Writing prompt: there is no exit

I stumbled upon a flash fiction challenge over on Chuck Wendig's blog and thought it might be a good opportunity for me to try and kick my creative juices into gear. So here it goes ... this one is based on an experience I had a couple of years ago. 

Prompt: there is no exit. 

The sound as I slid into the back of the Nissan was not as deafening as I had expected. I tried to change lanes at the last second, when I realised the wet road wouldn’t allow me to stop in time, but the decision to yank my steering wheel to the left occurred a moment too late. Thunk. My little Daewoo stalled. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, sinking into my seat. I pressed the button for my hazard lights. The traffic on the Ringwood Bypass continued to flow around me while I restarted the engine and pulled off the road.

The Nissan driver was a middle aged man and his wife was the passenger. In case I didn’t feel awful enough after crashing into their vehicle, the first thing they did was open the boot to make sure the two dogs they were transporting were okay. Thankfully, their fur-babies were fine. I was still overcome with guilt.

They were friendly enough, assuring me it happens to everyone, we’re all lucky it wasn’t a serious prang, do I have insurance, blah blah blah. We took photos of each other’s licenses and number plates and of the damage on both cars. I’d pushed in the back left corner of the Nissan with the front right corner of my Daewoo. The driver of the other car put his hand in the gap between the wheel and the body and pushed the dent back out—only some chipped paint remained as evidence that their car had been damaged. My Daewoo was worse off … the front headlight was smashed, loose pieces of glass and plastic still finding its way onto the bitumen. The right side of the bonnet had buckled and the forward side panel was pinching the driver’s door, so it only opened enough for me to squeeze in and out.

We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to call it a day. It was starting to rain again and there was no point standing around. The Nissan drove off and I called the friends I was meant to meet for lunch and explained that I couldn’t make it, even though our meeting place was two blocks away from where I was stopped. I thought about calling to get my car towed; the engine might still start, but the car was far from roadworthy with a busted headlight and a door that wouldn’t open properly. But that meant sitting and waiting and paying—and then what? I just wanted to go home.

I got myself onto the bypass again and headed back towards Eastlink. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but damned if I was going to touch my GPS after the cash. I’d been following my GPS’s directions on the way to lunch, but it had detached itself from my windscreen and fallen into the passenger’s foot well. I’d yanked it onto the passenger’s seat next to me as quickly as I could, but in the rush of the moment I hadn’t heard the instruction the GPS’s robotic voice uttered. I glanced at the screen to see the arrow telling me to turn right at the upcoming intersection. What a stupid thing to do. In that split second of looking at the GPS screen on the passenger’s seat, the traffic ahead came to a stop. I looked back up in time to slam my foot on the breaks and at first, I thought everything would be fine. But the road was wet and oily and my little Daewoo slid further than I thought she would—right into the back of that Nissan.

No, I told myself. No more GPS today. Once I was on the freeway, it would be easy to get home. At least, that’s what I’d hoped. But as I approached Elgar Road, inbound on the M3, I had an awful realisation—there was no exit. I saw the ramp from Elgar Road coming down to merge with the freeway, and the outbound traffic had a ramp to exit onto Elgar Road. But from the inbound lanes, there was no ramp to exit onto that road.

I regretted not setting up my GPS for the drive home.

A few Ks down the freeway, I spotted the exit to Belmore Road and took the turnoff. I still wasn’t familiar with the area, but I knew it was closer to where I lived than the freeway. After a few wrong turns, I found a street I recognised and made it home. The Daewoo sputtered sadly into the garage and the driver’s door made an awful sound when I tried to close it. I would have to call RACV later. I went up to my room and flopped down on my bed, defeated. 

Writing Spaces: Prose Fiction

My Writing Craft/Writing Spaces folder, under the
Wordly: August Edition, my glasses case, my new
copy of Verandah twenty-eight, and The God of
Small Things by Arundhati Roy. 

First of all, I huge apology to the people I normally follow for my recent absence! Assignments and whatnot piled up and while I've had plenty of things to blog about recently, I haven't had the time to. Now that I've got some free time to catch up, I'll tell you a few things you'll see in future posts:

• Melbourne Writers Festival event: the launch of Verandah twenty-eight, the 28th edition of the annual Verandah literary journal published by Deakin University.
• A review of Verandah twenty-eight
• Writing Spaces: The Novel (although it falls under the 'Prose Fiction' category, it was given a lecture of its own)
• Literature and post-colonialism 
• A review of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy 
• Writing Spaces: The Exegesis and Theory
• The 'ressie writers group' I have officially started
• How I felt about the first creative assignment I had to hand in for Writing Spaces (including workshopping it a few weeks ago), and how I'm feeling about the second assignment. 
• The Deakin Writers Club Wordly: Space edition 

Not necessarily in that order, and some of the topics might be combined into one post. But I'm pretty excited to get you guys up-to-date with the events of the past few weeks. But for now, on to Prose Fiction!

