Envy, A FreeWrite
"It will never be quite a long white beard" Lucy said to her sister Maud as she lovingly stroked the single twelve inch strand of hair that long ago first sprouted from her chin "but it is my muse, the source of my power, and I can never be without it or I will not be able to write anything that is not unbearable for you to read."
Maud looked at her sister dubiously.This was Maud's default look. Maud could not be less supportive of a person. She found fault with everything (unless it was hers), did not enjoy any performance (unless she was in it), and read nothing that had not either been lauded in the New York Times or written by she herself. She was scrawny, could move quickly but inefficiently, and had an obviously false smile. Strangers who passed her on the street gave her wide berth, because she looked every bit a meth addict.
"That is absurd." Maud said. "Your writing is really bad already, even with with that stupid hair distracting all of kingdom come. If you ask me. I feel like I'm inhaling the stench of vomit as I read your stuff. It's positively riddled with sentence structures I couldn't construct if I tried, you used the passive voice that one time for god's sake, and your stories sometimes expose deep personal truths. Those make the reader uncomfortable. Throw in more sentence fragments. For no good reason. People like gratuitous writing that goes on and on and ends up nowhere. The only thing that is good about your stories is that they are very very short, and even then I rarely waste my time bothering to read them. Your problem is that hair. You should shave it off. Maybe then you will be able to do more than just take shits on the page."
The mere thought of this filled Lucy with dread. She had come to love that hair, plucking all the others in favor of this one.
Maud then got all up in Lucy's face, readying herself to leave. She said "You will agree with me someday. Everyone eventually does" and, as she zipped up her coat, she caught Lucy's beloved hair in her coat's zipper, ripping it out.
I'm happy to report that Lucy was not only still able to write perfectly well without that hair, she could perhaps write even a little better, and she was, for the first time in her life, grateful for her sister.
Some thorns in your side serve a purpose. You just have to pluck them out.
I went way overtime - I desperately needed to get this story out.
Since my five minute freewrites are generally under 200 words and require less than one minute of the reader's time, I estimate that this one took me twelve minutes to write.
I hope you feel your three minutes with me were fruitful.
I chose to show you my favorite painting in the whole world because I feel very proud of my freewrite.
You kinda had to be there to fully understand where I am coming from in this piece, but I'm sure you all know someone like Maud.
What a great freewrite @owasco. I loved the humor with the hair. 😂
Thank you! Doesn't suck when a great freewriter likes my freewrite!
What a wonderful compliment @owasco. You made my day! I always enjoy your great freewrites and posts. 💕
Awesome freewrite hon! Really love your writing style!
Daaamn! hahahaha!! ouch.
This one cracked me up too! I choked on my coffee hard enough my dog came over to ensure I was alright!
good pooch you got there HAHAHAHA!!!
Glad you got a chuckle out of it! There is nothing like a good tussle with a freewrite.
Thanks Jaynie! If you ask me, there is nothing like a really good freewrite.
I would agree there. Much of what I write is my own personal ramblings so I suppose not much different haha!
Dumbo's magic feather... the mean sister...
"The only thing that is good about your stories is that they are very very short, and even then I rarely waste my time bothering to read them." My own mother once told me she reads my stories only if they're short--and if they have photos to break up the text. :)
I know sooo many women who sound like this sister.
Your artist friend Lydia Viscardi is indeed incomparable!
oh I just had a lovely vision of a young Carol Kean (nee?...) writing all day long. Maybe it was like in Matilda by Dahl, only the mother says "I'm fed up with all of this writing!" instead of the father's saying "I'm fed up with all of this reading!"
Bad Mommy Move. I'm pretty sure she regretted that one.
Now I need to defend my mother. She's never been an avid reader, always hated school, had no patience for fairy tales, and made sure we never believed in Santa. She didn't discourage me from reading and writing, but she wouldn't feed the habit, either.
To my surprise, she's been reading more of my Steemit freewrites in the past year (if it's short enough!). The "Mom's Cousin Lois" posts got her attention.
Do I exaggerate? All writers do! And sooo many writers tell me they NEVER show their stuff to family because it will be ignored or lampooned. Not alone!
I love that description of your mother! And your mom's cousin Lois stories were some of the first ones I ever read of yours. They were great. I loved her son (I think it was - Robbie?) He's a bad boy I would have been attracted to. I'm a redneck deep down inside.
I am very selective about who gets to read my stories in my family of origin. Only one of them even knows about this little obsession of mine. I write about them too often. I've wondered how published authors dare to write about their families.
You liked Rory - LOL!! - last night I lay awake thinking about him and his cousin the runaway wife... and the missing mother... the real life Rory scattered his mother's ashes on her birthday (or planned to) only a few weeks ago, so that story has been heavy on my mind. (No, the real life Lenna didn't go the way of her cat!!!) Thanks @owasco for reading and remembering this wacko family, mostly fiction of course. :) And I posted something last year--a Wallace Stegner quote about the greatest fiction ever told--the disclaimer at the front of a a novel that this is "only fiction," and resemblance to real-life people is unintended or coincidental. Bwa ha ha ha!!!! Authors, hide your career, hide your stories, from all who know you!
