Find Your Story Within Contest – Week 7

The week 7 writing prompt is ready to inspire your writing! The week 6 winner is Henry S. Parker. Check back here next week to read his winning entry.

Settings can be easily visualized because when written well, they appeal to all our senses.

Setting is often overlooked, but has the potential to be the dominant element in a story—as in The Secret Garden, for example –where the garden’s slow flourishing mirrors the developing relationships and the main character’s return to health. Setting can predispose the reader to feel what the character feels and it can also change the entire nature of an interaction.

In no more than 250 words, describe a setting so influential it is as powerful as a character.

To enter, send an email to thestorywithinbook@gmail.com with your full name, email address and written entry. Week seven entries are due on Wednesday, February 29, 2012.

To learn more visit http://thestorywithin.net/writing_contest or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thestorywithin.

Words Fail Me: Showing the Inexpressible

Words Fail Me: Showing the inexpressible

Just before Grandmother Aten died, my parents moved east. I have no memory of my grandmother but have been told she sewed exquisite gowns by hand for my mother when Mom was in college. I know my grandmother left vases of wild flowers in Mother’s room when she came home from school on vacations. And I know that without time to really clean my grandmother would have given the room “a lick and a promise.”

Each generation of this family moves farther from the farm and it shows in our speech. Although I may say, “There aren’t enough vegetables on that plate to shake a stick at,” I use this type of expression less than my mother and my children, far less than I. The children don’t search for needles in haystacks or get clean as a whistle. These are hand-me-down expressions that speak of our history, not our current experience, and they cannot be replaced in kind.

Grandpa Aten came to visit us a few times after Grandmother died. He’d take the train from Chicago to Baltimore and we would meet him at the B&O Station. With little familiarity to bind us, I was self-conscious as I greeted the tall, silent farmer in the straw hat—his pale blue summer shirt so thin that I could see the scoop of this undershirt through it.

I’d shyly approach and he’d raise his fists in a mock boxing stance as if to playfully engage me in an exchange for which he had no words. Maybe I was supposed to shadowbox with the kind old man who loved my mother and therefore me, but I would smile and move out of range, not knowing what was expected.

Perhaps because words were difficult, Grandpa Aten did more than he said in the name of love. He spent most of his visits doing thoughtful jobs for my mother who was now raising three daughters alone. He’d repair the pasture fence, or spend days at treacherous heights trimming tree branches so she could see the river from the house. He worked, as he loved, in silence, unlike the family who now remembers him and unlike my daughter Emily who never knew him.

“I love you more than you love me,” Emily challenges me with authority. She searches her second grade experience for the greatest comparison she can offer as proof. “I love you as much as every star that shines, ever will shine, in this galaxy and all the other galaxies in the universe. Or any other universe. Forever,” she concludes triumphantly.

“Now,” Emily says in a business-like manner. “How much do you love me?”

She waits expectantly.

I don’t sew exquisite ball gowns late into the night. I don’t know how.  In place of greater talents, it seems words are all I have. I give detailed explanations when a “yes” or “no” would do; deliver speeches to children too sleepy to listen. My grandparents might have reminded me too many words fall like seed on fallow ground but still, I search their legacy (till the sun doesn’t shine? till the rivers run dry?) and find no words to measure the longevity of my love.

Emily waits for me to quantify my affection. But sometimes words fail me. And sometimes, love speaks for itself.

Just to engage the muse and practice showing, not telling in your work, write about a time words failed you or about a character who cannot communicate his feelings or intent. How can you convey the struggle? How can you show what was felt? Clues; have your character performing a physical task—baking a cake that won’t get done, trying to open a jar with a stubborn lid, unable to read a map.

 

Find Your Story Within Contest – Week 6

“Present the evidence for the way your character feels without overtly telling the reader what he feels,” writes author Laura Oliver.

When you give your reader an experience through clues, you are showing (not telling). When you master this skill, the reader is far more likely to trust you as an author and to feel what you want them to feel and see what you want them see.

