Continued Object Writing and NaNoWriMo

I’m pleased to say that I’ve managed to keep up my daily stints of ten-minute object writes. I haven’t missed a word offered by the website Object Writing since I joined, even though some words gave me no immediate inspiration, power adapter and ladder being two of those. However, I managed to come up with something in the end, and have included both in a small selection of writing below.

Ladder                     Bandwagon                    Bonus

Power Adapter         Bicycle                          The Relatives

As we come up to November I am seriously thinking about taking part in this year’s NaNoWriMo which describes itself as ‘a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing’, and ‘an annual (November) novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world with a goal of writing a 50,000 word novel by 11:59:59, November 30’. 

The NaNoWriMo organisers stress that the writing is more about output than quality, as the approach forces you to ‘lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly’. I think that might be good for me, as I have a tendency to let go of the flow as I become engrossed in researching some minor detail or editing a section endlessly only to end up chopping it out. Forcing myself to write intensely, leaving research to a later date, getting on with the story and just creating could be a good thing. I have no fear of writing complete rubbish. I’m pretty much used to that!

I’m also looking forward to meeting up with local writers and sharing ‘laughably awful yet lengthy prose’ over a glass of something. Though being new to it all, I will have to gird my loins and brave the getting out and meeting people part. I’m hoping that the fact that I keep misreading the face book page ‘Cambridge Wrimos’ as ‘Cambridge Winos’ could foretell good times to come. Watch this space!

Bandwagon

Hop on the bandwagon, leave you own point of view on the step. You don’t need any baggage – the herd will tell you what to wear, who to vote for, when to laugh, how to love. See what’s trending, follow that. Savour the fifty shades of saccharine coated latest fads and never mind the sour underbelly or the rising stench of warmed-up bullshit.

Who cares if you sail blind for a thousand days through indifferent air? Who notices that it’s a bumpy ride, with your jellied spine continuously jostled and jolted by the whims of others? Just wallow in the forlorn knowledge that you are in with the in crowd. Your envy is the perfect shade of green and you can lay all individuality aside as you roll along with the circus parade.

Bonus

Stepping down from the raised dais of the cash desk she smoothed the skirt of her uniform, feeing a warm surge of pride. She stood a little taller, striking a pose of puff-chested responsibility. Only sixteen and promoted to supervisor for her Saturday job in Woolworths. It was a pity that the uniform upgrade was so unglamorous. She looked down at the Crimplene two-piece ensemble. It was hardly exquisite, and combined with American tan tights and sensible shoes it was positively frumpy. Still, it was worth it to earn her pocket money and tonight the small brown pay envelope would be thicker. Tonight the Christmas bonus would be there, plumping up the banknotes and coins like weights on the scale dragging her waistcoat pocket down as she signed for her money.

She took her pride for a walk around the shop floor, smiling generously at the girls on the make-up counter, their pancaked faces cracking in response. Over to the sweets next, you had to keep a close eye on those girls, and that’s where she saw him. Her heart sank as she sighed his name, “Grandad”. He had promised never to come here. Never to bring his uncontrollable urge to her place of work. He had sworn he would not. She could see that a certain look of excited pleasure was already suffusing his features, filling him with an exhilarating satisfaction triggered by the thrill of temptation. She was a supervisor. It was her duty to report shoplifting and failure to do so could lose her this job, but rigor mortis had hold of her, painfully locking her knees as she remembered that his name for this counter was Pick and Nix. She turned, and walked away. Stationery was bound to need a tidy.

Bicycle

Swift my heart flies in a downhill chase, feet stuck out at the end of straightened legs and fingers curled round handles in tightened grip. Velocity picks up and an involuntary scream of terrified joy is torn from my lungs and dragged back, past my ears, by the blasting rush of the charging air.

Wheels spin, sizzling as they eat up tarmac, flying across the road surface with little resistance. Shapes speed past in a blur of green and brown. Hedges and trees passing by in a haze of spring scents, while time distorts, splintering into abandonment with the freewheeling exhilaration of my racing heart. Until at last resistance comes, the ground levels out and I slow to a pace where feet can once more find pedals.

The Relatives

Red flocked wallpaper soaks up the atmosphere of steamy tea and whisky, and faded prints of pastel watercolours oversee the tearful laughter of the relatives, subdued and straight-backed, perched on chairs pushed to the outer edges of the room either side of her vacant armchair, its antimacassar still bearing a faint greasy imprint. Wrapped in their many shades of mourning they feast, like crows, upon the maggoty remnants of her life, and slip with the passing hours into indecorously singing their music-hall laments.

