Creative Writing
Along with writing ads, I love writing stories. I’m especially interested in Young Adult fiction – the kind of thing that helped me imagine a bigger world and feel understood as a precocious, yet insanely stupid teen.
Cedar
A passage from my bad novel
The closest town to St. Joan was aptly called Alsace, Texas. Mom told me not to say it the French way, but like the name “Al” and “sace” as in “space.” She wanted to save me from the age-old “You’re not from around here, are you?”
From Alsace, the drive became a ramble. My MapQuest printout did nothing once I peeled off the highway, and the school had sent their own page of useless directions that were a real turn-right-at-the-rusty-mailbox situation. When I’d had enough, I looped back to town and parked at the podunk café in their little downtown.
A bell chimed over the door. The place was worn in style, but cute in spirit. It had probably seen better days 30 years ago. There was wood paneling behind the counter and wall-to-wall green carpet. An older man in khaki shorts read the paper at one of the tables, while a guy not much older than me worked the counter. He was leaned over writing something.
“You’re not from around here,” he said. If he’d looked up from his pencil and paper, I hadn’t noticed. I made a mental note to tell Mom she was right.
“I was wondering if someone could help me with—”
“Directions to St. Joan’s?” he cut in. How many confused private school families came traipsing through here?
I crept my information packet to the counter. I had organized it in a folder with the maps, schedules, and forms I’d need for orientation week. Now that I was close enough, I could see he was doing the crossword in the paper.
Again, he barely glanced when he said, “I didn’t know they gave you girls tests on the first day.”
“Kind of feel like you’re giving me one,” I said. Khaki Man behind me made what I could only make out to be a gruff laugh-ish noise.
He finally unfurled to consider me. He was good-looking in a conventional way.
“It’s easier to get there than you think.” He drew a rough map on the back of my information packet. “You want to get out of town going north on the main drag. It’ll come to a few weird bends and intersections. Keep going. You’ll cross the creek—carefully—then take the next left. It’s a dirt road. There’s an old tree with a swing. Keep climbing and you’ll get to the gate a half mile up. They leave it open. I won’t tell you what’s there yet, but you can’t miss it.
“Did you leave your folks in the car? You ought to get back before they combust.”
“No, they’re in Round Rock. What’s at the gate?”
“I just meant, most Joan girls get dropped off by their parents.”
“I guess I’m not familiar with the cultural customs,” I said. “Thank you for this.”
There was a pause. My feet weren’t moving to the door.
“Do you have a phone number?” He smiled barely enough to notice if not for the dimple high on his cheek.
“No.”
“Do you have a name? Because mine is Javier. Javi.”
“Anna.”
“I’m around for you, Anna.” Javier Javi went back to his crossword puzzle, my official permission to leave.
Around for me, I thought. He most definitely said that to all the “Joan girls,” but I had to hand it to him, it was charming.
I cheated a glance at Khaki Man on my way out, but we made eye contact over the Business section. He nodded goodbye, like he’d been part of the conversation that whole time.
Prompted Angst
What would it be like to not be creative? To see things so black-and-white, to look at the pale sky and hear the birds sing and not be curious? To not care? To believe a computer-generated word is in any way comparable to one that a person chose.
They searched for it, that perfect thing to say just what they mean. They caught a thought in a butterfly net and released it in open air hoping to be understood. They were resourceful and brave.
A tool to enhance creativity, the fallers and climbers say. To accelerate it.
There is no such thing. As part of us, as nature, art flows at its own pace. It takes many forms and has no ending. A river becomes an ocean becomes a
cloud becomes snow. An amoeba becomes an animal becomes a fish becomes a woman. What is next, we cannot know, but something will follow.
An inkling becomes an emotion becomes a vision becomes Macbeth.
We live in a made-up structure of money and product. Some believe that eliminates our own value. Their pretense does not subdue truth. They see the world in black-and-white, but the sky is blue.
Bright blue, reflecting the ocean.
And the birds sing because it is beautiful.
And we create because we are.
Life on Io
Flash fiction I wrote in a short story class at UCLA Extension
The speed at which the universe tore itself apart was unbearable. Lou could hardly hold her own matter together. The atoms, the stardust, the lightwaves—everything she had ever known—ripped through the great blackness, spinning out and out and out. It would never end.
She clutched at her brother’s hazy edges to keep from flying apart. A blinding comet seared past them in a scorching close call. Jack tried to lean down and wrap their wispy forms together, but the external force kept Lou clawing to survive.
“Be good,” Jack said. They held each other tight and ignored the squawking airport parking lot duty guy. Still, Lou wondered how miserable it must be to separate families every day.
“I’ll try,” she said.
MOVE IT! NO PARKING HERE. YOU CAN’T PARK HERE. YOU, GREEN HONDA.
As she dragged her well-loved Snoopy luggage set to the terminal, she couldn’t remember the last time she saw Jack cry like that.
Lou was going to burst at the seams from the pain of holding on. While the stars passed by, the roaring chaos all but split her head open. They needed a plan.
Then, like a miracle, a faraway swirl of color spun gently alone. An oasis anchored by some huge, scarlet mass. Lou pulled at Jack. Her delicate fingers fought the current to point at the body in the distance.
A meteor was gaining on them too, headed directly at her target. She loosened her grasp, ready to hop onto the icy rock. Dangling off of Jack, she was even less stable than before.
She thought she saw him shake his head.
Certain he would follow anyway, she let go.
“Ginger ale, please,” Lou said. She’d been mentally rehearsing her order since ten minutes ago, when the flight attendant popped up with his notepad five rows ahead. She slid her pink Target headphones back on. Neil Young brought her to a humid summer night in the sticks. Her mom
and uncle sang by a damp campfire, while she and Jack cajoled their cousins into playing Harry Potter with twig wands. To all, getting eaten alive by chiggers felt worth it when there were s’mores on the fire. Geometric pastures scattered into parched canyons as the world spun beneath her. She knit in the light of the tiny window and sniffled.
The meteor smacked Lou in the back and rushed her and Jack away from the centrifugal madness. Energy coursed through her. The stars slowed around them, entangling the universe in secure spirals and webs. Newborn nebulae formed velvety clouds throughout space. As the swirly moon grew closer, it too became more beautiful every second. The vivid oranges looked like thick, hot canyons, while the periwinkle ripples wrapped the rest of the body in stunning snow.
Lou landed in a gentle drop-off while the meteor melted into the warmth of the surface. She was brought right to this place. Meant to be here.
Only when she looked around, she was missing somebody.
After searching the cosmos, the craters, and the caves, Lou found a little blanket of golden lava and tucked herself in. She pretended Jack held her, as he had done for all existence in their cozy star.
Lou hoped the west coasters couldn’t peg her as a hick. Their suspiciously flawless faces picked pricey-looking suitcases off the carousel. She felt aware of her acne scars and genetically small-to-medium sized lips. The silver expanse of baggage claim turned her stomach worse than the flight.
Her Uber guy seemed nice. She controlled her accent as they chatted. Stucco apartments and bungalows passed under an overcast sky. Everything looked different here. She didn’t know why.
She thanked the driver and hauled the Snoopies up to her month-to-month studio. She punched in the code she’d requested—Jack’s birthday backwards—and there it was, just like the Zillow pictures.
She grabbed the ladybug blanket from her big suitcase and curled into bed five feet from the kitchen. The cat hair she hadn’t washed irritated her face, but she held the fleece up to her chin and sunk into sleep.
Kind reminder that as a human author, my intellectual property is protected under federal copyright law.
Many thanks for reading this far.