In no more than 250 words, write about a character who is worried about something without using the  word “worry” or “anxious” to label this emotion—instead, think about ways to show worry.  (Hint: to start, ask yourself, “What do I do when I’m worried?)

To enter, send an email to thestorywithinbook@gmail.com with your full name, email address and written entry. Week six entries are due on Wednesday, February 22, 2012.

To learn more visit http://thestorywithin.net/writing_contest or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thestorywithin.

Week 5 Contest Winner!

This week’s writing contest winner is Annie Hilliard for her piece, “Sunday Unknown.” The vignette is a revelation of love, loss and the first stage of grief. In less than 250 words, Hilliard conveys the deep companionship that was a hallmark of the relationship allowing the reader to sense not just who, but what has been lost.

We’d also like to give a round of applause to Gary Faigen for so deftly using meal planning as seduction, to Dottie Rosenberry for the full-circle manner in which she brought closure to a piece that began with a search, and to Jeanne Slawson for the sophistication with which she connected cooking with mindfulness meditation.

Sunday Unknown

It’s noon on Sunday and I am alone in my mother’s house for the first of many times. I am hungry and tired. I check her cupboard and fridge. Everything I need is there to make Mom’s favorite sandwich, tuna salad. I gather the ingredients and place them on the white vinyl counter. I take one small rib of celery and dice it into the tiniest possible pieces, removing the stringy bits. We used to shop at the supermarket every Sunday after mass, just the two of us planning the week’s menu. Let’s leave Sunday unknown, Mom would say. I add the carrots next – the “real” kind with green tops. Mom disliked the baby kind. When it’s time to add the Kraft mayonnaise, I hesitate. If you’re stingy with your Kraft, things fall apart. It seems impossible now that I got cross over her adding too much, that I used to turn away my face when she ate. The last step is the seeded rye. I slip two slices into the toaster and stretch out my hands for the warmth. The toast looks pale but when I flip the slices I see they’re perfect. It only takes one second for them to burn. I take my sandwich, the closest I can get to her, to the table where we shared fantasy and reality and too many chips. Where candles dripped and wine glasses emptied. She’s gone where I haven’t. I take my first bite without her there and, slowly, digest.

A New York Moment by Iain S. Baird

The week 2 Find Your Story Within contest winner Iain S. Baird submitted the guest blog post below as part of his prize. It’s a short piece of creative nonfiction that won an award last year from the Tallahassee Writers’ Association.  I really enjoyed reading it and hope you do too.

A New York Moment

By Iain S. Baird

(Reprinted from the 2011 Seven Hills Review.)

As we step from the East Village’s Punjabi Restaurant, the scent of cumin, cardamom, and coriander follow us in to the damp city evening.  The late spring shower has washed the street clean, and the red, green, and yellow reflections from the traffic lights and neon signs bounce off the glistening black pavement.   A yellow cab pulls up to the curb in front of the restaurant, dislodging a young couple.

“Where to?” asks the taxi cab driver, turning over the meter as we settle into the rear seat.

We give an address over on the West Side.  Pulling into the traffic, our cabbie resumes talking into his cell phone in a language I can’t understand.  Years earlier, when I grew up in New York, cabdrivers were from Brooklyn or the Bronx and gave their opinions in accents laced with “Dems, Deese, and Dos.”  Today’s taxi drivers are more likely to come from Calcutta, Mogadishu, or Tehran, speaking with their own unique accents.

Even in the light rain, the streets are full of couples, young and old, laughing and talking. This is the new New York; clean, optimistic, safe.  People are out and about looking for excitement and enjoying each other’s company.  Not that everything is perfect.  As we cross Broadway, we look south into the dark hole in the sky where the Twin Towers once lighted up the night.

“Are you visiting the city?” our driver asks.

“Yes, we’re just here for the long weekend.”

“And from where do you come?”

“From Annapolis.”