Power Adapter

Pull the velvet curtains and block the siren stars. No more distraction from purple dancing skies. Lie back on the bed. Let lavender from freshly laundered sheets wrap around and root you to the mattress where thoughts slide away in a slow melt towards nothingness. Taste silky dreams begin to grace the tip of your tongue.

You see, I prefer my darkness really black, perfect and uncompromising, so even the devilish glint of that one red eye staring at me from the corner has the power to disturb, to dismantle my calm and set up a frenzy of throwing, where sock follows sock in an arc towards the slim, white of the power adaptor. It sits, its gaping wounds, like tiny mouths, punctured in its plastic case by giant industrial teeth, in full understanding that I will not sleep until a well aimed item of clothing shutters me once more in welcome night.

Object Writing 17

Today’s word - ‘Genre’

The dame running the writing workshop sat on the desk, eyeing me up like she knew I’d be trouble, nose wrinkled in distaste at the stench of our collective wannabe desperation.

I stared at her hair, piled so loosely on top of her head that it threatened at any moment to tumble down. It put me in mind of a haystack after the rain.

“You are going to write a detective story in the genre of Mickey Spillane.” She lisped the last name, sending a fine spray of spittle over the front row.

I licked my lips. It was going to be a long, dry hour. My tongue already felt as if it had been baked on a rock somewhere in the Australian outback.

A ringing phone, way off in the distance, dragged my mind away from the blank page in front of me. It screamed at me, disrupting my thoughts like an irritating child in a supermarket queue.

The tutor dame began to tap the desk with her pen, sending staccato bursts of gunfire pelting my brain, creating a spiral of ragged holes through which all ideas fled like water through a colander.

Who the hell was Mickey Spillane?

Ladder

I’m shorter than short – standing at exactly five foot nothing – so I put ‘small kitchen step stool’ on my Christmas list, to allow access to the highest reaches of my shelves. What he bought me was a vintage step-ladder, with a wobbly leg and a precarious list to the right that makes it unfit for purpose. I don’t know what panic sets in as he goes shopping for gifts, but he has a remarkable skill for choosing just the wrong thing with such care and love that I cannot do anything but show gratitude, and it is a beautiful ladder. A small metal label, tacked onto the warm oak, is embossed with the date of its hand-crafted birth, 1925, an age when someone cared about the smallest of design details. It cantilevers open with the complex grace of a greyhound rising from a sofa. I cannot use it. I have tried, but the stress as I listen for that creak of impending disaster is too much to bear, and so it languishes in the shed, dingy with stranded cobwebs, awaiting re-use as a shabby chic towel rail, or bedside bookshelves.

Object Writing 16

Today’s word –‘Method’

I’m a person of words, not numbers. A hundred creative ideas may, on a good day, flow from brain, down arm, through hand to be delivered, via pen, to my battered notebook, but ask me a maths question and the buzzing begins.

It starts with a click at the back of my head. It is the sound of the last light being switched off on the shop floor before the foreman goes home for the night, but instead of empty silence there is a hum, which increases in crescendo before zipping round with zigzag speed to plant that frisson of fear behind my eyes. My mouth does its impression of the Sahara, with my saliva dammed and diverted, to form a clammy film in the dead centre of both palms.

So today my thirteen year-old niece asks for help with linear equations. She smiles expectantly and has no doubt whatsoever that I’ll be there for her. So I am.

Rusty hinges squeal as a quick Google reintroduces me to long forgotten methods. Thirty-five years of dust makes quite a pile. Sweeping it aside is as strenuous as raking blown leaves from the lawn, but suddenly I am there, in that zone of flying where you can see the whole universe mapped out before you and all you need to do is reach out and pluck the answers, one by one, from silver branches.

An hour later the cinnamon scent of best auntie lingers at the desk and I smile. It is all so much more than maths.

Object Writing 15

Today’s word – ‘Smoke’

Subtitled - Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!

A thick wooden door, painted red, was set at head height in the chimney – a window into a blackened, soot encrusted world. The smokehouse keeper opened it and stepped back as smoke billowed out, puffing the scent of winter churchyards to softly shade the room in grey pencil.

Inside hung row upon row of twin bodies, nails hooked through their eyes, drizzled with minute beads of oil which threaded downwards over exposed spines to hang like crystals from fanned tails. Their amber flesh, caught up in beams of sunlight spilling into the chamber, glistened and shone like pebbles in a stream.

The smokehouse keeper tossed a handful of wood-chips onto the smouldering embers which lay glowing in the hearth, where they hissed and spat before settling down to send taste trapping tendrils of smoke curling and dancing around the dangling fish. 

