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When the clutter in your basement looks more like rising floodwaters, it's time to go down there and deal with it. Building an ark to escape in would only be a way of avoiding the inevitable. And, besides, God would probably want me to go out into the world and collect all the animals, two by two. No thanks. I'd rather deal with the clutter.
I opened the basement door and looked down the stairs. The only clear area was the path from the bottom of the stairs to the washer and dryer. The path was walled-in by piles of clutter almost up to my hips.
I sighed and made my way down the stairs. About halfway down, I spotted an old shoe-box on one of the steps. I picked it up. There were words written on the side in magic marker: Box of Memories, 1987, for Quentin Ngoro when I'm grown up.
Going through the rest of the basement's clutter was going to have to wait a little longer.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I sat on my bed and placed the shoe-box in my lap. After I removed its lid, I saw a small disorganized collection of old photos, baseball cards, playing cards, a small red rubber ball and a set of jacks, and an old baseball. Somehow these all belonged to me, when I was a child, but I had no memory of putting this together.
Digging through the collection, I noticed a sheet of 8x11 paper, folded in half. I unfolded it and saw that it was a handwritten letter from the boy I used to be to the adult I would one day become.
To the future Quentin,
Today is Tuesday, July 21st, 1987. I'm about to finish my box of memories. Once I'm done with this letter, I'll fold it in half, put it in the box, close the box, and then store it somewhere where it hopefully won't be noticed until I'm older. I didn't want a big box. I wanted something you could put in your lap and rummage through on a rainy day, remembering the boy you used to be.
The baseball is one that I caught during a Baltimore Orioles game, when Reggie Jackson hit a home run into the stands where Dad and I sat. After the game, Mr. Jackson kindly autographed it.. The photos are of me at different times in my life. The earliest one is of a baby in a bassinet. I can't believe that the baby was me. How small I used to be! Another one is of when I was six. I'm sitting upright in a hospital bed, with a toy yellow bulldozer in my lap, a bandage wrapped around the top third of my head. That was after a dog bit me in the forehead and a doctor had to stitch the skin on my forehead back together again. The toy bulldozer was a get-well-soon gift. There are some other photos, too. At the bottom of the box is a book that I bought at the school library's book sale last year. The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander. I didn't want to part with it, but I wanted you to have it. I hope you'll like it, too.
I didn't want this letter to be as long as the ones I write each December to Santa Claus, so guess this is it for now. I hope everything turned out well. I wish I could look at you and see what I grew up to be. Were you a pilot, astronaut, or doctor? I hope one of them. But if not, I guess that's okay, too.
From the past Quentin
I smiled to myself. Much had changed in thirty-three years. I didn't become a pilot or astronaut or doctor. I went to law school and became a lawyer instead. Why? Because I was inspired by a book, To Kill a Mockingbird, and a fictional character in it named Atticus Finch, who was himself a lawyer.
There was a knock on my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I called as I closed the shoe-box.
Cat came in. She was almost as tall as I was, with long dark hair and dark eyes. She wore a plaid button-down shirt, jeans, and was barefoot. An echo of her mother, right down to the lack of fingernail and toenail polish and no rings on her fingers.
“It's almost lunchtime,” she said. And then she saw the shoe-box in my lap. “Where did that come from?”
“It was on the basement stairs,” I said. “I meant to deal with the clutter down there, but I got distracted by this shoe-box instead.”
“Maybe I can help with the clutter,” she offered.
“That would be very kind of you,” I said.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
I nodded and moved over, so that she could sit down next to me.
Cat touched the shoe-box's lid. “So what is this?”
“A box of memories,” I explained. “Something that people used to make long before MySpace and Facebook existed.”
“Sort of like a scrapbook?” Cat asked.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Can I see what's inside it?” she asked.
I nodded and handed it to her.
She carefully opened it and carefully went through the shoe-box's contents. “Seems to be the sorts of things that a young boy would've been interested in. There's even a folded sheet of paper. Probably something he doodled on. Who did all this belong to?”
“It belonged to me,” I said. “Apparently I created it when I was ten years old. To be stored away until I was grown up.”
Cat glanced at me. “You mean, like a time capsule?”
I nodded. “Something to remind myself of who I used to be. I even wrote myself a letter.”
She removed the folded piece of paper. “Then you didn't just doodle on this.”
“Correct,” I said.
“May I read it?” she asked. “Or is it too personal?”
