He ran his hand over the crinkled page of the skin on her forearm. Away from the cannula and tubing while day and night wrestled for mastery.
Around him the ping of the heartrate monitor and the chatter of nurses and patients become birdsong.
He took up the pen and asked her, “Do you remember what I wrote on your hand when I proposed?”
A faint nod.
He wrote, “…and the greatest of these is love.”
Posted in Creativity, Short Stories
Tagged creativity, experimental, fiction, flash fiction, Friday flash, handwritten pages, micro-fiction, microfiction, slice of life, writers, writing
I grew up in a house with a corrugated iron roof and loved hearing the sound the rain made on it. It’s a familiar sound and a familiar memory and I used it as the basis for an idea developed below.
Like the wind picks at the corrugated iron roof, this memory is a scab I have picked at for years and years.
I have scratched and scratched.
Sometimes out of curiosity, out of a need to understand; to comprehend how we failed to relate to one another. Or out of frustration and anger at failed intimacy.
I retreat into the solitude of the bedroom, into a book and a pen and bury myself beneath headphones where the music thrashes and yells and pummels.
And like the wind, I return to pick at the scab of memory.
Sometimes it’s random images that lodge in my head like a splinter. This is one of them. I think there’s more to this story but I’m putting it aside for later to see what grows out of the compost heap.
The child stood on the crest of the hill overlooking the city. She turned her eyes upwards to the uniform inky expanse of night sky. It was spotted with dots of white; a scattered litter of light like tissue fragments on a black jumper in the wash.
Turning her gaze downwards the city lights exploded in a galaxy of white, orange, red, blue, green.
She bent down and performed a headstand, inverting the world, and for a brief moment she believed the earthly heavens were brighter than she ever hoped for.
This week’s Handwritten Page is inspired by a colleague of mine who wrote down for me a series of events and remembrances of growing up in Queensland, Australia.
I have only taken a snippet of a memory while I work out a larger story from the raw material. On a side notes, people’s stories are fascinating.
My sister and I would sit in in the projectionist’s booth at the drive-in, offering gifts of popcorn, hot chips and sips of Coke to the projectionist. Gifts from our mother who ran the tuck shop as we waited for Dad to pick us up after he finished his shift.
We watched visions of life unspool through the reels as the clatter of the projector spoke over the dialogue and music, until frame by frame, it disappeared.
I loved how the end of the film would fthlip fthlip fthlip as the reel ended. A child’s tongue extended, blowing a raspberry. I saw it as a cheeky gesture, a way to express myself no matter how serious or shitty life would become. A chance to blow a raspberry at circumstance while the reel was changed and life moved on.
The second instalment of Handwritten Pages. This one was inspired while reading Amanda Palmer’s book, “The Art of Asking.”
I cannot recommend her book highly enough if you are a creative person. It is a heartfelt and affirming read; quite challenging to accept her premise sometimes but as a creative person there is such a wealth of ideas to gain from it. If time is of the essence, listen to her TED Talk.
The couple sit across from each other at the dining room table, each with a pen and a pad of Post It Notes.
In silence they share a communion of scribbled notes, stick figure cartoons and random doodles intermingled wiht a chorus of laughter, sighs and whispers.
There is a solemn but playful sincerity to their ritual as the notes pass back and forth.
He passes a note to her; the body of Christ.
She receives it. Reads and responds.
She passes a note to him; the blood of Christ.
He receives it. Reads and responds.
He offers his hand and they stand to leave with the benediction spoken on paper.
They leave the notes as holy writ.
What I don’t do enough of is write by hand, letting the pen and paper become an exploration. Yesterday I was inspired by a blog post on calligraphy to use my notebooks more effectively.
I know writers who use Julia Cameron’s (The Artist’s Way) technique of morning pages. The idea is you free write first thing in the morning as it clears the head and channels a creative flow. Mornings don’t work for me but the concept of free writing association can be done at any time.
I want to use a specific notebook of mine for this exercise as it is unlined meaning I can use the space on the page to convey meaning as much as the words do. I can alter my handwriting style, use colour, draw shapes or doodle images. Over the coming months I will share more handwritten explorations.
Below is the first attempt at using a notebook for handwritten explorations. Nothing fancy. Just text.
“I dab the tissue at the pinpoint of blood on my fingertip, blotting the word that pools. The tissue is spattered with random words bleeding into one another in a random game of Scrabble. Another word forms and I place it on my tongue to break it down to letters and reabsorb it. The blank page waits patiently as I resist the urge to open a vein.”
Just before Christmas my writing co-conspirator sent me a mash up of two pages (and stupid me forgot to take a ‘before’ picture) and let me loose to see what I would do with it.
The left hand page is the front page of the New York Times, the day after the moon landing. The right hand page is a diary entry.
I turned it into a blackout/erasure poem and reproduced it below with some changes to punctuation.
