Copy the Greats -- free course on imitation

Craft of Fiction
#63

My attempt at Day Two :slight_smile: :

I couldn’t imagine a greater paradise. Pattering through thick dust that flowed like cool silk across our bare feet, my cousins and I with our bright polyester shorts, freckles and pigtails made our way under the towering firs that shaded us from the scorch of the August sun and lightly burned the back of our throats with pungent sap on every inhalation. The old cabin was dark and our eyes took a moment to adjust as we filed in, giggling and sweaty and thirsty for a frosty glass of tart lemonade; the faint musky odour of packrat in the porch fading as we noisily trooped into the kitchen where the mothers fanned themselves with tea towels and sighed at the sudden interruption. By rights, the table was ours as weary explorers— conquerors of the forest trails—until our glasses were emptied and the mothers shooed us out into the quiet heat again. The freedom and simplicity captivated me and seared indelible memories into my subconscious, which call to me even now; an invitation to revisit a world of wildness and community that at once feels so familiar and yet so unattainable by the passage of time.

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#64

Day 2 Challenge --The tittering of a massive bird flock was an apt parallel to the sound that bombarded me as I stepped through the Cancer ward at the saturated children’s wing of my hospital. Within its white starched and bleached corridors, completely softened by the myriad-colored walls with thousands of handprints of small hands, small stick people, small houses with trees and copious flowers of every color, were many rooms branching out holding over 100 of the undersized, high-pitched, talkative patients, quickly losing their innocence from the big C’s dirty little-known side-effect called the onset of an adult who is battling death with a stick of bubblegum and a band-aid. While the sickly air smell caused by the overwhelming cleaning with bleach was diffused by actual flowers and perfumed stuffed animals and anything else the parents and nurses could think to eliminate it with, I could still detect the faintest smell of vomit, urine, and sadness; my inured state of its acidic stench outside this wing was epic but in here, crystal clear to my olfactory senses as much as the false vision of sunlight beams affecting a happy place with its empty promise. I’d lost another one today and not even by her sickness, while severe it was not her true “adulting” moment. No, money was the ultimate betrayer of this comedic parody of corporate bullshit, and inhumanity.

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#65

Day 3’s from me below. Also, reading this extract from Dickens, didn’t it feel like prose poetry?

                                                     **Not Going Down**

The sun burns wherever you look. Piercing past hotel curtains tentatively drawn, seeping through eyes still shut tight. Outside, tinted sunnies and Polaroid-aviators wannabe helpful, but can’t do much. Sun hats, baseball caps—too hot to bear, are quickly discarded. It suns everywhere: on tourists’ backs, bald heads, reddened necks, bare arms. Sun-baked piazzas, waterways and tomatoes; waiters, with only their shirts and bosses White, beckon to come inside. Boatloads of tourists, their pointless parasols inflating St. Marco’s Square overspill into shady avenues. On incoming trains, sleepers doze in seats and on the ground their rails gleaming in the heat. No sunblock please; its oozing creaminess too sticky. Not that it helps, only runs off with August’s wild sweat. Beyond perspiration, Venice, steaming in the sun is uncovered, regardless. At night the strains of Vivaldi’s ‘Summer’ evoking sunshine heralds a light drizzle, an apres sun that can only be, Heaven-sent.

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#66

Day three!

Hard rain everywhere. Rain falling upon the river, where it swells and swallows the narrow bridges. Rain on the tin roofs, clattering like stones, and dripping on the porches in deepening pools. And rain upon the roads, droplets leaping like crickets on the dusty back ways and freshly dark highways alike. Rain on the junior high schoolers, yelling with laughter as they run home in small groups, holding their plastic folders above their heads. And rain on the pensioners they run past, who stroll on, unhurried, water cascading in sheets from their umbrellas.

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#67

Day 3:

Rain! Rain everywhere. Rain up the streets, where its waters flow in turbulent streams covering the broken pavement. Rain down the streets, forcing the denizens of Los Angeles’ Skid Row to huddle in doorways, to hunker down in their tents and other makeshift shelters in their vain attempts to escape the deluge. Rain blanketed the streets of LA, coming down in sheets, reminding Jim of another day, another time in Hollywood, a time when the skies had opened up and it rained for five days straight. Rained so hard and heavy that he couldn’t walk from the halfway house where he was living to the corner store without getting soaked to the bone. Jim watched other homeless men and women struggling to keep the water out of their tents and makeshift shelters and thought of how smart he had been to erect his tent on a triple layer of wooden pallets so the waters flowed under it instead of through it. At least he had a dry place to sleep and didn’t have to face the raging storm except on trips to the nearby mission to use their bathrooms, showers and to eat.

