My first short story

I didn't win the short-story contest I entered but I'm still marking the experience in the 'win' category because I put myself out there in the serious world of writing - as an author - by having submitted an entry in the first place.  I threw this little piece together in a week after I got a wild hair from my writing group who all jumped on the bandwagon and submitted entries.  I figure why waste the effort and not let everyone who cares to read it get the chance?  So, without further ado, for your reading enjoyment...

Decisions

by Terra Luft

Beep-beep… Beep-beep… The sterile sounds of the many machines trapping you here like a prisoner go on incessantly. Tubes drain a putrid looking fluid from your chest while others down your throat are breathing for you. How surreal the past days have been, culminating with you lying there, pasty white and barely breathing, and me sitting here in this plastic chair wishing you would wake up so I can tell you how unbelievably unfair it all is.

For hours I sat in the waiting room while they worked on you, time marching so slowly I wondered if it had stopped, thinking of all the things still unsaid between us, praying to a God I don’t believe in that we get more time to say them. Fifteen years, you would think we’d had time to say and do it all but I’m selfish and I want more. My thoughts are haunted by the irony of all the hours of comfortable silence we’ve spent together, unaware any moment might be our last. I refuse to consider sitting on the couch, you watching a ball game while I read a book, could be the way we spent our last waking moments together. All those years we let fly by and we never discussed or planned what we would do if either of us ever found ourselves here.

What a trick fate has played on me. I’m the one with the bad gene pool, the one with the poor cardiovascular health who needs to lose a few pounds. You are the active one who plays basketball twice a week and rides your mountain bike every chance you get. So why are you lying there with a split sternum under what will be one nasty scar instead of me? And will you even be around later to tell the story of how you got it?

The thought of never hearing your voice again suddenly grips my chest. What I need right now is to see your eyes open and alert and hear you speak. I’d even settle for one of the inappropriate jokes you’re always telling at the wrong time at parties. Something to distract me from all the potentially life ending decisions I might be forced to make soon if you don’t wake up.

The endless tears stream silently down my face and I grip your hand in mine. I try to picture your hazel eyes staring out from someone else’s face, your heart beating in someone else’s chest. I know you well enough that, although we haven’t discussed donation, it is what you would want. Yet I can’t bring myself to even think of pushing the button that turns off the machines, let alone actually doing it. I pull the plug and you never wake up? No, unacceptable!

Instead, I keep the entire world shut out of this room and plant a seed of hope amid all the shock and horror. I know some think I’m in denial. I can hear them all whispering outside the door – the door I won’t let them enter. I prefer to think I’m forcing my will on the Universe. Either way, I will sit here – just you and me – watching and waiting until you wake up, my love. Because somehow I know you will and because I cannot go on alone if you don’t.

A detached part of myself wonders what you would be doing if it were me lying there instead of you. And if it were me clinging to life, what would I want you to do?

*********

 

So, there you have it.  Reading it now, a month after writing it, I know why it didn't win... after all, it was written prior to learning all that I learned at the writer's conference.  But, we all start somewhere.  The narcicist in me wants to hear comments from readers so bring it on my hopfully adoring public!

 

In other news, work on the first draft of my novel continues.  The last half will prove insanely better than the first half when it comes time for revisions (since I got amazing critique at boot camp) but that's okay.  After all, there's a reason you write a first draft: to revise in the second!

Like You Mean It

I got a kick in the pants... figuratively speaking... the other day.  After my first Writer's Conference, I was perusing all the "author" blogs and places of interest around the 'net since apparently it is a requirement to know people and be able to recognize them by name.  I signed up for a few free newsletters - what's another few pieces of junk mail a week to clog my In Box, right?  I added a few interesting blogs to my reading list, blah blah blah.  And then I got a little nugget of value out of the whole exercise.  I got a "free book" that had 70 solutions to common writing mistakes.  It is fascinating how much you think you know and then you find out that the stuff you didn't know that you didn't know is actually more than you knew.  (Ha, did I lose you on that one?!)  I'm not done reading all the pointers and tips but I'm taking one to heart that hit me hard like an open-palmed slap to the face by an angry lover when I read it:

"It isn't enough to say you want to be a writer, you have to live like you are a writer."

