Stories

It's been a long time since I wrote a story.  A very long time.  I'm trying to remember the plots of some of the stories I wrote.  Please excuse the spelling.  I'm using this stupid browser that'll tell me I've mispelled a word, but won't give me the correct spelling of it.  I can't find the dictionary, so I give up.

Anyway, I wrote a story in which the central character was a woman, with 2 children an a small dog, who's husband was on a business trip.  She gets up, has to get ready for work and get the kids fed and off to school, but the dog starts going crazy.  She opens the door to to see what's going on, and finds a big ol' snake right at her front door.  How she deals with it is the story.  

I wrote another story about a make up artist who worked in theater in DC, getting the actors ready, make up wise.  He concocted this elaborate and really strange plan to rob a Denny's in Eldersburg, Maryland.   The planning was extremely detailed, from the disguise he was going to have, to the time and sequence of the stop light at the intersection outside the restaurant, to perfered and alternate routes, both coming and going, and everything timed to the second.  He sits in the lot, watches the light turn red, gets out of the car and begins the robbery.   Everything goes like clockwork, until he approaches a table and notices a co-worker sitting at it, quite scared.  It was his boss, as a matter of fact, and she happened to be there having dinner with her sister.  Just one of those random things you can't plan for.   What happens next is a large part of the story.  I didn't really like this one, I thought it could have been better.  As elaborate as I tried to make it, I'd still read it and didn't quite believe it.

I wrote another one about a lady who had a nervous breakdown at an airport.  It's told in the first person from 4 different point of views - hers, her husband's (who had just been promoted and transferred), a supervisor behind the ticket counter, and a baggage handler, who had to load & retrieve the couple's checked baggage.  I think this one was the longest story I ever wrote.  It had chapters.

My favorite story was one about a struggling writer and his muse.  The writer's muse happened to be an old woman who lived on the top of a hill in West Virginia, and communicated with him telepathicaly.  She was a professional muse, not only to this writer, but to others as well, and she also acted in the capacity of a personal 'inner critic' to some other writers.  But she was never both the the same person, and to this writer, she was just a muse.  Well, her musin' was getting erratic and the writer was having problems.  He's try to get some specific info, for example, and all he'd get back would be an image of old woman in glowing robes standing in the corner of a yard pointing up toward the sky.  He was having trouble dealing with that, so he decided to pay her a visit.   He didn't know exactly where to go, but he got pretty close before the road ran out and he had to walk.  She lived way back in the hills.  Anyway, she makes him shuck some corn & string some green beans while they sit on the front porch and talk.  Then they have supper, she sits down, and suddenly dies.   He contacts the proper authorities & leaves, but very shortly he begins to hear voices.   Voices begging for ideas and inspirations.  To his horror, he realizes he's become the muse, her powers have been transferred to him, and it is something he's completely unprepared for.

I once wrote another story that was based on a punchline of a joke I heard.

I created two characters, Thad and Deanna, and put them in all kinds of situations.  Sometimes they were old,  sometimes young, sometimes they didn't know each other etc etc etc.  I have no idea where I came up with those names.

I once made up a poem and created my very own pun,  about a laundromat in hell, which was not responsible for "lost, damaged, or stolen souls".  

It actually takes a lot of work and time to write a story.  No matter how quickly an idea comes, fleshing it out takes energy.   It's hard to create believable characters and situations.  It takes a lot of time and effort.

These days, I mostly do eBay stuff, sit on the porch and listen to birds, and read.   More about that later.