I thought I'd start with a picture of the Laocoon sculpture. My professor brought it up in class today and until then I'd completely forgotten I've seen this beautiful piece of art in person at the Vatican Museum in Rome. Now I can't stop thinking about it. It's such a passionate piece of art and perfects something I strive for in my writing all the time. It's powerful and elegant and so emotional. I love it.
Next-- I'm thinking it's about time to share some of my fiction writing with you. To start us off, here's a "short short" (a piece of fiction that's around 300 words give or take a little).
Experiments in Lewisburg, Ohio
In the summer we would roll up our pants and wade in the river that cut across our farm in Lewisburg, Ohio, trying to catch crawfish, upending rocks and splashing and screaming if we thought we saw a snake. Bernie was my best friend back then. We came up with the greatest plans.
When we were eight we decided that chickens not being able to fly just had to be a hoax. All birds could fly, that much we knew. The idea came to us when we were jumping on the trampoline one day, pretending to be rockets, seeing who could shoot up the fastest. When my mom went to the grocery store that afternoon we got started. We visited the henhouse and chose the chicken that we thought had the best looking wings. “Oh yeah,” Bernie said, when I pointed out the hen, “That old biddy can fly.”
We put the hen carefully on the trampoline and climbed up after her. We walked gently towards the nervous, clucking bird. Bernie’s eyes locked with mine and we grabbed each other’s hands, making a bridge over the bird. “NOW!” I shouted.
We jumped at the same time as high as we could, landing deep in the surface of the trampoline. We dropped our hands and then rolled apart just in time to see the chicken soaring into the air squawking and flapping her wings uselessly against the bright blue summer sky. She plummeted back down and we heard two sickening cracks in quick succession as the chicken’s legs broke on impact. The hen didn’t make any more noise. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were glazed over. “Oh shit,” said Bernie, “That bird sure as hell can’t fly.”
Dinner that night was chicken cooked in garlic and lemon with our least favorite vegetable, peas. Bernie was making a funny face when Mom put the plates down in front of us and I felt a hard knocking against the insides of my stomach. “Eat up girls,” my Mom said, “I want to see clean plates.” I'm really enjoying this form of fiction writing (new to me this semester) because you can be as flat out crazy as you want and the short short just lets you. There are no rules to writing a piece of short short fiction. You should try one yourself. It's a lot of fun. Let me know how they go!
Happy Monday folks
Chelsea
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