I was delighted to come across the Stegner quote because I'd held the same thought all my life as a reader:
Ha!
You and @goat-girlz and @fitinfun read and commented on that one. You've come a long way since then, Stacey - more confident in your own writing - Bravo! (I was already a fan.) :)
Nice window into what once was! Actually, nothing has changed. I still feel that way.
Wait, you still feel that way... about yourself as a writer? You spread your wings; you're no longer a fledgling!
We all know frustration and self-doubt. My mission is to build confidence in others and help streamline those wings for an aerodynamic flight that takes us higher than ever... because I am sleep deprived and babbling at the moment....
Speaking of @goat-girlz, she hasn't posted since Christmas. I was very excited that she got a good camera, she used it once for us, and then POOF. I miss her.
I miss her too!!! Does anyone have contact with her outside her Steemit account?
It was well worth the three minutes of my time 😄 👏 👏 👏 👏
Ditto that! :)
I'm so glad you think so. Thank you!
This is a GREAT story and was worth the wait completely! Some thorns can and should be plucked out!
Thank you fellow freewriter!
Lol. This was cooked up as a freewrite? Interesting what one might find in a scribe's mind.
It's a total freewrite. It does capture some difficult feelings I've been having regarding a certain recent post that denigrated freewrites (and was generously rewarded by curators to my utter disgust), but not a bit of what I had been working on prior to reading the prompt, setting the timer, starting to write, and having no idea what I was even going to write about, is in this freewrite - it was 100% unexpected. It's a great example of what I love most about freewriting - truth comes hurtling out, effortlessly. My characters speak in their own voices - that always surprises me the most. The bitch who thinks she can write makes the same errors and pronouncements in her little speech that she makes in her writing. The protagonist is submissive and self-doubting, which was my reaction to to the aforementioned denigrating post. It baffles me how this happens. It's magic.
Magic it is when our subconcsious, aka our Muse, makes sense of the detritus of our daily lives and shoots it out as prose. Good prose, not drivel, I will add. :)
...it was 100% unexpected. It's a great example of what I love most about freewriting - truth comes hurtling out, effortlessly. My characters speak in their own voices - that always surprises me the most.
As for the comment about freewrites being a waste of one reader's time, I felt 99.999% certain I was the target of that remark--that I am the writer who's grown "sloppy"--but even if writers like you are the target, I'm biting my tongue and restraining my sword hand. Not because I don't care to defend others against bullying! I can do that behind the scenes. Bullies are best ignored (a lot of the time). Some act out for the attention. Why feed it? Why give them the drama and conflict they're after? Someone was lurking on my Freewrites and screen-shotting things I wrote in the comment section about a real-life neighbor (as if anyone at #freewritehouse knows or cares who that person is), and it's not rocket science figuring out who would do that, but it's also not worth any drama or confrontation. It's no use fighting opinions of those who denigrate us. This neighbor expends a lot of time and energy on negative attention. So do certain friends and family members that I no longer trust as I once did. So be it. Half a century of asserting myself and explaining and apologizing taught me one thing: the more I try to make amends, the more my efforts at 'damage control' backfire and make things exponentially worse. You can't reason with mental cases and d^ckwads.
So, gray-haired granny that I am, I've been tossing the sword to the side and forging ahead with my own thing, be it freewriting or editing or book reviewing, or (gasp!) polishing and publishing my own novels at last.
I'm not ashamed of my freewrites. I had fun with them. I have a large cast of characters now that never existed before the daily prompt arose.
Having someone dismiss my writing as drivel just doesn't faze me. There's a book titled I Only Have So Many Sh^ts to Give and that's about where I'm at. Oops. Never trust my memory. Here's the book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
The cover blurb:
Let's send Oprah Winfrey to the curbside and live life as it comes.
And let the true stories out by freewriting.
Yeah!
Even if the Not Giving a F^^k author is a millennial trotting out his own buzz words and F-bombs for shock value. We can only take so much positivity, right? :)
Sometimes the crabby old lady on sitcoms makes us laugh because she has the guts to say what she thinks without fear of consequences. She's in her final years. No time to waste, to suffer fools.
My big mistake was thinking that I could be like that before age 50. Live and Learn, and read Dale Carnegie!
I think most of us have a thorn in the flesh that we cherish my friend.
A brilliant writ here.
Blessings!
Thank you!
👌 ❤️ 👌
Everything about that hair upsets me, @owasco, but I'm glad you got it out.
This one is on a similar theme maybe:
https://steempeak.com/hive-161155/@mariannewest/day-836-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-crazy-eyes
Well, dang. This author has been busy! I haven't read all these books, but I've seen the blogs, and I tend to agree: we only have so many f^cks to give, so why give them to mean people who don't warrant our mental energy and attention? If you're discouraged or doubting yourself due to some negative feedback, feel free to internalize this message.
by Mark Manson, Gary John Bishop, et al. | Jan 1, 2019
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