Object Writing 14

Today’s word – ‘Tube’

Down in the realm of the dead, a withered place of no return, a tunnel stretches into infinity. This feat of urban engineering, a gateway into the world beyond, is air-conditioned by the chill fear of unknowing and swept daily by the trailing rags of the dispossessed.

Standing on the platform’s hard edge, some ancient fear, buried deep, submerged beneath a surface of acceptable behaviour, screams out. Its echo, trapped in the tiled walls, cries “Do not ride this tube.”

Pulsating breezes, followed by vibrations which travel up my spine, turn me about as some invisible hand in the small of my back pushes me towards the escalator and I rise from the deep and step, blinking, into the world of cars, buses and scurrying workers. I breathe deep, inhaling the full life of fumes and dusty streets, and am glad.

Object Writing 13

Today’s word – ‘Band’

Some alchemy had transformed base metal into echoes of crystal raindrops and thousands of glittering bodies swayed to the exotic rhythm of a steel band, allowing the throbbing rumble to permeate their bones. The lime tang of the music quenched thirsty souls and sent them soaring, flying towards paradise on the pulsating Calypso beat. Light ricocheted from the city windows, sending its discharge out in a sequined rainbow, sewn over a hundred tired evenings by loving mothers, who now, with ample hips swaying, reflected the dance in their proud smiles.

Object Writing 12

Today’s word – ‘Fan’

She woke in terror, drenched and fully expecting to find herself outside on the darkened lawn, staring up at heavy clouds dousing her with a pattering of drizzle.

In fact she was in her own bed. She had become a searing fire, crackling and spitting, her skin liquefied in the smelting furnace as serial volcanic eruptions forced millions of tiny needles through her pores.

Trapped by the extreme weight of lightest goose down, she imagined she heard a faint squelching as if her own body’s moisture was being slowly siphoned off and pumped to pool in the folds of her nightgown. Throwing back the covers she made a grab for the fan on her bedside cabinet. As soon as the paper pleats clattered open she set to work with rapid wrist motion, creating a restoring draught that left her skin once more petal fresh and allowed her to sink back into sleep, no more in danger of melting before dawn.

Object Writing 11

Today's Word - 'Simulation'

Press pause. Hold the blurred images in their frozen motion. Reflect on the race run. Remember the feel of pistons pumping day after endless day as you pounded on, charging ahead with a lion’s roar, driving headlong into the fray. You were an efficient machine, agile and fast, a fearless warrior defending your patch, swerving through bureaucracy with silver grace until a screech of brakes saw you stopped in your tracks, blood poisoned by your adrenaline fuelled career path and dragged down beneath those fathomless depths of red tape.

Look back over the crumbled remains of a job well done and rake over the ashes. It’s there for all to see in the black molten tracks and the stench of burning rubber. You rose too fast, aimed too high and were scorched by the effort to steer your path to the top. If you could hit resume and re-run the simulation of your life what changes would you make?

Guided Visualisation

Doing my writing warm-ups, in the form of ten minute object writes, reminded me of a workshop session I ran for a writing group a few years ago and have also used with classes of children to help them explore their use of the senses in creating writing.

We tried something called ‘guided visualisation’, following a series of exercises based around a tray of 15 random objects I had gathered together.

The exercises invited no-pressure, anything-goes writing and the value of them was that each writer brought unique experiences to the object.

Some writers love these prescribed types of exercises, and others hate them.  Whatever your feeling, it’s worth giving it a go once in a while, because sometimes the results can be exhilarating, sending your stream of consciousness into a completely unexpected direction. 

Exercise 1: "Object Tray Game" – Uncover the tray and give 1 minute to try and take in as much information as possible. Write down everything you can remember in as much detail as possible. This is not ‘Kim’s Game’ though, so don’t just try and memorise the objects – you are trying to write details about each object.

Exercise 2: Ten lines – Choose one item from the tray. Look at your item until you are certain you have memorised everything about it. Then put it back and start writing. Do not look at it again until you are certain you have described everything about it in the best detail you can manage.

If you've done a good job of paying attention to detail, you should have no trouble writing ten lines or more on the description of a simple item. If you're having trouble getting that far, take a help card and use the hints.

Help Card

Use these senses – sight, touch, smell – and write whatever occurs to you.

What do you notice about the shadows the object casts?

What does the surface feel like?

What colours is it and what colours/images  are reflected in it?

Are there any marks on the surface? Any signs of wear? Any scars? Any engraving?

If it has several parts, how is it put together?

Replace the object with another. Again, look at the object, hold it in your memory, and write every detail of your chosen object, no matter how minute. When you've finished check to see what you got right, what you got wrong, and what you overlooked entirely.

