Friday November 1st, 2013

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose about something or someone that is: absent.

Good luck to those of you embarking on the 2013 NaNoWriMo literary journey. I'm taking a pass again, as I still haven't finished with the novel I wrote in 2009.

Or finished writing the novel I began in 2010, for that matter. Though I feel it would have been for the best if I hadn't reminded certain people of that fact...

Training went fine today, so hopefully I'm ready to run the show on my own tomorrow. We shall see. Either way, I am looking forward to a slight sleep in compared to the last several months of Saturdays.

Mine:

I knew I should have been concerned once I realized they had gone missing. Phone calls should have gone out, reports filed. The police would have been brought in, sooner or later.

But, to be completely honest, I was just relieved to get any kind of break from my excessively energetic kindergarten class.

5 comments:

Greg said...

Hmm, it suddenly occurs to me that I should have insisted that you join me on this NaNoWriMo thing this time round... well, I'm in and I've started and 1800 words written. They'll go up on my blog, with unimaginative but informative titles (Nanowrimo day n mostly). I make no guarantees to write every day given the dog's pregnancy, but we'll see if we can get there.
Heh, loved the punchline for your tale today! I can quite sympathise with that desire for peace and quiet!

Absent
"Derek, why are you giving me a note? From your mother?"
"I don't want to come in to the office today, Mavis, and my mother says that that's ok."
"I'll pass it on to HR then, but you know we all call her Katie the Ogress for a reason, Derek...."

MosesMalone said...

Wet sleeves, soggy tissues, and mascara down my face... These things are not absent. A sense of death, loneliness, and longing are also not absent. Killing off a main character in the last pages of a 500 page book in a 3 part series... Are you kidding me? Tomorrow, I'll be absent from life, morning, because the blasted author KILLED OFF THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!!!

Anonymous said...

once again art here is imitating life.
mine...

Absence

It was a big decision, something I'd agonised over for months; days.
One more thing pushed me over the edge. The straw that broke the camel's back...
That email.

After all that was said and done, so many things. I thought I could forgive and forget, I truly did. But I am not only plagued with an elephantine memory, my heart has the sensitivity of a new born soul, I can only handle so much.

I knew your time was coming; we all did, it was inevitable; but not one thing in your recent past could make you re-think, redefine, shift your paradigm, metamorphose you into something human. Not even that.
Your death was inevitable. I was nearly there, but I retracted at the last moment, pushed away again by the words of your lackeys, blinded as they were yet again. You're not royalty, you only think you are; not that it's any excuse.
So I did not go, I stayed home.
I was not at your funeral.
You know why.

David said...

Well Marc, I curse you... I though Nanowrimo was last month. But for some reason, for the first time I am feeling it, and will do it.

But, I will be doing it a bit differently. I will be using your prompts to guide the writing, will most likely post some, if not all of my writing here.

After it is all done, I will see what I have and find the story.

So, then, as you inspired this, there is only one story to tell. Which I will tease here:

Her father remained absent, as he had her entire life. Her mother would not acknowledge his existence. The girl knew nothing about him. Except he was some sort of hair stylist.

Marc said...

Greg - hah, not likely sir. But I am pleased you're posting yours and plan on catching up on it soon!

I wish my mother was willing to give me notes to excuse me from work...

Mo - oooh, that's horrible. I would not be pleased by that sort of ending either.

Writebite - oof, very powerful ending there. Excellent work.

David - woo hoo! :D

And that's awesome. Sorry to only read this now, but I'll try to give at least a little bit of thought with my prompts so that they're not totally unworkable for you :)