https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/
A Writing Challenge.
It was Wednesday evening, the
night of my writing group meeting. As writers do when they gather, we were
talking about writing. One of them gave us a writing
challenge. We had to write five beginning sentences for five stories.
We had ten minutes to do it.
After much thought, I came up with these five:
If you didn’t know your actual age, how old do you think you would be?
The day that my brother blew his hand off is the day that I lost my father to
booze.
Whatever the past, the future is spotless.
I don't give a dang, for I have seen the elephant.
The only time I like water is when it is cold and the day is hot.
As each one read hers, we discussed them trying to figure out how the story
would go. At the end of the meeting we decided that we should take one of our
sentences and build it into a short story, or the beginning of a
novel for our next meeting.
I took my second sentence and here is the beginning of the novel I wrote
around it.
The
day that my younger brother, Ralph, blew his left hand off, was the day that I
lost my father to booze. Not that he hadn’t drank before. He'd have a beer on Saturdays with the neighbours
or a drink at family gatherings but it was that day that he began drinking
every day as soon as he got home from work.
And
the change was immediate. When he and mom came home from the hospital after
leaving Ralph, Dad went to the cupboard and pulled out a half empty bottle of
whiskey. He got a glass and poured it almost full. He drank it down. I was
watching him as mom told me and my younger brother, Jimmy, that Ralph had lost
his hand and would be in the hospital for a few days. Dad took time off work
and he and Mom went to see Ralph every day. But every evening Dad drank himself
into a stupor.
When
they brought Ralph home from the hospital the only change in Dad's routine was
that in the morning instead of going to the hospital he went to work. He got up
sober, left the house at his usual time and was sober up until the moment he
entered our door after work. It was once that door was closed on the outside
world that he'd sit in
his chair in the living room and pour his first glass of whiskey or vodka or
rum whichever he had on hand at the time. Mom would serve him his supper there
while the rest of us ate at the table in the dining room. His evenings varied
little. Sometimes he'd
stare at the television set, sometimes he'd stare into the corner of the living room. And
he continued drinking all evening until he passed out, usually in his chair,
sometimes on the couch, occasionally he made it to bed.
He
became, and remained for the rest of his life, a functioning alcoholic
So far the story is not finished but I still have hope that one day it will be.
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