My wife adds, “It’s in Maryland.  It’s the capital of the state.”

“I’ve heard of Annapolis.  It’s near Washington, D.C., isn’t it?”

“Yes, you’re quite right,”

My wife and I have flown up for the weekend.  The short flight was predictably miserable with all the necessary but inconvenient added security.  I look at the taxicab license displayed next to the meter.  Malik Junaid Ahmed.

“And where are you from?” I ask.

He pauses before quietly saying, “Pakistan.”

A week earlier, Faisal Shahzad, a newly minted American from Pakistan tried to set off a bomb in Times Square only a few blocks north.  Our driver glances back at us in the rear view mirror before returning his gaze to the street.  A silence fills the cab.  My wife shifts in her seat.  I stare out the window, no longer seeing the passing crowds but thrust back a half century in time.

“I’ve been there,” I say.

“You have been to Pakistan?”

“I lived in India as a teenager, in Delhi.  My father worked with the United Nations.  In the spring of 1961, we drove from Delhi to Kabul and back, driving back and forth across Pakistan.  We crossed into Pakistan at Lahore, then on to Rawalpindi and Peshawar, and through the Northwest Territories to the Khyber Pass and on into Afghanistan.”

“You have been to Lahore?  That is my home.  Actually, I lived in a small town called Mari.  Have you ever heard of it?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, it is very small.  I went to school in Lahore.  My wife and small daughter live there, now.  I hope to bring them over to the U.S. soon.”

“It must be hard to be separated from them.”

“Very hard.  But sometimes one must make sacrifices.”

At Fifth Avenue and Washington Square, traffic comes to a standstill.  Ahead, the entrance to the park is aglow from the flashing lights from several emergency vehicles.  We crane our necks trying to see what has disturbed the night.  A policeman directs us to a detour on Eighth Street.

As traffic picks up again, our driver asks, “So, how did you find Pakistan?”

“I found it welcoming.  Wherever we went people opened their homes to us and treated us with great affection and respect.  Parts of the country were very beautiful.  I remember heading up into the mountains and seeing the Hindu Kush range for the first time.  It was spectacular.”

“Did you enjoy the food?”

“Of course.  The freshly baked naan, the spicy chicken tikka, the succulent lamb kebabs, or maybe they were goat.”

“Ha, yes, yes.  Sometime they will serve you goat and call it lamb.  But delicious anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

A panel truck swerves in front of us.  Our driver curses words I can’t understand, while breaking and honking his horn.  The truck makes a right turn, and we proceed south down Seventh Avenue.

“Do you have family over here?” I ask.

“My father lives in New Jersey with one of my brothers.  My brother works for my father.  They have an import/export business, but things are slow.  I take night courses at City College in management.  I hope to join them in the business soon.  Do you think taking management courses is a good use of my time?”

“I think education is good.  It sounds like you have a good plan.  I wish you luck.”

“Thank you.  Yes, I think it is a good plan, too.”

We pull up in front of the apartment building of our friends on the West Side.  The meter says $ 12.40.  I pull a ten and a five from my wallet and lean forward to hand the money over the back of the seat.

“No, no,” our driver says.   “No charge.  You are my guest.”

“But I must pay something.  This is your business.”

“No.  I cannot take your money.  You have been my guest.”

Pocketing my bills, my wife and I step from the cab.  I turn and in one of the few words of Urdu I remember from that trip so many years ago, I say, “Meribani.”  Thank you.

“Shukriya,” he smiles back to me and pulls away from the curb.

Connections in Writing TweetChat

I had the opportunity to answer writing questions via a live TweetChat today. I talked with other Twitter followers about this week’s contest theme – connections in writing. If you missed the Q&A and are still looking for some inspiration for this week’s contest prompt, check out the TweetChat summary below.

 

@WilksComm: Great! We’ll be talking all about connections. Q1: What are connections in writing?

