to wear it these days, but on the equally rare occasion she gets to return home to rest, she will at least pick it up, turn it over in her hands, and allow herself the solace of memories. She remembers when her parents presented it to her. She was of sixteen summers and still in Ul'dah, so very close to finishing her studies there. Wheels were in motion for her to move in with her great uncle in Limsa Lominsa to continue her education with the Arcanists' Guild, and her restless heart yearned for the freedom that came with this change. She was going to be away from her parents for the first time, far from the cactus and sandstone that was so familiar to her. Her parents had showed the bracelet to her with its imperfections caused by a careless porter and an unfortunate tumble through the wheels of a carriage. They promised they would repair the damage but Imanie wouldn't hear of it. It was the perfect piece to complete the set of ruby earrings, necklace, and rings that had been gifted to her for various accomplishments over the years.

She told her parents that it must have been the will of the gods to make its way to her in the state it was in.

In truth she liked that it represented a journey. She could pretend that it was involved in high adventure across Eorzea, collecting scars and stories along the way.

There was a time when the idea of her own life being one of adventure and danger was as far away as the distant shores beyond the sea's horizon, when she believed she was doing what she was meant to in her regular job with her average routine and unremarkable life. But the winds of change blew her into this life of a hero, one from which she could never return.

She wasn't entirely certain this new life fit her, but the bracelet always would.

@bettsfic