I am not entirely sure why this particular phrase hit me so hard - perhaps because lately I've been less than satisfied with my "day" job and have been dreaming of being a writer who was successful enough I didn't need to have another job anymore.  I realized it is like what I always say - you aren't going to win the lottery if you aren't playing the lottery.  The same is true about my writing.  I am not going to get an agent or a fat book deal or hell, even a finished manuscript, if I'm not actually writing on a regular basis.  So, this is me... turning over a new leaf.  From now on I'm an author because I write on a regular basis, period.  I may not be a published author yet but if I write every day and keep polishing my craft I will be soon!  And that pesky first draft that stalled after NaNoWriMo?  Thanks to my new ebook, I've got tools to get me past the hump of the middle and sailing through to the end.  From here on out, it will be like NaNoWriMo every day of the year!

An unlikely source

Yesterday I finally broke through some immense barriers. I had three days of zero weight loss and was feeling very intense emotions. This was worse than only losing every other day - this was three solid days of sticking to it like glue with nothing to show for my efforts! I was talking with my Sister, who is also on the protocol and experiencing her own setbacks with slow results, and she said "why aren't you using FitDay.com to track what you're eating?" We were theorizing that our issue might be that we are eating either too few or too many calories. I have never been a calorie counter - just eat real food, not alot of it - so if there's a tool to make it easier, bring it on. I went to the site and guess what... I already had a free account. Who remembered setting that up but I must have done it after the first time she had mentioned it to me. Incidentally, it really is a cool site - lets you track your food, your activity and daily journal entries and see them all in one daily snapshot. I had exactly one entry - from 2008 - that consisted of a starting weight, a goal weight and a journal entry stating how committed I was to changing my life. It was interesting to read the entry - I'm sure I have a touch or narcisism - but the best part was seeing that I have attained my goal weight already! At the time, it was that ultimate goal that seemed unattainable because I had so far to go. It's like the weight you put on your driver's license and hope that someday it can really be true. I'm 50 lbs lighter now than I was in 2008 and pretty damn proud of the fact. Considering that I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants girl who can't be bothered with setting goals because I'm too busy living for the now, it was amazing to see that I have achieved something I thought back then was next to impossible. It was enough to lift my spirits from the toilet where they had been residing for three days.


Then something else amazing happened. I was taking a new self-portrait so I could put a good hair day out there on Facebook (more narcisism you say?) and I realized that I no longer MUST take the angle from above in order to hide my subtle double chin that always taunted me from photos of myself. That double chin is history, baby! And I realized that I actually have a narrow chin and a long and narrow face once the pudgy cheeks are gone. Who knew?!? The best part about the departure of my 'fat face' is that it happened while I was bitching about how slowly I'm losing weight this time around on HCG and lamenting that I want it all to happen NOW NOW NOW. Guess what, it is happening that fast and I just need to be more patient with the whole process. I have 13 days left and I'm looking forward to what they have to bring in transforming me further.

Tonight my new lifestyle was cemented in stone as reality when I look around and realized I was chatting with hubby and friends about running triathalons and 10K's and 5K's and half marathons and which ones we want to do culminating with deciding where we're going to meet on Saturday for the Race for the Cure we are doing together. I love feeling good enough to run out to the car for something I forgot instead of thinking about how much effort it would take me to get up and go all the way out there. I am a healthy woman to my core and I have nothing in the future but more goals met and more milestones reached. Who knew I could get this inspired coming off of a three-day weight loss stall but it happened and I love it!

What the hell was I thinking?

