So, October is my favorite month of the year. I've lived in several places across the US, and whether I live in Rhode Island, Virginia, New York, Texas, or California, October usually means cooler weather, jeans and hoodies (my favorite attire), and horror movies on AMC. This year I've decided that October will also be a month of setting personal challenges, especially when it comes to what I love best: writing.
I've been writing fiction my whole life, usually scribbling in a notebook in the dark in the middle of the night, or chipping away at a novel on my keyboard in between classes and homework and work and life. But this year has been the first year that I've taken writing seriously, and I've learned more this year than I have in all my years of writing for fun. I've learned how to make websites, how to use Twitter, how to write bios and cover letters, and how to submit my stories to literary magazines. I've learned how to set the foundation to get myself and my writing “out-there.” Mostly I've learned that to be a writer, or at least a writer who wants her work to be read, I need a platform.
I've been trying the past few months to work on platform, but I'm still in the little baby stages. So, this month I've joined Robert Lee Brewer's October Platform Challenge. What's great is that I'm already learning things about myself and my goals, mostly because I've never taken the time before to articulate these things. I'm also already stepping out of my comfort zone. It's only Day 3 of the challenge and I'm creating a blog, something I've never done before nor had any desire to do. And so far, whatever, it's not that bad, though I still prefer writing fiction.
Speaking of fiction, I whimsically decided last night in a sleepy stupor that I would try my hand at flash fiction. Now, to explain, I don't read much flash fiction, and I don't write flash fiction. It's not because I don't like it, or because I don't think it has any merit, but because I find it so DIFFICULT. And that makes me frustrated. And when I get frustrated, I can't write, and when I can't write I want to throw my laptop out the window. I like to let the words flow, especially for a first draft, but with flash fiction I feel so RESTRAINED, and the word limit pecks at me incessantly in the back of the brain while I'm trying to think of something to write about.
But, this is the month of challenges, and so last night I decided to try out flash fiction. And then, predictably, I couldn't think of anything to write about. That was until I read somewhere (I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the person or website offhand) that flash fiction has the potential to be short story and poetry mixed together, used to convey a single mood, a single tone. I learned that plot is not as important as the experience. I know that different writers and readers have different definitions of flash fiction, but I found this definition to be profoundly helpful.
So, here is my attempt at flash fiction, in a blog, which I made solely to complete Day 3 of the Platform Challenge. Happy October, and cheers to new challenges!
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Toothless Insomnia
by Veronica McDonald
about 500 words
Sometimes when she concentrates and the room is pitch dark and there is nothing but shapes and shadows, the world looks the same whether her eyes are open or closed, and it's as if she doesn't need her eyes to be open to be able to see because they won't stop seeing. Her eyes just won't stop seeing. The eyelids go down and she can see. At first it's just shadows and then it's dots. No, not dots. More like flecks. Millions of flecks and specks that move like the static on an old TV set. And when she focuses her eyes on the specks they move. They fly around the room, they zip so fast, in a long line of specks that cut through the dark at lighting speed. They glow and flash, just the slightest, and move around swirling and speeding like a roller coaster of dust. She did not like or dislike the specks, but she could handle them. The specks were there whether her eyes opened or closed, and when she followed their roller coaster trail, she felt like she did when she was a little girl in her grandmother's house, seeing ghost blobs and feeling the trails of millions of dead things all around her, lying on frayed cotton sheets wrapped around dog-haired couch cushions, to the chimes of her grandmother's grandfather clock.
She rolled over in bed, tired of the specks, and then she saw the hand. Just the slightest movement in the sheets at first, pulling near the black crack where the bed met the wall, then fingers, climbing over the edge of her pillow. She closed her eyes and saw the fingers move towards her face, trying to get at her mouth, to pull at her teeth. Eyelids should make the monsters go away, she thought. One finger pushed past her dry lips, scratching with a fingernail at her front tooth. She wanted to bite it, to make it stop, but her fear froze her. Moving only makes things worse, only makes the nightmares reach your heart through your veins, and only makes the tingling and the shaking start. Lying still is better, but it's not.
“Don't let the devil get you,” her boyfriend said as he peeked in on her through the door. She wanted to ask what, to ask what, to ask what, but her mouth could not move with the finger inside. She can make out his silhouette with her eyes closed, surrounded by pointed strings of light. “I'll close the door, so the devil won't get you.” The strings are gone and she knows that he's talking about the cat, that devil of a cat, that never let her legs alone while she laid in bed. But he's gone and the cat's gone, and now all that's left is the devil and her eyes that won't stop seeing, and the teeth that are scattered around the sheets like jagged pearls of her past.
END