Instability of the self- a writing exercise

I love writing exercises, and who doesn’t? Sometimes it makes all the difference in a writing block to just sit down and write something for fun, with no meaning or necessity, just to fulfill a handful of requirements and see what comes out of it. I used to love being a part of a writing group for this very reason. I miss being part of a writing group. Honestly, I’d give just about anything to have that back again.

But until then I’d like to share a writing exercise I myself have just now completed. It was fun and a bit strange. Not something you could do with publishable writing, but a fun exercise of stepping out of the rule books and trying out the forbidden for a change of pace. This exercise comes from a book I really like called “The 3 A.M. Epiphany” by Brian Kiteley. The exercise is titled “The Unstable Self” and goes like this:

Write a story that alternates between the I and the he or she (or the name of the narrator), making suryou dont’ confuse the reader with the switches. You might also consider other ways of indicating instability -voices (in italics), commands, or out of body perspectives. Why would this be useful or necessary? Imagine a situation where a character is under such stress that he cannot think straight- or perhaps she’s madly in love and doesn’t care if she thinks in statnard issue thoughts.

 

Want to give this a try yourself? Do it! Post your story pieces in the comments or give me a link either in comments or by email to where you’ve posted your story based on this prompt. I would love to see how everyone interprets this difficult exercise.

I am not sure I pulled it off all that well, but the story writing was quite entertaining- something I do not do very often these days. It’s usually non-fiction or bust. So here it is, if you are interested.

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            On the corner of 21^st and Fairmoor is a13 floor architectural beast of a building left hulking and under-maintained, once the flagship for a business think-tank, now broken into law offices, accountants, psychatrists, social workers, and call centers, mostly. Considering how mundane the businesses within this building are, the architecture speaks of something grander, older and more refined, maybe even pretty, if architecture was your thing. Which it is not, for me.  There it sits, in all it’s stone and marble glory and here I stand, on it’s opposite corner, paralyzed from the knees down to do anything but stand and stare and wait.

            She’s going to be late. It’s 10:21 and if she doesn’t move a little faster, she’s going to be late. A taxi passes, and then a cobalt blue Ford Taurus with muffler problems. The driver is an anxious blond, probably embarrassed and aware of every riff and bang ejected from her vehicle. Her car problems are obscene, and now belong to us all, unwilling and resentful pedestrians in the wake of her exhaust and noise pollution. I want to pity her, but I don’t. I have a feeling she did this to herself.

Short Story: The First Race (of the Tortoise and the Hare)

The First Race

(of the Tortoise and the Hare)

Said the tortoise to the hare, “I have a story to tell you.”“A story?” said the hare, “A story that I do not already know?”“Oh no,” said the tortoise, “you do not know this story. No one knows this story. It has never been written.”

“Then how,” asked the hare, “do you know the story? Surely you did not write it.”

“Mmmm,” retorted the tortoise, “this is a terrible story. Positively awful.”

Puffed the hare, “I surely do not want to hear a positively awful story!”

“Oh,” replied tortoise, who was slow and wise and never got bristled and always dressed in fine clothes without a wrinkle or a snare, “oh but you will want to hear this story. This story is about us. And I’ll have you know, I did not write it.”

“Oh?” puffed the hare, indignant and scattered, “who wrote it then?”

“He is writing it,” replied the tortoise rather reluctantly, but shamed with smugness upon knowing something that hare did not. “The writer wrote it. He wrote it about us.”

Hare withdrew suddenly, crushing his bowtie under his pawpalm while trying to adjust it for breath-room. Hare stuttered, spittle whipping away from his angled teeth. “But not us! Certainly never about us!”

Tortoise nodded sagely and hare’s ear drooped and withered.

“What could he possibly have to say about…us?” asked hare finally, recovering his tall stature upon two legs. Tortoise adjusted hare’s bowtie as best he could.

Tortoise crossed his green-nailed front feet and patted the yellow underbelly, clothed by a plaid vest. Sharp and never wrinkled. Calmly tortoise cleared his throat, adjusted the tiny square glasses perched on his hooked nose, and began the story.

“One day,” said the tortoise, “and this was a very nice day I might add, with sunshine and birdsong and trotting of humans on…”

“Yes yes,” said the hare, “I get it. It was a warm sunny day. Do get on with the story.”

“Harumph,” said the tortoise nasally. “It was a very lovely day. There was a tortoise passing along on a country road, as sometimes tortoises are wan to do, and along came a hare full of vim and vigor. The tortoise was a slim shade of husky green and the hare a mottled medley of grays and goose-browns. The hare, upon spotting the slow moving tortoise, bounded over with such speed and clumsiness that he nearly tripped over the tortoise’s full bodied shell.”

The hare sniffed warily in the tortoise’s general direction. The wilt in his ear lifted just a fraction, as the hare sensed this story to be bias and written by the tortoise after all, and not the Writer.

The tortoise, sensing hare’s distrust for the affectionate descriptions he had offered the story, resigned to tell it like it was unwritten.

“The tortoise, a slow moving creature, paid the hare’s boundless energy little head as he was content to plod along at a tortoise’s rightful speed.”

“Stop, narrating,” challenged the hare. “Get on with the story.”

The tortoise continued, unfazed, and looked respectfully away from hare’s wide blinkless eyes, “The hare, however, found great delight in the tortoise’s slow movements, and carpeted circles around the tortoise as he plodded along.”

