So it's the weekend and I'm taking a break from school and writing. But I've got so many ideas in my head that I'm anxious to get them all down. Which is great, right? Because a writer should always be wanting to write, and always be wanting to come up with great ideas.
Re-editing The Photograph has been a fun process so far. When it's done, sometime next week, I'll make sure to post it. I plan on submitting it to some zines and seeing if I can get it to go anywhere.
Publishing world, here I come ... slowly.
I've been thinking about getting an agent soon? I need to get published somewhere first. So I've got to keep submitting and writing short stories.
Today was the deadline for submission of either fiction, poetry, or screenplay at the university for competition in the President's Prize challenge. Being so swamped with school work and other writing, I didn't get enough time to edit a complete draft of a short story I wrote entitled The Photograph.
I particularly enjoy what I've written, but after much consideration came to the conclusion that it needed to be edited down; particularly characters removed to centralize focus. Thus, I submitted Clara and dread that nothing will come of it. I'm hard working on editing The Photograph, and will be publishing it on this site soon. Here's an excerpt:
The Photograph:
Stephanie hid her face under the lip of her jacket, fighting off a cold blast of air.
Here she goes again, she thought, watching Lily tug on her sweater and examine her breasts for the thousandth time that morning. Doesn’t she know what day it is today? Apart of her understood it: they were new a new toy, foreign, continuously growing, and she knew how much Lily liked them … a lot. How could she not? They made her feel beautiful and confident; they made her feel like she was part of a secret club. Stephanie couldn’t understand it by experience, but she wasn’t dumb; she knew how the world worked – sex appeal went a long way. But the other part of her was starting to feel left out.
Watching Lily was like watching her baby cousin open his eyes for the first time: she kept touching her breasts, shaking them, flaunting them. She was so sure she could get Tommy Hornerbeck to notice her … and she wouldn’t shut up about it, either. It was driving her mad.
‘God, I love these things,’ said Lily, pressing her breasts up against her chest. ‘They’re so firm!’ Lily sidled up against Stephanie, shook her chest from side to side, and said, ‘check them out, Steph; they’re like jello.’
Stephanie smiled half-heartedly.
‘Aw, Lil, get away,’ she said, pushing her aside. ‘Keep ‘em to yourself.’
Lily let go of her sweater and zipped up her jacket, frowning. She shivered impulsively and snuggled back into warmth. It had been snowing all morning, and the city was slowly starting to erase under a sea of white.
Ahead of them, a couple of older boys were grouped together exchanging cigarettes. The sound of their arguing carried in the air and Lily couldn’t help it:
‘Think he noticed them?’ she asked.
‘Hell, they’re probably talking about ‘em right now,’ said Stephanie, flippant.
‘I think he loves them,’ said Lily. ‘He wants to touch them.’
‘Don’t be gross,’ said Stephanie. She crossed her arms self-consciously and stared at the footprints leading them on.
‘You’ll be getting yours soon, I expect,’ said Lily hopefully.
‘Can’t wait,’ said Stephanie. What else am I supposed to say? she thought.
All Stephanie wanted was to talk to her best friend about what was piling up on her. But Lily was too focused on the idea of growing up. She loved it, absolutely loved it, everything about it, and to her breasts meant exactly that. Again, Stephanie understood that, but again because Lily was her best friend, she wondered why she couldn’t shut up and think about what maybe she was going through for a moment.
Okay, thought Stephanie, so maybe I’m always complaining about growing up. Sure I want to know what it feels like to become a woman, but do I want it to happen right now? No. I don’t. And I know that it will because I’m a girl, we all go through it.
Stephanie bit her lip and reflected on the neighborhood around her. She liked the area a lot. The houses all looked different from one another and that amused her. They were assembled from a time before suburbia. If she could live anywhere when she grew up, she thought, it would be here.
I wanted to take a few paragraphs and talk about my most recent short story, Clara. It can be found in full on this blog, and I hope that you take the time to read it. Also, if you want a hard copy, feel free to e-mail me and I'll send it off.
Clara is about population control. Its story takes place in a world where no one is having children, and if you are caught having a child then that child and its mother are terminated while the father is tried and jailed.
I liked the idea that the world was so full of people that the government had no choice but to ban reproduction. I like to think that this choice was unanimous by all the governments of the world, who finally all agreed on one thing: population control. Scary, huh? I imagine that women were then forced to be on birth control, and if they resisted then they would be terminated if they were caught. That would bring up a lot of debate about religion, ethics, and freedom. It would create great drama, characters, and political interest. I see Freedom Fighters, and people trying to secretly have children. There's so much to say, and I'm excited to one day turn this into a novel.
And as the world gets bigger and bigger, I think it's important that we all start thinking about what could happen to our freedom in the future; our freedom to have children and spread life.
Population control isn't an unreality, it's a haunting reality.
So I've got another short story to finish for Thursday. This time, this one is going to be much longer than 750 words. Not sure how I'm going to get it done, and edited by my brilliant editor, when I have so much work to do this week. Contemplated dropping a course and focusing freed-up time on every other course.
Bah!
An excerpt from the first short story I ever submitted for publication (oh how much I've learned and how far I've come along):
If anything can be said of fate it is that we are all bound to the same end: death; common, vile, deceptive death that knows only harm and sorrow; its blade poison and its shield impenetrable; its master the void of eternal damnation. But whether it is to Heaven that we go once our weary bodies give, or that we simply cease to exist, only the dead truly know. Does that comfort you? It cannot, but we continue on. We live each day with the knowledge of death looming in our subconscious, at the back of our thoughts, buried under the myriad tasks we undergo to keep the fire of our lives burning. Sometimes it envelopes us and springs forth like a cold wind on a hot summer’s day. It is then that we question, fear, neglect. It is then that we imagine a perfect world after life; worlds we hope exist and worlds that we believe in so blindly that we defend them to whatever end. Without this we break like the snapping of a twig in a harsh storm: to be blown away over the earth -- away from home, from comfort.
