Drabble Five

A Conversation

“We can go anywhere in the whole wide universe that you want to go!”

“Can we go home?”

“But…we can go anywhere in the whole wide universe that you want to go.”

“Yes, but I’m tired, and this place is cold.”

“We can go somewhere warm…?”

“It would still be cold, I think, in some way.”

“Well…I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s alright. I was excited in the beginning. I thought that doing it together would make all the difference.”

“But?”

“But, it’s cold here. And I’m tired. And home is the only place that really smells like you.”

Intro-drabble-spection

That last story was a lot of fun to write, mostly because I had to be really creative with word usage.

As I see it, this is the challenge of writing drabble:
-Say what you want to say as quickly as possible without sounding rushed
-Trim that down so that it still says what you want it to but meets the exact word limit

100 words is so few...heh, I was actually worried with the idea for #4 that I was going to have trouble meeting it. That's the last time I worry about that, because it's pretty silly to assume that I can't find at least 100 to say about, well, almost anything.

You just have to get creative. So "to be precise" becomes "specifically." "Eating her way through" becomes "eating through." And of course I find places where I actually want to add words...often to keep the phrasing from sounding rushed...and then I need to hunt for places to trim more to make up for it.

I'm thinking now that I don't really mind the beginning-middle-end format that I brought up before...because I understand why I'm putting it in. I want these "stories" to feel complete; I don't want them to feel like excerpts or like I just trailed off. So, while I do want to experiment with the format some, I'm going to try to avoid feeling self-conscious about my natural tendencies. I will also try to avoid every ending being a crazy/creepy twist, but I think that's doable.


Anyway, another one up tonight, hopefully.

Drabble Four

Time Flies When You’re Eating It Up

Lilly enjoyed birthdays—specifically, her own. She just couldn’t get enough presents. The day after her birthday was always an enormous letdown, and she despaired that it only happened once a year.

She grabbed the page-a-day calendar from her desk and began tearing off the pages and stuffing them into her mouth. Eating through the entire year took hours, and she ended up dousing the pages in chocolate syrup in order to get them down.

She went to bed with indigestion, but she was confident that tomorrow would bring more presents.

Maybe someone would give her a new page-a-day calendar.

Don't you wish you were here right now?

There's really nothing like spending a hot summer afternoon baking cupcakes in your underwear.

(There's also nothing like spending a hot summer afternoon baking in your underwear to make a woman feel like she's in some "Fried Green Tomatoes" movie.)

So, no, this isn't a drabble, but they are yellow cupcakes with orange glaze (made with fresh squeezed orange juice).

I'll put a drabble up by the end of the night, but in the meantime:

You could read a book!

Happy Labor Day...do something that you wouldn't normally be able to do on a Monday.

I'm working on a couple of ideas for this week's drabbles, but in the meantime, here's a book recommendation.

I am, and have been for about a month now, in the midst of reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. That doesn't sound like a great way to introduce a book I'm going to recommend, but the truth is that it just took me a little while to get into it, and only in these past couple weeks have I really been devoting the necessary attention to the task of reading.

I pick up this novel kind of randomly. I'd heard of the author and could see the Pulitzer sticker on the cover. When I found out by the reading the back that it was the story of two boys in New York in the 30s and 40s who write a comic book together, I decided it would probably be a good buy, and did so.

The reason it took me awhile to get into the book is that it's very long-winded. Elaborate, lengthy, complex sentences...beautiful descriptions, but ones that require a lot of attention from the reader. So, not a book to be sped read. I liked it from the beginning but just didn't commit enough. Now, I'm really enjoying.

It very well might be the most romantic book I've read in a long time. Not just the actual romances in the novel, either; the whole book is a romance. (The actual romances are, however, quite romantic.) It's a love story about art, and history, and New York, and growing up, and I think that this perspective of it helps explain the long-windedness. I think my own romantic inclinations are on the long-winded side.

Of course, there is a more taciturn form of romance, as well, understated rather than over.

Anyway, I highly recommend this novel, even though I haven't finished it yet. If the end changes my mind, I'll do the responsible thing and let you know, but I doubt that's going to happen.