help! please. :]
okay, i need some help/advice.
i really want to start writing again and i have a few stories that i've started and have some kind of idea for, but it's been so long since i've just sat down and written something that it feel daunting to start any one of them.
SO, i'm asking for help.
i'm going to post what i have of each story so far, and i'd like you guys to pick which story you would like to see me finish the most. i'd like to try and have it done in a week and posted somewhere [here, obviously so you can read it] for critique and such. i know the only way to get better is to write and read and listen to suggestions.
so, if you have time, i'd love it if you'd read these and just leave a comment as to which you'd like to read the most. the one with the most votes will be the one i work on right away, but i want to finish all of these, so if the one you like isn't chosen, i promise it's going to get worked on eventually.
and the more encouragement/kicks in the ass i have, the more i'll get done.
so, thanks for reading [if you do] and i'm interested to see which ones you like. :]
Life played like scenes from a movie in her head. Most of the time, things felt out of sequence and a little grainy, like she was looking back on her life from the future as she lived it. She liked that feeling; it made her feel like maybe she had a perspective where she could learn something in the moment instead of in hindsight. Like she knew something before she was supposed to.
She also loved the feeling of nostalgia she almost always carried with her. Like the songs in her head-her own personal soundtrack- with their old feelings of a time she never knew that added a sense of longing to her life, and every decision she made catered to keeping that feeling around. Twenty three years of this feeling from a girl who grew up with too many movies her mom loved and records her dad played her before he decided he didn’t want them anymore. It’s that kind of movie her life turned into, and while she hated the potential cliché, she was determined to keep her movie wistful, not overdone.
The night was unseasonably warm in the little Midwestern town she called home, called her prison. The sliding door to their patio was open and she, in her pajamas (that consisted entirely of his clothes), was wrapped in a blanket. He was in jeans and his favorite old t-shirt. The front door was locked and the lights off as they got high, a candle burning and “Wish You Were Here” playing.
He laughed when she stared at the flame for minutes, enthralled in the yellow, orange and red dancing in mid-air. She felt infinite in that moment, like that book she read once, and this mouth moved slower than it did when they were sober. She giggled, which made him giggle and soon they couldn’t remember what they were laughing about, but their stomachs were sore from unused muscles getting a workout. Then they were kissing and she interrupted to tell him how soft his lips felt that day. He grinned; she sighed.
“When are we getting out of here?” she asked, tone turning serious and thoughtful. He sighed and looked out the open door at the rain dotting the patio.
“Soon, babe. Soon,” he promised. She smiled and pulled him to her again, his warmth putting an end to her inexplicable shivering. Her body felt tired then, and when a song about love in a coffee shop came on, she let her head rest on a pillow on the floor, pulling him down next to her.
I look at you in the light of the morning. The way it hits your face, I either want to slap you or kiss you. I can’t decide so I get out of bed and pull on some clothes. You move, looking for me in your sleep, and groggily ask me to come back to bed. I can’t. I have work. Fuck work you say, and the way your hair stands up makes me crazy. I sigh and lay back down next to you, knowing my clothes will be on the floor again soon. When you whisper, I love you in my ear, it makes butterflies to insane inside me. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re cheating on me.
Let’s go away for the weekend, you suggest. Just us. You and me, a hotel, and a whole weekend to do whatever we want. You snake your arms around my waist and there’s nothing I want more than to stay there forever. For us to go away forever. I agree to go, of course. It won’t be easy for you to screw someone else with me in the hotel, but I’m sure you’ll manage. You ask if I love you and I not instinctively, more out of habit than actual feeling. I don’t mention the message she left on my machine when she called. She doesn’t know I live here. This is my apartment. And you gave her my number. You bastard.
A weekend at the beach, full of sun, sand and sex. Three of my favorite things. We both pretended you didn’t call her while we were gone, and we both pretended you weren’t thinking about her. You gave me kisses that made me shake and I gave you everything but the best part of me. We both seemed fine with our lies.
“Did you know that every stoplight on my way out of town was green? Like something was telling me I was making the right decision and to get the hell away form you and this place as fast as I could.” She laid in his apartment, in his bed, in his arms.
