Writing is difficult. I'm told it's more difficult for people who are good at it. In that case, I should be very, very good. :-)
Over the past 4 months, I have managed to write some story beginnings with the help of a class called Jumpstart. The teacher, Marlene Cullen (thewritespot.us), gives us prompts to get us started, then we write for 20 minutes, and read what we wrote. It's a bit like the essay section of the SAT. There's no time to procrastinate, or get distracted by the laundry or the length of the dog's toenails.
Here's what this morning brought.
Little Blue Boat
Stanley cradles a wooden sail boat in his lap. "Phwoosh," he says to himself, tipping the deck sideways into imaginary swells. The wooden block bobs and dips, following the undulations of his hand. He carves a turn, wrist flexed, fingers clasped, until the bow faces him. He stares. The boat and he are at an impasse.
Then a huge wave comes and tumbles the boat. The stick of a mast bounces off the floor. Stanley leaves it where it falls, and rolls on his back to stare at the ceiling.
He is on his bed. There is a soft knock at the door and he does nothing. It opens. He does not look when someone sits on the bed next to him. He can feel the tug of the bedspread toward the weight, the impression of flesh pressing on springs. Stanley smells hairspray and power and still he can't look. Though he can see from the corner of his eye the pale flash of Aunt Margaret's hair. He takes a deep breath.
"Hey buddy," she says. "What are you doing up here?"
"Playing with my boat," he says to the roof.
"Is this it?" She picks it up off the floor. "It looks like it might have had a crash."
"Yeah," he turns over, taking the boat from her hands and dangling his arms over the side of the bed. "It sank."
Aunt Margaret frowns, then her eyebrows lift. "You know that, even when a boat sinks, they can still rescue it," she says. "It just takes someone to know where it went down, and pull it up again."
Stanley looks at her to see if she's kidding.
"How do they pull it up?" he asks.
"They have a machine. It's called a winch. What they do is they take a steel cable, and they hook it to the strongest part of the boat. Then they turn a crank, and this winch it pulls the cable in, and that lifts the boat. A winch is very strong. They can use it to pick up boats or cars or even school buses."
Stanley turns the boat over in his hands, rubbing the fading Made in China sticker on the wooden keel.
"I came to tell you that your grandma and grandpa are here, and they'd really like to see you. Do you want to come down, or should I send them up?"
Stanley says nothing. Downstairs there is the sound of glassware set on tables, and the clank of china plates being lifted from a stack. There is a dull hum of conversation, here muffled in quiet, sometimes a staccato spike of ebullience, a burbling laugh, almost excited, that can accompany grief.
Aunt Margaret holds out her hand.
"Come down for a little while," she says. The sun's out, and we can sit in the garden. You can show grandpa your boat. Did you know he sailed in the Navy?"