@StoryWithin: Connections in writing are places where a story’s emotional subtext is exposed; the subject beneath the plot.

@WilksComm: Can you give a few general examples of connections in writing?

@StoryWithin: Ex. connection is recognizing a story about an ant farm is really a story about the complexity of marriage.

@WilksComm: Interesting! So, why is making connections in writing important to the story?

@StoryWithin: Connections make what happens in a story what matters. Connections are recognizing the true subject of a story.

@GW_BOB: How can writers recognize the connections in their work?

@StoryWithin: Read your work aloud listening for metaphor. The ear can hear a connection to which the eye is blind.

@WilksComm: You say it’s important to make what happened what matters. Do you have any tips to do this?

@StoryWithin: Find connections between plot and subject at places of vulnerability, change, growth or insight.

@GW_BOB: Why is reading your work aloud important?

@StoryWithin: Reading work aloud initiates a right brain response making deeper meanings more accessible.

@GW_BOB: Thanks!

@WilksComm: We have time for one more question. How does making connections help the writer and the reader?

@StoryWithin: Connections are always a discovery made in the writing itself; to find one is to have had an actual insight. The reader witnesses a genuinely new discovery. To coin Frost, “Tears in the writer, tears in the reader.”

@WilksComm: Thanks to all who joined us for the #TweetChat with @StoryWithin! Check out her writing contest at http://t.co/93PkP3C

 

I’ll be participating in another TweetChat on Monday, February 27 at 2 pm EST. Join us on Twitter by using the hashtag #WritingRight.

Find Your Story Within Contest – Week 5

“The true gift of any book you read is that it illuminates your own life through someone else’s experience and imagination,” writes author Laura Oliver.

The challenge as an author is how to make those connections as you write; how to give your story depth. These connections must be fostered, not forced. One way to discover those emotional connections is to write about something concrete and physical listening for the metaphor.

In no more than 250 words, write about a person preparing a meal and let it stand for something else—duty, longing, generosity, exhaustion, boredom, love?

To enter, send an email to thestorywithinbook@gmail.com with your full name, email address and written entry. Week five entries are due on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

To mark the halfway point of our contest, we are giving away an extra copy of The Story Within! The 10th person to enter week 5 will automatically win a copy.

To learn more visit http://thestorywithin.net/writing_contest or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thestorywithin.

Week 4 Contest Winner!

Congrats to Kita Murdock! She is the week 4 winner of the Find Your Story Within Writing Contest.

Once again the contest entries were creative and varied, each writer approaching the prompt in a unique way.  In selecting a winner we had to mention as finalists:

• Amy Thurston for her imaginative piece using the memorization of prime numbers
• John Van de Kamp for using ten distinct quotes to memorialize those who taught them to him
• Lawrence P. McGuire for sheer originality–using the listing prompt to create a character

Kita was chosen as the overall winner this week for her creative piece about memorizing the princess names (and why) and then memorizing dinosaur names. Check out her piece below:

Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Tiana, Ariel, Mulan, Pocahontas, Snow White, Jasmine, Repunzel… By the time my daughter, Noni, was three years old, I could tell you the name of not only every Disney princess, but every Disney prince. I knew who died from an apple and who died from a spindle, which princess liked to read and which one liked to cook. How could I not? I spent most waking hours honoring Noni’s requests to help buckle her imaginary glass slippers or to discuss whether I preferred Snow White’s multicolored dress or Sleeping Beauty’s pink gown. I had listened to “So this is love” on the car stereo 5,000 times and read our dog-eared copy of The Little Mermaid every night for a year.

While I spent my days indulging Noni’s princess obsession, at night I would drop into bed and pick up the latest article or book about how doing so was guaranteeing her a life of anorexia and insecurity, not to mention a likely shoe fetish. I agonized over what I should do.

One evening, as I lay in bed worrying about raising a daughter who would inevitably care more about hair and make up than math, she came down to my bedroom clutching her blanket.

“I’m not into princesses anymore,” she announced.