“Nope,” he sighed, eyes closed and feeling relaxed. The radio was still on, quiet background noise that helped her sleep.
She fit nicely into the crook of his arm, covers pulled up under her arms but laying low on his waist. She took a deep breath and rand her fingertips over the darkened skin a few inches above his left nipple; the tattoo said her name: Maia. She laughed quietly to herself and he opened his eyes.
“What?” he asked. She’d missed the soothing deepness of his voice.
“I still can’t believe you thought getting my name tattooed on your chest would make me stay.” The skin was soft, but even without looking, she could feel exactly where she was on him forever. He laughed now.
“Hey, I was young and stupid. I thought that was what you wanted from me.” He paused, looking down at her, looking older and wiser and just as beautiful as he remembered. Then, he thought of his wife. “Explaining that to Casey the first time we slept together was fun.” Maia laughed.
“I’ll bet.” They were quiet for a few minutes before she spoke again. “Why didn’t you try to find me when I left?” He looked down into her eyes.
“Did you want me to?” he asked. She smiled.
“No. but it would have been nice of you to try. I would have probably broken down and come home if you’d asked me to.” He bit his lip and sighed.
“You want the truth?” She closed her eyes and thought for a minute.
“Yes,” she said.
“I didn’t try to find you because I didn’t want to. I was just as fed up with the stupid games as you were. Just as tired. Everything you said in the letter, I felt the same.” He wiped away the tear sliding slowly down her cheek toward his chest. “I still have the letter, by the way.” She smiled.
“We really didn’t work back then, did we?” He laughed.
“In the beginning we did. But later? God, no. We were terrible. But this,” he pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “This feels right.” She sighed and nodded her head, absentmindedly fingering the soft, dark skin of his tattoo.
“Well, there is one small problem,” she said.
It was still dark when I woke up. The clock glowed 5:42. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the open window at the street three stories below. She’d called me late that night to come over because she couldn’t sleep alone, which she’d been doing more recently. I sighed; she moved and the space in which is fit was empty.
“Come back to me,” she mumbled sleepily, barely opening her eyes to see where I’d gone. I just nodded and her eye closed again. After a few minutes of neither of us moving, she sat up, looking for at the clock, then at me. “Why are we up so early?” She didn’t move, just wiped her eyes and looked at my back, waiting for me to move. I finally turned and looked at her, hair a mess and eyes heavy.
“We’re not,” I said and moved back up the bed to her. She smiled as I moved and waited for me to get comfortable before she laid by me, head resting on my arm and her body half on mine. Her skin smelled like yesterday’s shower and sweat from whoever she forgot her troubles in that evening. She smiled up at me and sighed contentedly, as if there were nowhere else she wanted to be. “Go back to sleep,” I told her quietly. She did. Her breathing evened and it got harder for me to keep my eyes open.
When I woke up again, it was light and I was alone. I heard her moving in the bathroom so I waited, quiet, for her to come back to bed. When the door opened and she appeared, looking like she had at six o’clock that morning, I smiled. She grinned and crawled back into bed to me.
“Afternoon.” I looked over at the clock. 12:19. Damn. A realization and I practically jumped out of bed.
“I have to be at work,” I breathe, frantically searching for my pants. She laughed.
“Hey, it’s okay. I called them. Said you were sick.” My first thought was annoyance, but it was a sweet gesture: she wanted me to stay. I took a deep breath and sat on the bed.
“So what are we doing today?” I asked. She slithered up the bed, taking her position, sprawled where I was laying.
She looked in the mirror and wiped away the dark circles; this mascara was supposed to be waterproof. So much for being strong, she thought and sighed as she reapplied the lies. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and deep down she knew it was him. It had been thirty two days, twelve hours and forthy three minutes since he’d called, texted, acknowledged her existence. Another sigh and she pulled the phone form her pocket and flipped it open too late; he’d hung up already. Should have been quicker on the draw.
Her best friend’s voice echoed in her head, begging her to stop this. It reminded her that there were two innocent victims in this situation and neither of them were the ones wrapped in each other in a way they shouldn’t be. They were the wife and the baby, oblivious to who he really was: a liar, a cheater, “the perfect man except for those facts.”
