Author: GennaClaire

Writers’ Block Challenge #4

~ GennaClaire ~ Leave a comment

Task: Write a story about the images on a roll of film. Use 12, 24, or 36 paragraphs.

Flawed Memories

He hadn’t crossed her mind for months when she decided it was time to clean out the closet in her adolescent bedroom. She dug through the poufy frocks and sequined skirts of old prom dresses, remnants  of a coin collection, graduation caps and gowns and tassels. She dug deeper and uncovered pictures that had decorated her college dorm. Art supplies long forgotten. An old broken iPod – lime green, clunky and heavy. She sorted through high school sports paraphernalia. Sweat shirts from swim team. Running shoes from track.

Twenty-two years of memories kept quiet and tucked away. Out-of-sight and nearly forgotten. But not quite.

Buried underneath a box of clothes that most certainly didn’t fit anymore, she found it. A shoebox. Wrapped in pink and purple tissue paper. And small cut out hearts. A memory box. Containing all the keepsakes a sixteen-year-old holds onto the first time she falls in love.

She ran her finger along the outside edge over the crinkled, stiff paper hearts and considered just throwing the whole thing away. Why rustle up all those old feelings, right? Surely there’s nothing in there she’d actually want.

But something sentimental got the better of her and she lifted off the lid.

Inside, she found delicately packed corsages. Dried flowers and ribbons and Velcro bands. Faded ticket stubs to movies and concerts and amusement parks. Cards and tags from every birthday or Valentine’s gift. Empty jewelry boxes. Letters  they wrote each other. Printed lyrics to their favorite songs.

She felt her heart tug as she flipped through the memories. Let them flash in her mind. Homecoming dances and football games. Break ups and make ups and a mountain of firsts. How earnestly she had loved him.

At the bottom of the box was a single roll of film. Undeveloped. She lifted it out and pulled at the fragment of film strip peaking out of the plastic black case, exposing the negatives. Holding it up to the light, she saw a sequence of happiness. A casual afternoon together with nothing better to do than laugh and cuddle and waste a roll of film.

She shook her head. That’s not what it was like, loving him. You’d look through this box and think we were perfect for each other – that we were meant to be. That we were happy. But we were no such thing. Sure there were moments like the one captured on that film. But there were other moments to. The terrible kind. The scream-so-loud-your-lungs-hurt kind. The weep-until-you-get-a-migraine kind. There was cheating and callousness and recklessness and selfishness and emptiness.

Where is the box that holds those memories? Where’s that roll of film?

We look back and we see the flowers and the letters and the smiles and we wonder, were we wrong to let it all go?

She put the film back in the box alongside the other happy mementos before replacing the lid. If I must remember us, I insist on that memory being true to what we were. With that, she added the memory box to the ‘throw away’ pile and moved on to sorting through the Art Supply bin. 

a forty-minute love story

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I have forty minutes left before my work day ends and I’m free to live life for a measly five hours. What can I do in forty minutes? Well, I suppose I can tell you a story.

The first time I saw his face, other than the photographs I’d studied diligently on Facebook, I had already fallen for him. It was a warm November night. A Saturday. He drove from Atlanta. We had never met, not in person. We had mutual friends of friends of friends. We chatted online. Then via text message. And eventually had lengthy nightly phone conversations, reminiscent of freshmen year of high school.

We talked about things we liked and didn’t like. Why we were single and what we were looking for. Who had broken our hearts. Whether or not those hearts were actually mended. We talked about growing up and screwing up. We talked about music and movies and books and the world around us.

We fell in love over the telephone. And then he showed up on my doorstep.

I was shocked at how tense he was. I’d had the luxury of two strong lemon drops to ease my nerves.

He stayed with me that weekend. Eventually he calmed down. Became the person I’d spent every evening with on the phone.

He kissed my forehead in a bar that night. It was our first kiss.

The next day, before he had to leave, I walked him all around the most beautiful parts of Charleston. Historic architecture. Waterfront parks. Cobblestone streets. I kept trying to sell him on the city I’d come to love so much.

Do you like it? I’d ask over and over again. Yes, he’d say. Yes, it’s wonderful.

Before he left he took me by my waist and asked what happens next. I didn’t know what he wanted to hear or I didn’t know what I wanted to say, so I said, What do you mean?

And he said, I don’t want to leave here without you being mine.

And I thought, I was yours before you ever arrived. 

image

how to say goodbye

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Saying goodbye. It may be the hardest thing we ever have to do. Relationships end. Jobs end. Lives end. Love ends. We practice it our whole lives through. Yet it never gets any easier to say goodbye.

In high school we did it right. With yearbooks that gave us the opportunity to say the things we’d been too shy to admit. To confess to crushes we’d held onto secretly for years. To give the highest compliments and make promises to stay friends forever and keep in touch and never forget. Then we put on matching caps and gowns and go out ceremoniously, with nothing but exuberance and high expectation.

Why can’t all goodbyes be so uplifting? On the verge of the end, why can’t we just exchange notebooks, and write down how we feel. Give the notebooks back and walk away.

You were great and I was great and we were great together. But you changed and I changed and we changed. Now we’re not so great anymore. We’re holding each other back from being great. I think it’s time we both find greatness again.

Seems like a nice way to go if you ask me.

Instead we draw out the goodbyes. Ripping off the bandage over hours and days and weeks and years. We don’t know how to let go. So we hold on like an anchor that doesn’t quite understand its purpose.