The After Analysis Is Fading
to have to go
a half degree
angle it and take a swing
without threatening the surreal
earth. There is no time to
whisper
heartbeats told of a religious space
the time to see each other
but isn’t now
and I agree.
command, kiss his cheek, and
informed it’s not tentative
his arms
replied. not actually going to let me go.
the unsaid stuff in
degrees in the sunlight. We let each other
kiss
degrees below zero, short enough to stop it becoming
a blanket, more like floating and less
night
I see his light, he’s
higher, put the window down
this landing in the
after analysis is fading
flying through the
equator, the beautiful buzz
reduces the messenger
the moon
Posted in Short Stories
Tagged black out poetry, creativity, experimental, fiction, flash fiction, Friday flash, poetry, writers, writing
Thanks to my pet friend, Sean Wright, I have been experimenting with haibun. It is a Japanese form utilising haiku and prose. The haiku is meant to be stand alone as well as illuminating aspects of the prose. They are brief and focused.
I wrote a few to play with the form, a way of practising.
I have included two of them here. I used a third on Storybird as a picture book experiment and have had some good response to it. You can read it here: Pendulum
Exhalation
In the silent moment before the alarm makes its declaration of the birth of the day, I wait, awake. Outside my window the main road is silent, a petulant child trying to see how long she can hold her breath as if it can stop the day from starting.
spark of life
measured in two movements
light follows dark
The fanfare of the hourly news is followed by the burst of exhalation: the rapid, rasping, laboured breath of rubber on bitumen. It is a too-quick heartbeat, and if I lie here long enough I hear the rise and fall of cars. They lumber away, wheezing their way up the hill hoping the lights turn red to catch their breath again.
If I hit the ‘snooze’ button, I can pretend the news never happened and the breaths taken outside my window are nothing more than the wind playing with the trees shaking their thoughts onto the ground.
I want to see how long I can hold my breath until I find a pencil and a scrap of paper to keep tally. They will be filed in pockets of jeans, jackets and shirts, ensuring the stipend is not exhausted, and hoping the remainder can be carried over to the following day.
receipts kept in pockets
fall with autumn’s grace
kindling for the fire
Gunning Station
I only met you once in real life, officially, when I stood on your platform, my toes deliberately hanging over the edge, uncertain if a train was due to arrive.
Our first, formal introduction, where the firm handshake betrayed the frailty of the weatherboard spruced with a fresh coat of beige and capped with terracotta coloured corrugated iron. The blue Countrylink sign on each of the matching seats announced your name.
I felt the awkward familiarity of meeting a robust memory known only from photographs and second hand reminisces, seeing the aged decrepitude beyond. A faded discolouration, a tea-soaked sepia superimposed over the glare of a late winter’s afternoon.
shadow obscures
the printed timetable
a faded memory
A place as familiar as a Sunday lunch of roast lamb and vegetables, gravy thickened from the pan, linen napkins, silver cutlery and the lingering scent of tobacco rolled through your fingers. The smoke drifts up in curls like the steam engines who once waited on shunting lines now no longer connected.
Five generations of my wife’s family including her lived at some point in the stationmaster’s house on the hill overlooking the station. I look at the corrugated iron, rusting in the silence while paint peels off stone walls in a town redefining its face with brick veneer, upmarket cafes and gentrified real estate.
I walk the length of one platform, descend the ramp to cross the tracks and feel the rebellious rush of stepping over the rails. I half expect, even want, a passenger train or freight train to crest the curve and suggest that the pulse, however thready, exists for at least one more day. But none come.
I walk the length of the other platform and reach the boundaries of a circumscribed world defined by memories that are not my own.
Posted in Creativity, The Writer's Life
Tagged creativity, flash fiction, Friday flash, haibun, haiku, slice of life, writers, writing, writing practice, writing tips
I came across the Storybird www.storybird.com website during the week and was initially reluctant to sign up for the free account (yet another log in to remember) but I gave it a crack.
You can do three things with it
You use the images as a stimulus to create a piece of work.
You can write for the following age groups.
I began experimenting with poetry. You take a single image and are given a random selection of words. Think Magnetic Poetry for your fridge.
You are limited with the words you are given and this can sometimes be a frustration. However, the limited vocabulary makes you focus on what you can do with the words at hand. Sometimes the words are almost useless and you scrap it and start again.
These are some poems I have created.
I also have a picture book using a haibun(a mixture of prose and haiku) as an experiment. I was limited by the number of images provided to create a strong narrative.
Before a picture book is ‘published’ it is vetted by the site. I found my story had been approved within less than 24 hours. I suspect this is due to the broad audience range available.
I can see this being a good tool from an educator’s point of view as a way of helping students experiment with language, create their own stories with visuals already created (artists can also submit their work for use but I do not know how they are supported and/or paid).
It is useful for a 10 minute creative break, or something to spark your imagination if you’re feeling stifled.
I am not sure how far to go with it but for the moment it is a fun, creative way to pass the time and get you thinking and creating. It may lead to other works or ideas. Ultimately it’s another tool you can use to be creative.
Posted in Creativity, The Writer's Life
Tagged creativity, experimental, fiction, flash fiction, poetry, storybird, writers, writing, writing tips
I am an English teacher and drummer/percussionist with an interest in literary pursuits, creative endeavours, rhythmic permutations, theological amplifications and comedic outbursts.
Here you will find my creative detritus: articles on living a creative life and writing explorations.
And other ideas I have snaffled from the papers stuck on the fridge door.
Twitter: @RevHappiness
Instagram: @handwrittenpages
My collaborative epistolary novel, "Post Marked: Piper's Reach," written with Jodi Cleghorn (@JodiCleghorn) out now via Vine Leaves Press.
Come and browse through the library; there is no need to be silent.
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 