Wrote a story...sort of...

Last week I started reading 'Steering the Craft' by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is basically a book of thoughts and exercises for aspiring writers. Then I remembered how much I loath writing exercises. Write something without punctuation, write something that's one long sentence, write something with no qualifiers, etc etc etc. I always find these things a huge struggle to write and find myself wondering what the point is. When am I ever really going to want to write a passage that consists solely of sentences that are less than 7 words long, or a short story where the first letter of each word spells out the lyrics to my favourite song? OK, so I made the last one up, but you get the jist. In keeping with my goal achieving theme this year I'm determined to stick with it and actually do these exercises. The sensible part of me knows they're useful, but I just hate them so!

I decided to have a go at the '7 words or less' sentence thingy. Also tried the 'no punctuation' thing, but that one makes even less sense than this one so I'm not compelled to share it. The brief was to do a passage of around 150, but I end up with a bit of flash fiction at 184 words. The suggested topic was a thief breaking into a room, so I ran with that. Here's what I came up with.

***

The thief held his breath. The princess did not move. His slip had gone unnoticed. Shoeless, he tiptoed across the carpet. Suddenly he froze. Something had twitched. A small shape moved in the shadows.

"Meow." 

He nearly laughed. Just a cat, its green eyes flashing. It settled on her bed. She looked so peaceful. Only damp handkerchiefs betrayed her pain. The thief caught himself staring. He shook himself. The goal was near.  

The silver box glinted in the moonlight. He reached to her bedside table. Her soft breathing was strangely soothing. His heart still pounded wildly. With a flick the catch was released. The thief lifted the lid. Multifaceted jewels cast rainbows on his skin. They were not for him, though. A single purple ribbon was his prize. He tied it round his wrist. It smelled of her perfume. The princess would given it freely. He stole a final glance. She must not know he still lived. Aurora had hope of a new life. She would get over him. He made his final exit. The princess could never marry a thief. 

***

So it's a story, sort of. Unfortunately it doesn't count towards my 3 story goal for the year because I just had to go and add the condition that the stories be written AND workshopped, and this isn't exactly worth it. But I wrote it so I thought I might as well post it somewhere. I think it's quite cute, though I would have written it totally differently had I been allowed to pick my own sentence length. I find it pretty clunky sounding this way.

Next up, story with no qualifiers. A tragedy about an aged performance artist needing a friend. It takes place in a zoo in Bejing. The question 'is man alone in the universe' plays a major role. OK, I was stuck for an idea so I raided the Seventh Sanctum plot generator. This seemed amusing :o).

As for the rest of my list, well..

2. I got as far as looking at my chapter plan for Technomancer. It's still there, no more actual prose yet though.

8. Read up to Chapter 35 of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, still about half to go.

9. No OU books yet but my lovely parents have bought me one on Biological Psychology to be getting on with.

10. Now in week 7 and Baby Boo is giving me some little bits of nausia, but nothing too bad. If it stays around this level I'll be very happy. Me and hubby went to price up some of the essentials at the weekend. Hmm, apparently babies are expensive. Who'd have thought? :o)