“Be my guest,” I said.
Cat pushed her hair behind her ears and silently read the letter.
When she finished, she said, “That's quite a long letter for a ten-year-old. I'm not sure if even I would've written anything that long when I was his age.” She refolded the letter and put it back inside the shoe-box. “It's kind of like finding a bottle on the beach with a letter from 1987 inside it. An echo from a different time, a different world.” Then she noticed the book and took it out. As she did so, something small slid out of it and fell on the bed. It was a small photo. She picked it up and looked at it.
“Is this Ma?” she asked. But then she turned the photo over and looked at its backside. “No, it isn't her. It's someone else. Someone named Sharon Ferguson, or 'Sunny' for short. It's dated 1987. A girlfriend of yours, maybe?”
“I didn't have a girlfriend back then,” I said. “May I see it?”
She nodded and handed the photo to me.
The photo was of a pale-skinned preadolescent girl with freckles, green eyes, and red hair in a ponytail. At first I didn't recognize her. But then, like a recording, I could hear a girl's voice coming from deep within my memories. A voice I hadn't heard in over thirty years.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Quentin? It's Sunny. Why don't we go outside and play?”
“I don't want to,” I heard a boy grumble. He sounded familiar.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I don't want to play House again,” he said. “It's dumb.”
“Okay – then what do you want to play?” she asked.
The boy's face came into view and I saw my ten-year-old face. Probably not what you'd call good-looking, but nothing too scary.
And then I saw her face. She was very pretty. But why wasn't she hanging out with other boys, the popular ones? Or maybe she was bored with them?
“What if we went to the park?” I suggested. “It was a new playground. If it gets too hot, we could sit in the shade near the duck pond.”
Sunny looked thoughtful, then nodded.
The park was about a block or two from our elementary school. You could get there either by the street side, or through the field and woods on the other side of the school. We chose the latter route.
As we walked along, she asked, “Do you ever wonder what you'll be when you're a grownup?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Maybe a pilot, because they get to fly to faraway places. Or an astronaut, because they get to travel in space. Or a doctor, because they help people. What about you?”
“I think I want to be a scientist or an engineer,” she said.
She was definitely smart enough. Compared to her grades, mine were awful. Not as bad as my father's were, but that's not saying much, since he almost flunked out of school.
“I wish I could be one of those,” I said.
“You could,” she said. “You're pretty smart.”
I shook my head. “Not like you are.”
“Maybe you just need some help,” Sunny said.
“But who would help someone dumb like me?” I asked.
“You aren't dumb, Quentin,” she said. “I know you aren't.”
“You're just trying to be nice,” I said.
She frowned. “No, I'm not. I bet with a little tutoring you could improve your grades.” She grabbed me by the arm, and we stopped, facing each other. “I could be your tutor, in fact.”
“Why would you do that, Sunny?” I asked, puzzled.
“Because we're friends,” she said. “And friends help each other.”
“If you think it'll do any good,” I said.
“I sure do,” she insisted. “I could start helping you today. in fact. After we get back home, I mean.”
“All right,” I said. “If it's not too much work for you.”
“It isn't.” Then she smiled and tapped me on the arm. “Tag! You're it!” She ran ahead and I ran after her.
In the park, parents were seated on benches that were in the shade. They talked with each other while watching children and dogs play. The fountain in the middle of the park was on and some of the kids were running in and around it, getting wet as they cooled off.
“Hey!” someone said, giving me a shove from behind. “Lookee here, it's Quentin. The school idiot.” His two best friends stood nearby, snickered and hooted with laughter.
I recognized the voice as Dwayne's. One of the school bullies. I kept my back to him and tried to ignore him.
Sunny turned around, though, and said, “Don't call him that.”
“Why not?” Dwayne asked. “It's his name, ain't it? What else do you expect me to call him? Moron? Mental retard?”
“He isn't stupid and you know it,” she said.
“Then why are his grades so bad?” Dwayne asked and laughed. “Have you seen 'em? They're even worse than mine are.”
“I don't care,” Sunny said angrily. “You just leave him alone. You hear me?”
“Isn't it a shame?” Dwayne teased me. “Too weak to defend yourself, so you have to have a girl protect you.”
I turned around to face him, fists clenched, arms held against my sides.
“Don't give in, Quentin,” Sunny warned me. “It isn't worth it.”
“What choice do I have?” I asked.