But believe what you will about life and death for it does not change the fact that Melanie Matters is dead and will always be dead.
She was an angel unto the world as any who knew her could tell you. Why then did she deserve death? Is it that to exist one cannot be as she was: holy, free, nature’s purest bud?
Melanie was loved, as most are loved, by her family and her friends. She was a gentle soul who imparted onto all she knew ideals of peace and happiness. She cared for others as equally as she cared for herself; yet she always strived to give more than she could. She was a devoted activist, a loyal friend, a loving daughter and a gracious lover. But that was ripped from her – she was ripped from all that she knew and knew her in turn. Her death came about commonly: a car accident; the driver was drunk and sped through a red light, slamming into the side of her car. Melanie died instantly. Blood filled the street and sirens raided the air. The driver lived on, however, and was sentenced to a couple of years in prison: a rich man with a greedy lawyer.
So I've been working on a short story that I just submitted to my university zine in hopes of it being published in the next issue. This being a contest, I'm sure there will be many amazing entries, and I'm not sure if anything will happen, but I'm proud of the story I wrote. Which is what it's all about, isn't it?
This is the second time that I've submitted a story for publication. The first time, I lost and got my first rejection letter. It felt ... like a rite of passage. Does that make sense? In Stephen King's On Writing, he talks about his first rejection letter and how he felt happy that someone at least responded back to him.
I've decided to post my new short story, entitled Clara. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:
---------------
The windows around them were plastered in posters of ad’s displaying the new rules, the new laws, and the new punishments. Karen’s eyes scanned the windows frantically, and she suddenly realized they had left the city and were traveling along a barren wasteland shadowed by black skies.
Louis tightened his grip on her arm and dragged her down the corridor, the train rattling forward on the rusted track beneath them.
’Keep moving,’ he said.
‘They’re stronger now,’ Karen groaned, barely able to breathe. Her knees were buckling, and she was sweating, hunched over. The pain was surmounting and she struggled to stay on her feet.
‘A little further,’ Louis urged.
At the next compartment, he started knocking on the blind-drawn window. Then he started banging.
Karen leaned against the window; she was feeling dizzy and started to slip, but Louis caught her arm.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked, his eyes nervously searching her face.
‘I can’t,’ Karen whispered. They were moving fast down the train, and this was the last carriage before there would be nowhere left to go.
Louis steadied his wife. Full of consternation, he started to kick the door. Finally there was shouting, and then someone unlocked it. When the door opened a small man popped out.
‘What?!’ he barked.
‘Please,’ begged Louis. ‘We need your help, my wife can’t go on.’
The man peered around the doorway and saw Karen against the window, clutching her stomach.
‘Get out of here,’ he snarled, shutting the door. But Louis stuck his foot in the way.
‘I have money,’ he bartered, stuffing his hand into his pocket. But the man shook his head and started slamming the door against Louis’s foot.
‘Please,’ Louis pleaded – behind him Karen gasped and fell to the floor.
‘You’re a fool,’ said the man, closing the door. The lock turned and Louis knew it was over as he knelt down beside his wife.
‘Make it stop,’ Karen begged. ‘Make it stop, Louis!’ She opened her mouth and started to scream.
Louis’s face was full of horror as he bent to kiss her, suffocating the noise. He took off his jacket and placed it under her head. He started breathing slowly, heavily. He tried to steady his shaking hands. He knew it was time.
‘Breathe,’ said Louis. ‘You have to breathe, Karen. We’ve read all about this. We know what to do. Remember those books on the bedside table? Keep breathing!’
‘I’m scared,’ she cried. ‘We can’t do this here.’ She glanced up and down the corridor. ‘They’ll find us!’
‘We have no choice, love,’ Louis whispered, staring at her. He smoothed the hair back from her face. ‘Push, Karen!’
*
Louis ran as fast as he could back up the narrow corridor, panic stricken. Nearly at the sliding door between carriages, he stopped as it started to open. Six armed men and women in orange gear raised their weapons. Louis’s eyes widened.
He turned and started to run back to Karen. One of the guards fired their weapon; the bullet pierced Louis’s leg and he dropped to the floor. He was crawling forward when he was seized and lifted.
Karen stared up at the approaching army, her pale face matted in sweat. In her arms, a tiny baby was crying. She held onto the small bundle as tightly as she could.
The guards tossed Louis next to his family while one of the female officers spoke into her walkie-talkie: ‘We’ve got them,’ she said. Then she nodded to the guard next to her who stepped forward and seized the baby. Karen was too weak; her grip failed her and the baby was forced from her arms. Louis tried to fight but was pinned to the floor. The guard handed the infant to the female officer who looked at it with disgust. She threw the tiny body to the floor and shot it through the heart.
‘Karen Phillips,’ said the officer calmly, ‘you are hereby terminated under PC article 1.’ She lifted her gun and put a bullet through Karen’s head. Blood sprayed onto Louis’s face, and his eyes lost their colour.
‘Louis Phillips,’ she continued, ‘you are hereby sentenced under high treason against your country, for which you will be tried and punished by court of law.’ She raised her chin.
Two guards assented and grabbed Louis. As he was dragged up the corridor, he watched the remains of his wife and daughter bleed out on the rug.
I'm twenty-three years old and I've recently finished the first draft of my first novel. Right now I'm working on publishing short stories and advancing my writing career.
Posts
