The Hoity-Toity Freewrite

Nothing drives me nuts quite like a hoity, lofty romance novel with characters who think their armpits smell of such a wondrous aphrodisiac that all the other characters should flock to woo them. And then it actually happens, of course in a high-headed way with much dramatic airs.

A little note here: someone should take those two sentences and actually use them for a plot. That would be way fun and crazy. Oh, also, this is part of my not-so-daily freewrites.

That said, there must be a plentiful readership for these types of books, since there are so very many of them. So, who am I to judge? McDonald’s also drives me nuts, but I personally know several people who nearly worship the Golden Arches. The hubbs and I have long since given up on most prepared food, since combined we have allergies to most processed items. There must be some sort of appeal in all that superficial fakeness that appeals. And just as I have eaten in most fast food joints, just for the experience, it is well beyond my time that I write a heady plot on a character who can’t see past the glow of how self-centered and awesome they are.

And thus comes Beatrice. Don your helmets, for I’m swan diving into the lake of egotistical masochism. Or my version of it, in any case.

And beware the ides of typos and misunderstanding which will surely occur. First draft and whatnot.

Crystal gleamed beneath Beatrice’s white gloves and rag, the last of the water droplets wicking away at her touch. It was a simple death that awaited the sheriff at the feast, a slow nodding-off as the food and drink settled into his stomach. Thus was his downfall, the drink, for he took his wine cut with French brandy, and the heat of the drink would allow the poison to sink deep into his veins and cover the peppery bite of the toxin. His son would likely die as well, the swine that he was. A bitter pang to Beatrice, but she hadn’t the heart to poison the sheriff’s wife, not when the girl was younger than she while the sheriff old enough to be her sire. The girl was his third such wife, the first having died to bear the son, and the second found on the shore of the river.

It was well and beyond time that the plague of the sheriff be gone from this kingdom forever. Not that she would survive the murders, of course. The staff here was too observant. They’d kept eyes on every person handling the food no matter for how brief a time. And with hair and eyes the color of rich dirt, Beatrice stood out amongst the maidens with wheat-hued hair or those with a reddish tinge. No, there was no doubt that once the sheriff was dead, she would be found. And that knowledge therein was precisely why the woman had reserved a dose of poison for herself.

The butler at the head of the table frowned, not much caring for the gossiping and flighty maids, but caring even less for the silent and collected type which looked ready to poison a glass.

Beatrice flashed a smile at him, dropping her eyes to the work she had done. She lifted the wine glass to the sunlight, admiring the cuts the craftsmen had made to carve the pattern of diamonds into crystal, catching a rainbow when twisted correctly. Without a word, Beatrice handed him the glass, making a comment on beholding the wonder of its beauty. At this, the portly and short man frowned, having to tip his head to look up at her as he read her expression. Seconds passed, marked by the swing of the clock down the hallway. Beatrice gave away nothing, nothing but the slight curve of her lips.

A scullery girl, just a waif of a thing such as the sort the sheriff preferred, crept up behind the butler, tugged on his sleeve, and proceeded to tattle on a boy who put his fingers in a pie. The man had other concerns than a woman whose smile put a shudder down his back. She was just a temporary addition. In two hours, she would be gone. Reprimanding the girl for interrupting adults, the butler gave pause long enough to mutter to Beatrice that they had a firm count of all the stem- and serving-ware.

Beatrice smiled again at him, and he gave a noticeable shiver. Fearing the darkness in her eyes, the butler directed her to sweeping the halls. If the order perturbed her, the woman gave no indication, just inclined her head and turned to her new task.

The floor was swept, dinner laid out, and the guests came in, all at once, with great clamor and chatter. Compared to the stillness and deliberate calculation of the dining hall earlier in the day, the guests came as a great flood down the riverbed, talking and joking and finding their seats by their name card.

It was with relief written over the butler’s brow that he dismissed Beatrice from his employ. He had re-washed the stemware, and was confident in the safety of his meal. Not that she would have made an obvious attempt to get her hands on the sheriff’s glass, Beatrice did wish she could have deposited just a drop of the oil into the sheriff’s glass—however, the butler would know when it smudged instead of wicking away the way water ought. Nothing was out of place for the man. An assassination had been impossible ever since he took charge of the Lord’s household. The sheriff took his glass, poured his concoction into it, and took a swig as he sparred wits with his deputy. Sadly, the man was safe, for his glass was untainted.