“Yeah, if you're so smart, Sharon, you should tell him what to do,” Dwayne said. “Mama's boy don't know how to stand up for himself, anyway.”
His insults and teasing were having the desired effect and he knew it. I stepped past Sunny, my fists raised.
She tried to pull me back. “No. Don't do this.”
“Maybe I want to,” I said.
“You wanna go home with a black eye?” she asked.
“Maybe I do,” I said. “It would be worth it just to plant one on his stupid face.”
“Hey, Carrots, maybe you should let him be stupid without your help,” Dwayne teased her.
Sunny went cold and still. “What did you call me?”
“You heard me,” he said.
“Carrots, Carrots!” Dwayne's friends parroted.
Next thing I knew, Dwayne was flat on his back with a bloody nose, and Sunny was on top of one of his friends, straddling him as she punched him. Dwayne's other friend had backed off, like the coward he was.
Dwayne got to his feet and wiped away the blood flowing from his nostrils. He looked at Sunny's unprotected back and smiled to himself.
I grabbed him by the arm, yanking hard enough to force him to face me. He didn't like that.
“You leave her alone,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” he retorted. “And what are you gonna do? Cry on me?”
That did it. I punched him in the face with my left fist. It hurt enough that I had to wring it until the pain went away. But the shocked and hurt look on his face was worth it.
“Why you little runt,” he said, getting into my face.
But he didn't get a chance to do more than that. The adults were on their feet now, forcibly separating Sunny and me from Dwayne and his buddies. The adults were frowning at all of us. I'd never seen them this angry.
“Of all the stupid things you could've done,” a white-haired black woman told us, “and you decide to have a fight here at the park. What would your parents think if we told them? Hmm?” She looked at Dwayne first, pointing her forefinger at him. “No surprise that you're involved in it.”
He looked like he'd rather be anywhere but here.
“Kathleen?” the black woman called to another adult, a white woman. The second woman was younger, and maybe a few inches taller. She had short dark hair, and looked strong enough to play football. “Take Dwayne home and tell his parents what happened.”
Kathleen grimly nodded. “Gladly, Geraldine.” She came forward, ready to grab him by the arm.
“But I didn't start it!” Dwayne complained, trying to pull away from her. “I didn't punch him first. He punched me first!”
“You did start it,” Geraldine said. “We were watching. And from what we could tell, they were both minding their own business. But you just couldn't leave them alone, could you?”
He looked like he was going to cry. “It's not fair! I'm going to tell my parents how awful you are!”
Kathleen narrowed her eyes at him. “Don't threaten me, boy. We're going to talk with your parents. Who knows? They might just ground you again, even if the school doesn't expel you.”
As they left, Dwayne kept trying to free himself. He looked back at me once, gave me an angry look, and tried to make a rude gesture with his free hand. Kathleen grabbed that hand and pulled it back down.
“Don't think I didn't see that,” she told him. “You are in a world of trouble, boy.”
Once they were gone, it was Dwayne's friends' turn next.
“You have a choice: act like him, or go home right now,” Geraldine said.
They took their heels and never looked back once.
Geraldine sighed and finally looked at Sunny and me. “Maybe you two should go home, too,” she said in a much calmer voice.
“But it wasn't our fault,” Sunny protested.
“I know it wasn't,” Geraldine said firmly. “That wasn't why I suggested it. Maybe you could spend the rest of the day tutoring him. Unless you'd rather end up like Dwayne?”
I shook my head.
“I didn't think so,” Geraldine said.
“Are you going to tell our parents?” I asked her. “About this fight?”
“I'll make you a deal,” Geraldine said. “Let Sunny help you improve your grades and I won't tell anyone about this fight.” She held out her hand. “Is it a deal?”
I nodded and shook her hand. “Deal.”
With Sunny's tutoring, my grades steadily improved. As a reward, Sunny gave me a photo of herself. If only I hadn't lost it before the end of the school year.
* * * * * * * * * *
But now I'd found it again, with my daughter's help.
“I guess sometimes you need to pick up something old,” I said, “dust it off, and look at it with new eyes. I certainly did in this case..”
“Did you two ever date?” my daughter asked, handing the shoe-box back to me.
I shook my head. “But we did stay really good friends. All the way through high school.”
“How did you manage to forget her, then?” she asked. “She sounded really special.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it was when we went to different colleges. Or later on, after I finished law school. I was pretty busy for a long time. And then I met your mother, which made my life even busier … but for a good reason.”
