I spotted The Writer’s Toolbox in a charity shop. Brand new. Unused. It looked fun. Potentially. So I bought it and posted about it on Facebook. The response was a series of writers and other creative people saying they had bought the Toolbox too. None of them had ever used it and we decided we should get together and play with it as a group. That hasn’t happened. At this time it’s unlikely to happen and my health is being too unpredictable to plan it. I wrote a comment though promising myself and everyone else that I would experience one of the exercises in the Toolbox and that no matter how bad the result I’d post it online within a week.
That was a month ago. The Toolbox has sat neglected in the back room among some scattered books and pieces of paper that I haven’t put away. It’s still brand new. Unused. I have joined the ranks of writers and creatives who enthusiastically bought it and didn’t ever use it.
Until today. Today is the day. Having written six blog posts in six days about leaving Christianity I want to write something else. I’m hoping my writing brain is more switched on now and that I can allow words to pour out like they used to do. After that full stop I stopped too. No more typing for sixty seconds. There’s an anxiety about writing. Can I still do it? Is there still such a life inside my head that I can let go and allow sentences to form almost mysteriously, hardly knowing what each word is as it gets typed or written with a pen. Typing and penmanship are very different experiences to me. The speed is different and the physical feelings alter the results.
The little book accompanying the Toolbox starts in a manner that must be rare for a writing guide. It tells how the exercise I’m going to attempt today was a big success among teenagers in a psychiatric hospital. A recommendation for the most messed up among us and I was never a teenager in a psychiatric hospital. I nearly was. If I had been I’d have probably been a patient there for a year or three. That’s a story for another day. Until I begin the exercise I can have no clue about today’s story.
The rules:
Take a “first sentence” stick. Write it. Keep writing from that sentence until you notice the sand in a timer has run out. The book says from three to six minutes which implies that the sand timer isn’t accurate enough for anyone wanting to boil an egg. Then take a “non sequitur” stick and continue your story with whatever is there. Finally take a “last straw” stick to create a dramatic arc. There are twenty of each kind of stick. I haven’t even read the ones of the tops of their piles.
There are more exercises in the box and the book contains lots of tips for writing stories that aren’t bland pieces of dull. I haven’t read the book yet. I also haven’t looked at any of the sticks. This experiment could work. It could inspire me to repeat it with different sentences on different sticks. It could inspire me to try the other exercises. Alternatively it could inspire me to give the Toolbox back to a charity shop this afternoon.
At this moment you know just as much as I do about what’s about to happen. I invite you to experiment with the exercise too. Afterwards I’ll rewrite the three sentences on the sticks and you can play too. Yes, play. This isn’t work. This isn’t pressure or a trap. It’s not meant to be a serious or burdensome task and it has no real world consequences whatsoever beyond quarter of an hour of enjoyment or learning that you don’t want to do it again. It has a consequence for me though because I promised to post whatever I wrote.
I’m keeping the promise. Don’t expect quality. Don’t expect to be amazed by a genius at work. This could go very wrong and from the bottom “Sixth-sense card” I know that I may need to throw a prompt away for being too uniquely American to make even First-sense to me.
Right. Enough procrastination. I’ve delayed for a month plus 700 words. Stop it. Now. The only way to write is to write.
He swore on his mother’s grave, but then he swore on just about everything. Alex was a prolific graffiti tagger. He was well known in the community and the other guys saluted his bravery in tagging the highest buildings and the most difficult parts of railway bridges. Alex was fearless, the most courageous and his escapes from security guards and the police were becoming the stuff of legend. His tag wasn’t popular with the local people though. It didn’t say Alex. It wasn’t a code that only other taggers could understand. It simply said “Buggeration.” The first time he wrote it on anything was six months after his mother died. Alex was still grieving and felt that his life had gone to pieces without his mum. On a particularly bad day Alex believed that everything was falling apart and there was no hope without her so he broke into the cemetery that night and scrawled on the back of her gravestone. “Buggeration.” He felt better after that so it became his calling card. Shop windows. Road signs. Buses. An army transport. The back of someone’s coat hanging on the back of chair in a pub while that someone had gone off to order a pint of lager.
It wasn’t so much that I had been blind to the truth. It was just that I had seen the truth differently. My name’s Jackie. And Alex is my boyfriend. Or I wanted him to be until he got arrested scrawling Buggeration on the side of Tower Bridge. I fancied him so bad and he made me so dizzy that I forgot to turn over egg timers and I could hardly talk in front of him without thinking of him naked and me naked and what it would be like and I’ve never even had a proper boyfriend. Alex was cool and he had everything going for him and it was sad when his mum died but he was doing okay I thought and his eyes were always full of humour and, oh God his eyes. I could faint just thinking of them. I didn’t know about the Buggeration though until his arrest only that there was this cute, clever, sexy boy and I wanted him and couldn’t even tell him and he was so sad that he couldn’t see it and no I wouldn’t let him do that to me. We should have been together. Alex and me. We would have been good and I’d have made him happy and I’d have let him to almost anything else.
The time he invited his mother to dinner was the night I decided I should forget about him. After all, Jack at school was pretty hot too and he fancied me and everyone knew. It was a year after Alex’s arrest. The courts had decided he was nuts but I thought he was just sad and they’d locked him up in a psych ward as if he was some kind of loon. I used to go and see him even though my mum said I shouldn’t and I’d still have wanted to kiss him and feel his body against mine but we couldn’t do that in the hospital canteen could we? We used to eat a meal there together once a week. Until the day he ordered three meals not two and said that the other one was for his mum and then he started to talk to her and told her that he wanted to kiss her and that he’d let her share his bed that night. He didn’t even look at me and I realised that my mum was right. He was fucking off his head and Jack would be much better. I never visited Alex again.
He’s getting out tomorrow. Cured they say.
….
So that’s that. Something short. I confess I didn’t stick exactly to the egg timer. Thoughts needed finishing before moving on. And that last sentence stick! What was I to do with that? A bit of a shock for me having to write about someone inviting their mum to dinner when the first sentence told me their mum was dead. Okay, it didn’t. It’s just an idiom but I have a tendency to literalism and I’ll happily play the autistic card here. When typing that quickly from unpredictable prompts the results may not always make perfect sense. Forgive me for the strangeness. Forgive me for the multiple plot holes as I re-read.
There you go: Graffiti. Psychiatry, due to the little book. Insanity. And teenage hormones.
The egg timer by the way runs through in three minutes and four seconds. If you want to play the game that’s how long you have for each section. Write down the sentences first and give yourself extra seconds.
First sentence: He swore on his mother’s grave, but then he swore on just about everything.
Non sequitur: It wasn’t so much that I had been blind to the truth. It was just that I had seen the truth differently.
Last straw: the time he invited his mother to dinner.
Have a go. Or don’t.
I quite enjoyed the experiment. I might want more time if I repeat it. Two egg timers not one. I may try the other exercises. I may read the little book. Get my quid’s worth. Manage to write without gaping plot holes. Not mention God even in a phrase of teenage lust!
So now I wonder, given how many people have bought the Toolbox how many people have ever used it? Am I very rare? Maybe the Toolbox was never intended to be used, only to look like a good idea at the time or like it would be a good present for a writer when shopping at the last minute in a panic because it’s Christmas Eve and it would be the end of the world if the writer couldn’t be given any old tat the next day.
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