Week Six of Start Writing Fiction

I thought last week was difficult enough with falling behind with my studies, but this week has been even worse! We have been thrown task after task after task!! Below is one such task. It was to envisage a character through dialogue. I quite enjoyed writing it. It just seemed to flow. Hope you enjoy it too? And as always any feedback is most welcome!

 

She walked over to him, unsure whether he had seen her or not. ‘Would you like a second cup Sir?’ She noticed him start. He looked up into her eyes and to Olivia it looked like he had been found guilty. Guilty of sitting in a coffee shop alone. Guilty of a pupil seeing him outside of school. Guilty of being found reading ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’. ‘My favourite book!’

‘Well I thought I would give it a try since one of my star pupils loves it so much!’ He blushed or she thought she noticed the colour rise to his cheeks.

‘Would you like me to get you another cup?’ He shook his head.

‘I don’t think I’ll be staying much longer.’ He looked at his watch.

‘Are you waiting for someone Sir?’ He smiled his assent.

‘Though I don’t think she’s coming.’

‘Maybe she’s been held up?’

‘Maybe,’ he sighed. ‘Though somehow I think I’ve been blown off.’

‘No Sir, surely not.’

‘Well I have been waiting here for over an hour.’

‘There’ll be a plausible explanation I’m sure.’

‘Please don’t tell your class mates I was stood up. I really don’t want them knowing that I am a sad lonely old teacher.’

‘You’re not old!’ Olivia caught herself.

‘Older than you!’

‘Not by much.’

‘By enough.’

‘I’d date you!’ Olivia not only surprised herself but her teacher sat upright too.

‘Would you now,’ he released a strained laugh, showing he was trying too hard to make light of the matter. ‘Anyway,’ he changed the subject like a click of the fingers. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I work here.’

‘I can see that, but why, you have your studies?’

‘I need the money Sir.’

‘Call me Adam. Sir is so stiff and formal.’ Now it was Olivia’s time to blush. She lowered her gaze. ‘Why do you need the money?’

‘I’m saving to go to Paris,’ she blurted.’ I’ve wanted to go since I can remember!’

‘Paris is a lovely city!’

‘Have you been?’ Olivia couldn’t stop the rising excitement within her. Adam nodded. She desired more than anything else to be able to share her dreams with someone. Adam, her teacher seemed the most qualified than anyone she knew, to be the one she shared them with. She sat down at the table before him. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Olivia!’ a shrill cry broke Adam’s description of music filled streets, the Seine glistening in the moonlight and Art, not just in the galleries but on the buildings that lined the boulevards. Olivia arose from her seat under the glare of her boss.

‘Sorry I have cups to wash.’

‘Perhaps,’ Olivia looked down at Adam with wide eyes. ‘We can continue this conversation at school, Monday.’

‘Yes, maybe.’ She walked away, forgetting Adam’s empty coffee cup on the table.

© Christine Lucas 2014.

Challenging expectations!

I’ve been a bit erratic with my studies this week. I have been worried about Artie having to go for a routine castration. Thankfully he is now home safe and recovering from the anaesthetic.

This week’s writing task was to write about a stereotype character and change the role. I found it really difficult to achieve and what I have written really shows no sign of stereotyping but I’ve tried and it is all I can achieve this week. I am very tired.

As always feedback is extremely valued. Thank you!

 

The wind slapped at his hairless head like an insult. He closed his eyes to the driving rain that threatened to blind him, while his fingers strained to keep their hold of the cold, bare rock. He was hanging hundreds of meters from the relative safeness of the ground, and close by someone was shouting. ‘Geoff, get a move on! You’re holding the rest of us up!’

‘I can’t!’ he shivered.

‘Just think why you’re doing this!’ And then he did. Of Hannah. Little sick Hannah lying in a hospital bed attached to multiple drips, with her grandmother sitting beside her reading fairy stories to chase away the fears. Since his wife had died it had just been him and Hannah. And now Hannah had become sick with the same rare genetic condition as her mother. Geoff was clinging to the side of a precipice as if his life depended on it, and in some way it did, maybe not his life but others. If he was successful in his conquering of Ben Nevis, Geoff would raise in sponsorship almost £100,000! His friends and family had been generous to a fault, but it was the donations from the public after he had featured in the local press that boosted his funds to astronomical proportions. Geoff remembered standing rosy faced before a TV camera and being humbled by the generosity of anonymous people. However on this ‘dreich’ autumnal day Geoff’s resolve faltered. It fell away from him like the lose rock that has fallen headlong down the slope as he tried to hoist himself up.