Exercise 3: Take a picture of a character. I just print some random pictures from a Google image search. Imagine that you're going to have to identify them in a police line-up, or better yet, describe them to a police artist. Take in as much about them as you can in one minute, then put the picture aside and write down as much as you can about the person.

Repeat with another picture.

Exercise 4: Choose an interesting setting that you know quite well – the shopping centre, the park, an old Victorian house. Try and really pay attention to the surroundings. Do your best to notice everything, not just with your sense of sight, but with all your senses.

Exercise 5: You should have a good idea of a person, a place and some objects by now, so put them together to create a scene in which you use everything you observed. Put some action in there. Put dialogue. But your main issue in this exercise is to create an absolutely over-the-top all-senses-engaged presentation of two people and the space they occupy.

Object Writing 10

Today's Word - 'Novice'

Eyes cast downwards, he feasts on the blank sheet, abandons a mumbled prayer to the scrivener’s god, and lets himself wander lost into the white blizzard of wordlessness.

His tapping nib sends a spray of obsidian blobs, footprints of a Lilliputian army, to mar the serene beauty. They must belong to the pacing monks who clutter up the quiet contemplation of his mind’s cloister.

With creative fervour now burning his cheeks, and mindful concentration fluttering his lashes, his hand begins to move. Soon tight grip cramping words give up a line, then two, before self-doubt snags his sleeve. The careful scaffolding is undermined and blocks crash down, thudding about him, scratching out his thoughts. Back and forth black lines scrape grooves. Back and forth rattles the shuttle as the loom weaves the one truth – there will always be days when you are a novice. 

Object Writing 9

Today's Word - 'Prefix'

The acid swirling backwash leaves thin bitumen furred on the roof of my mouth as I stare blankly out of the window, phone bill in hand, listening bitterly to the slow rhythm inside my chest that gives no indication of a heart unbound from the chains of loving you.

How I wish I didn’t recognise that often dialled number, but the blindfold cannot be re-tied. No more will warm velvet ignorance keep me shackled. Why couldn’t you be clever in your cheating? Why not lie and say you misdialled by accident, or, better still, keep a special phone, secret, hidden away beneath that stash of car magazines that I will never bother to touch?

It is not to be. The reek of your descent into infidelity is upon the white sheet of paper, and even if the numbers fell from the page like ants scurrying from their doomed nest, I know they would leave indelible that prefix, the one that starts her number, dialled a dozen times.  

Object Writing 8

Today's Word - 'Danger'

In a deliberate act of spite, she throws a handful of ivory teardrops in my face. Smooth and shiny they scatter their danger all about me and within the space of a few blinks my body reacts. Violence begets violence from the seemingly innocent sesame seeds. My lips grow, plumped up on my body’s own chemicals, to encase my tongue with gripping numbness that slides down my throat to freeze my vocal chords. A thousand grains of sand tingle on the top of my head, sink through my skull and explode like space-dust on my brain. The sheath about my chest tightens and I begin to burn with a bright vermillion flame that licks my arms and neck. Short, sharp breaths become inadequate and my knees concertina. As I fall to the ground I hear scuffling. A hand rifles in my bag and finds my epipen.

Object Writing 7

Today's Word - 'Council'

Moon circle time again. That once monthly torture that is our family council, but today, for a change, I am safe. I have done nothing wrong. Annoyed no-one. Not taken one single step out of line.

Yet she sits opposite me with a smug set to the thin red thread of her lips. She is waiting. Waiting for her turn with the talking stick.

My stomach takes an elevator plunge. What does she know? What will she say once the smooth bone, encased in sky blue beads, is in her hands?

She points the stick like a gun to my head. A vicious shake of it rattles out my death knell, while the turquoise eye of the peacock feather tied to its end winks cheekily. I’m done for.

A fake smile shrouds her intention. Only I know that she intends to beat me with that stick until the cork explodes from my bottled-up problems and I confess the one truth – I don’t belong here.

Object Writing 6

Today's Word - 'Lid'

She licked the salty grit from her lips and placed both hands on the slab. Ten tons of rough hewn granite steadied her trembling fingers as they roamed over the furrowed inscriptions. Strong lines threaded deep and sharp, a tribute to the skill of some ancient stonemason who had once spent his day chink, chinking away with the cold metal of his chisel.

In the ten minutes it took to lift the sarcophagus lid she lived a lifetime, recalling her life’s study to the humming flow of blood washing clean her veins. Each squeal of the pulley, each thud of the counter weight, elongated her anticipation, stretching it taut and plucked in discordant strains. Finally, with a rush of stale air, it was off. Stepping forward she shone her torch down through the rising dust motes of past time.