Category Archives: doing it wrong

First tomato. Sherman and Mr. Peabody for scale. A week from now and I will have plenty more plus lemon cucumbers.

This week I tried to map out a conflict before I started rather than just thinking of a character and typing. It is a pretty half-assed entry but I made my stated goal of writing 6 brand new stories pulled out of nothing.

This week’s story is about a bored elder Aunt Beety who escapes quarantine to meet her sister and catch-up on gossip only to be thwarted by a tribal road block. She tells a fib to get around it with unexpected results.

Snippet:

“Well, I’m sick,” Beety said, touching her forehead. A flimsy folding table sat next to the nurse. She grabbed a little gadget and held it to Beety’s forehead.

Beety jerked back. “I do not consent.”

“You don’t have a temperature. Do you have symptoms?”

“Of course I do. Why would I be driving around by myself?”

Beety put her hand on the side of her face and grimaced then slid her hand down her neck and to her chest and forced a gargly cough.

“Yeah, that’s bad,” the nurse said. She picked up a walkie-talkie from the table. “We’ve got an elder gonna need an examination.”

Five (5!) pounds of roasted hatch chiles arrived on my doorstep Wednesday.

This is the final week of the write-a-thon but you may donate anytime. From the final report we had 535 writers with total donations of $19,839. OOF! So close to $20K

You can still sponsor me here.

You can sponsor one of our workshop leaders here: Neile.
Or tireless workshop supporter Kate.
My classmate: Maggie.
My classmate: Tracy.

If you want to check out the participants yourself: CW Write-a-thon Writers.

Here’s the address if you’d prefer to mail a donation:

Clarion West
P.O. Box 31264
Seattle, WA 98103-1264

Thanks again for your support.

Percy the fig tree in November, 2017.

This week I attempted to write something dark since I normally don’t even write characters who are mean to each other. I was not successful. This week’s story was 2400 words about Derrick, the bumbling thief who tries to steal $5000 from a lady upriver. It’s really 2400 words of throat clearing.

Snippet:

All he had to do was steal Dee’s dog, pretend to find it, bring it to her, get a reward, see where she grabbed the reward money from, knock her down, take the money, run to the dealer, get the drugs, set aside a portion for himself, sell the rest, and return the money to Dee.

What could go wrong?

I had a brilliant idea for a story as I was falling asleep and roused myself enough to jot a quick note so I would remember it in the morning.

The note says: Shallow NDN [illegible] $ Kids tribal [illegible.]

Feel free to steal.

Fig harvest 2020! So far we’ve picked 4. I ate 3 and gave 1 to Bob. There are 7 more out there.

The fundraiser continues. I seem to have deleted the progress report email but I think we raised almost $15K of our goal of $20K.

You can sponsor me here.

You can sponsor one of our workshop leaders here: Neile.
Or tireless workshop supporter Kate.
My classmate: Maggie.
My classmate: Tracy.

If you want to check out the participants yourself: CW Write-a-thon Writers.

Here’s the address if you’d prefer to mail a donation:

Clarion West
P.O. Box 31264
Seattle, WA 98103-1264

Thanks again for your support.