“I wonder what happened to Sunny,” Cat mused. “Maybe you should try to find her. Now that you're single again, I mean.”
“Hint?” I said. “She might have forgotten about me after all these years.”
“Or maybe she hasn't,” she said. “Try using Facebook, Pa. I've found some old friends that way.” She stood up. “See you in the kitchen.” She left my bedroom, gently closing the door behind her.
“Thank you, Quentin and Sunny,” I whispered. “For everything.”
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This was so sweet. I love how this was told from Cat’s dad’s POV. I love it when writers reuse characters because it’s always a thrill for me to point the same characters out. With each part in this series, your writing continues to improve. It’s almost like by reading your past stories I’m taking a peek in your box of memories. I hope that you had a nice Easter.
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Glad you liked it.
Originally, the entire series of stories was going to be written from Quentin's point-of-view. But I've found since writing the first few stories, that I like changing the viewpoint from character to character. Because sometimes it seems to work better from a different viewpoint. That way you get to know those characters a little bit better from the inside. Not just what they say and do, but also what they think and feel.
I'm not reusing characters in that series. It's supposed to be like one really long story, but broken up into separate stories (like chapters, but also like how Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" and how Gaiman wrote "The Graveyard Book"). The reason there's more about Sunny is that one reader asked if I could write more about her. I didn't want to take the focus away from Quentin and Cat, so I compromised: I wrote about Sunny *and* I wrote about Quentin and Cat. It's been an interesting mixture so far.
Easter was okay. Not what I'd call one of the happier ones. I miss the ones I celebrated when I was a kid. I remember one Easter my oldest brother hid the Easter eggs and my middle brother and I had to find them. We found most of them, but some remained hidden after Easter. We eventually found them (I think mostly because they were starting to smell really bad; all you had to do was follow your nose and you could find them). I miss decorating eggs. I haven't done that since 2009, I think, when I visted my female best friend and her daughter. It was after Easter, but the three of us decorated eggs on the kitchen table. No decals, just different shades of food coloring. I remember dyeing one brown egg purple. My friend's daughter wouldn't touch it. She thought it looked terrible. I kind of felt sorry for the egg. No one seemed to like it when it was brown and they liked it even less once it was dyed purple.
I submitted the ninth story in that series yesterday. I'm not sure how good it is (my opinion of it is much lower than that of the readers on this website). It's called "The Calm Before the Storm". Maybe it's just that I had to write about topics and characters that I didn't really want to write about. Maybe the tenth story (whenever it gets written) will be easier to write. I hope so.
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I'm glad that you decided to make the series with using more than one perspective. It gives readers, and sometimes even the writer, a chance to get to know the character on a more personal level. I personally enjoy writing in first person because it allows us to really get inside the character. There's a lot of disadvantages with that POV in the aspect that it sometimes lack background information but it can be helpful in a lot of other ways. I still like to experiment with the other POV's but I think I'm a step closer to finding my voice.
My Easter was pretty quiet. I spent it with my family and we watched mass online which was nice. I miss the times when my brother and I went on Easter egg hunts. Then after all the "scavenging" was over, we exchanged toys and candy we found inside the eggs. That was always fun. It's also been a long time since I've decorated some eggs. I think the last time I did that was years ago at my friends' house. We only used dyed colors, too; nothing fancy. That poor brown and purple dyed egg though...
I'm slowly making my way to the other parts in your series. They've all been great and it's cool to see how much you've grown as a writer. Some stories we write may never be that good (I've had plenty of those) but at least it's out there and we can move forward from them. I really do hope that the tenth story will be easier to write.
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But when it comes to switching narrators, I have to make sure that it's clear enough who the current narrator is. Sometimes I mention their name at the top of their section, sometimes I hope that what they say, think, feel, and do will make it clear enough. It's like writing a mixture of a play and a novel.
Another problem with switching narrators is that you don't want to reveal too much in the process. There should still be "fog-of-war" (as wargamers say), enough mystery to keep the reader interested and reading onward. Revealing too much too soon could actually hurt the overall story. After all, if you know who did it by the third chapter and there are thirty chapters, why bother reading the rest of the story?
I'm not sure what my "voice" is, when it comes to writing. It's just how it gets from my head to the computer screen. Whichever way seems to work best is the way I choose. It doesn't mean that the path is the easy one (in fact, usually it *isn't* the easy path; it's the hard path).
