[Libby]

Thank you, @janeshuff . This is the first time I’ve won a monthly Den competition and I’m really pleased, and especially so as everyone else’s entries were excellent and a delight to read. Many thanks!

[Libby]

Thanks, @Daedalus. I’ll read the article with interest 🙂
I can use castor oil as a bit of sensory detail in my novel. It was just that I know the smell of linseed but can’t remember the smell of castor though tins of Castrol were ubiquitous during my childhood, as was the smell of oil in general.

I suspect the laxative story was probably apocryphal. I don’t see how smell would have loosened bowels unless by association, though that could have been enough if one had particularly unhappy memories of swallowing the stuff!

Writing a novel which ends up in WW2 is interesting during present times. Some of the emotions feel transferable, or enough so to make me think hard about them.

[Libby]

I’m very sorry you and your son have had to cope with a cancer diagnosis, @skylark.

I’ve never signed up to any social media and so far haven’t felt tempted. Not just the polarised views but the amount of time it can take up!

[Libby]

I’m glad you were able to translate real life into other real life, as it were, @Daedalus . Sounds a very successful strategy.

BTW, please can I ask you a question about linseed oil in biplanes? Was it used or have I imagined this? If it was, presumably pilots and passengers would have been able to smell it?

[Libby]

The Future (399 words with title)

I awake dry mouthed and tight headed but without the regret usual to such mornings. Sunlight warms the floorboards and in the lane outside my lodging a song thrush rings out his tunes as if he sees something new.

Last night in Sedham’s rooms, while enjoying his Madeira wine and Spanish sherry, I drank down Sedham’s conversation. He is the son of a viscount. In Oxford there are several such men who like help with essays and have money to pay me. I am a poet. The truth is that the award of my own degree last summer brought satisfaction and no rise in my income. But there is a difference between Sedham and similar undergraduates. He has intelligence and freshness of thought. And he is quite the firebrand. Vive la révolution! he cried last night, holding up a glass as the quad clock chimed midnight. With his lineage I doubt he meant it but I measure his ideas against my life. I try them for fit. Would a revolution help me?

He reads newspapers and passes his copies to me. We discussed the Army’s retreat after the Battle of Corunna and the condition of our soldiers when they reached British ports. Hungry, shabby, wounded; many had died and horses been slaughtered. Sedham showed one of the turns of thought that make our discussions so lively: all war must be banned. I laughed at the naivety but asked him to say more, being depressed myself by news from the Peninsula.

He leaned forward and, putting his glass down on the rug, was near sober with seriousness. Journalists, he said. More information must reach home, then the populace will rise against what isn’t right.

In front of his fire, the intensity of his gaze lit my failure. What a habit I had of conservative views. A crafter of words should breach new clarity but my poetic depictions of mankind’s lot and his potential only repeat what mankind already knows. If a mind could blush, mine did.

But this morning I believe my pen can describe a new wisdom and, with blood thrumming, I’ll rupture the old.

I get up and wash, needing to walk to the baker for today’s bread. But at the door the opposite direction beckons, towards open country. There is a bend in the lane. What lies beyond is just out of sight.

[Libby]

I sympathise with you, Richard, over reading more politics than normal. I was the same then got cross with myself not least because it stole time from other things.

I think some involvement, however, can make one feel better. There are many causes still to fight for – environmental and social – if one is that way inclined. Though preservation of sanity and energy is key.

[Libby]

I think the premise might have been plausible, Jane and Amanda. If I’ve got this right, the telephone lines between the front line and HQ had been cut and therefore the regiment (?) on the front line didn’t have up to date intelligence. The idea was to get the despatch drivers to update the officers on the front line so that they wouldn’t make an advance which had been planned in the belief there weren’t many Germans.

I can’t remember the name of the short film, I’m afraid. It was British. I saw it at the arts centre outside Maidenhead. We were asked to fill in questionnaires afterwards to say what we thought of it, presumably to help fund further short films. If you search for Western Front + short film + ballet you might find it. Let me know if you do 🙂

[Libby]

Hello Amanda, it doesn’t sound my kind of thing either. One thing the reviewers said in its favour was how balletic and choreographed it was. Coincidentally I saw a short silent film – 5 minutes or so – a while ago which depicted the Western Front by using only two male dancers in uniform, dancing in slow motion and getting tangled up with each other. It was very atmospheric and strongly emotional in a quiet way.