She wished her friend’s voice was louder, that it could somehow stop her in her tracks. But she just couldn’t help herself. She scrolled through her contacts until she reached his name and hit ‘Talk.’
The constant chirp of the cicadas almost overpowers the noise of the cars that go by. The house under construction across the street is quiet, a nice change from the racket of the bulldozer a few weeks ago that seemed to be pounding on rocks for no other reason than to make noise. I feel a pang of guilt every time I take a drag of this cigarette in my hand; I can’t even count he cumber of times I’ve told my mom that those things will kill her. But I figure it might calm me down, maybe get rid of a little bit of this feeling I always have in my stomach: this feeling like I’m always waiting for something better to come along.
It’s August but it doesn’t feel like it. It’d call the weather perfect, but the few fluffy clouds that have stuck around from the rains over the last week hide the sun and make it feel like the rain could come back at any time. The rain is depressing. The air is cooler than it should be and the breeze that blows when the clouds move in front of the sun gives me goosebumps. My arms are bare; a white men’s wife beater and jeans were what I threw on today. It’s a simple outfit; I guess I felt the need for simplicity today.
My stomach is full of faux-Indian food and after the cigarette I feel tired, ready for a nap. A day of doing nothing is hard work. I keep checking my phone, hoping somebody’s decided to talk to me.
She tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the phone on the other end to ring. She looked at her watch for the third time in as many seconds and muttered to herself.
“Come on, pick up,” she said. She sat in her car in the parking lot of his apartment building. She couldn’t exactly say how she ended up there, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Hello, my belle,” he said. She rolled her eyes at the sound of his voice, but the question of why she called him never crossed her mind. Why she always ended up back here, she never thought about; it was instinct that this point.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She sounded annoying, the way she always did when she talked to him until their bodies were together and she felt like she could breathe again. He laughed.
“Waiting for you to come up,” he said. She looked up at his window where he stood waving. She was sure she could see the smug look on his face.
i really want to start writing again and i have a few stories that i've started and have some kind of idea for, but it's been so long since i've just sat down and written something that it feel daunting to start any one of them.
SO, i'm asking for help.
i'm going to post what i have of each story so far, and i'd like you guys to pick which story you would like to see me finish the most. i'd like to try and have it done in a week and posted somewhere [here, obviously so you can read it] for critique and such. i know the only way to get better is to write and read and listen to suggestions.
so, if you have time, i'd love it if you'd read these and just leave a comment as to which you'd like to read the most. the one with the most votes will be the one i work on right away, but i want to finish all of these, so if the one you like isn't chosen, i promise it's going to get worked on eventually.
and the more encouragement/kicks in the ass i have, the more i'll get done.
so, thanks for reading [if you do] and i'm interested to see which ones you like. :]
Life played like scenes from a movie in her head. Most of the time, things felt out of sequence and a little grainy, like she was looking back on her life from the future as she lived it. She liked that feeling; it made her feel like maybe she had a perspective where she could learn something in the moment instead of in hindsight. Like she knew something before she was supposed to.
She also loved the feeling of nostalgia she almost always carried with her. Like the songs in her head-her own personal soundtrack- with their old feelings of a time she never knew that added a sense of longing to her life, and every decision she made catered to keeping that feeling around. Twenty three years of this feeling from a girl who grew up with too many movies her mom loved and records her dad played her before he decided he didn’t want them anymore. It’s that kind of movie her life turned into, and while she hated the potential cliché, she was determined to keep her movie wistful, not overdone.
The night was unseasonably warm in the little Midwestern town she called home, called her prison. The sliding door to their patio was open and she, in her pajamas (that consisted entirely of his clothes), was wrapped in a blanket. He was in jeans and his favorite old t-shirt. The front door was locked and the lights off as they got high, a candle burning and “Wish You Were Here” playing.