My family is scattered across America, so getting together on holidays isn't easy to do. My mother, two of my nephews, a niece, and a cousin live in Virginia (all at my mother's house). My late father's cousin lives in Maryland. I'm not sure where her sons live right now. My mother's brothers and sister and their families mostly live in Texas. My oldest brother, his second wife, and one of his daughters live in Colorado. My middle brother and his wife live in California. My stepbrother, my stepniece (his daughter), and her children live in Utah. My father's older brother and paternal-side cousins live in Washinton State. Of course, there are also plenty of paternal-side relatives who live in places like Cuba, Illinois. The maternal-side ancestor whom I'm named for had a mansion in Albany, NY, which I haven't visited yet (General Philip Schuyler of the Continental Army; he was originally from Holland). Someday I should go there and sign the guestbook and look at their reactions. I bet they'd be staring. There's also the annual reunion of the Schuylers and their relatives at Saranac Lake in upstate New York State which I also haven't been to, but should go to someday.
Just because some people are prejudiced about purple-dyed brown eggs. It's just not fair, I tell ya. As the late Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "No respect at all. No respect."
It's hard to keep a growing overall story consistent. At one point I forgot who Sunny's late husband was. I thought his name was Mark, but it turned out to be Leonard. I had to go back to the story where he was first mentioned to make sure. Sometimes I have to go back and reread earlier stories in the series to make sure I don't make a huge mistake in plot or names or locations or whatever. With Tolkien and "The Lord of the Rings", when he reached the end of it, he had to go back and retype it from the ending back to the beginning. That's one of the reasons why it took him about 14 years to write it. Also, he was a two-fingered typist, not a touch-typist. And, he was still teaching classes at Oxford during WW2. So he could only write when he had enough free time to (and when the ideas were flowing).
I bet some of the earliest stories are okay compared to the later ones. Like "Tea for Two". I haven't finished that series yet. Or the one that started with "Submarine Academy". *sigh* I've got a lot of writing yet to do, just to finish off each of these series. I never thought I'd have so many going at the same time. I'm used to doing one series and either completing and going on to another series, or run out of ideas, abandon a series, and then start a new one. Having several in parallel is rather unusual for me.
Same here. I had a pretty good idea what *might* happen in story #9, so it wasn't that hard to write. I just had to make myself write it when I didn't really want to. Being lazy is so much easier, after all. Story #10 is still amorphous (like smoke) and I'm not quite sure what it'll be about. I don't want to rush the overall story along, but I also don't want to dilly-dally along the way. And then, once the overall story is finished, I'll have to go back and fill in the gaps, as well as convert the series of short stories into one long novel (or two, if it's too long for one novel). When that time comes, I bet I won't have any idea what the word "boredom" means. "Boredom? What's that?" My middle brother made up a term when he was in grade school, "Panic boredom". It's when you panic for lack of anything to do.
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Oooh. Sunny sounds like she could be a keeper!!
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She definitely is. I just haven't gotten around to writing the sixth story in the series yet. Maybe after I see the next set of short story prompts on Friday morning or afternoon (depending on when they're posted in my time zone). I don't want to write stories offline only to find that they don't fit any of the short story prompts, because I don't know how to post them at this website if they're not part of a current weekly contest.
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I love this story! It is super cute and made me smile. I like how you leave it with an action he is going to do because of the flashback and how you described the close community. You did take a while to get to the flashback, you could've made it where he opens it with his daughter the first time that way you don't have to go over everything twice. But if this is how you wanted to write it then you did an amazing job!
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I'm happy that you loved it.
The original ending wasn't a happy one, but when I edited it (several times), trying to get the word count from around 4000 words to 3000 or less, I changed the ending. When I was editing it, I couldn't tell where I could reduce the text before the flashback. I tried to reduce that as much as I could. I guess that's the difference between reading from the outside and being the writer on the inside. The reader often sees things that the writer didn't see (or can't see).
Maybe you could tell me where you would've condensed the pre-flashback text without hurting the story? Then I could compare your suggestion(s) with what I wrote and then see if I can make the changes in my offline version (since I can't change the online version anymore).