[Libby]

I haven’t seen 1917, Jane, but the review on either Front Row or Saturday Review concluded that it was a rather unengaging film. I think they ascribed this partly to the camera technique.

[Libby]

Congratulations @janeshuff, I too loved your story, and Ath’s, and Sandra’s which completely hooked me. I hope we hear more about Lucy.

[Libby]

Untitled, 300 words

Tilty Weston opened a tin of smoked mackerel and put half on his plate. Good for your heart, was mackerel, though his trouble was a limp and a few creaky joints. A tomato was next on the plate, and the frilled leaves of a Webb’s lettuce. A fine thing, a Webb’s. A sight of summer here in the half dark, though no surprise the weather was gone topsy-turvy if the world and his wife wanted salad at Christmas. Outside the cottage the wind was moaning again, the fourth time in as many days. On the wind rushed, fast as a woman in a hurry. Blow yourself down the chimney, wind, and thwart me having a good fire.

The surprising thing, over the many festive seasons, had been the ladies of a single status, and a few as were attached, who’d sent invitations for dinner. Turkey and the whole what not. The difficulty had been fathoming what it meant. Charity perhaps. Village do-gooders saving him from a boiled egg and a pickled onion and bread. That had been in his twenties. Then, through a decade of fish fingers and frozen peas – his thirties and prime of life – there’d been the glad eye from divorcees and young spinsters. All nice enough ’cept they’d wanted to organise him and have his body as reward – not a bad specimen after a few years of farm work. Oh, Tilty was a practical chap; that was their excuse. Could fix anything.

Naturally, it had all become clear. The cottage. He owned it and cared for it. You couldn’t blame a female body for seeking a home but after a while each woman got the message, or some other message. Village gossip was as fond of wrong turnings as a map held up-side-down. But no, he hadn’t wanted a fellow instead. Anyway, it hadn’t mattered. Time had gathered her skirts and here was his seventh decade. And he’d grown quite handy with the supermarket shopping. A nice lettuce. The end of the old year: a time for thinking. No wife, no children, but mortality would turn up one day or night and he had one worldly good. Outside it was raining again as if the sea was lifted and thrown over the fields. Humans had been given enough: out of season food and so on. The cottage would be left to charity. Friends of the Earth.

[Libby]

And thank you Ath for setting the competition and giving us all helpful feedback. Apologies for not mentioning this before.

[Libby]

Well done, John, and well deserved. And to everyone else too. I’m glad I didn’t have to judge between such good entries.

[Libby]

498 words including title

Photographs

Kirsty wasn’t interested in the marriage album but there was a folder of other wedding photos. She tipped the glossy prints out over the kitchen table: all those relatives and friends, held in their best outfits for decades.

It was fine to look at them now. The old emotions didn’t snag any longer. Her in a white dress, her long hair permed into curls, standing next to First Husband who had a short mullet. The marriage had been short too.

And there was Helen, sitting at a table, smiling up at the camera. Sweet Helen, that’s what she’d been called. Kind to old people and animals. Kirsty had disdained that – the nickname. After all, Helen wasn’t sweet when she ran off with First Husband. Kirsty couldn’t use the sweet part of Helen’s name while her own hot tears ran with a pain which seemed set to last forever. And the sense of having been made a fool of; that was even worse. Holding her head up while feeling like she’d been rubbed with sandpaper. When Helen, in turn, was dumped, Kirsty’s cheeks had glowed.

Kirsty was happy now. She’d won through – eventually had found sympathy for the woman who also was wronged by First Husband. Now she sat here in the kitchen able to move calmly through these photos. It was proof of her recovery.

When Second Husband came home she showed him Helen’s picture. His expression flickered.

‘I’ve seen her before,’ said Liam.

‘Is she a patient?’ The mature Kirsty could be comfortable with that.

Liam said, ‘No. It being a photo is relevant, somehow.’

The next day he brought home a framed photograph. ‘This used to hang in the waiting room before we replaced it with posters about flu jabs.’

The photo looked professional, perhaps taken by the local paper. Helen was handing a cheque to one of the surgery’s senior partners, a woman now retired. A caption had been printed below. ‘Mrs Helen Jarvis presenting a donation to the defibrillator fund from the Jarvis Charitable Trust.’