Beatrice waited, lingering in the servant’s doorway, needing to watch, needing to see the man administer himself the toxin, even though there was naught she could do to force it to happen now. Only the mouse could take the cheese for himself. She watched him sip, taking in enough brandy to dull the senses and mute the tongue to taste. Never one for manners, the sheriff speared a mushroom upon his fork and toyed with it as though using it as a prop in his conversation. Somehow sensing her eyes watching, the light-haired man saw Beatrice hiding behind the door, and mirth marred his otherwise handsome profile. He had seen that her status was reduced to this, reduced to taking whatever scraps of work were given to her. But Beatrice knew that he had taken far worse from other maidens. At least her ruin was in her own fault, having fallen for a smooth word and smoother hands. Age wore well on the man, it was no wonder his adolescent wife had a belly which bulged with a growing child. The girl had not a whit of the monster she bedded, and Beatrice was glad to keep her innocent of it.

The butler shot her a glare when he opened the door, muttering noises to shoo her away. Beatrice slowly backed down, a smile sliding over her lips as the sheriff’s closed on the fork, his tongue licking away the juices, never knowing that the woman he tormented had polished his silver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladle Rat Rotten Hut

This is a more-than-slight deviation from what I meant to write today. Sorry. I was going through my bookshelves picking the books to get rid of, and the books to take with me to England. Did I mention I was moving overseas? Grad school. It’s going to be fun. But the point of the matter is, I was sorting through books and I found a paper that my English professor had given out during class. I ended up being the student who could read it with the proper intonation so the others could understand it. My professor didn’t give it any other credit than the title and a mention that he didn’t write it.

I find it fascinating that words can be morphed to create a whole different meaning. Take for instance “lodge, dock, florist”. If you are familiar with this tale, you know this translates with a little  nudge, into “large, dark forest”. The reason my professor shared it with us is the same reason I’m sharing it with you. It’s something to wonder and admire at, and to take heed and caution from. It’s much like the teenagers in my classroom who think they’re brilliant for saying “sofa king bored” and that they won’t get in trouble for it.

Instead of typing it out, I nabbed a portion of it from Exploratorium.  So, read some of it here, and if you’re interested in the rest, stop by Exploratorium. Google search Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, and there’s all sorts of audio versions available.  

Ladle Rat Rotten Hut

Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage, honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

Wan moaning, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut’s murder colder inset. “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groinmurder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily-doily inner florist, an yonder nor sorghum-stenches, dun stopper torque wet strainers !”

 

“Hoe-cake, murder,” resplendent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, an tickle ladle basking an stuttered oft. Honor wrote tutor cordage offer groin-murder, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut mitten anomalous woof. ” Wail, wail, wail ! ” set disk wicket woof, “Evanescent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut! Wares are putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?”

 

“Armor goring tumor groin-murder’s,” reprisal ladle gull. “Grammar’s seeking bet. Armor ticking arson burden barter an shirker cockles.”

 

“O hoe! Heifer gnats woke,” setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, “Oil tickle shirt court tutor cordage offer groin-murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an denÑO bore!”

A Walk Through Craters of the Moon

I’ll be honest here–I intended to make this post about walking the dogs through the farm at home, but it just so happened that yesterday the husband said we were finally going to go visit Craters of the Moon, a landscape made from lava flows, and of course the dogs came with us  and we had a good walk. The place is on the small side for a US park, but it’s still huge and the whole walk would take probably a full chapter to go into the sensory detail that I want. I’m going to abridge it to a single short walk that we went on. I’ll try to pay a little more attention to my grammar and the point of view here, the last post was uncharacteristically hair-pulling in those two departments.