It is day 23 of my current 40-day round of HCG protocol with 17 more to go.  Last time, by day 20 I'd dropped 21 pounds and was pissed I had been talked out of a 40-day cycle because I could have kept going and lost another 20 pounds.  Everyone said it was "too hard" to stick with it for that long and yet it had been a breeze for me with seriously amazing results.  Where am I this time around, you ask?  Well, I'm not down 21 pounds, I'll tell ya that! 

I've lost a total of 16.4 lbs and am on this insane new trend of only losing weight every other day for the last eight days.  Last time it was so easy to stay motivated because I was seeing .8 lbs or more melt away every day.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  The meal protocol is so strict and specific and rigid and unforgiving but so very worth it when you see impossible results day after day.  What happens to your mental stamina when you don't see those results every day is bad.  Very bad.  In the last three days I've contemplated quiting at 23 days, been tempted to cheat - something I was never even tempted with last time around, cursed myself for thinking 40-days would be easy, wanted to throw my scale out the plate glass window, and everything in between.  The last week has been rough... no, more like brutal.  I even choked down an apple on Friday to give myself some variety in my fruit since there are only four to choose from and I won't eat grapefruit.  Ugh, I hate apples!

Today, I decided to really evaluate what I've been doing to see if there are perhaps subtle things that could be contributing to the trend. . . and thereby reverse it.  I am a problem-solver by nature, after all.  So, starting today, I am vowing to walk every single day, I'm not eating beef anymore since I ate none of it last round (Hubby will be happy because he just inherited a shit-ton of beef I stocked up on at the local Sam's Club) and I'm not chewing gum anymore since I didn't last time.  Hopefully the remaining 17 days will go much smoother and yield me at least 17 mores pounds of weight gone forever before I go on maintenance.  And if they don't... well, that nuclear meltdown you hear about on the news next week is probably me!

On a positive note... I'm down 16.4 lbs - IN THREE WEEKS - my clothes keep getting looser,  and I look better than I have since before I had my first baby.  Yes, I just bitched for three paragraphs about the slowness of the process this time around but I must not lost sight of how phenomenal the results are regardless of how much I wish they were even better.  HCG is a miracle - one I'm so glad I stumbled upon!  When they say it is a weight loss cure, they aren't lying...

New Beginnings

First, I am a third of the way done with my current round of HCG injections...  It hasn't been as easy this time in many ways but I'm still seeing fabulous results and sticking to the protocol like glue.  Day 16 and as of this morning I've lost 14 lbs.  I had a couple of days where I didn't drink enough water and ate the exact same thing for both meals which, I found out the hard way, will both stall the process.  So, two days of zero weight loss that I cannot get back but still pretty amazing.  I've never felt better and the smallest size pants in the closet are beginning to hang on me.  By this time next week I'll need a belt to keep them from falling off and by the end of the 40 days I'll need a new closet full of clothes.  (Didn't really think THAT through as I don't have the cash for an entirely new wardrobe but it's a problem I won't mind having!)

Second, I just took my writing to the next level by attending my first ever writer's conference.  It was a two-day event but I was only able to spend the entire day there on Friday.  One of the add-on options was a program called 'Boot Camp' where you take a sample of your writing and you're paired up with either a published author, an agent or an editor who specializes in your genre plus four other writers.  You read aloud to the group and they all give you feedback.  A very frightening prospect on it's own to have someone else read your work before you've edited the shit out of it and think it is the absolute very best.  But to have to read it - aloud! - to strangers?  Bordering on the terrifying.  A fellow member of my writing group (which I found out should be referred to as a Critique Group in industry-speak but hey, we didn't know!) both signed up and were there at 7:00 AM on Friday morning.  It was amazing the insight I got out of what Dan Wells (my assigned author) focused on and picked up on to comment about in my writing sample.  The morning itself was worth the price of admission for the entire day and I came away with fresh ideas for a chapter I hadn't thought about since writing it at the beginning of NaNoWriMo back in November.  After boot camp, we had a full day of conference sessions where we learned how to pitch our work to an agent, address pacing of a story and add emotion to our writing.  They were all very informative but I have to be honest... I walked away Friday night thinking I didn't really get much out of it and was glad I had done boot camp since THAT was where the real learning had happened.  