Btw, the flashback was mostly improvised (the entire first draft was written nonstop between 10 pm and 4 am Monday/Tuesday of last week). I remember just typing and thinking, "Boy, I wonder if they'll believe me that I'm just typing what pops into my head as I go along. Probably not." And when I finished at 4 am, I think I was really tired and just went to bed. I started editing after I woke up (around noon or so) and it took part of Tuesday and Wednesday to edit the story into the version you read. For me, it's usually easier to write at night and edit during the day. At night, I tend to fuss less about what I'm typing, so it's free to flow as it wishes (as long it makes sense, plot-wise). For instance, I didn't know that there would be a fight at the playground before it happened. Quentin and Sunny got to the park and I thought, "Okay, now what?" And then Dwayne said, "Well, lookee here" and that scene pretty much wrote itself. The reference to "carrots" (again, improvised) is actually borrowed from a scene in "Anne of Green Gables", where Gilbert Blythe whispered "Carrots" to Anne when they were in class. She got so upset that she broke her slate on his head and then got in trouble for it (though Marilla toned down the need for punishment; you can tell when she asks, "Did you really break your slate on his head?" And Anne says yes, she did. Marilla asks, "Hard?" And Anne says, "Very hard." At which, Marilla tries to smother a smile.).
Btw, "Reunion" (the sequel to "Box of Memories") is done and submitted. Just wrote it and edited it today. After a few story drafts that went nowhere after several pages each, I decided to make one last attempt today. And I'm glad I did.
Sorry for the long response.
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That is true, the writer always seems more as they are the one trying to paint the picture for the writer to see. Writing is cool that way.
I actually write in a similar style to you, where am just sit down I write what comes to my mind and watch the story unfold before my eyes. I am working on a large book series and I don’t actually know how it’ll end yet, I have an idea but I have to see where the story takes me. I can see how writing at night would help that process, a good idea.
That is a cool reference that you slipped in. I haven’t seen or read that yet. It sounds like a funny scene.
I look up reunion. I would love to see how this story continues on.
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It definitely feels like word-painting to me sometimes (especially when the writing is going really well). I feel like I'm *in* the story rather than observing from outside the story. Late at night, a story can feel more real to me than reality is. I finish a draft (or an editing session) and pull back from it and have to readjust to the world around me. Almost like waking up from a dream.
I'm lucky that no one has ever said, "Ew! How could you read a girl's book? You're a guy! Read books for guys!" So reading "Anne of Green Gables" feels as natural to me as reading "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". And "Daddy Long-legs" is just as okay as "The Russia House" is. But, despite that, I'm still a bit canalized by how I grew up. For instance: I can't wear pink. Pale red is sort of okay, but no pink. Pink is for girls, not boys. Blue, however, can be for boys *and* girls. (My female best friend looks better in blue than pink, in my opinion.) I must sometimes seem like a dinosaur, culturally speaking, compared to people younger than I am.
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I get the whole feeling like your apart of it and how it feels like waking up. When I get really into the story, it is really hard to pull myself away sometimes. Though it is important to spend time in real life, it is really cool to be apart of the story and watch it unfold.
I haven't actually read any of those books. I guess growing up I was always reading fantasy books like "Fablehaven" and werewolf stories. Color is interesting with our perception of what it means. For example, back in the 1800's pink was the color for men. Things just change over time.
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Great story and great writing! As Silvia said, great ending with sweet and hopeful feelings. I wish we would know more about who Sunny has become!!
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Very happy that you liked it.
I have in mind two possibilities of what happened to Sunny (one happy, one sad). I haven't quite decided which direction to go in, yet. Waiting to see if there's a writing prompt on this website that suggests a possible direction. Not this week, apparently. Maybe one of next Friday's prompts?
It's really nice to have a reader wanting to know what happens next. Because that makes a writer happy and the writer thinks, "Hmm. Let me think, brainstorm, and daydream, and see what I can come up with." It's actually rare that I've had readers ask me, "So what happens next?" Until this year, I think the last time that happened was back in 1994 after an incomplete series of poems (14 poems in all, I think) about the spirits of Halloween (led by Samhain himself) trying to take over the world. The reader (a friend of mine) read them all and then asked me, "So what happens next?" And I had to confess that I didn't know and that was why the "story" stopped at that point. I still haven't completed it. Maybe someday I'll go back and rewrite it in prose form.
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That's true, if the readers want to know what happens next, it means they like the characters and got attached to them. It gives you the desire to write more!
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It feels good. It really does. I'm just surprised that the current character-of-interest isn't Cat and/or her father Quentin, but is Sunny instead. I was rather hoping to go back to Cat or her father next. Maybe no one will mind if the next story includes all three of them.
