She Writes has an interesting post about wishes here, and I was thinking about that today. Along with myriad other wishes large and small, my overwhelming one right now is that I could spare my husband the next six months or so of his father dying. My father-in-law called Friday night to ask my husband to go with him to sell his house and set his affairs in order. The cancer’s back and it’s everywhere and it’s sooner rather than later for him. It’s a terrible thing to watch a parent or child or loved one die.
I’m saying this here because Piedmont Writer also had an interesting post on how weather around her affects her writing. It doesn’t affect me; the weather is what it is in the story, not what’s around me. My characters are hot or cold, wet or dry as the setting dictates. What does affect my writing is what is going on around me in real life and often, what I am teaching at the time.
I’ve spent all day researching genocide for an elective I will be teaching next year. Elements of genocide from Rwanda found their way into a novel I was writing during my teaching of that.
Elements of my writing that include setting, tone, dialogue, theme, and all their intersecting points come from life around me. So given my husband and my father-in-law and my curriculum prep, I expect that my writing will tend toward the dark for a while.
So what’s the bleed-through? What affects you and your writing?
Showing posts with label dark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dark. Show all posts
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
TGIF
It's the end of a long, brutal week, and while I have not been as productive as I would have hoped, I have managed to cobble together 327 words hopefully crafted into complete sentences. Here they are. What do you think?
---------------
When he wakes, he opens his eyes to nothing. It’s cold and dark, the pitch black giving way to a dull, gun-metal grey at the edges of his peripheral vision.
He curls in tighter to himself; pulls the filthy, threadbare blanket closer and listens to the harsh exhale of his breath. There’s a weight against his back, heavy, pressing close.
Brain still slow with sleep, scrambled from the remains of the dream, he throws back an elbow, rolls, and shoves hard against the stiff, formless shape. His hand falls, palm down, onto a sharp-boned, unmoving chest.
He rolls out of the blanket, rolls to his knees. Bright, dead eyes lock him in their line of sight.
He quits breathing; listens hard in the silence and the dark. There’s nothing beyond the sound of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
Fingers thick with cold and clumsy in the dark search blindly for a sign of heartbeat or breath.
There’s nothing. The body is cold and hard and silent.
He shifts on his knees, grabs the bottom of the thin, torn shirt, wrestles it up and off its unresisting owner and over his head.
Ignoring the stench that makes his stomach roll, he drives his arms quickly through the sleeves, pulls it down.
He slides down the body, yanks off worn boots; shoves bare feet into the rotting leather and freezes.
Still as stone, he flicks his eyes around the dark.
It’s quiet.
He moves again; pulls rancid pants two sizes too big off the corpse, rolls them up in the blanket.
He buries the rank bundle in the bag that’s filled with everything else in his life; crawls into the corner.
He huddles there, wrapped in his blanket, listening for the sound of boot steps. As the stillness and dark congeal over him, he slips into faded memory from a long ago sometime that floats like ash on a cold wind.
He dreams in grey.
When he was small and hurt she would hold him. Soft, cool hands, satin-smooth and small, would cradle and caress him, and she would sing to him.
His eyes snap open, his head snaps up.
He can remember everything about her; the feel of her hands, the scent of her hair, the sound of her voice. Everything except her face.
Shrouded in the blanket and the rags he still feels the cold coming up off the stone, sees two burning eyes staring at him in the dark. A leaden cold that has nothing to do with hunger claws at the hollow in his gut.
It’s been a long time she’s come to him.
He can’t remember how long.
He’d thought he’d stopped dreaming.
He should remember.
He pulls his bag and the blanket closer, his knees up to his chest, wonders if he’ll see her again.
He tries to pull breath deep into his lungs; hasn’t any to spare.
The corpse watches him from the shadows. Once he took pity on the dead; now he wishes they would take pity on him.
He wraps his arms around his knees and waits.
---------------
When he wakes, he opens his eyes to nothing. It’s cold and dark, the pitch black giving way to a dull, gun-metal grey at the edges of his peripheral vision.
He curls in tighter to himself; pulls the filthy, threadbare blanket closer and listens to the harsh exhale of his breath. There’s a weight against his back, heavy, pressing close.
Brain still slow with sleep, scrambled from the remains of the dream, he throws back an elbow, rolls, and shoves hard against the stiff, formless shape. His hand falls, palm down, onto a sharp-boned, unmoving chest.
He rolls out of the blanket, rolls to his knees. Bright, dead eyes lock him in their line of sight.
He quits breathing; listens hard in the silence and the dark. There’s nothing beyond the sound of his own pulse pounding in his ears.
Fingers thick with cold and clumsy in the dark search blindly for a sign of heartbeat or breath.
There’s nothing. The body is cold and hard and silent.
He shifts on his knees, grabs the bottom of the thin, torn shirt, wrestles it up and off its unresisting owner and over his head.
Ignoring the stench that makes his stomach roll, he drives his arms quickly through the sleeves, pulls it down.
He slides down the body, yanks off worn boots; shoves bare feet into the rotting leather and freezes.
Still as stone, he flicks his eyes around the dark.
It’s quiet.
He moves again; pulls rancid pants two sizes too big off the corpse, rolls them up in the blanket.
He buries the rank bundle in the bag that’s filled with everything else in his life; crawls into the corner.
He huddles there, wrapped in his blanket, listening for the sound of boot steps. As the stillness and dark congeal over him, he slips into faded memory from a long ago sometime that floats like ash on a cold wind.
He dreams in grey.
When he was small and hurt she would hold him. Soft, cool hands, satin-smooth and small, would cradle and caress him, and she would sing to him.
His eyes snap open, his head snaps up.
He can remember everything about her; the feel of her hands, the scent of her hair, the sound of her voice. Everything except her face.
Shrouded in the blanket and the rags he still feels the cold coming up off the stone, sees two burning eyes staring at him in the dark. A leaden cold that has nothing to do with hunger claws at the hollow in his gut.
It’s been a long time she’s come to him.
He can’t remember how long.
He’d thought he’d stopped dreaming.
He should remember.
He pulls his bag and the blanket closer, his knees up to his chest, wonders if he’ll see her again.
He tries to pull breath deep into his lungs; hasn’t any to spare.
The corpse watches him from the shadows. Once he took pity on the dead; now he wishes they would take pity on him.
He wraps his arms around his knees and waits.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Crawling in the dark
I write dark. I mean that I’ve written about nuclear winter, before reading The Road, and I’ve written fiction weaving topics like genocide, slavery/trafficking, violence, as well as the psychological weapons and tools of those events into my work. I’ve tried to be honest in the telling, and have never considered them gratuitous, as to me they are an integral part of the story.
But I sometimes wonder about the topics I’ve chosen to explore in my writing and storytelling. Does what you write reflect you as a person/the inner you? How much of your personality bleeds through to the written word? Does that exchange flow both ways? How much of you informs your stories?
But I sometimes wonder about the topics I’ve chosen to explore in my writing and storytelling. Does what you write reflect you as a person/the inner you? How much of your personality bleeds through to the written word? Does that exchange flow both ways? How much of you informs your stories?
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