As his foot had slipped, it seemed to Geoff that his life flashed before his eyes. He recalled the look of his mother when his father left them. Of playing kiss chase in the school playground, and only chasing the girls with fair hair. He preferred blondes, so much so that years later his wife too had been a blonde. Geoff had met her at a friend’s 18^th birthday party. Geoff wasn’t 18 until the coming January while Belinda was still only 16! He remembered they had ‘hit it off’ straight away. They were ‘soul mates’, Geoff always thought. After that night when they shared their first kiss under the stars, they were inseparable.

Geoff married Belinda when she was 21. It was a small registry office affair, but he remembered Belinda dressed in white, looking the picture of beauty. A year later and the perfectly formed Hannah with her big brown eyes, (inherited from Geoff) and blonde curly hair (like her mother) arrived.

He didn’t like what came next in his mind’s eye. Of Belinda falling sick. Of the long days and nights in hospital, and ultimately standing before an open grave with the priest prattling on about ‘the shadow of death.’ Flowers, that was his lasting memory of Belinda’s funeral. Lots of flowers. Large gaping lilies and pale, lacklustre roses. That was not how he remembered her. Belinda was vibrant and fiery like blooms of Birds of Paradise!

Some two years after Belinda’s death, Hannah started showing signs of becoming sick. This was the reason why Geoff was clung to a rock like a mollusc. He had agreed to climb the mountain to raise much needed funds for research. Somehow, his own discomfort sweetened the pain of what was ultimately to follow. ‘Come on Geoff!’ someone called. With teeth clenched he loosened his grip and raised his hand to the next crevice. He would achieve this for Hannah’s sake!

Ideas for a Story

As you may know I have embarked on a short, free creative writing course with the Open University.

This is the second ‘large’ piece of writing I have been tasked to do. It was inspired by a short video introducing the course and I have tried to pull a story from one of the images featured. Of a young woman sitting, awaiting a bus with an over night bag on her lap. Let me know what you think of the first 500+ words and if it has any promise for me to continue with. Thanks. Christine.

 

I remember… how he looked the morning he walked into the class room. The bright spring sunshine flowed into the room, touching the heads of twenty four rowdy teenagers and me. I sat gazing out of the window to the park below. The trees were heavy limbed with pink blossom and daisy heads interjected the green grass of the playing fields. I watched as an elderly man walked his dog, a young mother pushed her baby in a pram while talking into a mobile phone. All life was going on before me while I sat stifled and bored awaiting the new form teacher to arrive and to begin another day of endless classes. Don’t get me wrong, I loved studying, was always in the top 5% of classes but life at present seemed an endless chore. Mother had just remarried to a pig of a man, Dan and my older sister Melanie, had started her first semester at Manchester University studying politics. So it was just ‘little old’ me in a house far too large for three people, (two of whom I tried to avoid at all times,) and Jake the Border Collie. ‘Perhaps I’ll take the dog for a walk after school,’ I thought and then the door was flung open and in he walked!

It was his confident swagger that gripped me first. He didn’t look much older than 25, but his poise gave him the air of a much older man. I think I half envied him then! Confidence was never a strong character trait with me. Indeed that was why I was sitting alone while the rest of the girls in class were all huddled at the back chatting to the boys, the good looking boys I may hasten to add. He breezed in and demanded such attention that everyone fell silent. ‘I’m Mr. Blake and I will be your new class teacher.’

It didn’t take long for the brassy ones of the class to pipe up, ‘sir, which school have you transferred from? What subject do you teach?’ The latter was voiced by the girls who were suddenly sitting alert like animals in anticipation of food.

‘Poor Mr. Blake,’ I thought. ‘He’s a carrot dangling before all these hormonal girls, many on the verge of womanhood,’ He bent over his desk and peered into the class register. He patted his shirt pocket, looking for something.

‘I’ve forgotten my glasses. Forgive me if I get your names wrong. I’m rather short sighted.’ His voice was rich and soft like the wind sighing through the trees. If I closed my eyes I could picture his voice coming from the radio late at night, announcing some relaxing piece of music. I smiled as I thought I wouldn’t mind lying in bed listening to his voice all night. ‘Olivia Edwards,’ he was saying my name. ‘Olivia Edwards is she here?’ and then I opened my eyes. He was scanning the sea of faces before him looking for someone he thought resembled an Olivia.

‘Here,’ I managed to squeak. His eyes rested on my face and I half envisaged a slight turn up of his lips.

‘Nice to meet you Olivia Edwards,’ and inside my heart pounded.