So the idea here is that the last post was to work on imagery and the barest start of a plot. Just to start writing. Period. This one goes a step farther, and the challenge is to add more of a plot theme to it. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we? ~and as always, remember these are first drafts. I like to do several drafts before something is finished, but these exercises are a low priority in the editing department. I hope you understand. Also understand that stories are stories and contain fictional content. I am not claiming any truthful accuracy of said tale.~

Eyes of honey and chocolate turned up at me, then closed as Terra’s nose raised in the air and she took several sniffs at the breeze, ending the routine with a wag of her speckled black and white tail. I studied the asphalt path before us, thinking it was a clever way to make a trail over lava that has pooled and oozed out a millennia ago, and my husband unloaded our second dog, a mutt of strange origins that had given him the color of a Newfoundland, the hair of a Golden Retriever, and the heterochromic eyes of an Australian Shepherd. Teddy was ten months old, the size of a large family dog with an attitude of a three-pound puppy, and this was one of his first big “outings”. Terra, on the other hand, was watching the world with interest and confidence, half-erect ears turned to listen to my voice as she watched three joggers pass by on the other side of the road. Two females and one slim male, I noted, which meant no hackles and no growls. The Blue Heeler protectiveness often got the better of Terra, and as much as I was ashamed to say it, the dog was sexist, racist, and hated obese people. Teddy loved everyone; we feared strangers would take him home.

I stroked the white stripe down her muzzle as we left my husband and Teddy go on the trail first. Raised on the farm and largely without leashes, Teddy was slow to learn manners of being walked on a lead despite our work with him. Today was both invigorating and frightening for the pup, and his tendency to obey waxed and waned with his mood. My husband stopped him, told him to sit, and read an informational sign in front of the weathered remains of a desert pine. One almost-white blue eye looked at me, red tongue lolling out, striking a contrast against the black waves of his coat. With much less leash-pulling, Terra and I joined them, and I stopped to read the sign with my husband, motioning for Terra to sit. She did, the blue dog rolling back on her tailbone like a teenaged couch potato.

My husband commented on the strange little tree, on the way the lava had split open along the path, then bent down and ran his finger over a spot where the lava had formed ridges like coils of a rope, a little like cake batter right when it hits the pan and before it smooths out. Down the path a little farther was a sign about the native plantlife, many were species we had at home–sagebrush, rabbitbrush, great basin wild rye–but some were peculiar, like the dwarf buckwheat which grew so low to the ground I initially thought it was oversized white lichen. Along the path were more signs, many of which referenced words and terms native to Hawaii, not something I anticipated seeing in the northwestern state of Idaho. The tropical paradise island was an opposite to our dry state, and I hadn’t thought I would ever see a single thing that could be compared to it. I supposed there was no point in making up new words when the Hawaiians already knew what to call various lava flows.

At one point, the path fell away to both sides, one depression a rocky pit that could surely break an arm or twist an ankle if fallen into. Teddy paused and leaned over the edge, curious but frightened of what might be down there. My husband called him along, and the pup clung to his side. Terra saw a pika dodge from crevice to crevice and whined. An excellent rodent hunter, Terra had killed twice the number of mice in our kitchen cabinets that our cat had killed. She trotted down the narrow path, hardly caring about the holes next to her.

Most of the lava flow was like this: reasonably flat ground which would give way to sudden nothingness, lava tubes which wound their way across the landscape, occasionally breaking through to the air above. I told my husband that if I had been a wanted man in the Old West, I’d be sure to come here to lose the lawmen. This was one landscape a horse would have been a great hinderance to have.

Not far away, there was a hill largely like any other hill, but covered in pea-sized crumbles of brown-black rock, and it was there that the dwarf buckwheat thrived close to the surface, most only a few inches across, but the sign said they could reach up to three feet in diameter.

My husband and I traded leashes a time or two. Teddy tended to revere my husband, and Terra certainly held me in the opinion that I was something to be worshipped. To my relief, Terra obeyed my husband very well. After scolding Teddy for not staying like I told him to, the pup paid very dear attention and did not pull on the lead. When thunder rumbled overhead, he turned a big head to look at me, the blue eye darting to and from the car in an expression of worry. His brown eye was not as noticable as his blue eye, but his right side was dominant, so most often he really was watching me with the blue eye. Terra did not mind the thunder, nor the flashes of lightening in the distance, nor the wind when it picked up, but she hunkered over the second a bit of rain spit on her back. Half the sky was gray clouds, a quarter was robin’s egg blue, and the rest was the white cotton-candy like columus clouds, and the weather behaved like these clouds in turns.