So Helen was married. She must have recovered too from First Husband. Kirsty googled the trust. It and Helen had moved to another part of the country.

***

Several months later Liam said, ‘The husband of Helen Jarvis emailed us today. He’d like a copy of that framed photograph. Helen Jarvis died recently – cancer – but most of the family photos were lost in a house move.’

Kirsty was sorry for Helen, and for the husband too. Proof again of her own recovery.

‘We could give him that wedding photo.’

Liam looked at her. ‘I don’t think we should.’

‘But if he’s short of pictures …’

Liam was silent.

After a moment, Kirsty said, ‘The husband might not know about Helen and me. The photo could make him wonder about his wife.’

Why hadn’t she thought of that immediately? She’d had her own difficult questions about Helen for years. And, remembering them now, an unexpected sense of stupidity came back.

[Libby]

I very much like your story, Ath, exactly because of the problems you comment on. The twist worked really well for me, and I often don’t really enjoy such stories because the twist feels tacked on. This one, though, feels integral to what’s gone before. I also enjoyed it as a horror story but that was secondary for me. I could be over analysing the story or misunderstanding it but I read it as showing how persecuted minorities can absorb and use negative tropes just like anyone else – sometimes it can be hard for people see where else to go – and their members don’t have to be more, or less, ‘moral’ than other people.

The business of layers and references in fiction is really tricky. I battle with it. My novel includes the Manchester cotton trade in the 20th century. I can’t not mention that the industry was a continuation of the one built on African-American slavery; it’s a question of how to do it without, as you’ve called it yourself, waving at the reader.

[Libby]

Yippee! Brilliant! Fab! I’m so pleased.

[Libby]

Congratulations, Squidge. What a powerful story. And congratulations also to Baz and John.

Many thanks, Kate, for setting the competition. It pushed me hard, and I think from some of the comments I wasn’t the only one racking my brain in an enjoyable way!

[Libby]

398 words including title

Fate and Soul

The house in South Kensington wore fresh white stucco and stood in a terrace of frontages all the same. On a colour chart the paint could have been named Anonymity.

Melissa climbed the front steps. Beneath the pillared porch she tapped a code into the key pad and sensed passers-by lingering. She knew they’d be wondering who she was and if they recognised her. Fate had given her the looks to go from middle-class Devon to the cover of British Vogue. During the seconds she stood there – today in a coat by Stella McCartney – the strangers decided they didn’t know her and none were a nuisance. She could live on her and her husband’s money in peace. No need at all, really, to question whether this was the fate she wanted.

Indoors, the house was most likeable when it was quiet and free of people. Her husband, a singer, was away in Japan on a tour that had started in Glastonbury and the O2. His producer, sound and lighting engineers and everyone else had gone with him.

Downstairs in the kitchen, which covered all the basement, Melissa made a latcha matte with coconut milk. Sitting on a high stool, she began to drink. The middle-class part of her was self-conscious. A good but ordinary tea with ordinary milk would have done just as well. Recently, she’d had this feeling of detachment and had begun to revert to the beliefs of her parents. The disconnection, some sort of floating to another place, was increasing but it was hard to tell what was happening.

That lunch time, in the West End, she’d walked into Wigmore Hall – her first ever visit – on an impulse to hear something different. The small Victorian venue, with a vase of flowers on a pedestal on the stage, had been alarming. The performance was going to be old-fashioned and dreary. A string quartet started to play Janáček. The music pressed around her; drama and layers of mystery, some threatening, others playful, pulled her along. Her soul had shifted and been piqued.

In the kitchen, she continued to think. Her lucky life: it had been down to chance, with little mastery of it from her. The music had seemed to say as much. But her soul: that could view experience however she wished. If anything went wrong, a determined soul could endure the storm.

[Libby]

Still working on my entry …

[Libby]

Lots of congratulations to Kate, and to John and Seagreen. And thank you to Sandra.
I’m chuffed to be mentioned alongside The Return of the Soldier.

[Libby]

Here’s my entry, which contains mental health issues in a character under military duress. First line plus 200 words.

Bringing a gun into the house changes it.

Edward came home on leave. He was given embraces by Mother, pats on the shoulder by Father, and – foolishly, I now think – a salute by me, his brother. He laid his cap and service revolver, in its holster, on the hall table. A piece of the war, in our house! I, at fourteen, was eager to hear adventures from the western front.

