Hi! I'm in a good mood. There's snow and it's cold and everything is just wonderful. It's the perfect time to write creepy stories where small children get lost in the woods. And witches. Maybe a rabbit too.
I mentioned in my last post that my current project, those in Professor Kate Mile's writing for publication seminar can relate, is devouring my time like those giant toothy hairballs from the Langoliers. This project was supposed to feature a hitchhiker (I steal from myself, I guess) dropped off at the edge of a shady looking forest. His night traveling through it should've offered plenty opportunities to explore the hazy truth about the nature of our environment: what is it's very basic level of functioning? If the nature of fire is to burn, what is the nature of nature?
Well, it didn't turn out that way. Instead of a gruffy, irritable boy who probably has mommy issues dominating the story, it, uh, was taken over by a little kid of questionable age* who wanted to know where the savage beasts from fairy tales go once the stories end.
Once I started playing around with the idea, which I liked better anyway, I completely scrapped the original draft and began fresh. I churned out roughly four solid pages before realizing the style didn't suit. Originally, a sarcastic, omnipresent narrator was speaking directly to the reader with back-handed, child rearing advice. This version snarked at the audience for a little while before leading into Hannah Feverfew. Kite came afterwards.
After trashing that version too, I tried one more time. Three's a charm, right? In this case, the cliche is jumping for joy.
(* I wasn't even sure what age he was, but my classmates decided on 8 or 9, which I think is the best fit in anycase)
Here's an unedited snip of the beginning. I'll post the rejected version of Kite's story next time.
"Will Brier had once tried to ask his mother a very important question. He stood with his hands fidgeting behind his back while she buzzed around the living room like an agitated dragonfly. Wielding a rag and a bottle of Windex, she was preparing for the arrival of an obscure uncle from across the country, waging a battle on crusty dust and embedded dirt for the first time in a month. Will did not understand the special occasion. Obscure uncles liked to pinch your cheeks, and they often smelled like cigar smoke and moth balls.
Waiting for her blue-moon cleaning spree to pass, he peered at the television. Wild forests swimming in grey mist flew across the screen. A man in a helicopter explored forgotten patches of world, filled with weird creatures.
Only when mother stopped to scrub furiously at the glass (her hair—a black, frizzy mess— stuck to it), he inch forward. He had time enough to open his mouth before the front door crashed open. A storm of five laughing, howling and braying boys surged into the house, tracking mud deep into the steam-cleaned carpet. All of them shared the same wind-blown black hair, but not one noticed the danger ticking across the room. As they cheered and barked greetings, Will stepped away from his brothers immediately to spare himself the enviable fury.
Their mother, crouched low to scrub the table legs, turned on them in an instant. With her teeth bared and eyes swarming with jittery rage, she looked remarkably similar to an angry squirrel. The boys hesitated in the doorway, probably debating on whether they should run or not. Grime dripped off the tips of their boots, dying the carpet swampy brown.
“Hi mom,” said the eldest with a shaky grin.
“GET.OUT,” bellowed their mother, threatening her sons with the Windex’s nozzle. “OR I’LL-“
But they never heard what she’d do, because at once they all barreled out of house and tore down the driveway. Specks of grit flung out behind them, spotting Will’s face with little dribbles of mud. Their mother hissed from between her clenched teeth and stomped to the blotched mess on her otherwise spotless house. She dropped to her knees and proceeded to beat the stains out of existence.
Will waited several minutes before trying again. Just as mother stood and wiped her brow on the sleeve of her tattered sweatshirt, the boy tugged tentatively at her pant leg. She startled and glowered at her final son.
“Kite! I didn’t see you there,” she said.
Kite, which was what everyone called him, only shrugged. Adults had this bizarre tendency to overlook him, as if he were a ghost with only partial visibility. During one of his obscure-uncle’s visitations, Kite had stood in the middle of the floor and accomplished three perfect cartwheels before the man looked up in confusion and said, “Did you hear something?” Even his brothers were apt to it; they sat on him daily, not because of sibling domination but because they simply did not notice him. A muffled squeal of pain usually sent them jumping off, and when they wheeled around in surprise to see a flatter version of their littlest brother, they (usually) apologized profusely.
“Mom? I have a question,” he said, fiddling with his over-sized sleeve. Nearly all of Kite’s clothes were a mishmash of hand-me-downs, and they swallowed his scrawny body in a pool of folds.
“Shoot.”
“Where do all the monsters go?”
The evolution of the title is worth mentioning as well. First it was 'Chasing Rabbits', but one of my classmates brought in her project, titled Chasing Beauty (an amazing idea, if she makes a blog about it or something I'll link it), and I decided to change it. It flopped between The Rabbit in the Snare and Rabbit in the Snare, but neither had the right ring. I eventually just settled for a revised version of the first one; To Chase a Rabbit.
No comments:
Post a Comment