The day went by quickly. We went up and down volcanic cones, stared at a few trailhead signs and decided that we’d rather just look at pictures of tree imprints than walk a mile in the raindrops and moist wind. We loaded up the dogs and drove down the asphalt road with a rise at the edge, making the road look more like a bumper-cart track than a park drive. From the car, we stared at Devil’s Orchard, a gnarled stand of pines, and watched the rain fleck on the windshield. My husband turned on the wipers. Too soon. The bugs smeared in white arcs and the wipers gave a barely-wet jumping squeak as they stopped at the bottom. We hadn’t refilled the fluid reservoir yet, so we waited and watched the storm out of non-buggy windows until enough rain had accumulated that we could turn the wipers on again, then until it was clean enough to start driving home.

In the back, the dogs were loving the way we had dropped down the seat so the rear of the vehicle was flat and extended under the trunk where a picnic basket shared space with a black dog, easily overlooked if not for the blue eye staring out at us. Terra lounged on the blankets right behind us, spread so her tail touched one door and her nose the other, for being the smallest dog I’ve ever had, this was quite the feat. During the hour and a half home, there was only one snarl-fight, easily broken up with a shout, over who would get the premium cavernous space in the trunk. The rest of the way home was the road under tires, the occasional deer sighting, and quiet conversation as we drew closer and closer to our home in the farmhouse on the riverside.

River in the High Desert

You’d never know there was a river in the ravine, below hills of clay and sand and sagebrush, below the green flats of alfalfa fields, below the cattle feasting on pasture like black ants on sugar. If you’d walk down the dusty gravel road, perhaps the wind would carry a fine spray of irrigation water to your face as you passed by fields where sprinklers slapped counterweights in and out of the stream of water and perhaps you would have to dodge the sprinkler as it tsssk-tssssked by in a spiral, eventually you would reach the end of the field, where the crops dropped from knee-tall to calf-tall, then to a thick swash of cheatgrass. Several feet beyond the field are scrawny shrubs as old as any tree, gnarled and twisted, some reaching the height of a man, others still taller, but most sagebrush grow to be chest-height or less. It was these plants we would cut fresh growth from, bind the stems with string, and toss the bundles onto car dashes. Weeks later, the dusty mint colored leaves would dry and fall into the air vents, the bundles discarded. A shorter plant grows with the sagebrush, a less-woody thing with stems like a straw broom with leaves: rabbitbrush, a not-so-aromatic plant which the deer and goats and rabbits preferred to nibble upon. Should the wind be blowing stiff and strong, as it is usually doing, the golden eagles will usually come down from the lava cliffs a couple miles from the river, and come to the tip of this ravine to glide over the wind, seemingly locked in place or just swaying like a tethered kite before drifting off into the skies or in search of field mice.

The road turns around the corner of the field and drops down the ravine, and you can first glimpse the river, white water rolling over boulders at the bottom of a clay canyon made from a history of landslides. Around the switchback, there’s a calm portion of the river with jumping fish, willows lining both sides, rocks of all shapes and sizes, and a sandy beach where kiyakers come to play. On occasion, ducks will fly up from the place where water reverses flow and swirls in a slow circle behind the rapids. Other times, you will see the kiyakers in their little boats like Styrofoam bananas going down the rapids with their paddles, often turning themselves under the waves then upright again, spinning on a dime and darting through the water the same way a good quarter horse cuts calves. On rare occasions, you could look up to the rapids and see pelicans perched on rocks, fishing to fill the sac beneath their beak. Always, always no matter the occasion, you can see sea gulls which eat river fish and whatever crumbs the interstate travelers toss them up at the gas station a few miles away, and always, no matter if there is snow or burning heat, you can see the deer trails down to the river, and you can see the canal that had been built in the nineteen-fifties. It is a straight line, a giant sluice made of concrete and covered with wood now fallen in and rotten, an attempt to bring water to an arid land so to give it the same life as is on this side of the river, but there had been one fatal flaw in the plan, just one simple oversight that no engineering nor determination could fix: That concrete and water cannot be supported on a ground made from wet clay. So it was that several sections of the once-great canal were now located quite some distance downhill from the rest of it, and other sections were gone completely.