At least I thought that until I went back for the second session of boot camp on Saturday morning.  Boy was I wrong...

Just reading the next section of my own - in my mind very polished - manuscript, I found tons of holes and examples of amateur writing I had smugly thought didn't exist in MY work the day before.  There they were... had been there the entire time and I hadn't even seen them.  All in the course of 24 hours I became a better writer.  Maybe it was rubbing shoulders with real live published authors (I sound like such a geek, I know it but this is my life and maybe I am a geek.  After all, who else besides a geek dreams of writing a book that one day gets published and spends her days interacting more with a computer than people?  I'm bound to come off sounding geek-ish!)  Or maybe it was the energy of the space and me making the declaration that I am taking myself seriously about this writing business enough to shell out a hundred or so clams of my own money and a weekend of my time.  Whatever it was, I am so excited about the possibilities!

I entered a short-story contest NPR was hosting a couple of weeks ago, I have pretty much figured out how all the story threads tie together so I can finish my first novel, and I have committed to another short story contest with a submission due by May 15th.  Look out, world, I'm a writer!  And one giant leap closer to being a published one at that!

Oceans Apart

I almost didn't write a review of this horrid little book.  But, I am a creature of habit and so I must.  This month the book club pick was "Oceans Apart" by Karen Kingsbury.  It was also not enjoyable for me.  I knew it would be difficult to get through since the announcement of the book last month was followed up by a little disclaimer just for me along the lines of "oh, by the way, she's a Christian author".  Don't get me wrong, I'm a spiritual person but I'm not the religious type and I prefer my reading not to be riddled with preaching.  *sigh*  However, I am in a book club to expand my horizons and many times a book I would NEVER have picked up if left to my own devices has turned out to be an amazing little gem.  And I'm sure there are some who have rolled their eyes or muttered about some of my picks in the past as well.  So I read it.  Every 300+, painful pages.

The story is about an airline pilot who has a wife and two daughters and living a perfect life in Florida.  But, his family doesn't know that he had a one-night stand eight years ago in Hawaii on a layover during a hurricane.  What he doesn't know is that the chick got knocked up and he has a son.  The woman gets killed in a plane crash - she's a stewardess - and her will states that her son should spend two weeks with his father (not knowing he is his father but rather his mother's friend) and then the guy can decide if he wants to keep him or he'll go up for adoption.  Of course, knowing it is a Christian author, I bet you can't guess that it's a story about forgiveness.  *gag*  The convenient aspect is that the harlot stewardess was really a "good girl" who only ever slept with this pilot this one night and ended up pregnant.  (Now it sounds like what my parents used to tell me when we'd have the 'don't have sex until you're married' talk... it only takes once!)  Apparently she somehow fell in love with this one-night stand and pinned away for him and never loved anyone else.  (Like that's realistic... NOT!)  Now she is devoted to her son and God and thus the little boy is this bible reading 7-year old.  Sorry, my eight year old isn't that advanced of a reader so I don't buy it!

The first problem was the preaching and heavy-handed shove-it-down-your-throat-on-every page religious bullshit.  Seriously, I get that there is a market for people who want to read books with characters in them who share their religious beliefs.  However, I do not believe there are any real people living who think or act like these characters did (and if there are, I don't want to know that they DO exist!).  The book was more like a sermon with a little bit of a story thrown in for entertainment.  But, remember, I knew this going in and could have overlooked it.

