It's been over four months, but I'm back. After finishing 30 Days I lost momentum, and I've decided the best way to get that back is to start writing every day again. I don't plan on a particular time span--it might be 30 days, it might be 3 months, it might be a year. Who knows.
Since there's less structure this time, I'm going to worry less about missing days. If I'm tired or busy, there's always tomorrow. The only excuse I won't allow is lack of inspiration. What the hell is this writer's block, anyways? We'll have no more of that. ^_^
This is nothing in particular--no idea where it will go, if anywhere. I'm just trying to get back into writing in general.
***
The house began as a few lines drawn in the margins of Anne's math homework. A simple floor plan, it wouldn't have seemed much to anyone else. There was a bathroom, a small bedroom, a kitchen with an eating nook, and a sitting area.
A small house, just big enough for a single person to live in (and perhaps a cat). No sharing the bathroom during the morning rush, no sitting cramped at the kitchen table, elbows knocking. Oh, and no snoring through thin walls.
The paper itself was turned in the next day. It was returned graded (13/15), and later lost, but the lines remained in Anne's memory. That summer when she visited her grandfather she spent hours reading on his front porch, relaxing in the warm breezes. A few mental strokes added a porch, and a few curves a hammock.
Apartment life during college added small things--a clothes washer, a desk. The book shelves she had imagined in the sitting area grew bigger, as did her imagined closet.
Several years later, as Anne lay next to Mark late one night, she made the bedroom large enough for a queen-sized bed. She moved the bathroom, erasing lines and drawing others, and fit in a nursery next door. Closing her eyes, she thought that yellow was a nice color for the walls. Or perhaps green.
Far too soon, though, there was no need for a larger bed and a larger bedroom to accommodate it. A few lines made short work of the bedroom, and in the nursery it was easy to make the cot a sofa bed, the changing table a desk. Easy to draw the lines, at least; harder to erase the lines that had come before them. She never could get rid of their ghosts left by her eraser.
The night Anne was phoned by the hospital, she added a building to her house. Unable to sleep on the unexpected flight, she imagined it to stave off her worry. A stone's throw from the main house... She listed the things it would have. A kitchenette, an accessible bathroom with rails and a seat in the tub, a bedroom with no obstacles for tripping. The last was foremost in her mind.
Early the next morning, when she entered the room and saw her dad in the bed, and her mother sleeping in the chair next to him, she moved the building closer.
***
Well, it's a short start, and I don't know how to end it, but that doesn't matter. I like the concept, but at the moment this is more of an outline than a story. Ah well~ ^_^
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hello, KC; an evocative piece, which builds (how appropriate) very neatly. I think I know where the inspiration lies... from a big fan, as you can probably guess from how I've addressed you...
ReplyDelete^_^ Thanks~
ReplyDeleteI like the thing about building the house in the head. I was a bit jarred by going from "possibly building a family with boyfriend" to "wanting to take care of parents." I kind of felt like you could have just focused on one or the other to have more of a clear direction, or maybe put more time in between the shift, or something. But there at the end it confused me and I had to read it a few times to get the two things she had been considering straight.
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