“You’re not?” I asked. Had I heard right?

“Nope. I’m into dinosaurs now.”

And a year later, she has kept her word.

Stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannasaurus, allosaurus, velociraptor, brachiosaurus, maiasaura, pterodactyl, lambeosaurus, protoceratops…

Under Pressure by J.C. Elkin

Our week 1 Find Your Story Within contest winner had the opportunity to publish her work here on my blog as part of her prize package. J.C. Elkin has put together the piece below. I hope you enjoy!

Under Pressure

By J.C. Elkin

I hated the balloon squeeze game as a kid, and I hate it still. You know the one. Balloons lay scattered across the floor, blobs of whimsy bobbing and floating in pools of color that shift with each passing step: delightful to behold, fun for play. We were supposed to kill them. Some kids tried stomping them to death, a brutal and tricky tactic. Others of us sat on them, wincing in reluctant anticipation of their alarming end. The whole thing was way too disturbing for this pacifist, but peer pressure makes you do funny things.  So I can’t help noting the irony that forty years later I’m still subjected to this “game”, except now my breast is the balloon, trapped between two panes of hard plastic.

Already I am immobilized with pain, yet my technician presses on, squeezing tighter and tighter until I shriek. My brain screams, flee for safety, yet there is no escape from this mod-ieval torture implement. What have I done to deserve this? Am I a witch to be pressed alive?

“Just a little more,” she coos, inching the pedal to the metal. “Good. Now don’t breathe!”

Somehow she always manages to catch me on the outbreath with that line. So if I don’t pass out from agony, I may from lack of oxygen. The instrument of my torment razzes me with a mechanical Bzzzp, then releases me. I imagine that if it could, it would wink and a nod. Ha Ha, had you going there for a minute.

“Just three more shots,” the technician reassures. “You’re doing great.”

What if the machine’s not so magnanimous next time, I wonder. Some hunting dogs develop a taste for blood. HAL turned on his creator.

Finally, I am directed to the radiologist’s office, a blacked-out nook where she sits all day staring at X-rays of mammary glands, deconstructing beauty into biology. Is it any wonder her name is Dr. Grimm? I want out of here. I want out now, and I want never to come back.

I got my first mammogram while still in my thirties, a decade before it’s recommended, because an aunt succumbed to breast cancer. It was uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how well that test had gone until the next one. The technician stomped on the gas until I howled in agony, then accused, “It’s your fault. You’re too firm.” I swear I started sagging that same week. I didn’t return for a decade.

Around that time a distraught coworker confided that his mother was refusing follow-up diagnostics for a tumor detected in her initial screening. Her examiner had mistaken the compression control for the release, thus rendering her an udder cripple, so to speak. She said she’d rather die than go through that again.

A friend finally wore me down with her constant harangues. Early detection saved me. Great. I’m glad for you. I would never forgive myself if you had a lump that went undetected. Will you please just shut up already? You are too special to me. All right, I’ll go – even though experts can’t even agree on the necessity, utility, safety or optimal timing of this procedure.

There has to be a better way. I’m considering another hiatus until medical science figures it out. I’m tired of party games that scare me, and I’m old enough to just say, “No.”

Find Your Story Within Contest – Week 4

You can do anything you want to in a journal, like singing in your car or dancing alone in the kitchen.

If you’re intimidated by the idea of writing any kind of narrative, start by making lists in a journal. Lists bring organization to cluttered thoughts, clarity to murky emotions, and with clarity comes the possibility for growth and change.

Make a list of 10 things you know by heart.  All the state capitols? A nursery rhyme? Jump rope chant? A poem? Who taught you those things? Why? Allow a story about things imprinted on your heart and mind to flow towards you.

To enter, send an email to thestorywithinbook@gmail.com with your full name, email address and written entry. Week four entries are due on Wednesday, February 8, 2012. To learn more visit http://thestorywithin.net/writing_contest or visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thestorywithin.