Several beginnings and a mish mash of ideas

The nail house - story about a fierce old lady who resists a powerful developer who wants her removed.  What's the theme ? I like the idea of the friendships and support that happen even though this old lady wants to be left alone and seems to want to repel others. I want to write a story that shows the weak and disadvantaged winning out.

Jesus as alien - Where is this going - humor or serious ? I want to show a truly alien perspective that doesn't alienate a human reader. Again the theme of powerful versus the unimportant is coming out. I see a confident fundamentalist alien who is sure that humans can be shown the great 'rapture' ie higher consciousness. An alien missionary who badly miscalculates and has to be rescued from a horrible death by a minor crew member. ( A bunch of sheep are lifted off earth at the end - but why ?).

Superhero - Iron Woman, based on W - a superhero who is a powerful figure in public  - but in private is emotionally needy and high maintenance, an emotional parasite - I think this is simply about my desire for revenge by using W as Iron Woman :  )

Superhero left alone on earth after plague kills humanity. How does he cope and save his sanity.

Dog story - based on dog minding days with jasper - about dog whisperers and the healing power of kindness.

The female Assassin - A novel length story - important that reader isn't repelled by a female killer. So she'll target 'bad' aliens who attacked humans and took over planet a long time ago. This assassin takes on jobs that target this species only. I'm starting off by basing the character on Dawn, my old flat mate in East Melbourne. The first challenge is how to make a tough prickly woman who makes a living by killing people LIKEABLE. 

 
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/how-to-write-novel.html

www.creativecopychallenge.com

 10 word prompt for 14 July

We're on a tight schedule, but I need to find the Ladies. And when I come back he's got Captain Jack gagged and chained to a post. For some reason he's incapable of killing off the Good Guy with one tiny bullet.  That would be fast, fail-safe, cheap. But no, the moron has to spend our hard earned booty on theatrics.

I catch him in the middle of the usual maniacal laugh. I should tape that sound sometime and play it back, so he can hear just how embarrassing he is.

This time he's engineered a cascade effect of sharp knives set into the wall. Must be thousands of them. I see a luminous clock face and wires going into the wall. There's always a timer, so the hero has the potential to figure a way out. And the hero always does.

Does he think it's just happenstance there's always a posse of cops right on our heels ?

I imagine the peak hour traffic chaos and frantic police calls happening right now. I beg him to use a gun okay ? But I'm just a minor distraction. He keeps on fiddling with leavers and pulleys, his face ecstatic.

And it occurs to me there's a definite trend for the good guy to win out in the end. The pay isn't fantastic, but you don't have to stay on the run or worry about jail time. Maybe it's time to switch sides.

When I drive away the cops are already surrounding the building.

 Began to watch a documentary about Cambodian refugees who escaped to Australia during the terrible Pol Pot regime. I couldn't watch the whole film, it was so painful and distressing. 

One man spoke of the day when he learned his son had been taken to a work camp.

"I felt the blood leave my body. It was as though all the life suddenly flowed away from me."

And I felt an instant recognition. He's right. That kind of sudden shock and trauma - It's a kind of death. 

 LONG article -

www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/djauss01.htm

 Some good advice by Christine Schutt.  I've been trying to get a better sentence flow by thinking about how to get a variety of sentence lengths, how each sentence stops and starts, rhythm - I haven't been looking enough at how the content of each sentence must link into the content in the previous sentence. 

www.mdbell.com/blog/2011/5/3/ssm-2011-christine-schutt-on-looking-behind-not-ahead.html

 
Still struggling to produce sentences that roll out smoothly.  I write sentences that smash into each other like mini cars in a fun park.  I thought maybe it's because I try to keep my writing so tight and stick to small sentences, but of course that's not the problem. I've read brilliant work by writers who produce fiction in small tight sentences that FLOW. 

This week-end I'm using a CC exercise for inspiration - "you're the last person left alive after humanity is wiped out by a disease - what will you do?".

The thought came to me that Superman wouldn't die in a pandemic. I thought about a lonely superhero who's always felt alien and separate from humanity. After the pandemic he plans to fly out into the cosmos to search for other beings like himself. But first he's going to stick around for awhile to take care of a dog for a human who was kind to him. He enjoys the companionship and acceptance of the dog. He also discovers the wonders of planet earth which starts to recover and flourish with the end of humanity. 

Well . . .  it's a start for the first shitty draft.  And for once I'm starting with an ending in mind.



 

 Woke at 5.00 am.  Lay for awhile dreaming/awake. Wondered how Debbie's going with work and why she hasn't given me a date yet for us to visit Melb Zoo. THEN I had a sudden memory of Herta, the Austrian connie from Kew tram depot.

Her uniform was always pressed and clean. She didn't smoke or drink. In the lunch break she sat alone, always reading, removed from the rest of the tram crew.

Most of the Aussie tram workers looked like they slept in their uniform. Many had a drinking problem. Aussie drivers liked to brag when they had an accident.  I remember new drivers always being told "You're not a real driver til you've had your first accident." They were suspicious of the Vietnamese workers who were quiet and self contained, who didn't report so many accidents, who sat at a different table and ate healthy asian food. I liked the way the Vietnamese connies would always rush to help a woman with a pram.

I realise now why Herta liked working with Vietnamese drivers. I wondered what happened to her when they got rid of the connies. 

I lay there remembering being a connie on the trams, thinking how that era has disappeared now.  Wishing I'd asked Herta why she came to Australia and what it was like for her growing up in Austria.

 
102 shorts posted on Flash Fiction Chronicles

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