Edward kept the revolver in his bedroom. He had difficulty sleeping. I’d wake to hear him open and close doors, and wander about. His eyes were puffed, his conversation abrupt. Talking more to the air than to us, he said, I shan’t go back. Mother held her mouth slightly open, as if wanting to speak but unsure. Father’s lips were compressed.

For minutes on end, Edward wrung his hands. I won’t go, he shouted.

Father hid the revolver and bullets. He called our doctor. Edward went to hospital and, four months later, there he remained. Father wrote to his regiment, asking to return the firearm and ammunition.

In our front room an officer stood upright and didn’t ask how Edward was getting on. Father handed over the holstered revolver and bullets.

Our taste of war never went away.

[Libby]

This deadline will make me get my act together 🙂

[Libby]

I agree, keep the subtitle in. I especially like GippsGirl’s suggestion of ‘improbable’. More interesting than ‘extraordinary’ IMO, and for the reasons she states.

[Libby]

Congratulations, Sandra! A very worthy winner. I’m also on your list of readers when you finish. I was inspired, as well, by everyone else’s entries to try and up my game. An enjoyable competition. Thank you, Raine.

[Libby]

THE RIGHT ATTITUDE. Opening of a novel in progress. (383 words)

Lois stood in her kitchen in dolly-bird boots and a skirt above the knee. She was looking through the window just in time. The woman drew up at the curb and Ruth stepped out, pulling her satchel with her. The woman, another mother, waved and Lois waved back.

The point, though, was not to see this woman – kind though she was to offer a lift at the end of every school day – but to look at Ruth. Lois’s heart rose. As her daughter came up the drive in her school blazer, one side of her body dipped with each step. This morning the limp had been in both legs; she’d dipped on both sides. A roll, a sailor’s gait in an eleven-year old going to school.

The reason was a mystery, despite their trip to the surgery yesterday. The doctor had been tight-lipped – ‘cautious,’ was his word – and this had left Lois’s nerves turning. Would the problem get worse? She must appear untroubled for Ruth’s sake; not shift whatever was happening in to a drama. In any case, the limping might get better.

Although it was hard to stop observing, Ruth mustn’t feel monitored. So, as her daughter approached the house, Lois looked instead at their cul-de-sac and the other modern houses across the way.

‘Hello, Mum.’

Ruth came in through the back door, via the garage. The up-and-over was left open to let Lois go in and out with the Mini and Ruth leave muddy shoes or wellingtons outside the kitchen. She was a child who enjoyed going for walks.

‘Hello, poppet. All right?’

‘Yeah.’

Since yesterday, when the doctor had said he couldn’t diagnose the limping and she must see a specialist, most of Ruth’s conversation had become single-worded. That was the trouble with an intelligent child. She did well at school but could pick up the unspoken as well as Lois could herself.

Ruth said, ‘I’ve got maths for homework.’

This sounded better – a full sentence of information.

‘Have some tea first.’

‘What is there?’

Lois was moving towards the fridge. ‘Mushrooms on toast.’

A snack until Malcolm came home when she’d cook a proper meal and they’d all eat together.

Ruth nodded and went to hang her blazer in the cloakroom, and when Ruth’s back was turned, Lois watched.

[Libby]

Lovely news.

[Libby]

Yep! And turn sub-clauses into separate sentences then merge them again.

[Libby]

Sometimes professional book reviewers complain that creative writing graduates have a CW style. I haven’t spotted it myself and perhaps am being dense. If any Denizens can describe it I’d be grateful!

I do notice trends and fashions but they seem to apply to most trad published novels.

Re the workshop style, there must be a danger that if you’re a student in a physical group over a year or more there’s a strong group effect. Creatively, maybe many people would drift towards a group signature and approval. My guess is that this would be weaker in an online group. To answer Richard’s question, I don’t think we should be discouraged.

I agree with Sandra – it’s great to find real originality. As I doubt I’d be capable of such creativity whatever I did, I don’t feel too worried by universal workshop style, especially as I don’t know what it is. Maybe innocence is bliss.

For anyone interested, Yelena Moskovich is another original writer. I read Virtuoso recently and it was virtuosic.

[Libby]

A well deserved win, Raine. The voice is wonderful and the whole piece captivating.

[Libby]

Thanks, Kate.

[Author]

Posts