Koala Blue says Hi. He just woke up and needs a cup of blue gum tea or he’ll eavesdrop on our conversation.
Here’s a surprise. My short fiction class of eleven people received an assignment. Their challenge after six sessions of beginning craft was to write a rant in second person point of view and in one long sentence. The stories phoenixed from their pens and I felt like a proud mother kookaburra whose chicks could now fly.
Ma wants to know if you have ever written a mini fiction in one long sentence in second person pov – concise, compressed, under 250 words, with a mini arc and a tied up ending?
I will offer you examples but not until I see some attempts from you. My students might allow me to show you a few of theirs as examples after they’ve seen yours.
Ma’s Challenge for today. Do as my students did. Prize?
Ma will post the best ones on her site.
Ma’s going to make strong blue gum tea now for her buddy.
6 Comments on “Ma’s Passionate students offer a Challenge”
You probably have no idea that many people, including me, have written rants that go on and on, or maybe you do – you probably do because you’re a pretty smart lady (is it politically incorrect to call you a lady or would it be better to call you a woman, or, if you’re like some people, you’d want them to call you anything, but call you for sure, because that’s what I used to say when I practised law and people would ask if I used Miss, Mrs. or Ms.) and smart women/ladies like you usually do know that somewhere in a computer file or a file drawer, or more than one file or drawer, there lurk a few rants that should never see the light of day, or even the glow of a crescent moon, and now you’ve asked for it, because you’re going to get a deluge – well, at least one – from your friends, but after you’ve read mine (not this one because this one doesn’t follow your rules), you may regret that you ever posted such an evil and devious challenge, since everyone needs to vent now and then, and even to remember a former vent about a time in their lives when the only thing to do was to get it all out and on paper, to experience the catharsis the Greeks revered, because if you don’t rant, you just might kill someone, and usually someone in particular.
If I can find the damn rant, I’ll send it to you, unless I get so angry reading it again, that, this time, I really will kill that particular someone.
(This was just practice!)
LOL
Once you were handsome, but that was so very long ago and looking in the mirror above the sink you catch a glimpse of yourself all washed out because the endless monotony of marriage wore you down and made you introverted, and even though you are now free from the strains of a relationship, it’s hard to change with something always demanding your attention: the demands of the boss; the dog; the endless chores around this prison that you’ve chosen to ignore but now they’re piling up and haunting you more than any relentless spirit or your wife who couldn’t hold her liquor and drank and drank until her face and neck were covered with red blotches caused by alcohol poisoning you suspect which serves her right for flirting with all those men even though you were right in the room so her behaviour ate a hole in your heart and you decided it was high time you tried new things so it’s no wonder you ran away just to prove to your voices that they were wrong and that, yes, you could make it on your own out there even if your old friends didn’t invite you to stay overnight and you slept in a ditch because you had no identification and all the hotels and motels wouldn’t let you stay so you robbed a store and the ink pack exploded in your pocket and the police told you to hit the ground and you went back to jail once more.
Great Irene. I wonder what else will come in today. k.
You knew, didn’t you, when I said “tell me about your new friends,” I meant tell me about David, the guy (I know this already) who taught you to say far out and heavy and bummer and whatever else he taught you (I’m not asking), but you pretended you didn’t and so you gave me bullshit answers as if miffed that I felt I had the right to ask you anything, after all we’ve been through, talking about “hanging out” and “listening to records” and “rapping,” and when the phone rang and you ran indoors to answer it even though I was hanging around for no other purpose but to talk to you, but you wanted to talk to him, “David,” and when I asked, politely, if you were going to be on the phone long you turned only slightly in my direction without removing the phone from your ear and said to me, “this is what he wants to do now,” and what you didn’t know was that even though I raged inside, fantasizing tracking scrawny, whiney “David” to his suburban lair, pulling his hair, twisting his ear and demanding that he get his shit together and move out of his pansy-ass suburban Mummy-Daddy-takes-care-of-me rest home for over-privileged adolescents and into a real-man’s college dormitory, preferably some place faraway and cold, I observed as kindly and gently as the love dove you had once compared me too that if you were busy now I guess I would just take myself off, and you said, “then go, bye,” and even though we had been together for three years and you knew I was faking, you had to know, you knew me that well, that I was sick and wounded and hurting and dying inside, you had no pity, no pity at all.
Now, bob, THAT’S a rant… love it. kaye