He laughed when she stared at the flame for minutes, enthralled in the yellow, orange and red dancing in mid-air. She felt infinite in that moment, like that book she read once, and this mouth moved slower than it did when they were sober. She giggled, which made him giggle and soon they couldn’t remember what they were laughing about, but their stomachs were sore from unused muscles getting a workout. Then they were kissing and she interrupted to tell him how soft his lips felt that day. He grinned; she sighed.
“When are we getting out of here?” she asked, tone turning serious and thoughtful. He sighed and looked out the open door at the rain dotting the patio.
“Soon, babe. Soon,” he promised. She smiled and pulled him to her again, his warmth putting an end to her inexplicable shivering. Her body felt tired then, and when a song about love in a coffee shop came on, she let her head rest on a pillow on the floor, pulling him down next to her.
I look at you in the light of the morning. The way it hits your face, I either want to slap you or kiss you. I can’t decide so I get out of bed and pull on some clothes. You move, looking for me in your sleep, and groggily ask me to come back to bed. I can’t. I have work. Fuck work you say, and the way your hair stands up makes me crazy. I sigh and lay back down next to you, knowing my clothes will be on the floor again soon. When you whisper, I love you in my ear, it makes butterflies to insane inside me. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re cheating on me.
Let’s go away for the weekend, you suggest. Just us. You and me, a hotel, and a whole weekend to do whatever we want. You snake your arms around my waist and there’s nothing I want more than to stay there forever. For us to go away forever. I agree to go, of course. It won’t be easy for you to screw someone else with me in the hotel, but I’m sure you’ll manage. You ask if I love you and I not instinctively, more out of habit than actual feeling. I don’t mention the message she left on my machine when she called. She doesn’t know I live here. This is my apartment. And you gave her my number. You bastard.
A weekend at the beach, full of sun, sand and sex. Three of my favorite things. We both pretended you didn’t call her while we were gone, and we both pretended you weren’t thinking about her. You gave me kisses that made me shake and I gave you everything but the best part of me. We both seemed fine with our lies.
“Did you know that every stoplight on my way out of town was green? Like something was telling me I was making the right decision and to get the hell away form you and this place as fast as I could.” She laid in his apartment, in his bed, in his arms.
“Nope,” he sighed, eyes closed and feeling relaxed. The radio was still on, quiet background noise that helped her sleep.
She fit nicely into the crook of his arm, covers pulled up under her arms but laying low on his waist. She took a deep breath and rand her fingertips over the darkened skin a few inches above his left nipple; the tattoo said her name: Maia. She laughed quietly to herself and he opened his eyes.
“What?” he asked. She’d missed the soothing deepness of his voice.
“I still can’t believe you thought getting my name tattooed on your chest would make me stay.” The skin was soft, but even without looking, she could feel exactly where she was on him forever. He laughed now.
“Hey, I was young and stupid. I thought that was what you wanted from me.” He paused, looking down at her, looking older and wiser and just as beautiful as he remembered. Then, he thought of his wife. “Explaining that to Casey the first time we slept together was fun.” Maia laughed.
“I’ll bet.” They were quiet for a few minutes before she spoke again. “Why didn’t you try to find me when I left?” He looked down into her eyes.
“Did you want me to?” he asked. She smiled.
“No. but it would have been nice of you to try. I would have probably broken down and come home if you’d asked me to.” He bit his lip and sighed.
“You want the truth?” She closed her eyes and thought for a minute.
“Yes,” she said.
“I didn’t try to find you because I didn’t want to. I was just as fed up with the stupid games as you were. Just as tired. Everything you said in the letter, I felt the same.” He wiped away the tear sliding slowly down her cheek toward his chest. “I still have the letter, by the way.” She smiled.
“We really didn’t work back then, did we?” He laughed.
“In the beginning we did. But later? God, no. We were terrible. But this,” he pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “This feels right.” She sighed and nodded her head, absentmindedly fingering the soft, dark skin of his tattoo.
“Well, there is one small problem,” she said.
It was still dark when I woke up. The clock glowed 5:42. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring out the open window at the street three stories below. She’d called me late that night to come over because she couldn’t sleep alone, which she’d been doing more recently. I sighed; she moved and the space in which is fit was empty.
