Wednesday Write-in #20

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Welcome to the Wednesday Write-in!

CAKE.shortandsweet runs a write-in every week to writers to practise their skills, and get chatting to each other about their work. Everyone is welcome to join in, and the more people you tell, the more everyone will get out of it.

A happy new year to everyone! What are your writing plans for the year?

 

Prompts

scribble  ::  a pirate’s life  ::  pistachio  ::  distribution  ::  debt

Guidelines

There are no hard and fast rules, but here are some brief guidelines:

  • You can use the prompts as inspiration or try to work them into your story somehow. Use as many as you want.
  • When your story is done, post it online (your blog/twitter/in a comment here), tag with #wednesdaywritein and comment with a link so we can read it. You can write as many stories as you like.
  • Please take the time to read and comment on as many other stories as you can.

Featured Story

We’ll feature our favourite story on the blog with a review of it and links to the author’s blog/twitter/facebook if relevant.

Posts will generally go up at 12am(ish) on Wednesday – stories are due by 10am Thursday (UK) to be considered for the featured story. You can keep posting your work after this, it just won’t be featured.

The winner will also be eligible to publish on our special CAKE.shortandsweet genre through Ether Books.

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Any questions? Otherwise, have fun writing!

58 thoughts on “Wednesday Write-in #20”

  1. #Wednesday Write-in #20

    The notes linger like the brush of lips on my neck.
    Johnny, Captain Jack Sparrow
    Seducing me to “A Pirates Life”
    The dream fades into sounds of trash trucks and NPR.

    Work awaits, a means to an end to debt.
    But that’s not fair. I enjoy my job.
    My days measured in pages of tasks
    Scribbled into college ruled, lined notebooks.
    Satisfying check marks next to those completed.

    Along the familiar route
    Enviously eye the pistachio green Craftsman
    So much more my style than
    The Colonial which is home.
    Embarrassed by my gluttony

    I have more than most, an unfair distribution of good fortune.
    For which, I need to remember, I am thankful.

    Reply ↓

  2. Today’s (partially still hanging from NYE) offering… Happy new year all! xx

    **** **** **** ****

    Scribbling in a drunken text message to yourself is not an effective way of recording someone’s phone number. When you’re several cocktails into New Year, nothing is fail safe. And when predictive text is on, foreign names don’t necessarily come out spelled correctly. I can only say I tried, leaving clues for the morning after questions from the night before.

    I awoke the first morning of the new year feeling like a bus had hit me, with “Simon” recorded next to a new number in my contacts list.

    That doesn’t sound very Romanian…

    http://www.misswrite.co.uk
    http://www.facebook.com/louise.gibney.writer
    @misswriteuk

    Reply ↓

    • Ha! So true.

      I agree with you about the second word.
      I don’t quite understand this sentence:
      ‘I can only say I tried, leaving clues for the morning after questions from the night before.’

      Reply ↓

      • I meant it to mean I made the effort, I attempted to save the number, but it failed obviously! 🙂 I was leaving a clue to myself as to what happened that night, like a treasure hunt through a hangover of clues haha!

    • I liked the rather complicated sentence ‘I can only say I tried …’ It fits with the character’s hangover! Happy new year.

      Reply ↓

      • I like the idea of leaving clues from yourself, from when you had another state of mind. Could work on deepening the sense of mystery, some kind of sensory evocation of the night before? Depends how long a piece you wanna write. I didn’t get the link between Simon not sounding Romanian and the earlier mention of predictive text till my re-reads. I think that might be because I was looking for more mystery in the line somehow… like for a second I thought the guy had been lying to her…just some thoughts 😀

      • Ah Beccaaudra – there was no mystery or twist! Maybe some more emotion might work – I deliberately made it shout though. Who wants to handle long and complicated tasks when they’re hungover?! 🙂

  3. Her brain felt like the tangled wires of the tree lights now back in their box. Pretty colours flashing their magical message of hope, then darkness as the plug was pulled. She felt unplugged. Empty. Merry Christmas and happy new year had left the building.
    Nothing but a mountain of debt to look forward to, apart from finding chocolate wrappers and the odd pistachio nut lurking under the sofa well into January. Bring on 2013. Another year of doom and gloom on the telly and listening to Kev banging on about cutting back on spending.
    She had to do something, anything, to switch back on, to bring back some light. Quickly she scribbled a note and grabbed her coat. The sales were on and she still had a credit card. Heading to the shops, as she knew it would, the dark clouds lifted and life seemed brighter.

    Reply ↓

  4. Pingback: WWin#20: Scribble | beccaaudra

    • Hi Becca – glad you found your muse again! One or two comments if you don’t mind me saying….? I would have removed the word ‘style’ from line 2. I’m not sure it’s needed.
      Also, in this line “She often popped out, for fags or groceries, I remember, we had run out of bread.” did you need a full stop after or maybe before “I remember”?
      Loved these two lines! the quivering pile of whites and yolks mashed together….. and …….She ruined the yellow fairground of my bedroom walls, scribbling with black crayon over the pattern.
      I wonder, maybe the story could have finished with “Some small space of silence before Mum got back from the shops.” It would have a bigger punch to it and tie it all up nicely.
      Just some thoughts, hope you don’t mind, feel free to rip my story COMPLETELY apart haha! x

      Reply ↓

      • Heya Lou, Say away, good to have some edits! I played around with the full stop in that sentence! I will readjust. I quite like the idea of ending on the silence, rather than the noise. The dog barking comes from another story, so maybe it needs separate space. Hmmmmm 😀

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  8. #Wednesday Write-in #20
    Happy New Year – trying out something different

    A Pirate’s Life

    Jake Jones had a pirate ship bedroom:
    his half-mast pyjamas were breeches
    and his stale sheet a flag.
    His mother paid for things on the never never.
    Captain Hook paid a visit now and then.
    Noises below had him pick up his cutlass and jab at the air.
    His bruises he got in a brawl.
    Jake Jones was never brought up;
    instead, he just grew upped and left.

