Flex Your Writing Muscles: Alphabet Flash Fiction
I’m re-reading Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones” and am going to start doing more freewrites, in addition to my morning journals. Along the way, I’ll share writing exercises and books that I especially felt strengthened my writing muscles.
In my writing group a few months ago, we did a timed writing exercise (10 minutes) that I really enjoyed: Write a story where each sentence begins with a subsequent letter of the alphabet. So, that means the first sentence starts with “A,” the second with “B,” and so on … I thought it would be impossible, but turned out that wee bit of the structure was tremendously freeing. Here’s the piece of flash fiction that I came up with. (I’ve since edited it a bit and added a few sentences so a couple of letters might be off, but you’ll get the gist of the exercise.)
“All I ever wanted was a house with a yard,†she said. “But your father bought me this monstrous mansion. Ceilings 12 feet high, eight bedrooms, and a forest in the back. Do you really think two people should be living like this? Every day is a
trial–so much work, so much space, nobody here. Far, far away from everyone I know. Give me a break. Help me convince him to sell this place, no? If anyone can, it would have to be you.â€
I listened to my mother pour her wishes out to me over the phone, jasmine tea in a cup next to me, a wet cloth on my forehead.
“Kumarasami Raghavan is not an easy man to talk to,†I said. “Lest you have forgotten, let me remind you of the time he bought you a Mercedes convertible just after you had given birth to me.†My lips curved into a smile as I imagined my mother, a first-time mom, trying to bundle me into a car seat in a breezy car, her sari flying. Now here I was, a grown woman swallowing the words I didn’t have the courage to say: “Ma, he has to give you a big house to live in. There’s someone else in the chinnaveedu.†(Of course, Ma would understand what I meant right away if I used the words “small house.†The other woman.)
“Please don’t remind me of that impractical car,†Ma interrupted. “Quietly, in your own way, can’t you do something? Really, you don’t know the weight of your words, you, his only pet daughter.â€
Silence streamed through the receiver. I was not going to say anything, I had sworn myself to secrecy.
“Tarini, are you there? Can you hear me?†Ma said. “Signal lost?â€
True, I was his daughter. But only daughter? That was a lie. Until last year, I had believed this to be true, but I cannot pretend anymore. Vidya, my father’s other daughter, will not allow me to. Whenever I look in the mirror nowadays, I see her—my height, the same eyes—spread apart, the identical liking for evening ragas and oreo cookies.
“X marks the spot,†Dad used to say when he taught me how to play miniature golf the summer of my ninth birthday. Years later, Vidya sat next to me on an airplane and asked me to exchange seats with her. “That’s my seat,†she said, showing me her boarding card. “X marks the spot.â€
Zebras do not have identical stripes. A mother zebra knows her child, a sister zebra recognizes her sibling, just as I knew then that Vidya was my little sister.
So … now, it’s your turn. Feel free to post your Alphabet Flash Fiction here or link back to it at your blog.
September 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Brava! I’ll have to give this a try.
September 24th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
What Kate said! I will give this a try hopefully over the weekend. I know nothing about writing, so this may be fun or not for the readers!
I loved the way the story slowly built up to the twist towards the end. Also liked how you used “X” and Zebras. Enjoyed reading it!
September 24th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Thanks! Oh, do give it a try! You don’t have to be a writer to get something out of it. My only suggestion is to do it by hand, not on the computer.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Sandhya! I am so glad to see your site here. It was not loading for me when I tried several times this summer, and at one point, I got a message that the blog did not exist. :{ Maybe it was a browser problem. At any rate, yay! I see I have lots of good reading here to catch up with.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Wow! That’s really cool. A cool idea and an even cooler little story starter coming out of it. I like how you pull it all together at the end with that beautiful Z metaphor. What an intriguing beginning to a … novel? short story? Very nice.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Sandhya,
Why not on the computer? I hate writing by hand… those muscles are just so out of practice. And besides, I think through my fingertips now. You must have a reason.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:28 am
I know what you mean about the writing muscles being out of practice. When I started journaling again this March, I carried an awful pain around in my right arm because I had become so unaccustomed to writing with my hand.
Of course, I remember what you said once about how you think better with your hands on the keyboard, so I can see why you’d rather just sit down and type. And, maybe it’s OK for those people who are comfortable with writing and do it often enough. However, if you are a person like Sanjay who classifies himself as someone who “knows nothing about writing,” by hand is a much better option.
My belief is guided by my experiences with Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” where she emphasizes the importance of doing morning pages by hand. Here’s what she has to say on the subject:
“Why By Hand? There is an energy to the hand, an energy of blood, of truth and knowledge that is deeper than skin. Blood is body’s ink. We write our lives in it. The blood remembers what the mind forgets and when the blood remembers it tells by hand. … Writing by hand is like walking somewhere, instead of whizzing there in the car. We notice landmarks.”
In “Writing Down the Bones,” Natalie Goldberg also puts it well. “Writing is physical and affected by the equipment you use. In typing, your fingers hit the keys and the result is block, black letters. : a different aspect of yourself may come out. I have found that when I am writing something emotional, I must write it the first time directly with hand on paper. Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.”
When I do my freewrites on the computer, I make sure not to read back the words I just wrote, to look up and away from the monitor, and to never stop typing. It’s harder to do that though without cheating
which is why I end up going back to pen and paper.
Let me know what you find….Thanks for stopping by!
September 26th, 2008 at 7:30 am
This is a wonderful piece of flash fiction. Very evocative. Suggests something longer, certainly. Thanks, too, for this idea. . . I hope to give it a try soon. . .
September 26th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Sandhya,
I have another question. When you did this, did you think your story through first? Or did you just start freewriting, sort of, constrained only by the ABCs of it? You ended up with a thoroughly coherent, even fascinating, story. I suppose one could much more easily end up with properly alphabetized gobbledygook. Yes, you guessed correctly. I’m afraid to try it.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am
DJN – No, no thinking through at all. None of us in the writing group had the time to do that. We just had to put pen to paper and “ready, set, go.” It’s amazing what our imagination comes up with when we aren’t thinking about it or worried about it or censoring it. Everyone in our group came up with something pretty amazing that had a start and an end. And, believe me: each and everyone of us was afraid and reluctant to do it too!
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
hey, loved the idea. gave it a try. by hand first, and then typed it out. here it is:
http://benpoukoibenpake.blogspot.com/2008/10/lily-and-butterfly.html