But then there was this problem of bad writing.  How the hell does drivel like this get published?  And I heard this author was a bestseller... and it wasn't her first book?  The characters were so shallow it was like little walking cardboard puppets on popsicle sticks.  The dialogue by the little boy was done so it sounded like he was 5 instead of 7.  And, the ending was so badly foreshadowed that I knew exactly what was coming from about the third chapter and just kept waiting for her to get to it already.  The descriptions lacked depth - I still don't have a clear picture of what the two daughters even looked like nor most of the main characters.  "Handsome" doesn't really tell me anything, does it?  But go ahead and tell me he's handsome over and over again!  (Show, don't tell, people!  It's the first lesson an author should learn!)  And the religious stuff wasn't even woven into the story.  Just all of a sudden the character would be spouting off about how "I know this is God's plan" without the benefit of hearing the human struggle of deciding that's what they were going to choose to believe.  Plus the preaching was so repetitive... find a new phrase because you used that exact one two paragraphs ago, lady!  The actual content of the story could have been summed up as a short story but instead was drawn out far too long.

I headed off tonight to book club not knowing how I was going to express my opinion about the book without hurting anyone's feelings.  Remember, someone picked this book because they thought it was good.  And, if I totally trash a book with little tolerance, how do I expect everyone to read my picks with the same tolerance, right?  I was glad to hear that even the religious folks in the group thought the religion was over the top and left a bad taste in their mouths.  Having the pleasure of being "the one non-religious one" of the group, I was pretty sure that everyone was wondering what I thought of it all.  I decided not to voice an opinion on the religious aspect and see how long it took someone to ask me.  One hour and seventeen minutes...  ha ha!  What I was not expecting was how many people chose to add layers of depth to the characters in the book that simply did not exist.  They were giving them alterior motives for actions that had no basis in what was actually written.  Some of it was good enough that they should seriously think about writing their own books because it was completely made up with nothing to back up their claims.  All in all, by the time the end of the discussion came around it was clear that the majority of us held the same views as I did and the sappy ones who I assumed would like the book were the ones who did.  

I hated this book enough that I actually wrote my first review ever on Amazon because I wanted a voice of reason out there for others like me that might be tempted to pick it up based on all the glowing reviews.  Trust me, skip this one for sure!

Sore muscles

I have sore muscles of both the literal and figurative variety.  Surely you can guess the source of the literal ones.  My ass hurts, my shins hurt, my hips hurt, my ankles and calves hurt and I'm loving every minute of feeling my body transform.  I am taking full advantage of my week of running before HCG starts again this weekend and I have to pause for a few weeks.  Today I ran off steam in the gym at work all alone because my workout buddies were both in meetings (isn't everything better with company?!?) This was the first time running to relieve stress and I know what people are talking about now.  It was amazing to run away all the anxiety about the idiocy of the day and people surrounding me.  I almost didn't go back!

The other muscles that hurt are my writing muscles.  I got a wild hair this week after someone dropped a dime about this short story writing contest that NPR is doing.  My first thought was about several members of my writing group who have mentioned in the past they had been toying with short stories.  So, I posted to the group's website about the contest, whose deadline is Sunday, and went back to my crazy life.  My post started this email frenzy with everyone talking about how they were going to just throw together something or dust something off and next thing I know I'm the only one of the group not planning on attempting an entry.  Not wanting to be the slacker (or outdone!) I started a little something of my own.  How hard could it be after all since it must be a story that can be read on air in three minutes or roughly the equivalent of 600 words.  Hell, I crank out that many words on a weak writing day... piece of cake!  

HA!  

Let's just say that writing a short story requires much different muscles than writing a novel.  With a novel you have the luxury of seemingly unlimited words in order to describe in intricate detail everything that is important.  In a short story, you must convey in very few words a slice of a larger story that can stand alone all on it's own.  You have to tell a whole bunch of background to get the reader into the time and place so there is an emotional connection to the story.  You can't lead up to it with foreshadowing or several chapters - only a sentence or two.  I've managed a few hundred words and a halfway decent start but it is far from worthy of submission.  When all is said and done, I believe the exercise will be worthwhile because I'm building creative muscles I can apply to my other writing as well.  And as they say... no pain, no gain!