“Oh –ho!- tortoise! How slow you walk! I dare say, it wouldn’t be much different if you ran!” laughed the Story-Hare.

“I am in no rush,” responded the Story-Tortoise. “It is a lovely day, after all. But I could run if I wanted to.”

“But the hare fell back on his mottled side, kicked up his feet, and belly-laughed until he cried,” narrated the tortoise.

Buck-toothed and highly amused, the hare snickered. The tortoise continued his story.

“Mildly irritated by hare’s abuse of his speed-prowess to insult and laugh at the tortoise, the tortoise decided to issue a challenge to the hare.”

“Hare, if you think you are so much faster than me, why don’t we have a little race?” said Story-Tortoise to Story-Hare.

“This made the hare’s side split in more laughter. The hare tumbled and trotted after the plodding tortoise, spitting with laughter.”

“You and me, tortoise? Race? But that’s posi-lutely ridiculous! Sincerely now old boy, tell me how you’d plan to cheat!” said Story-Hare to Story-Tortoise.

The hare sat down cross-legged, though taking no care to keep his suit coat from becoming wrinkled in the process. His amusement glittered as he listened to the stoic tortoise tell the story.

“I will not cheat,” said the Story-Tortoise. “And to prove that I will not cheat, there is a kindly fox-girl who lives in a nearby fox-girl hole who will undoubtedly enjoy spending a few minutes refereeing the race. She will be objective and kindly and keep us honest.”

“Then I will go get the kindly fox-girl and bring her back. You decide on the race length, as you’re the one who must struggle to cross it!” the Story-Hare tossed off toward the fox-girl hole while the tortoise mapped out the race with one toe in the dirt on the road.

“When the hare had returned with the fox, the three studied the course, nodded each in agreement, and the fox set off for the end of the race while the two competitors stretched,” said the tortoise.

“The fox made a BANG! noise and off they went! The hare at a brisk run and the tortoise at a tortoise’s happy plod. Midway between start and finish the hare decided to pause and gather a few of the delightfully green herbage that was growing beside the road. Knowing that he had plenty of time before tortoise would ever get to the midway point, he grazed and hopped and played and tumbled, content to not win too fast, lest the fun be over too quick. Even on the way the hare decided to curl up beneath a tree and take a short hare-sized nap. He snoozed about a circling of daisies which provided pillowing to his little head. When he awoke not long later, the tortoise was within sight but still far enough behind the hare.”

The hare bobbed his head entertained with the story, forgetting that the Writer wrote this story, and enjoying the behavior of the story-hare as it was what a hare would do. He clapped so hard at the nap that one of the buttons on his wrist cuff had unraveled.

“The hare made it within sight of the finish line and bounded joyfully towards it. In the dust of the road the fox-girl had drawn a line with her toe, and standing in front of the line was the fox-girl. The hare waved at the fox-girl with one floppy ear. Wanting to make a production of the win, he slowed down and danced toward her, sashaying the waltz by himself. She remained stoic and unmoved as he approached. When he was close enough he noticed that she was standing with her paws behind her back, and the red edges of her eyes seemed larger than he remembered her before. He came to a stop before her, front paw raised curiously.”

“I am here to win, don’t you see me?” said the Story-Hare.

“Oh I see you,” replied the fox calmly, “I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you would win.”

“Hare wiggled his puffy tail in excitement at the flattery,” said tortoise. “Of course he should be excited, he’s going to win!” said hare.

“You did know! How knowledgeable you are fox!” said the Story-Hare, who then gingerly pawed forward, keeping one steady eye on the fox as he approached the finish line.”

“Before he got to the line he noticed that fox was no longer hiding the object behind her back. In fact she was holding it out like a prize, or a warning, or a threat but mostly a promise.”

“Do not tarry with fancy descriptions tortoise!” hare warned, “Finish the story!”

“You would never tarry,” said the fox, now holding in her paws the black length of a handle and the glinting, hypnotic edge of a butcher’s blade, steely and flat. The hare sank back away from the finish line, the floppy ears flattening and lowering as close to the ground as possible. “That’s why I knew you would win, hare. You never tarry.”

The tortoise paused here for affect, knowing that the hare’s good mood was now changing. Upon realizing the outcome of the story before it was told, the hare raised one bony mottled gray arm in defense of his face, and lowered his bottom jaw as if to cry out. But he remained horrified that the Writer would do this to him, the hare, the fastest of the fast.

“And with those last words, the fox pounced upon the frozen hare, deepening the blade between his flattened floppy ears and smattering the finish line with the blood of an -almost- winner.”

Tortoise fixed his vest, sharp and unwrinkled, and as he was now alone, spoke to no one in particular, “An hour later the tortoise crossed the finish line first, crowned winner of the race by no one in particular. He did not see hare again, but that was not surprising,” tortoise remarked, walking away from the scene of the story, “He had known the ending of the race before it had begun. He had, after all, just left afternoon tea with fox, who had remarked how nice it would be if she could have rabbit for supper.”

S.L. Wiegert

-Short story written for R. Wiegert as a gift in 2005, published only in blog form at http://www.rhetoricwizard.wordpress.com/

-(c) S.L. Wiegert 2005-2008. All rights reserved. You may not copy whole or in part (unless reviewing) and you may certainly not republished for free. No stealing, borrowing, rewriting, or thinking about stealing- by the might and majesty of the Thunder Gods of Copyright.