As far as I got.

Final blog post on the "novel" I wanted to write when I was in high school.

Last one.  This is it, my friends.  As far as I got.  I'm going to tell you what I think about the whole thing at the end.  When you finish reading, you should form your own opinions before you read mine and share by commenting.  It helps to know my strengths and weaknesses and I won't be offended.

         “Come on now, Son, don’t dawdle.  I need to talk to you.”  My father spoke in an eerily kind tone, one that would be on a TV show, the family seated happily around a kitchen table with a plate of old fashioned cookin’ placed in front of them.  The youthful version of myself hurried over to the doorway.

            “Have a seat, Tim,” my father offered, pulling a wicker chair over to him.  The two of them sat on the porch, and timidly, Tim lifted his head until his eyes met Father’s. 

“Now Timmy, I know that I made a mistake, but we all make mistakes once in awhile.”  Tim nodded.  “And we will be much better off now anyway.  I can spend more time with you, and we won’t have to do those awful chores, won’t that be great?”  A small giggle escaped Tim, as he continued to nod, a giggle that sent chills up my spine. 

Father continued, “You just have to promise me one thing.”  Tim’s smile faded away quickly.  “You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone.  Not a soul.  And if you do, I may have to make another mistake, only this time it would be with you.”  Those words echoed in my head, and vaguely I remembered hearing them before.  Tim only nodded, looking in the direction of his feet.  Father’s voice rose, “Do you understand?”

Again, Tim nodded.  Turning red, Father screamed at him.  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!”  Tim raised his eyes to meet his father’s in a hard glare, and sternly, he answered the question.  “Yes.”  The power of the young boy’s voice made my jaw drop, and Father retreat to the inside of the house.

            I awoke to an odd little man mumbling something about dinner, sliding a plate of bread and grits under the door, accompanied by a plastic cup of water.  I rolled over with a groan and let myself succumb to sleep, once again.

            A new picture formed in my mind.  This one came more quickly, but was less vivid.  The same young boy, I, was sitting in front of a black and white TV, shoveling cheerios into his mouth.  A stream of milk ran down his chin and back into the bowl.  On the television a stout man with a toupee broke away from a commercial involving singing socks and laundry detergent, talking intensely into a microphone.  Tim instantly sat up straight and all attention was on the news broadcast.

             “Today, in the small town of Greyville, the body of twenty-six year old Kathryn Deleroy was found in Larson Lake.  Scott McCoy and his daughter were fishing when they came across a badly mutilated body. An investigation was put into action immediately.  No evidence has been found, but the police are determined to find the person who so brutally killed this woman.  Now available to us is an interview with

the husband of the victim, Matthew Deleroy.”  Now I was watching just as intently as Tim, shocked out of disbelief, and yet not surprised.  Little Tim was staring, expressionless, at the television.  A single tear trickled down his cheek and off his chin, following the stream of milk into the bowl of cheerios.

            “I am heartbroken.  I hope whoever did this burns in hell.”  The voice of Father, Matthew Deleroy, floated across the room and I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of nausea. 

            “Thank you, Mr. Deleroy.”  The cameras went back to the reporter as he wrapped up the report.  “The prayers of this small town go out to Mr. Deleroy and his seven year old son, Timothy, in hopes that police will find the murderer and the family may sleep more easily.”

            This time I awoke to find myself vomiting violently over the side of my plywood bed.  My stomach wrenched, and I felt that every organ in my godforsaken body might just come up.

Ok, my thoughts.  First off, for some reason the formatting got messed up somewhere between copy and paste, so I'm sorry.

The good:

-I feel like I was pretty effective at writing a creepy little story, or the beginning of one at least.  I felt a little insecure posting it because I didn't want anyone to think that it reflected me.  Stephen King days.
-There were a few spots where this is not true, but for the most part I did a good job at avoiding redundancy.
-I could see some of my descriptions.  So that is good.

The bad:

-Commas everywhere.  Like I said before, I love them and I somehow need to learn how to cut back.  I'll just put all the "had"s here too.  Maybe they just bugged me.  And I'll lump any grammatical/formatting error here too.  I remember struggling with sentence comp in dialogue situations.
-Dialogue in general.  It has always been a struggle for me to write a dialogue that didn't feel forced or awkward.  Maybe because I'm not eloquent when speaking for realzies either.
-Dramatic.  Geebus.  A bit cheesy too.
-I did not write an outline for this story.  I had no idea what would happen.  This is always my problem.  Directionless, plotless.  I can put a pretty sentence together, and maybe string a few of those together to make a pretty paragraph, but the real essence of a good writer is plot.  Right?  This is THE BIG ONE for me, the reason I failed with this story then and continue to fail even now.  This is why I will never be a writer.

Observations please.

Novel page 3 of 4 plus TRAX adventures

You know it's a good day riding public transit when you see:

1) An adult carrying around one of those American Girl dolls that you can design to look like you.  Said adult was also wearing a matching outfit.

2) One of the largest men you've ever seen with one of the smallest dogs you've ever seen.

3) People from Honduras traveling to the Real stadium to see the U.S. Men's National vs. Honduras game.  Cool.

And here's a continuation of my story.  I'm a bit embarrassed that I decided to put this on here (the last two posts too) because I was so dramatic and cliche, but better here than on my old hard drive, never to be seen.

All was darkness, and the black was unbearable.  I was frightened and confused, lost in the shadows.  Just as panic was setting in, I caught a glimpse of orange.  Twisting together and unraveling again, teal and violet came into view.  Yellow swirled about, teasing the other colors with its vividness.  Gradually, more colors came out of their hibernation until every color imaginable danced together, to a hypnotic beat.  They were one and I was their offspring, gazing up at them with amazement and awe.

