by Naomi L. | June 28, 2013 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
Her world was normal. She had a loving family, great friends, a good school and a happy home. Her days were filled with the the average musings of any young girl trying to find her place in the world. She had a normal life. But she didn’t know how much more exciting that life could be.
Until the day she picked up a digital camera and discovered her gift for making films.
Suddenly, the world had become her playground. Now she had control over everything around her. She could make people do and say whatever she wanted. She could tell her younger sister to act silly, fall down, make a fool of herself, and know she would actually want to. She could ask her older sister for favors and have them done her way. She could channel her wit into hilarious scripts that would entertain others and bring smiles to the faces of the people she loved. She had discovered the power to turn the world upside down. She was an artist.
She loves the world. She loves her family, her friends, her days at school and at home. She loves her life.
Sometimes it’s all just more exciting through the lens, for behind the camera is the brave young woman she always wanted to be.
Happy Birthday to my incredible sister and favorite filmmaker! Best of luck to you in all your future endeavors. Keep making those awesome movies! I love you!
by Naomi L. | June 21, 2013 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
She was so beautiful.
The moment I saw her, I couldn’t stop staring. Something about her was calling me, urging me to move closer, and I saw her moving toward me too. Soon, we were face to face. I smiled at her. She smiled back.
Then something else caught my eye, and we both turned to look. Another face, just as beautiful. How could all these lovely eyes be looking at someone as plain as me? Again, I walked to the alluring new arrival, as she did to me. Perhaps she was a little prettier than the first…
More faces appeared around the corner, all of them calling me forth. Some were like the first two, but many were different. Some were hiding, no doubt shy like me. Some stood in the light like regal beings waiting for attention, my attention. Some were slim, some were wide. Some were tall as giants, some were short as dwarves, and others still had the most unusual curves. But they were all beautiful.
Soon, I was lost in their world. Around every corner, another face waited to greet me with a smile. They made me laugh, a lovely sound that echoed through the still halls of their mysterious land, a sound I hadn’t heard since before my broken heart told me I was plain and made me believe I could never be as beautiful as these hundred faces watching me now. They were laughing with me, telling me a different story. Maybe my heart was wrong.
And then I was at the edge of their world, where one last face, the most beautiful of all, was waiting to see me off. Above her head was a sign, telling me I was now leaving their “House”. I spared one last look into her lovely dark eyes, and in a single step, I was back in the outside world of people and noise and fun of all sorts. Fun that I could finally join in once again.
I looked back into the house I had left, but I couldn’t see that beautiful face anymore. She was gone. They were all gone. They were never there.
But my smile remained. I didn’t need them anymore.
I held my head high and walked away to the pier. Alone.
This story was my entry for the Carnival Style Contest recently held by Writer’s Carnival. The rule was to write any piece as long as it was carnival-themed in some way, so I chose to write a story set in a house of mirrors. With the contest now over and the winners already announced, I decided to share my piece here on my blog for others to read. Enjoy!
Special thanks to Writer’s Carnival for hosting the contest! It was a lot of fun!
by Naomi L. | June 7, 2013 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
I never saw the spider.
I kept telling them on the way to the hospital: I opened the door just for a second to let the cat out, and then I went back to the living room.
I never saw that spider sneaking in.
Yet here we were two hours later, listening to the doctor tell us that my sister was going to be fine. A minor allergic reaction, nothing to worry about. But good news now wasn’t going to keep my parents from looking at me funny for weeks, and it wasn’t going to stop this story from coming up at every Christmas family gathering for years to come. Now my baby sister was going to be arachnophobic for the rest of her life, and I would never be able to open another door without looking straight at my feet first.
All because of one mistake.
That I never even saw.
by Naomi L. | May 24, 2013 | Flash Fiction, J.C. Wolfe's Writing |
(What If? Exercise: Read the description here.)
I sat at my desk, typing away at my computer, trying to break through my writer’s block as I wrote about anything and everything that came to mind, hoping some random idea would blossom into a story, when I happened to glance over at a pile of books sitting nearby, on top of which sat a book from my childhood, The Cat in the Hat, a book I had recently found sitting quietly on one of the room’s many shelves, a book I had loved as a little girl, and suddenly I found myself thinking back on the simpler days of my life, when six-foot cats wearing tall striped hats and pet fish who could talk made perfect sense to me, when stories about boys who had crazy adventures in magical chocolate factories and young children learning the craft of magic were much more appealing to me than the average everyday life, a normal life where I was just a shy girl trying to hide from the scary kids at school by making herself as inconspicuous as possible, while still longing for a day when she would be recognized as a great storyteller with a gift for touching people’s lives with her unique voice in writing, a day when people everywhere would know her name and celebrate her beautiful stories about fantastic adventures and worlds where anything was possible, worlds that existed only in her mind but that could hopefully live on in the imaginations of many young readers, perhaps some of whom would choose to pursue their own talents in the arts and continue to color the world with their own voices, making the world a much brighter place… and then I looked back at my computer screen and smiled, realizing that I didn’t need to worry so much about finding a perfect idea to shape into a perfect piece, that ideas were anywhere and everywhere, and as long as I had my own storytelling voice, I didn’t need to produce a great novel to be heard, for I could just as easily write a simple short piece about an ambitious writer’s long train of thought and her hopeful journeys breaking blocks.
Yes, I realize this piece is only one sentence long, and I can assure you that it’s completely intentional. This story is based on What If? Exercise 90: “The Journey of the Long Sentence”. The goal is to write a short short story that, as mentioned above, is a single sentence in length. The objective of this exercise is to understand how we can shape our writing in a similar manner that our minds function, building a linear order for an observation that often consists of many overlapping aspects.
The story I ended up creating was almost completely improvised; I started with a single idea and just ran with it, typing without pausing while I let my mind continuously fill in the lines of the story. Though I know the end result isn’t perfect, I can honestly say it was a lot of fun to write, and I encourage you to try it yourself. Who knows what brilliant stories might be lurking in the back of your mind?
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