file under 'will never be published' (no. 11)

It's been a while.

I'm very rusty at writing at the moment, which leaves me feeling particularly rickety. Feeling rickety is fine if you're a swing or a gate, I suspect, but as a human being (at least, I think I still qualify as one of those), it's not the most pleasant feeling. One feels one could fall down at any moment, and falling down is not an option, so ...

File Under 'Will Never Be Published' (no. 11): The First Cold Read

Background: There is a fun short story competition I used to enter from time to time. I won it once --this was another entry for the same competition. The contest no longer exists, which is a shame. It was good fun.

For this particular month, the entrants were provided the opening phrase, “I looked into her eyes and I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain, but then …”. I don't know why, but the phrasing bothered me. The entire short story came from improvising after that initial annoyance. Writers get their inspiration from odd places sometimes. I get my inspiration from odd places sometimes. There's nothing wrong with odd, but there may be something wrong with run-on sentences.



The First Cold Read

“I looked into her eyes and I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain, but then …”

“Run-on.”

“What?”

“You’ve got, like, three sentences going there. It’s a run-on.”

“Fine. I looked into her eyes. Stop. I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain. Stop. But then …”

“That should be a comma. It was only two sentences.”

“What should be a comma?”

“I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain, comma, but then.”

She stared at him.

“Fine. I looked into her eyes. Stop. I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain, comma, but then …”

“Don’t you feel like this has been done before. I mean, it’s a cliché, isn’t it? The guy does the wrong thing, the woman gets angry at him but keeps it all in, the guy realizes it too late ...”

“It’s not a cliché. It’s a common conflict, and stories need conflict.”

“Yeah, but it’s the easy way, isn’t it?”

“You know what? Never mind. I’m going to work on the story. I needed to edit it before I read it to you, anyway.”

She began to turn in the chair.

“No, it’s good. Keep going. I want to be supportive. Go on.”

She stopped.

“Okay. I looked into her eyes. I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain, but then …”

“Do you need to use the word ‘that’?”

“What?”

“I could see the anger that she was fighting to contain. Does ‘that’ need to be there? I could see the anger she was fighting to contain makes sense, even without ‘that’. Saves you a word.”

“Okay …”

She hit the delete key with excessive force four times.

“Is everything okay, honey?”

“Mmhm. Why do you ask?”

“You seem upset.”

“Upset? No. Why would I be upset?”

“I don’t know. You wanted to read me what you wrote, and I’m listening, but you seem upset.”

“No, I’m fine. I think I’m going to do some editing.”

“But you wanted to read me what you wrote. Are you sure?”

“We can do it later.”

“Okay. You’re going to edit, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You said you were going to edit.”

“Yeah, so then why did you ask if I was going to edit? Are you saying it’s bad?”

“No! I was just asking! Wow. You know what? I’m going to go watch some TV.”

She watched as he walked through the doorway.

Once she heard the TV turn on in the other room, she turned to face the computer again and began to type:

I looked into her eyes. I could see the anger she was fighting to contain, but then, suddenly, I met with a fortunate accident; it was fortunate I had the accident, or else, she would have killed me.