Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Here it it, ‘pre-Thursday’ already! It’s been my practice to put some words on ‘paper’ as a way to reduce lock-up come tomorrow (Thursday) morning, when zoe’s bloghop ‘Six Sentence Story‘ opens for business. It helps to not have to stare at a blank white page.
The theme, (of the bloghop), is simplicity itself: write a story in six, (and only six), sentences.
This week, our host, zoe, has charged us with creating a story of six sentence length using the word, ‘Point’ as the prompt, reference, starting p….
“No fricken way,” the writer stared at the list of definitions for the word ‘Point’, his confidence leaking like the hollow pillow of a life raft full of holes, CO2 canisters hissing like cats on a merry-go-round.
“I’ve lost it, finally a word without a story… or too many stories,” he felt the faux nausea of the previous nights non-sleep, eight hours of waking up too soon and not getting back to sleep soon enough; like an old movie where a plot point is announced by a display of newspapers being printed and put, full screen, headlines blaring, the jagged dream fragments ran through his head. The only bright spot was the memory of a creative twist to a night of worry-dreams, as he recalled that every other dream centered on relaying someone else’s six sentence story into the mornings collection.
Counting periods with the exaggerated care of a precocious four-year-old, all too aware of the how important it was to the adults, he counted, then remembered another metaphor to contrast the child image with that of an elderly adult, all Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea, like.
“Whats the point,” he thought, kicking the thorny deja vu chewing at his ankle across the floor and under the bed, he looked for a rhetorical insurance policy, “it’s always a good idea to muddle up the imagery and make it hard to remember if you’ve written this story before, otherwise you’d need pray that the group’s collective memory is all cozy with strangers, like a college dorm on a snowy Thursday night. Satisfied that he kicked at his rhetorical trail enough to evade all but the most ruthless trackers, he smiled with relief and punched in the last (period) .
About clarkscottroger
Frist.
I’ll come back to comment. Just needed to be “Frist”😆
lol
I wanted to make my point by pointing things in another direction.
Glad that it wasn’t just me… (or maybe it was)…finished writing at, like, 8:30 am
This struggle is familiar to me, I often wonder if the story in my head is one I dreamed of while sleeping, one I wrote long ago and no longer remember, or worse yet, one of someone else’s that I and liked. Often when I go back to read my posts from ten years ago they are as new to me as if she was a stranger. I like the way you put this six together, Clark, a window on your thought processes is always fascinating!
thank you Josie, that (the attitude among the participants) is what has allowed me enjoy these many weeks of Sixes… trying things out, and even when it doesn’t seem to work (when it’s time to hit ‘Publish’) knowing that it’s all in fun.
I never thought to count the periods. I had several stories running through my head from exactly 3:49 am until I fell back to sleep at 6:15 – just in time to get up at 6:30 and forget the words of wisdom Ms. Muse played in my subconscious brain so consciously aware of the time.
yeah I got caught by surprise this week, don’t always lay awake worried abut having a story, though trying to get some dream action on ‘Home and Heart’ prbaby didn’t help in the self-induced pressure department!
It is fun, and i enjoy your musings.
so do I (after the fact!) lol
Paranoid much? Lol…do what I do….NO don’t cuz half the time that’s nothing!
you people must have a cool faux-scientific term for that… what did you refer to it once as, hyper-vigilism or hyper-vigilantism or… was that hyper-ventriloquism lol
Hypervigilance
But I don’t mind hearing a good story twice, so it’s all good! “Eight hours of waking up too soon and not getting back to sleep soon enough…” I don’t think I’ve heard insomnia described better.
I remember reading a short story that describing the scariest of situations, the protagonist invented a machine that allowed him to enter the subjective world of a person in the grips of psychosis, the intent was to help them find their way out, or at very least, appreciate an alternative to the world they (the patient) was trapped in. the end of the book has a high drama, last minute ‘escape’ and everyone is relieved that the hero made it out of the patients mind, and everyone’s all ‘thank god, you’re back’.. and then everyone in the room runs and jumps out the window! then one more chapter and…everyone is relieved that they were able to pull the hero out of the last trap and…
ayeeii the power of repetition to imply a future either wonderful (and usually we think nothing of it) or totally horrible and those are the endless nights of half-sleep
damn wish I could remember the title of the story…. now that I’m all into the writing thing and such
Yes of course it is all in fun but that still doesn’t stop the writer agonising over words and expressions used, whether the readers will see the humor or pathos you intended. Most of all you want them to smile (or even cry) and say “I liked that, I wish I had written that”.
yeah… though I suspect I should appreciate the agonizing along with the enjoyazing (I’ve always believed that the one true cause of writer’s block is that voice that says,’oh man, that’s really bad, you can’t hit print on that‘
I often wake with a story in my head at four in the morning. Not ten too, not ten past, four precisely. So up I get, write it, and back to bed I go!
Call me crazy, but this is my fave one of yours yet, Clark–from the first sentence, “confidence leaking from life rafts and CO2 canisters hissing like cats on a merry-go-round”, to “deja vu chewing at ankle” and “rhetorical insurance policy”…fabulous phrasing!
thankee, Miz Cadillac
I don’t know why I can’t reply to your comments from my blog–I have to drive all the way over here each time, to simply say, “You’re Welcome” :) Have a good rest of the week–see you next time!