Author Archives: rebecca

My Manuscript Stinks: Four Scenes

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The monthly challenge for the My Manuscript Stinks Society (MMS Society) was to write four scenes of a novel.

Make sure that each scene creates a different emotion or group of emotions. Also, make sure that each scene features at least one strong image (try using all five of the senses).

I won’t post any of my novel on the web. I won’t even tell you what it’s about. Why?

  1. It really stinks. I cannot write fiction. My attempts are so horrible, I am embarrassed.
  2. I’m positive I’ll rewrite these scenes a number of times.
  3. I’m not sure the current plot will work or be interesting or both and I don’t want my ideas to be shot down just quite yet.

However, I did this assignment, mostly. I reworked an old scene (despair) and then I wrote three new ones (joy, fear, and anger leading to sadness). They were all short. On this website, I’ve been working on short scenes, in which I create emotions, setting or characters in a very small amount of space. When I went to my novel this month, I found myself focusing on very small snippets of the scenes. I am having a hard time creating a larger scene and continuing the dialogue.

As I said above, I consider my fiction writing talents to be horrible. Having an assignment to revisit my attempt at a novel was very good for me.

  1. As I started writing the scene with a vague idea of characters, I found my characters taking on slightly different attitudes then I anticipated. Now I know what people mean when they say they write but the characters create themselves. (Interestingly, a year ago I had anticipated writing from a daughter’s point of view and started a few scenes. A few months ago, I became a mother. Now I found myself changing and writing from the mother’s point of view. It feels much more natural. This is what I mean about rewriting the entire thing a few times.)
  2. I found that it is hard to describe an emotion: I find myself remembering how I have felt at various points in my life. I can’t describe an emotion using five senses unless I’ve experienced it.
  3. It is challenging to write dialogue that is convincing, but dialogue is what moves each scene.

I have a lot to learn about how to create a fictional scene. What suggestions do you have? I’d appreciate your advice!

Nap Time Gone Wrong

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Video 1, in which Paul does not want to take a nap

Video 2, in which Mommy checks on not-napping Paul twenty minutes later, after she hears loud shrieks of laughter

Video 3, in which Mommy gives up on nap time and Paul is happy

ETA: I changed the videos because apparently it wasn’t clear that there are three.

FICTION Writer’s Island: The Return

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I shift my son from my left hip to my right, and he whines and squirms for escape. The diaper bag over my shoulder slips to my elbow and I stop to reposition it.

My husband stops beside me, reaching for the bag, his wheeled bag toppling.

“You got it?”

I nod but hand him the diaper bag, again repositioning the eight-month-old rock squirming in my arms.

My son smiles and reaches for his daddy, but I pull him close to me. We walk. Up the escalator and we’ll be there, here, done, finished, back again, finally returned.

Sunday Scribblings #112: Quitting

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If he wasn’t born by 3 p.m., I would die. I would quit, that’s all.

“I can’t do this!” I said again.

“You are doing it!” the midwife repeated.

At 3 p.m., I decided not to die. Thirteen minutes later, with one long push, my son appeared, blue and squirmy and tiny.

That night, alone and exhausted, I held my fussy newborn in my arms, willing him to sleep: “I can’t stay awake much longer!”

And I realized I will never quit on him: after birthing him without medication, I can and will handle anything in the challenge called motherhood.

What I Will Miss

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One sunny 50-degree winter day last July, I walked to the supermarket. I was 7 months pregnant and brand-new to the country. Outside of the supermarket fly six Australian flags. As I walked by the first of the flags, the flags flapped in a light breeze. I looked up to see a beautiful, blue-sky backdrop for the Australian flag. I decided then that I was home, and I loved it.

Today I walked up to the supermarket again, as I have many times in the past months. It is now fall, and I crunched leaves as I walked down the street, pushing my almost eight-month-old in the stroller. As I walked under the flags, I felt a sense of sadness: I’m leaving.

What I will miss: Being 10 minutes from the temple.

The temple is open for about four sessions a day Wednesday through Saturday, and it is such a lovely, friendly temple. Saturday morning at 9:25, I decided to go to a session. I made the 10 a.m. session (I don’t like to rush to get ready; it just worked out well this week). I will miss being so close.

What I will miss: Being a short drive from mountains and empty fields and little traffic.

Sunday afternoon we went for a drive. We didn’t go anywhere in particular: we just drove. Because we live where we do, we could drive for 10 minutes and be away from traffic, among fields with cattle grazing. It is so lovely here. I will miss the scenery of Australia.

What I will miss: My husband walking to and from the train station every day.

My husband comes home every night. When we return to the USA, he’ll go back to flying to his work Monday and returning home Thursday. We’re obviously looking at other options; I’ve been spoiled by his presence this year. I will really miss being so close to a train line, with his job on the end of it.

Sigh. Still no departure date, but it is certainly going to happen.

FICTION Picture This #8

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Fiction response to Write Anything prompt for Picture This

I knew it was wrong to marry him. But he promised me riches and comfort, and it was easy to believe as I watched him pay $400 for my nine-course meal at the nicest restaurant in town. We would be so happy together, he said, as he added me to his credit card account. We’d never see the bill: it was covered by his employer in total, no questions asked.

In the end, he convinced me. It was partly all the fancy dining he treated me to, with the season of box seats at the opera. But I wanted that four-bedroom home with the manicured garden and gourmet kitchen. I wanted the brand-new BMW every year, complete with a new car smell. I wanted the free travel around the world, and I certainly wanted the comfy leather chair in the library with unlimited books. He had his employer write it all into the marriage contract. But I know now I should have read the fine print.

We found the perfect house. It had a white picket fence in the back yard. During his first two weeks’ leave, we decided on paint colors for the walls. During his next leave, we married and moved in. I was so happy.

It was not very long before our baby was on the way. I was still getting used to all the household servants (I didn’t like telling them what to do and kept apologizing) and I was still building the library. But it was a perfect excuse to add pregnancy self-help books and children’s books to the shelves. I was excited to find that it was a girl. I bought pink bows and dresses for her. I canceled our trip to London and painted the nursery lavender. His employer gave him five years local work so he wouldn’t be away. We would have a wonderful little family.

I realized in the hospital that something wasn’t quite right. He took her away from me after the first night. I asked him to bring her to me, and he started talking to me about protocol. I was a bit exhausted from the labor, so I did enjoy a little rest and pampering. But by the end of the first week, I was ready to see her a lot more than I had seen her!

It was then that he got out the marriage contract and showed me the fine print. I thought the Rumpelstilskin Program was about being a soldier for life in exchange for every comfort you could imagine.

I didn’t realize it meant my daughter’s life, too.

I’m sitting now in my chair. Twenty books are on my side table, but I can’t bring myself to read any of them. Kate is about to bring in my supper, but I don’t have much of an appetite. The house is immaculate — all four-bedrooms — and the flower garden is perfectly groomed. I believe the lilacs are out this week, but I haven’t walked in the garden all spring. I have a new Mercedes in the driveway, but it still has only 78 miles on it.

They will be home from work late tonight. That is why I sit and look at their photograph: my husband and my daughter, Soldiers.

Yes, they have a good relationship. They work together most of the day, Daddy showing her how to do the job she will have to do for the rest of her life.

She thinks it’s a game. I am dreading the day when she finds out it is not.