Monday, April 10, 2006

Monday's Not for Bloggin

I'm in no mood to be doing anything on a Monday evening. Except moan. Which is why the lovely J has christened in Moanday. She hasn't really, but is just goes to show that despite being tired, fed up and just not with it mentally, you can still pull some form of fiction out of your ass. Anyway, I have little to say on the Western today. Hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime, see what you think of the following as opening lines for short stories and/ or chapters. I quite like them.

She brings flowers when she visits. That's what you see when you line your eye up to the spyglass in the door. Flowers. Again.

The van trundles along; clunking, diesel, steering like a shopping trolly. He says "Shit!" just before he jerks the steering wheel right, and "Fuckit! Fuckit! Fuckit!" as he pulls it left. She doesn't think he's aware of it, but the words and the actions go together everytime.

The best thing about Billy is the craic. Sweet Jesus, you'd never meet a man like Billy for the craic. Red eyed, wide, smoking cigarettes and taking snifters in between each sentence. Mad craic.

They looked to me. Would I? Would I fuck. But how do I tell them?

Empty mugs, cups, plates, pots. Jesus, infested with what was food and cigarette butts. Not a-fucking one of them smokeable. Back to bed until someone resolves this situation... Up then as I hear her come through the door, the shopping bag down, the box pulled from it, and yes - yes - YES! the cellaphane ripped off the smokes. Not too fast now - can't have her thinking you were up and back to bed. You'd never get a smoke that way. Follow that sweet scent of the new through the pungent odour of last nights.

No odds really. In, out and away you go.

She wakes me and then I feel guilty because I told her to fuck off when my eyes were closed but when I opened them I could see her make up had all run, I could see her eye was cut. I could see she didn't mean to stay out all night.

Hmm. Maybe some more another time. All very tired today. Anyway, I shall leave you with some pretty powerful words from Mr Ernest Hemmingway (one of my Lit. heroes). This is what's known as "Flash Fiction". Writing small style. The description from Wikipedia is "There is no 'official' or exact word limit, but flash fiction stories are generally less than 2,000 words long, and tend to cluster in the 250 to 1,000 word range."
Anyway, here it is:
For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

1 comment:

chrismehigan said...

One of Hemmingways best pieces. It's shocking how easily he could convey his intellect. I struggle to speak coherently.
Anyway, I know the feeling.. I intended to do an entry in my blog also, but it's Monday and I'm tired and I can't really think, all I can manage is to sit here and flick through pages while listening to Miles Davis.
Thats the problem with kids today.. they just don't get the jazz....