Okay. Let's try this again. The same exercise as before. A first sentence prompt. A non sequitur prompt in the middle and then a last straw prompt. Let's give ourselves slightly more time and set a timer so we won't forget to stop when we're meant to but might forget to start the timer and just guess the time is up. Let's see what happens.
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I have no picture of a pool.
This is the North Sea coast. 2020. New Year's Day.
The edge of a very big pool. |
What happened is the drivel that follows. Not everyone posts their drivel. I'm posting it as an attempt at encouraging others. Just write. The results don't matter much unless you're writing an academic essay, a funding application, or a Marvel script. I'm not such the results matter too much for a Marvel script either these days so you'll be okay. Just write and enjoy it and try not to insult yourself afterwards as much as I'm insulting myself here. Writing is mostly for the fun of writing. Write for yourself primarily. Write to help release yourself creatively. Write to understand. Write with permission to be very messy on the page, to mispell words like misspell, to make typos. Let your writing be for freedom, for liberation, not for holding you in any cage of rules. Be yourself and cherish every damn word that appears on a screen or a page as I'm having to relearn how to do.
The problems were threefold.
A first sentence that didn't immediately fire off any neurons with any desire to write. I think quite a few of these sticks have words on that make far more sense to middle class Americans living in the suburbs of a big city with big houses, big yards, and in this case swimming pools. Of course the pool in this sentence could have been a public swimming pool and it could have been some other kind of pool but those neurons weren't allowing that so what you have here is the most obvious of melodrama. Perhaps I should get employed as writer for one of the many American daytime soap operas with outlandish relationships and always an evil twin.
A non sequitur that didn't really fit with the first section which is kind of the point but it can be a bit like that game where everyone writes a sentence or phrase on paper which is then folded so the next person can only see the sentence immediately before then and at the end you hope to have some kind of entertaining story that won't be any good but might cause laughter. I remember a children's book with an example of a story where they didn't fold down the pages and had five minutes each to continue a story. It was a perfectly reasonable story of middle class English children until one of them just wrote "A time machine." Some of these non sequitur sticks feel much like that time machine.
A last straw stick that didn't help at all. It wasn't even the first one I pulled out. That made even less sense in the context of what I'd scrawled by then.
Here you are. Be shocked. Be disgusted. Be assured that there is very little writing that's worse unless you find the very dregs of a fan fiction site. Here are three utterly unbelievable characters saying things nobody says while doing things that not many people do but which everyone does in any of those soaps.
I may need to scrap the toolbox. I may need a new toolbox. Or I may need to rely on my own head like I used to when writing stories ten billion times better than this, with less swearing, more humour, and people who were a little more realistic even though 98% of them came off as being autistic!
I think at some point I need to reclaim my writing too. I cleared out everything on paper in the belief that it was all rubbish deserving of burning. Someone saved it and I should get it back one day and start to sort through it. There is writing there that's quite good. People said so. There are things there people said to submit for publication and I could only belief it is garbage.
That's mental health though. It can bring out many kinds of self harm. It did too last year when I became pretty damn messed up by mindfulness practices and most especially by body scans that led to too many flashbacks and emotions I couldn't deal with it all. I was told just to accept it all and that mindfulness can only ever help but it was like I was being crucified and being told that if I could only accept the pain then being crucified would help me live a better life. Wanting to burn all my writing was one form of self harm and it's gone now.
Writing is writing. It's loveable even when it's drivel. What is written is an outflowing of something within us. If we are worthy of love, and we're all extremely worthy of love, then our writing is too. At least by ourselves. You may not be crazy enough to post drivel online and that's most likely a good thing. Yet even drivel is a triumph of our beautiful human urge to create. "Write more. It will spill out into a creative life." How's that for a platitude sickly enough to make you reach for a bucket?!
...
There she was, Amy Gerstein, over by the pool, kissing my father. Not
just a friendly peck. Full on. Their lips deeply pressed together.
