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Evolution of a Story: Part 9

To start at the beginning of this story, and see what it’s all about, CLICK HERE.    

  “You should go to the opening,” Jaynie’s only friend in town, her neighbor, Ellie, said to her as she read the invitation for the millionth time. She tried to hide the jealousy, but her voice betrayed her.

      “I don’t think so,” Jaynie answered, shaking her head. She poured two glasses of red wine and handed one to her friend. “I don’t even know why I got that. I must be on some email list or something.”

      “But it looks like fun.”

      “It’s a thrift store. How fun can it be?” Jaynie sipped her wine and kicked off her shoes, losing three inches in height.

      “So, you didn’t see the picture of the owner? Marcus Twombley?” Ellie swooned and giggled and sipped her wine and forgot all about her husband and three children waiting for her to come home in time to put the little ones to bed. She thrust the invitation into her friend’s hand. If she was going to live vicariously through someone, she needed that someone to go live.

      “He’s cute. So?” Jaynie dropped the invite with disinterest.

      “So you need to go,” Ellie pressed. “You need to get out and meet someone. You’ll never meet anyone sitting around here.”

      “You read too many romance novels, El,” Jaynie snipped at her friend. “Who says I want to meet someone?”

       “I do,” Ellie snapped. “I say you do. I say you need to get out of this rut you’ve dug for yourself and go do something. You can get out. You can get out AGAIN. I didn’t do it when we graduated, and I can’t do it now, and I hate seeing you sitting here in this big old house day after day feeling sorry for yourself and not doing anything about it.”

      “I’m not ready,” Jaynie felt her guard go up. Like most redheads, anger flared up in her with ease. Her face flushed hot pink and she sipped her wine quickly to avoid saying something she’d regret. The desire, though, to fling verbal arrows, was intense.

      “Not ready for what? Not ready to have some fun? Not ready to rejoin the land of the living?”

      “Back off, El,” Jaynie warned.

      “Look, Jay, what you did for your mother was amazing. It was wonderful. You took good care of her and she was very lucky. But you can’t stay here forever, selling soaps and lip balms. There was nothing for you here after high school, and there’s even less for you here now.”

      “There’s still so much to do,” Jaynie said softly.

      “I know,” Ellie softened, knowing not to poke the lion too hard. “But it can wait. You need to do something for yourself.”

      Jaynie picked up the invitation and looked at it again. She twisted her lips into a knot and looked at her friend. Why was her heart beating so fiercely? It was just a party. She picked up her wine and finished the glass and poured herself a new one.

       “I’ll need something to wear,” she said, tucking a renegade strand of silk straight hair behind her ear. “And my head checked. I’ll need to have my head checked, because I seriously must be crazy to listen to you.”

To start at the beginning, CLICK HERE.

She wishes she was this #fierce #catsofinstagram #cats

#fromwhereistand #blacklablove

Evolution of a Story: Where We At?

Where we at? We at an impasse, creatively speaking.

You see, I was writing along without a plan, which was fun and free and completely at the mercy of what my characters wanted to do with themselves. I was just along to put words to their actions, to provide the sentences with which to weave their fictional lives.

Then I hit that mark, that imaginary line at about 10K words where the disciplined, classically trained Writer in me wants to pull back. She starts demanding things like chapter outlines and plot lines and flow charts. She wants a highway where there’s only been wild forest.

And then, when she demands “What is your motivation?” of my characters, they who have been living freely and of their own volition, they invariably kick the dirt with their toes, look out into the open badlands from the confines of a desk chair in a bland room, and say, “I dunno.”

And so it is with my story right now. I slowed down. I started doing research. I got really excited and did more research, revising the story in my head, cruising along, creating scenes and showdowns and climactic conclusions. Speeding along until I hit that wall. That wall, constructed brick by brick each time Google goes out on a fact finding mission, that maybe now my story, once so carefree, is too complicated. Or too factually inaccurate. Or, gasp: boring.

So, I’m giving into the Nerd in me, the writer with a pen up her ass, and doing some cleanup before moving forward again. The Bag is back to being an ordinary bag. Well, not ordinary, just not haunted. I’ll be posting some re-writes. And once I’m done, I’ll set my characters free again to explore the world set out in front of them. I may not give them a GPS to their destination, but for this next leg of the writing journey, they’ll at least have a map.

If you’d like to go to the beginning of Evolution of a Story, click here.

#funwithlight #random #nighttime #takingthedogout

Evolution of a Story: Part 8

Back in November, I tried to participate in NANOWRIMO, but failed miserably at carving out enough time to write 50 thousand words in a month. What I was left with, though, are some quirky characters and hint of a story. It was, and still is, a story without a plan, without a roadmap. I thought it might be fun to blog the story as I go to really illustrate what happens when you write without a net. I’ll present the story as I write, in chunks, as I go along. If I make any major edits, I will make note of that, as well. I’m starting with what I wrote back in November to give me a head start. Suggestions for a title are most welcome, because I suck at titles.)