The writing space of Prose Fiction includes the novel, novella, short story, and flash fiction, but the first lecture was mostly focused on the shorter forms and not the novel. These shorter types of Prose Fiction can generally afford to be more radical and experimental than the novel.

The short story is an older form of story-telling than the novel, but it has received some heavy criticism, such as being simply a starting-point for writers who then go on to write novels. I disagree with that, as there are short stories that are capable of outshining some novels and some authors who write predominantly in the form of short stories, if not completely. I love writing short stories! Another criticism short stories have received is that of being outshone by the even shorter form of flash fiction. There also seems to be a ratio problem between people who want to write short stories and people who want to read them. It seems more readers are inclined towards novels despite the numerous writers who adopt the shorter forms, though I personally love both forms.

But what makes a short story? Or rather, what does a short story make? A short story makes a deep and thoughtful comment on the culture and our experiences of it. Not only this, but it also makes our experience of the culture strange to us and then re-explains it. At least, this is how the lecturer explained it and I think it's a brilliant answer.

I guess what makes a short story does also need to be considered. While short stories generally follow the same rules as a novel, there is more strictness in some areas and of course, a smaller word count. Short stories begin quickly, in the midst of an experience, and use only a limited number of characters and scenes. Our lecturer advised us to start as close to the end as possible and deal with only one major issue or problem, giving just enough necessary detail and allow for suggestive details too.

This all made me stop and think about the short stories that I've read and how much I love both reading and writing short stories and flash fiction. My personal favourites are Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice from the collection The Boat by Nam Le, and of course Super-Frog Saves Tokyo from the collection after the quake by Haruki Murakami... actually, make that all of the short stories in the Murakami collection, they were especially amazing.

What do you think of short prose fiction? What are your favourite examples of it? Do you prefer to read or write it? 

- Bonnee.

ANZAC Day/Pace Workshop Exercise

Today (25th of April), people of Australia and New Zealand have a public holiday known as ANZAC Day. This is a day where we remember those in the Australian New Zealand Army Corps who served, and especially those who lost their lives, in World War I and especially in Gallipoli. Since the day was first established, it has extended to ANZACs in general, no matter when they served.

In WWI, the ANZAC's objective of capturing the Gallipoli Peninsula was met by strong resistance by the Ottoman Empire, one of Germany's allies during the war. Instead of the successful capture of Constantinople that was aimed for, troops from both sides suffered eight months of combat and high numbers of fatalities. While the ANZACs were unsuccessful, the day is remembered and celebrated because of the strength, courage and mateship shown on the battlefields.

I have never been to one of the dawn services until today. Not a fan of the 4:00AM wake-up, but it was well worth it. There was quite a sizable group of res kids going to the early session. This is also the first ANZAC Day service I've been to in the of Melbourne itself, and the service was held at the Shrine of Remembrance. It was inspiring to be there with so many others before the sun had even risen.

On a coincidentally related note, the pieces I wrote during my tutorial/workshop for Writing Craft when we were exercising our use of pace was set in a battlefield. Our tutor played music to set a fast or slow pace for us and this is what I came out with:

Fast-Pace, including all of my crossing out where I decided that it slowed the pace down. Just read the part that aren't crossed out. We were only given 10 minutes, so I was stopped mid-sentence too:

“Get down!”
Not even a second passed after the words left the commander’s lips before  The deafening screech of a bomb whistlinged down on us, the screech deafening. I lay pressed myself into the soil as. The earth around me rose and fell. I stood again with the others. Heads down, guns raised, we crawled forwards.
The blood-coated red-zone was a death-trap sprawled with disembodied limbs. We shuffled forward an inch, ducked as gun-fire rained down on us (from) above us, rose again, pressed forward.
“Get down!”
The deafening whistle sounded again, closer. The ground to my right exploded in a spray of spraying dirt. I waited. Someone pulled me to my feet as the rescue van came into view. We dashed forward, half-hopeful, terror-filled, but alive.
“Get down!”
I didn’t listen. My hands made contact with the metal ladder and. I threw myself up against the… 

Slow-Pace. I thought of a battlefield in slow-motion. Again, this contains all the crossing out I did, so the most important stuff is what isn't crossed out:

Not even a second A moment passed after the commander ordered us to get down. My body met the soft soil of the battlefield red-zone with a gentle thud and I saw the dirt around me rise in a graceful arch and patter back down. I lay for a moment, inhaling, and felt the pulse of the earth beneath my palms as I lay them flat. Someone’s voice called out, but it sounded muted, distant and ethereal. My cheek felt the tickling of blood form a nick somewhere above my eyebrow and I pressed it into the ground, closing my eyes as I exhaled. When I lifted my eyelids again, I could see Corey’s face, watching me from the his place in front to my right. Behind him, I saw the dirt flying up in another graceful arch, and felt the pulse of the earth beneath my fingertips again. That distant voice sounded again, but remained unheard as I watched Corey flash pass me as mall smile; something reassuring. 