“Come back to me,” she mumbled sleepily, barely opening her eyes to see where I’d gone. I just nodded and her eye closed again. After a few minutes of neither of us moving, she sat up, looking for at the clock, then at me. “Why are we up so early?” She didn’t move, just wiped her eyes and looked at my back, waiting for me to move. I finally turned and looked at her, hair a mess and eyes heavy.
“We’re not,” I said and moved back up the bed to her. She smiled as I moved and waited for me to get comfortable before she laid by me, head resting on my arm and her body half on mine. Her skin smelled like yesterday’s shower and sweat from whoever she forgot her troubles in that evening. She smiled up at me and sighed contentedly, as if there were nowhere else she wanted to be. “Go back to sleep,” I told her quietly. She did. Her breathing evened and it got harder for me to keep my eyes open.
When I woke up again, it was light and I was alone. I heard her moving in the bathroom so I waited, quiet, for her to come back to bed. When the door opened and she appeared, looking like she had at six o’clock that morning, I smiled. She grinned and crawled back into bed to me.
“Afternoon.” I looked over at the clock. 12:19. Damn. A realization and I practically jumped out of bed.
“I have to be at work,” I breathe, frantically searching for my pants. She laughed.
“Hey, it’s okay. I called them. Said you were sick.” My first thought was annoyance, but it was a sweet gesture: she wanted me to stay. I took a deep breath and sat on the bed.
“So what are we doing today?” I asked. She slithered up the bed, taking her position, sprawled where I was laying.
She looked in the mirror and wiped away the dark circles; this mascara was supposed to be waterproof. So much for being strong, she thought and sighed as she reapplied the lies. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and deep down she knew it was him. It had been thirty two days, twelve hours and forthy three minutes since he’d called, texted, acknowledged her existence. Another sigh and she pulled the phone form her pocket and flipped it open too late; he’d hung up already. Should have been quicker on the draw.
Her best friend’s voice echoed in her head, begging her to stop this. It reminded her that there were two innocent victims in this situation and neither of them were the ones wrapped in each other in a way they shouldn’t be. They were the wife and the baby, oblivious to who he really was: a liar, a cheater, “the perfect man except for those facts.”
She wished her friend’s voice was louder, that it could somehow stop her in her tracks. But she just couldn’t help herself. She scrolled through her contacts until she reached his name and hit ‘Talk.’
The constant chirp of the cicadas almost overpowers the noise of the cars that go by. The house under construction across the street is quiet, a nice change from the racket of the bulldozer a few weeks ago that seemed to be pounding on rocks for no other reason than to make noise. I feel a pang of guilt every time I take a drag of this cigarette in my hand; I can’t even count he cumber of times I’ve told my mom that those things will kill her. But I figure it might calm me down, maybe get rid of a little bit of this feeling I always have in my stomach: this feeling like I’m always waiting for something better to come along.
It’s August but it doesn’t feel like it. It’d call the weather perfect, but the few fluffy clouds that have stuck around from the rains over the last week hide the sun and make it feel like the rain could come back at any time. The rain is depressing. The air is cooler than it should be and the breeze that blows when the clouds move in front of the sun gives me goosebumps. My arms are bare; a white men’s wife beater and jeans were what I threw on today. It’s a simple outfit; I guess I felt the need for simplicity today.
My stomach is full of faux-Indian food and after the cigarette I feel tired, ready for a nap. A day of doing nothing is hard work. I keep checking my phone, hoping somebody’s decided to talk to me.
She tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the phone on the other end to ring. She looked at her watch for the third time in as many seconds and muttered to herself.
“Come on, pick up,” she said. She sat in her car in the parking lot of his apartment building. She couldn’t exactly say how she ended up there, but she wasn’t surprised.
“Hello, my belle,” he said. She rolled her eyes at the sound of his voice, but the question of why she called him never crossed her mind. Why she always ended up back here, she never thought about; it was instinct that this point.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She sounded annoying, the way she always did when she talked to him until their bodies were together and she felt like she could breathe again. He laughed.
“Waiting for you to come up,” he said. She looked up at his window where he stood waving. She was sure she could see the smug look on his face.