To start at the beginning, go here. 

If there was one thing that Marcus Twombley knew for sure, it was that a steady stream of women through his doors would be the key to his success. Holding his Grand Opening right before the Christmas season hit its stride was also key, as it would give him a chance to work out any bugs, and there were sure to be bugs, since there never was a plan.

With the arrival of the sign, Marcus was ready to open the doors of his resale shop in the hip, artsy section of Portland, Maine known as The Old Port. Brick buildings, cobblestone streets, and air heavy with salt and the sounds of crying gulls, the Old Port was the perfect place for a man like Marcus and a store like Karma Konsignments. And when he hung that sign on the wrought iron bracket mounted in the brick of the building on the corner, he felt a pride he had always associated more with laying a woman than launching a business. He felt that, maybe, he had finally launched his adulthood.

“Now darling, how many invitations would you like to go out?” the woman with the heels as high as her hair asked Marcus quickly as she entered his store in a flurry of ringing cell phones and heavy perfume.

“Well, I don’t know,” Marcus answered slowly, attempting to slow down the bustle of the public relations consultant he had hired to give his business the proper kick off. She was a tightly wound package, but a good looking one, as he ran his eyes down the off-white skirt that stopped just above her knees, giving a demure but decent enough glimpse of her legs beneath. He thought about the last time he had taken a woman to bed and how it seemed ages ago and decided this one was worth as good a try as any.

He flashed a smile and slid himself off the counter in front of Sheila the PR lady, making eye contact with the slowly melting professional. She returned his smile and attempted to go about her business but could feel herself wondering what exactly her new client‘s lips would feel like on her neck. The wedding ring on her finger gave the challenge an added edge, which gave Marcus a kick, but the lady in the off-white skirt seemed far less concerned for her other half than most of the married women Marcus had bedded in the past. The exchange of smiles and innuendo grew more intense until finally, a little guilt-free afternoon sex, sweaty and dusty in the crowded backroom office, off-white skirt pushed up to her hips for a better look at the full length of her attractive legs, gave Marcus the bit of stress-relief he needed the week before his Grand Opening.

***

Another day gone, another night awake, the Medium stared at the ceiling and wondered when things had gotten so gray. She never expected to make a home in Maine, but life has a quirky way of placing people down in strange places. Even though it was now early November, and cold crept in through every crack in the beach cottage, she had left a window open a smidge, and could hear the pound of the surf across the street, soothing in its power and consistency. It seemed to be providing for the lack of a good man in her life. But it couldn’t make up for the lack of a powerful lay.

The Medium didn’t hate her job as an art model. Work at the university was consistent, for it had a healthy and well-funded art department. And freelance work for the art instructors and professors paid even better. But the Medium was currently experiencing a drought in the good-looking but bad-boy artsy type she seemed to fall for over and over again who, even though equipped to provide a powerful lay, always seemed to lack the equipment for consistency.

Having lived most of her life in Florida, the Medium was accustomed to the nature of the sea. Hell, she had once worked as a tour guide at Hemingway’s house, so the intricacies of man’s twisted relationship with the ocean and all its grace and power was not lost on her. But right now, it was just plain getting on her nerves.

“When is the last time I had a date?” she wondered aloud, engaging the wind in her self-inquiry. “When is the last time I got naked with another person?”

“I need a change,” she said after a pause to exchange sweet nothings with a glass of wine. But the wind did not hear; it was too busy arguing with the waves to listen.

***

The Medium’s ticket out of her normal routine came in the form of a sleek, black and silver invitation to the opening of a new boutique called Karma Konsignments. Sometimes, being intimate with artists came with perks, such as having your name on all the right lists.

The Medium may have been a professional when it came to getting naked, but her talents were best displayed behind a thin veil of expensive and well-draped fabric. In her previous life as a runway model, a life that seemed so far away but in reality was only four years behind our Medium, she had strutted in stilettos with the best of the best all over the planet. It was a short-lived career, derailed as much by her own imagination as by the charming wreck of a photographer who had convinced her life with him was worth more than the world. It turned out to be worth about two years of her life, though four years of her sanity suffered the ruin as well.

It was the photo of the new boutique’s owner on the invitation that convinced the Medium she should dig out her slinkiest dress leftover from her modeling days and attend the opening. He was rugged and handsome and had a dark glint in his eyes that made the Medium swoon and think of long, hot nights spent sweaty and naked in some artist or another’s loft. Standing in a black, tight fitting t-shirt and worn jeans, among the pensive mannequin and, yes, there on the shelf above his head, The Bag, was Marcus, looking deep into the camera and making the toes of women across the greater Portland area curl in subconscious anticipation. It was a lust she hadn’t felt in a long time, and after some well-spent alone time in a hot shower that night which resulted in the first decent night of sleep in more than two weeks, she felt she should try and thank Mr. Marcus Twombley in person.

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