Their hands wandering, his onto her ass creeping his fingers under
her bikini bottom and her hand pressing against his hairy belly and
getting lower. I could hardly pretend it was innocent. I wished I
hadn’t seen it but there’s no going back. What’s seen is seen
and I can’t ever forget things.
I tried to hide though, duck down
behind the big bush and crawl along until safely hidden by the fence.
They saw me though. If only they had kept their eyes shut when
kissing each other. But dad shouted out, “Oh fuck me” and Amy
cried back, “Yes, God yes Roy,” and dad pushed her away and
almost screamed “Amy, no, Erica’s over there. Erica, get here.
I can explain.”
Explain? How was he
going to explain? I mean it was obvious what was going on. They
weren’t rehearsing for a play and it wasn’t an accident and now I
could see Amy’s lipstick on dad’s puffy shoulder too. How could
he? She? They? I knew mum wasn’t getting on well with dad and I
knew things had been bad for a while and that was obvious even from
the way she slammed the cups on the table whenever I came over for a
meal. Dad having an affair wasn’t something I’d expected though.
He always seemed so against the idea of sex at all. And Amy?
She started taking
up a lot of bad habits. She was everything Dad said he hated.
Tattoos. Drinking. Smoking weed. Swearing. And sleeping with me
after Thanksgiving when we were both a bit too drunk and high to
resist each other. Not that she’s easy to resist. Not with a body
like hers and a voice that even now makes me melt inside with the way
it vibrates like a slight breeze through a field. She’s my age and
she’s pretty and mostly I like men but not always. And dad’s old
enough to be, well, her father and there they were by the pool.
I walked over to
them, all the time shouting, “What the hell dad? What the fucking
hell are you doing?” I didn’t think of her. Just him.
Unfaithful. Poor mum. I kicked the flowerpots into the pool as I
walked round it knowing that if I didn’t kick something I’d
probably thump him.
“Hi Erica. Sorry
kid, you weren’t meant to find out like this. Mum and me, we’re
over. We decided. Her fault not mine but she can tell you about
that herself. We were going to tell you next weekend I promise.”
“Over? No. You
should have sorted it out.”
“You don’t
understand. You can’t of course and mum will have to fill you in
about what she’s been up to.”
“I don’t believe
you. And Amy, you? How could you? With my dad, after …”
“I’m sorry too.
No. No, I’m not. I came over to talk about you and he was so
worried about you that we got talking about your mum and then we came
out here to swim and things just happened and I’m not sorry. I
still want to Roy, later.”
“You’re snogging
my ex, dad. Did you know that?”
The stain on the
wall caught my eye. I couldn’t bear to look at either of them.
Red wine down the wall behind the pool. Lots of red wine as if many
glasses and bottles were thrown.
“Come on Erica.
Don’t make things up. You wouldn’t do that. You’re still my
little girl and in this family we wouldn’t be gay. It’s wrong.
I raised you to know.”
“Christ dad, you
hypocrite. What’s worse, me screwing a woman once in a while or
you screwing a woman who isn’t mum? You’re sick. You’re just
sick.”
“Don’t shout at
him Erica. Please. He’s the one whose been wronged and he’s
hurting and it’s your mum who’s the bad one here. She’s been
having affairs for years, with Geoff, with John down the road, with
Rebecca in this very pool and with strangers too. For years and you
can’t blame your dad for anything. Or me. Don’t blame me for
being weak and stupid and horny as hell.”
I sat on the
poolside. I had no more words. Held myself and refused to cry. Dad
wrapped himself in a towel and sat too.
“I’d better go
in. Get changed in case your mum comes home,” said Amy and went
in.
All an accident. No
excuse. Not a reason. Consoling someone shouldn’t turn into
reaching for their dick. Ever. I wasn’t going to forgive her. Or
him. Or mum. At least not that day.
All an accident.
Except. Except.
Amy reappeared
wearing the same cute short dress she’d been wearing the first time
she and I …
“Alright Amy
Gerstein. Explain this. If it was all an accident how come you
brought your bikini with you?”
She began to laugh.
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