    Reply ↓

  9. Pingback: Fallible Opinions - Wednesday Write-in #20

    • Love the ending!

      One suggestion which would make it easier to read (imo) is to put the ‘Lars’s poor, abused quill finally surrendered to the inevitable…’ in a new paragraph. Plus maybe add something that says whether he’s writing or speaking at the start. I wasn’t sure if “Pirate’s life indeed” was his speech, or what he’s writing down.

      Reply ↓

    • Like Becca I wasn’t sure if the intro line was speaking or writing, but eventually got that it is speaking, but writing as well! He is ranting aloud as he checks a list of some sort. Maybe he could have a companion to be cursing to? I love the pen knife paragraph, it feels so physically real. It’s quite a punning piece, worth his salt, salty pistachios…

      Reply ↓

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  17. Happy New Year everyone!
    Pirate
    Pirate they call me. It’s because of my one eye. When I was six my brother hit me in the eye with a rock and now I can only see in one.
    The name Pirate was born from the lips of bullies when I arrived into school with my eye patch. They told me I was a freak. They’d gang up on me and make me walk the plank and tell me that I’d end up with a wooden leg and a hook for an arm. Their singsong names, a soundtrack that infiltrated my existence.
    I had to move school and when I did I decided that I wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore. I embraced the tools of my tormenters and introduced myself as Pirate. Curiosity about the new boy provided hungry mouths, opened, waiting in awe to be fed details of the cause of my partial blindness. I fed snippets and tit bits, keeping them hungry, keeping them afraid. Possessing the taunt, I filled it with my own profile, tales of my own greatness. The distribution of my myth was an essential part of my menace. Children stood out of my way in the playground and it wasn’t long before I began to exploit my new power. If there was anyone going to be doing any bullying it was going to be me. All of my feelings of guilt were swallowed down and I survived on fear and intimidation.
    I no longer know any other way of operating with the world and so it’s a pirate’s life I lead. I inhabit the dark underworlds where people drown their sorrows daily. There’s always some desperate soul willing to scribble out an IOU on the back of beermat or cigarette packet. I survive on the blackness of the holes they dig, scooping out more and more, making their pit even deeper.
    When I walk into a local to collect a few debts I can feel the air change. Stooped heads are lifted and eagerly offer drinks.
    Sometimes I stay if I’ve my business seen to. After a few drinks I’d find my sea legs and wobble and stagger home. I’d stop and spread my feet and wait for the world to stop rocking. Then it would spin until I’d collapse.
    Sometimes the man I am after doesn’t show and then I have to go looking for him. He knows this isn’t good news. Roughing people up is just part of the business, nothing personal. Jack O’Feeliagh might be a drinking buddy but he hadn’t shown his face for nearly three weeks and he still owed a substantial sum.
    I had to stay sober and go track him down. Loose ends are never good for a business built on reputation. I decided to call to his mother’s to see if she knew where he was. I wasn’t planning to rough her up or anything like that; just find out where he was.
    The sight of me at her gate was enough to finish her off. Mrs O’Feeliagh lay in the flowerbed, her black eyes twisted towards the heavens. Her mouth was open in a gasp but no cloud of breath emerged despite the spring chill in the air. I’m sure Mrs O’Feeliagh didn’t design her planting scheme around her own death but as I stood over her I couldn’t help but admire the stark contrasts of the composition. Her skin was spectral white beneath her jet black curls. Wind flickered through the pistachio green foliage that sprouted around her like a halo. Black and white tulips swayed around her in lamentation like little birds swooping in to collect her soul and carry it skywards.
    I left her there in peace and went back to the pub. I drank and drank until my legs felt like they were hollow wooden stumps filled with rum. I drank until I could feel the rise of the waves beneath my feet, the surge of my balance swooning away from me.
    I lie now in the middle of the footpath where I have buckled. I watch the world above me with my one good eye. The black sky spins around the creamy white moon and I see her, the stillness of her white skin and black hair. I close my eye and she is still there judging me, fearing me, permanently imprinted on my mind’s eye. Her death is another strand to knit into the fable of who I am.

    Reply ↓

    • Very dark, the damage that can be done in childhood. The humour of the sentence ‘I’m sure Mrs ….’ is a bit of a surprise in the midst of it all. Really liked the finale.

      Reply ↓

      • This is full of really effective phrases: ‘hungry mouths’, ‘I survive on the blackness of the hole they dig’ to name but a few. It is a sad tale and his appreciation of the scene of her death is humorous, but tells us he has an artistic side that has gone to waste. Sad. Well done.

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