These colors gave birth to a new earth, an earth with crimson oceans and more beauty than ever known.  Warmth radiated from the soil and bathed my body in purity.  It was clear to me that I was in the wrong place.  Yet, I couldn’t turn away.  Something grasped my eyes and held tight, not that I put up much of a struggle anyway.  There was something about this heat, something familiar.  I pondered this warmth with a quirked brow.  The answer came to me in an almost eerie whisper in my mind.  It was love.  This was a world of affection, one not of hate or enemy’s blood.  I suddenly felt out of place and uncomfortable.  Sure that I was not supposed to be here, I searched for a way out.  Then, from this world a universe exploded, and light was shot from the heart of the explosion to every pore of my poor soul.

As this blinding light broke free, a sound began from the distance.  It was faint, but I could make out a melody.  Growing louder, the sound transformed into a tantalizing song.  Harmony combined with the melody as I was lured into captivation.  The serenade convinced me to stay, and stole from my mind all previous thoughts.

The colors settled into a picture, and in this picture I saw a grass field, very familiar to me, yet I couldn’t place it.  The music transformed into a voice, yelling a name I couldn’t quite make out.  I watched a young child scamper around, bounding through the long, lush green grass.  His laughter was much like the music, and it captured me as well.  My heart was lightened with the joy of this boy and in my mind, I thanked him.  Suddenly, the boy looked up at the source of the yelling.  My eyes drifted in the same direction and when the source was found, they grew wider as I saw my childhood home.  My own father was standing in the doorway, bellowing my name.  My younger self looked away quickly to avoid eye contact with the man, but I stared into his eyes with rage, and I felt my fists clench.  He gazed past me as if I was the soulless wisp of wind that I was, his eyes preying on the boy.  The boy shook with fear, but took a step toward the house. 

My first novel-continued

I've decided to post the whole thing on here-don't worry, I only made it to about five pages total.  I'll just split them up because I know long posts = people not having the time or interest in dropping everything to read.

Also, I have not edited this in any way since the last edit date on the file: 11/22/2003.  I know the too many commas (I still have a problem with this, I just love them sooo much) and the too many "had"s etc. can make for a painful read.  Too bad.

The dimly lit room was painted a fleshy color, one that had always made me nauseous.  I could hear a dripping sound coming from the corner of my 7x7 foot box, and I hoped the bucket put there to catch the falling liquid had not overflowed.  I stumbled over to the bucket and sure enough, water was gushing over the edge, reminding me of an open wound.  My food landed in the puddle nearby, and any sense of balance I had was lost as I crashed to the hard, unsympathetic ground.  A deep groan escaped me as I lie there, writhing in pain. 

The light bulb flickered, threatening to go out.  Sighing, I rolled onto my stomach and rancorously pulled my knees inward toward my chest.  Then, biting my bottom lip to contain the yells, I pushed my weight off the deathly cold floor with my arms.  Gingerly, I crawled over to my bed, limping as if I was a hunting dog injured during the chase. 

When I reached the bed, I paused to gaze upon my place of respite.  Four pieces of plywood, here because they were rejected by any standard of acceptable lumber, formed my mattress.  On top of this mattress rested two wool blankets; one to keep me from freezing to death during the night, and the other to prevent slivers in various locations.  Sadly enough, I had experienced some of these slivers in places that shouldn’t be mentioned.  The pillow was only a thin cotton one, but the smell of freshly cleaned linen found its way to me and I smiled.  I hoisted myself up to this resting-place, and buried my face in the pillow.  My head pulsated in agony, for the fall had worsened my headache.  But soon I found myself drifting to sleep, and any sleep light as it may be, was welcomed warmly.

The big dreams of a 17 year old

When I was 17 years old my life plan was to complete a novel by the time I graduated high school and sell enough to support me while I finished college and wrote a second novel, which would then support me as I wrote my third.  Teens always have big dreams.

This was the beginning of my first novel:

      The walls appeared to breathe in this perdition I had called home for the past few months.  They had a life of their own, and seemed to watch me with judging eyes as though I was a monster, a being of extreme horror.  I chose to smile back at them.  The curve of my lips was taunting, and I had, by this time, discovered that this tool could intimidate others to a point of submission.  Yet, the walls continued to mock me.  This brought upon a malicious cackle from within me, one that raised every hair on my body.

     What had once been a terrifying delirium had become a game of chicken in my mind.  I had won this game before, but I could feel myself growing weaker, these walls overpowering me.  In the darkness of my mind I searched for a way out, a manner in which to do away with the demons that had burrowed themselves into my head.  Like a parasite, they were sucking the life out of me, feeding on my essence. 

     I took a breath, closed my eyes, and imagined the walls enveloped in hungry flames, clawing at the chipped paint.  Sable black smoke twisted and curled into demented shapes and faces, with eyes hell bound and claws searching for a succulent piece of life to sink themselves into.  The smoke was a weaver, intertwining itself with the lapping flames and peeling wall.  The walls themselves much resembled a sunburnt back, the skin parting from the surface of the back and falling to the floor in a shriveled heap.  Heaving for breath, the walls struggled to fight against slumber, but the smoke was singing its virulent lullaby.  Flames crept to the ceiling, and the walls were swallowed.  I could hear their blood wrenching screams as I defeated them, perhaps for the last time.

     When I opened my eyes I had a pounding headache, but the walls ceased to breathe, and so I felt it was worth it.