Saying goodbye requires a few things. It requires forgiveness. Of all wrongdoings. All past transgressions. It cannot start with here are all the reasons I’m saying goodbye. It has to start with here are all the reasons I’ve stayed for so long, but now it’s time for me to go.

It requires honesty. With yourself and with your words. No sugar-coating, but no brutality either.

We’ve grown apart. Drifted far away. I think I’m not as happy as I could be. And I think, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll realize you’re not as happy either. You’ll probably agree our best days are behind us; it’s time to move on.

And lastly, goodbyes require forward perspective. It’s not about the past. It’s not even about the present. And it’s not about the next few weeks or months which will likely be difficult and scary and sometimes sad. It’s about the future. The distant glow of a life you ought to be living, a life you could be living, a life that begins when another one ends. A life that starts with a goodbye. 

opening lines

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Task: Think of your five favorite novels and read their opening lines. Ponder them. What makes them great. And how you can use their opening line strategies in your own writing.


Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)  Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my free time to thinking about death.

Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart (Joyce Carol Oates) “Little Red” Garlock, ‘sixteen years old, skull smashed soft as a rotted pumpkin and body dumped into the Cassadaga River, near the foot of Pitt Street, must not have sunk as he’d been intended to sink, or floated as far.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque) We are at rest five miles behind the front.

Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) Those who saw him hushed.

diet

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She let out a heavy sigh as she stared down at the black scale on her cool bathroom floor. She removed her wrinkled t-shirt and cotton shorts before stepping on. Drew in a deep breath. The scale’s dial whipped around quickly, then teetered back and forth before settling on a number.

And that’s it. That’s the number that defines her today. She’s seen it. She cannot change it. Today, that’s her number.

And it’s not good enough. It’s not low enough. It’s not thin enough. It’s fat. It’s bloated. It’s ugly. It’s big. But today, that’s her number.

She shakes her head silently as she steps back off and turns to start the shower. Tomorrow will be better.

She’ll shave her legs and curl her hair and line her eyes and powder her nose, but it won’t matter. That number has already taken hold. She’ll pick out her cutest dress. Pair it with trendy heels and statement jewelry. But the number hangs over her still. And she’ll examine herself in the mirror before she walks out the door, but all she’ll see is that number.

Every woman she runs into she’ll match up against her number. Every size two and extra small. Every time she’ll fall short. Her number is just too high.

Every bit of food she consumes she’ll weigh against that number. Will this make it worse? Is it worth it? What if I just skip this meal? She won’t enjoy a single bite. Food has become a number too.

And at the gym she’ll mount the elliptical and watch the calories slowly climb. Exercise is just another number. She’ll push and pull and sweat and gasp and think, tomorrow must be better.

She’ll drink water and pass on dessert and go to bed as her stomach growls and dream of a better number.

I know this girl. I was this girl. I see this girl still every day. And every time I see her, I want to tell her a lesson I learned long ago about numbers on the scale.

Those numbers do not define who you are. They do not determine your worth. They have no gauge on your potential. And they most certainly cannot assess your beauty.

They are numbers on a machine. A machine designed to tell you your relationship with gravity.

Stop looking at the scale and start looking at yourself. You are beautiful. And everyone else can already see it.

failed experiments

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Describe Your First Brush with Danger

When I was just a youngin’, maybe five years old, I remember sitting on the kitchen counter on a bright summer afternoon. My mom was nearby, but engrossed in something other than her overly curious (and in this moment, stupid) daughter.

As I sat there, I noticed a black stapler resting innocently beside me. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “I wonder what would happen if I stapled my finger…”

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind did I pick up the stapler with my chubby right hand, slipped my left thumb underneath its arm and proceeded to press all my weight down on it.

After hearing it snap, I lifted my newly decorated thumb up to my face to examine it. The thin line of silver went perfectly down the middle and dark, thick blood quickly began pouring out of it on both sides. It was at that moment the pain suddenly struck me and I began wailing.

My mother immediately took notice and tended to my stapled thumb, trying to calm me down and comfort me at the same time.

She may or may not have asked me why I stapled my finger. But if she did, I’m fairly certain my distressed five-year-old self was not able to articulate that clearly.

So Mom, if you’re reading this, I just wanted to know what it felt like. It’s a pain I’ve never forgotten still to this day.

And you know what I learned? Sometimes it’s just better not to know.

what we lose on battlefields

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I could be getting the story wrong, but my dad once told me that his great-grandfather was mortally wounded in the Civil War. Not in a famous battle, but in some unremarkable episode of fight and fatality that took place in what is now suburbia in metro Atlanta.

The wound in his leg was deemed fatal. But when he did not die from it, he instead half-limped, half-walked the many miles back to his home, where he ultimately fathered my great-grandmother, which led to my grandfather, which led to my father, which led to me.

 

So on Memorial Day, am I grateful to those who have served our country? I am. To those who have pledged to give all they have and at many unfortunate moments, had to cash in on that pledge? Yes, I am forever grateful.

 

But I can’t help but think of all the lives lost. Not just the lives of our soldiers. But the lives of their unborn sons and grandsons and great grandsons. All those little beings that never came to be. All those lives destroyed before they could even begin.

 

When we lose our brothers and sisters to war, there is so much more we also lose. An eternal loss of people and dreams and hopes and destinies that will never be realized.

 

This Memorial Day, all I can do is give thanks to those who serve. Mourn the ones we lost. Grieve the lives that will never even begin. And pray, above all else, that there is such a thing as peace and we may find it still.