I just wish there was a weekly contest prompt that I could use to write Part 3 with. (There are old contest prompts, but I don't know how to post a new story based on an old prompt.) I'll just have to wait until Friday and see what the next five prompts are, because I still haven't thought of anything to write using the current prompts.
Hope your writing is going well.
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Well I guess we're interested in Cat and her father as well, but it is intriguing to know what happened to Sunny as she grew up.
I am not even sure we can post a story on an older prompt. I'm not writing as much as before because school takes most of my time these days but I can't wait to get into writing again!
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I didn't want this story to focus only on Sunny. It probably would've been easier just to start from her viewpoint, but that didn't feel right to me. So I did it this way instead. Think of it more like a bridging story (connecting the earlier stories with whatever happens after "Reunion", which I haven't written anything of ... yet). I do have some ideas of what the next story might begin as (mainly setting), but I get the feeling I'm not quite ready to start writing it. I hope to start writing it sometime this weekend, if possible. (I can't on Monday, because there will be transcription work to do for my boss.) There may yet be an unhappy conclusion, or maybe not. I don't want to think too far ahead. I'd rather be surprised instead.
I also didn't want a sudden jump to Sunny and Quentin meet and fall madly in love with each other. That just felt wrong to me. After all, they were best friends in grade school, not girlfriend/boyfriend. They're happy to be together again, yes, but where will their renewed friendship go next? I'm not entirely sure, so I'm going to be patient, and wait to see what develops. Besides, Sunny might need a babysitter for her kids if Sunny does anything (casual or romantic) with Quentin. Who knows, maybe Cat would be willing to babysit them while Sunny and Quentin go out somewhere. Maybe do some apple-picking in a local orchard together. No promises, though.
Maybe you can squeeze in a little writing every so often in and around school work. I have to do something similar when I have a lot of transcription work to do. I just take short breaks from the work and do some creative writing, and then I go back to work again. I had to do that in my first post-college full-time job (1993-2000), because the creativity kept happening while I was busy with work (mostly data entry). My supervisor finally said, "Okay. You can work on your stories when you take a break or during lunch." Really nice guy. After all, he could've just said, "No creative writing while you're at work." I had a similar situation at a temp job a year earlier, where the supervisor said, "As long as you don't have any work to do, you can read and write all you want." Which was wonderful, because I tended to get the work done quickly, so I usually had plenty of free time. Funny thing is, I was substituting for the full-time employee who was on injury leave for five weeks. The day they came back, they spent two hours typing a letter (which would've taken me about 20 minutes or so) and the other six hours chatting on the phone with her friends. Since it was a government job, there wasn't anything their supervisor could do (he wanted to me to replace her, but that didn't happen because I had to go through the proper employment channels and I wasn't so sure I wanted a government job back then anyway).
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I think you lost yourself in the flashback a bit, it felt a bit dragging as there were a few things that seemed without purpose, but the ending was so sweet and hopeful it made me want to know more about the characters. Well done!
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Thank you for reading the story, and I'm sorry about where it dragged (I'll have to go back and re-read it again and see if I can find those spots).
The initial story draft took me about 6 hours (between 10 pm on Monday and 4 am on Tuesday). I tried to edit/fix/rewrite what I could later on Tuesday and yesterday. It wasn't easy to write or edit (especially since the rough draft ended up at somewhere over 4000 words and I had to figure out what to cut and what to write to finally get it down to under 3000). I'll try to go back before tomorrow night's end-of-contest deadline and see what I can do to make it read better.
The basic plot was this: 1) Need to de-clutter basement, but found a shoe-box. 2) Went through shoe-box. 3) Shared shoe-box with daughter. 4) The discovery of what had been thought to be a lost photo triggers memories of a day when the narrator was 10 years old. 5) Coming back to present-day and going to conclusion of story.
I probably need to write a sequel to this story to clarify what got removed (and maybe should've been kept, if I'd had more than 3000 words to work with). Maybe that would make it seem less meandering and less choppy. It's hard sometimes deciding what can be kept and what can be deleted without hurting the overall story, or better yet, what can be rewritten (hopefully more concisely). Sunny asking Quentin about the future was actually supposed to tie into what got cut from the last scene of the story, where you find out what happens about a month or so before high school graduation (which I won't spoil here, in case I can still write a story about it). Let's just say that the original draft of the story didn't exactly have a happy ending. The current ending isn't 100% happy, but it's still happier than it originally was.