***OK, that’ll do it for today’s writing prompt. It’s a bit too late for me to discuss what I hoped to learn/did learn by writing this, you understand that my voice is quite sore from elementary PE. 😉 ***

TTYL

~Me

It’s the small victories

Today I made a list of writing prompts. Those count as writing. I hope. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but I sort of had my eyes on making sure the weight lifting classes were doing their exercises more or less right and certainly safely. (I’m speaking to you, Mr. Anonymous “I can bench 300 with no spotter” brainchild) The rest of the day so far was spent helping the hubbs organize stuff for him to go to work, and organizing the house so one person can manage.

The writing prompts have sort of developed into lessons, so I’m pretty excited about that. These are listed by day. I may alter their order later.

1. Describe an unusual beach (Setting)
2. Take the reader on a walk with the dogs (Scene/Basic Motion) *Take notes for sensory details*
3. Do a story (one character, plot) with thoughts only. So some psychological all-in-your-head thing.
4. Days 4-8 will be a series on the basic Man Versus ____ plots. Day 4 will be Man vs Nature.
5. Man vs Himself
6. Man vs Machine
7. Man vs Man
8. Man vs Society or maybe scramble up the order. Here I have a note that I should not use skills I haven’t practiced yet. No dialogue, for example.
9. Voices in the Dark (or, Intro to Dialogue)
10. Nightmare at 3 a.m. (Combing setting, scene, motion, dialogue, introduce the Man vs Supernatural device)
11. Describe a tiny miracle (sensory detail fine-tuning)
12. Have a conversation with two opposite people: one very expressive, one reserved. (Character exploration, dialogue, expressions, and sensory details)
13. A Grimm’s Fairytale type story (Basic “lesson” plot)
14. Speed dating (a study of various personalities and expressions)
15. Playscript (a study of plot and how dialogue by itself pushes it forward)

…aaaand so far nothing else.  Also: as of right now, it clearly could use some restructuring. That’s OK. I’ll update this post as I get more daily prompts/lessons, and as I better think how to organize them.

For now, sorry folks, but I’ve got to get my butt to bed. This snotty-nose isn’t going to go away by staying up late.

Till tomorrow,

~Me

I’m Thinking…Blog Re-Start

Yep. I think I’m going to revamp my blog in about as many ways as I can. A new look, new topics. Just new. Still me, of course. I’ve actually thought about deleting the old posts and starting fresh, but I sort of thought that part of the reason for this blog was to record the journey of me as a writer, and that includes having things that are from my past, things that I may not think anymore. So in that light, with a nod to integrity, I’d be best to let my previous postings stand. But why have I been looking at such a dramatic shift? What’s caused this sudden change of heart?

The reason is, I haven’t been the same since my miscarriage. The change in my behavior, in me as a person, and in my writing has been pretty dramatic. Like, I’ve gone from Beatrix Potter-for-adults-like tales to Edgar Allen Poe like tales. I guess my husband reads some of my writing after I’ve gone to bed, and he just made the comment to me that my writing has taken on a distinctly darker, more vivid style to it. For a while, my depression was so deep that I was unable to write anymore. Creatively unable. It was so strange to watch a movie and when it was over, it was over. No variation of the plotline, no carryover of an awesome character into one of my plots. I had no plots. I had no characters.

My visit to my “happy place” was a mental graveyard, with headstones of characters and epitaphs like, “Well, you got one of my stories written.” or “The world will never know me” or “Fat chance writing my tale. Ever.”  Yeah….sheesh, I’m sorry, guys, that sounds waaaay depressing. I seem to remember it being one of my normal mental images, something without much emotion tied to it. Now, the dark stuff, the truly crushing nightmares that I had—I never wrote those. Part of my recovery was that I forced myself to start writing again, to ignore the inner critic gone rampant, and I actually avoided writing about anything dark. And my husband said he found Poe less depressing.

…anyway! That’s in a nutshell why I can’t get back to the upbeat, confident note that I strived for (and sometimes fell short of) when I originally started posting.

For now, I’m on a schedule. A timed schedule, with so much time allotted for blogging. To get myself back into the habit of blogging again, I’m going to do a 30-Day Journal, starting today. Where I write about something, all to get back into a habit.

I’m up on my time limit now, so I’ll take a few to change up my blog’s appearance, and then I’m off to my next task.

TTYL,

Nicolette