I am a hoarder when it comes to tools I use for writing. As an example, I have lists of names. If I hear a name I think sounds cool or interesting, I write it down. I used to walk through cemeteries and write down names from headstones. At least I don’t do that anymore. I have a collection of sentences I’ve heard and think might come in handy one day, broken into categories. I collect words, phrases and insults. I love a good insult.
I have a folder on my computer filled with fragments of scenes I dreamed or simply dropped from the ether into my mind. I also have a couple dozen movies and series saved on my DVR and paused at a certain scene that makes me happy, sad, thoughtful or helps me slide into that slipstream you need to be in to write sometimes.
I have all these tools because my main difficulty in writing, besides keeping my butt in the chair, is plotting. I hate plotting. I am absolutely no good at plotting. Left to my own devises my characters just wander around aimlessly. They say clever things. They insult the hell out of each other, did I mention I love a good insult, but they don’t do anything. There is no arc, sometimes, outside of the insults, my stories have no conflict.
If you look at my body of work it is almost all nonfiction. I love history, so that kind of accounts for my love of nonfiction but mainly I am attracted to it because the plot comes ready made. Nonfiction and historical fiction are cheaters for me. I have also recently started to write memoir short fiction, or creative nonfiction. Again, it is a cheater, ready made plots that I can mold.
My point in this post is every writer has weak spots. Weak spots often turn into excuses not to write. How many times have you heard a writer say, “I’m stuck on one of the plot lines in my story, so I haven’t been writing for a while.” Worse yet, how many times have you said that sentence? Yeah, me too.
Get a toolbox. Fill it with things that can help you when you find yourself in a pickle. No your weaknesses, and find your cheaters. Don’t give yourself excuses not to write. You can always write something.
When I was little my uncle had a dog named Suzy. I loved that dog. My uncle is only five years older than I so we grew up almost like brothers. We had a ton of adventures with Suzy. My uncle and I were the only two people present when Suzy had to be put down from cancer. It was my first experience with death, close up and personal.
“Out of the Blue” is a short story about family, shared experiences, growth and death. It is mostly true, at least from my perspective.
Out of the Blue
By Mark A. Nobles
Danny and I had spent the morning playing along the banks of the Bosque, no doubt chasing outlaws and Indians. The family dog, Suzy, a spry, red dachshund, accompanied us. She ran along side us, occasionally dashing into the brush chasing an unseen squirrel or critter of some sort.
When the sun climbed directly above us Uncle Danny declared time out and we scrambled up the bank. It was lunchtime. Best to head back to the house before Ma-maw had to shout out the back door. The Bosque was only a trickle but the riverbed was wide and steep. We climbed the bank, grabbing exposed tree roots and kicking toeholds in the soft clay. When Suzy saw us ascending the bank, she ran in a circle several times, barking up a storm, then lit out for a bend about a hundred yards downstream with smaller banks she could climb.
Geography is bigger when you are young. In my six year old mind the banks were twenty feet tall and were followed by a tree line forty feet thick, but the banks were likely less than five or six feet high and the tree line only a few feet thick.
We scrambled out of the tree line at a slow trot, Danny at the vanguard by six to eight feet. There was a massive field of Johnson grass between the tree line and house. Again, it seemed a far piece to the house in my six-year-old mind.
We had beaten down a slightly winding path in the waist high Johnson grass between the river and the house. Danny slowed to a brisk walk as we waded through. In the distance we saw Ma-maw poke her head out of the back door to call for us. Danny spotted her and waved. She retreated back in the house, the screen door making a cracking sound as it shut.
Slamming the screen door like that would have gotten me a good talking to or worse but for some reason, grownups were allowed. This seemed a mighty injustice to me.
In the distance we could hear Suzy barking her approach. I could not see her as I was barely twice taller than the grass but I could judge her distance away by the sound of her bark. We were approaching a slight bend in the beaten path when Suzy’s bark rose in pitch and urgency. Danny, half way round the bend, froze. He raised his arms horizontal, palms back, signaling me to stop. But I had to see what the commotion was about and walked a few more steps.
Suzy was circling a coiled, ready to strike rattler. She ran frantically around it, breaking off every three or four rotations to run towards Danny and snap. Her running at us, teeth bared and snapping scared me at first. She had never even hinted at biting us, but I realized the snapping was not meant to be an attack but a high warning to halt and stay away.
The rattler looked fierce. I had never seen one before. It was coiled high and made lightning strikes at Suzy when she circled. Danny cried for Da-dad and he soon came running from around the front of the house, pistol drawn. He almost always carried a pistol at the river.
When Danny saw Da-dad running he began to shout ‘snake!’
When Da-dad arrived he commanded us to move back, which we immediately did, retreating back around the bend.
A single crack of the pistol sounded. Not as loud as I had expected. Da-dad took a step forward, momentarily disappeared below the Johnson grass and when he rose up he was holding the rattler by the tail end.
It looked enormous. Ten feet long. But that was impossible as Da-dad was only 5’9” and I could see the snake swinging.
Suzy got a large hunk of steak that night as a reward and the rattler decomposed on the fence line by the gate to the farm for a year.
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