Martini Rosso

Phototropism

Suzy and I drank white wine while we sat in stiff, square garden chairs. I hadn’t met Suzy before and admired how she leant back, legs stretched out – lounging and confident. She wasn’t just overcoming the chair’s straight edges; she showed me she knew she had glamour. Her jeans and yellow cotton shirt were years old, threads loose…[Read more]

Thank you, Seagreen, for the competition. Great, enticing stories from Ath, Sandra and Terrie. I enjoyed them all.

I like the bugs analogy, Terrie.

Roughly I do something like this: I plan, though not in great detail – usually the ending and a couple of things along the way. When I start writing the plan doesn’t seem to work so I alter the order of events or cut events. After a bit I give up with the plan and hope the writing will suggest what I need to do…[Read more]

It’s a while since the 1980s

And why come back? Why, exactly, limp along these corridors after decades, and stop to look at dormitory doors and classroom doors all shut for the summer holiday. There’s no one else in this building – a giant bungalow with many arms – except the senior school secretary who has shown me old records and left me…[Read more]

Coordination: that’s exactly it. I can’t get coordinated with notebooks. I have one on my desk and it travels to my bedside table and back again. I admire people who use notebooks when they’re out – they seem more intuitive and open than I am. I think their minds flow more smoothly. They’re even Romantic with a capital R, with all the creativity…[Read more]

I enjoyed this prompt @Seagreen . At first I thought I wouldn’t have time to enter the comp this month but being able to work on something I’d already written gave me fresh energy. My piece still needs a bit more work but the exercise you gave us was very helpful and one to be remembered.

This is from my novel. It’s 1937. Hester is shortly to leave school and has asked her father if she can have flying lessons. He’s said no, it’s too dangerous. That’s the novel’s inciting incident. The is the next scene, told from her father’s pov.

412 words

In Worcester Cathedral, Hester’s father Frederick Longley gazed at the vaulted ceiling…[Read more]

Yes, Salter’s detachment. Is that what makes his writing interesting? I think it may be – for me anyway.

John, I wouldn’t press Salter on you, or anyone, but his prose is an example of American spareness if you ever want to investigate same.

@sandra

The short stories are very good, Sandra. I liked a Sport and a Pastime but it can feel dated even though the writing was, for me, compelling. Salter can fall into the trap of his generation. Some of his writing about women can seem as if he didn’t ask the women around him how they thought and felt. On the other hand he’s also a very…[Read more]

I posted too soon. My comment may look as though I’m suggesting you don’t, Daeds, which I certainly didn’t mean! Your study of Salter brings a clarity and atmosphere to your writing which I’m sure it would have anyway. It’s interesting to think, in this influences process, how much we’re drawn to authors who provoke writerly neurones that we…[Read more]

James Salter has (had) a wonderful style.

Seems OK, both in the ‘text’ option and the ‘visual’.

I’m testing!

🙂

🙂

I love your story, Seagreen. Congratulations!

Janette, Alex, Sandra – all great stories. Thanks for setting the competition, Squidge.

When My Favourite Employee Really Gets Going, He Quotes Churchill

(300 words)

I stop in Steve’s doorway. He looks up from his laptop. Angled at his side, his PC screen glows with the photos and primary colours of our online edition.

At the opticians recently, he told the young woman he’s a journalist on the local rag and when off duty he rea…[Read more]

Congratulations @squidge  A fabulously tense story.

Thank you Sandra for setting such an interesting challenge.