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Silvia: Could you please point out where you thought the story was dragging?
I've re-read it again today and outside of a couple errors ("affect" should've been "effect", and "You're in a world of trouble. boy." should've been "You're in a world of trouble, boy." -- both of which I've already fixed in both my offline version and the submitted version), I honestly can't see anything I could really improve by making the text more concise or by eliminating a part (or parts) of a scene.
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I just find the flashback superfluous, that's all. The photo that triggers the memory only appears at the very end, and the rest of the scene feels completely unrelated to the characters in the present. When I was reading it, I could feel you were going somewhere with it which is good, but there was too much pointless dialogue for what is essentially a "I was bullied and she was nice" story. I suppose I would have liked more emotion, a stronger sense of connection between the friends, and not just a "this happened, she was there" kind of thing. All in all, I suppose the reason why it felt dragging to me is because I grew impatient and just wanted to get to the end and see what he felt by remembering, because the flashback just didn't hold my interest.
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Forgive me for being pedantic but: In my offline version of the story, the photo is mentioned from the bottom of page 3 to the top of page 4. Not the end of the story, which is on page 9.
Maybe this will help clarify things: I was trying to explain the friendship between Quentin and Sunny. It had more to do than just with bullying. They're friends and Quentin doesn't exactly have a positive opinion of himself. As they go to the park, Sunny is looking toward her future and wonders if he is looking towards his. With his grades, he doesn't think he has much of a future. She then offers to tutor him, to help him improve his grades, which he accepts (grudgingly). He doesn't think he's worth her help, and she says that he is, because they're friends, and friends help each other. Then, at the park, she tries to get him to use his brains when dealing with Dwayne and his buddies instead of his muscles (something that, in "Breaking with Tradition" Quentin tries to get his daughter, Cat to do). But he's determined to stand up for himself, because he's tired of being a weakling. But, in standing up for himself, Quentin also helps Sunny by punching Dwayne when Dwayne was going to go after Sunny's unprotected back. After the fight (after the end of the story really), without Sunny's tutoring, I don't think he would've graduated from high school, much less gone on to college and law school and become a lawyer. "Box of Memories" is basically two friends helping each other. And I guess you could say that "Breaking with Tradition" is how Quentin repays Sunny for her friendship, kindness, support, and tutoring by helping his daughter Cat with her essay. Just as Sunny wanted him to do better in school, he also wants his own daughter Cat to do better in school. And, if I write a sequel(s) to "Box of Memories", I might write about Cat's experiences in college and after college (and maybe what happened to Sunny in her last year in high school). Maybe Cat, in turn, will help someone else as a way of repaying her father for helping her. Kind of like people in line at a story or drive-thru paying for the person behind them. One good deed triggers another good deed which triggers another good deed, etc.
Maybe I just used to many words in the story to say all that. But a summary isn't a short story.
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Unlike "Breaking with Tradition", this sequel is from Cat's father's point-of-view.
I'm not sure if I followed the story prompt well enough, but did what I could.
The "stew" (the story) this time had more real life ingredients than previous stories probably did: The elementary school is the one I went to for 3rd to 5th grade and it's still there (Le Tort Elementary in Carlisle, Pennsylvania). I went back to visit it a few years ago. It's changed somewhat both inside and outside, but there are still parts that are like they were in 1977. The field outside the school is still there, so are the woods, and so is the neighborhood park (Le Tort Park in Carlisle, Pennsylvania). I did get bitten by a dog when I was 6 years old and did receive a toy yellow bulldozer as a gift after I got home from the hospital. The actual doctor who sewed my forehead's skin back together died in 1990 and, sadly, I never thanked him. Sunny is actually the name of an older friend who I knew in 1990 and 1991 (her real name was Sharon and she was about 20 years older than I was, not the same age). She had blond hair, though, not red. Dwayne was the name of an older brother of a friend of mine that I knew in the late 1970s. The real Dwayne is *nothing* like the fictional one; he's much nicer, but he doesn't talk much. Lloyd Alexander is a real author, and "The Black Cauldron" is the 2nd book of his Chronicles of Prydain series (but I didn't buy it at a school library book sale). Reggie Jackson was one of the Baltimore Orioles back in the 1970s.
As far as I know, all the rest is fictional, including the names of the other characters.
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