I think slow-pace comes to me easier, but fast-pace is definitely useful. While slow-motion battle scenes are pretty cool in my humble opinion, we can't going into slow-motion EVERY time there is gunfire and explosions in our stories. I think that paces that contrast what is actually happening should only be used when necessary; if there is some important detail that NEEDS to be brought to attention during the scene through the pace.

If anybody else would like to try this exercise writing a piece in fast-pace and slow-pace and post in the comments (give it about 100-150 words for each piece?), my song suggestions for those wanting musical assistance are 'Kiss the Rain' by Yiruma (for slow-pace, lovely piano music), and 'Before I Forget' by Slipknot... or you know, pick your own songs, that works too! :)

I ask again, what do you think about using pace in your writing? 

- Bonnee.

O-Week on Residence/Writer's Update

So for those of you who didn't know, I moved in to my room on campus at my university on Sunday, and I am seriously thrilled to be a Deakin student right now. I'm sharing a house with nine other people from a range of different courses and origins, including a girl from Britain and an exchange student from Sweden. Majority of the people in my unit are girls and I have had people in my room till 11:30 for the past two nights, just socializing rather than hitting the clubs; as much as some of us like drinking, I'm not the only one who would rather do it in a relaxed environment at home. Fun fact about Australia: legal drinking age is eighteen.

As well as meeting a lot of new people, there are a few other ressies here who I already knew from high school. On top of that, I've met quite a few people who will be studying Professional and Creative Writing with me. I've also already taken the opportunity to join the Deakin Writer's club, who publish a small newspaper/newsletter containing member's written works on a ... I'm not sure if it's a weekly or monthly basis, but you get what I mean :)

In other news, I've done a huge redraft of the first five chapters of KATHERINE, which I'm really happy about. I feel like everything already sounds much better now that I'm not trying to avoid a maximum word-count of 20,000. In hindsight, the story was too complicated to be kept to the novella competitions required length. I've shot the word-count up to nearly 28,000 again (after re-adding the deleted scenes) and it's still rising. I feel much better about this project now.

Last of all, I randomly thought I'd write a piece of flash fiction. I had the line 'the night is for hunting' stuck in my head. This is the title of the 6th book in John Marsden's Tomorrow series (I'm only up to the 4th book, I think.) So I used the title as a prompt.

The night was for hunting. We wandered through the shadows, our eyes peeled. Mira had her crossbow loaded and at the ready, waiting for Arthur to point out a stray animal; an unfortunate creature that would live no more than a few seconds longer. I lingered at the back of the trio, ensuring that we would not become the hunted. The forests were alive with the howls of wolves whenever the moon was visible. We could kill them if we saw them in time. But if we couldn’t…

“There,” Arthur whispered. Mira aimed and fired. A creature met its end. 

Your turn! Write a piece of flash-fiction, no more than 150 words (mine was exactly 100) based on the prompt 'the night is for hunting'. You may use the prompt in the piece and change the tense to suit yourself. Leave your little creations in the comments below. I'll put them in the next blog post and everyone can vote for their favourite. You cannot vote for your own. The winner gets the choice of: a guest post on my blog; a guest post from me on their blog; an interview (interrogation) which can go on either or both blogs; or to send the first page of their WIP in for a critique on my blog.  So get writing!

How are you all?

- Bonnee.

Flash Fiction - Still

This was originally a piece of fanfiction I wrote a couple of years ago, but I liked it enough to make it something original and mess around with it a bit.

Still

I hold her body gently in my arms, cradling her head against my chest. Her skin is pale and has lost its glow and its warmth. How can something so beautiful be so cold? Even her lips, once pressed against mine, are like ice. The steady rise and fall of her chest is gone. Her body is completely still in my arms. I feel a tear travel down my cheek and fall away from my face. I hold her to me, tightly; the only thing I can do. My heart keeps beating, but hers... it stays still. When they pull her body from my arms and take her away, my heart breaks. I had promised her father I would protect her, and in that I have failed.

I promise myself that night I will never fall in love again; that my heart, much like hers, will remain still forever.

150 words, first person, present tense ("promised" being the exception because he's referring to something he's already done). What do you guys think? Compliments and constructive criticism welcome :) 

- Bonnee.