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#68

What amazing pieces these are to read. :heart_eyes:
Here’s mine for day one, and thank you Daniel for creating the course.

As an Edinburgh evening slowly embalmed in darkness the Usher Hall, my Auntie Julie and I crept forwards in our seats, unconscious of our movements, only aware of the tingles hastening down our spines and summoning our hairs to a chilling attention. The man in the centre of the orchestra was drawing his bow across his double bass’s lowest string, stroking from it a murmurous solo note, extending for an age within a second, transfixing us. Then, the players to either side of him, began their melodies again. Thus Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms , cacophonous and harmonic at once somehow, continued to haunt us. Music has rarely inspired more emotion in me than on that night.

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#69

Hi Daniel and Everyone,
I want to thank everyone whose taking their time to do this and to appreciate Daniel for this opportunity.

Day Two work:
I’d never been to a place this chilly before. How were these people even surviving? From across the street, you could tell from the café window that this was a calm town. The people laughing sipping their teas and chatting with one another. Very few buildings, there was nothing but the people to fill the atmosphere. There was one house in particular that stood out, on top of a hill, where vampires had been spotted. The villagers warned me of exploring those parts, but I had come for one reason and one reason only…

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#70

Day 3
More rain.

Rain in Virginia drenches in torrents; it collects in streams, never absorbed by red clay. Rain in Virginia makes drainage ditches into jokes. Rain that comes from the North is kinder than those misanthropic rains from the South. Rain following crenellated clouds begins as a slow-building mist (my favorite) in which I run around transplanting perennials before mud puddles cake my boots with gook. Southern rains crack bolts of lightening as introduction, killing computers and taking down power. Southern rains throw short-lived tornadoes of destruction, and fell pines and whip hardwoods until they’re bowed over. They pelt windows with jewelers’ hammers. Imprisoned, rain-drumming music above, I stare out one of the abused windows, taking nourishment from a hot cup. My inaccessible weather app must know, when there’s so much rain, where there’s a sky with clouds so ephemeral they can’t possibly hold a drop.

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#72

Day Three - Sunlight everywhere. Sunlight streams thrusting down like arrows through the nearby treetops, where the canopy sways in the winds and breaks the beams into fractured points stabbing down to the ground and upon the loam still cold from last nights visit; sunlights warmth, a well-missed friend arrived after long winter months, endless rainstorms, and bitter frosts holding the ground captive with its grasp. The happy sunlight flickers like fairies on the creek waters, swollen with runoff slushing down from higher mountains. The lazy sunlight draped onto boulders and rocks, tree leaves, and sappy pine needles that stick and stab, ignored for the most part until you return to the cabin to step inside and you realize you’re covered with forest love. A distant forest glade, sunlight playing among the tall wild grasses, running with the wind as the stalks bend and twist and swirl in the unfamiliar heat, whispering challenges to grace them all with glorious shining warmth. Sunlight layering rousing a cacophony of strange sounds of the wilderness as it rises higher; brave Bambi’s steps out to dip their tender heads from the shadows, white spots gleaming under the glare of both sunlight and mama deer. A change of place so foreign to my city life I feel sunlight’s power of time and regineration into my deepest soul as I blink back tears from the strength of the gift.

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#73

Day Four:

Even exhausted as we were, overwhelmed with boxes that needed to be packed and endless baggage that needed to be sorted and long journeys that needed to be planned, we felt the beat of the music. The drums, the base, the funky lyrics, the riff of the lead guitar. We turned the volume louder and got to work. Such a couple has great resources. No task is a match for teamwork mixed with music that makes you dance.

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#74

Day 1

A happy moment

Their birthday is the end of August. Each year, I insist on a day in August with them together at the same time. It doesn’t have to be “the day.” There are 31 days to choose from. We choose the day, and it was perfect, the “seasonable month” here in the northwest. A day to enjoy summer sun at its fullest. Somehow the boys got several kayaks—3 or 4—loaded onto a borrowed truck and we unloaded in the dirt near the dock.

The boys and I had the first run out, leaving others on shore. So wonderful to be on the water with them! We paddle away from the dock toward the open lake, drifting alongside a small island. I cannot see what it looks like on the other side of the island, the point where we’ll either keep paddling or turn back toward the dock. Tree boughs bend toward the water, brushing the surface to become part of the lake. At the point, we decide to keep going, out into the larger part of the lake. Challenged by a light breeze, I’m glad we can pace to stay together.

A pause, and Kenneth extends a paddle to hold the kayaks side by side. We share a granola bar and a few memories. Too soon, we must turn back, to give others a turn.

These moments are fast fading, I know. One day in an entire summer. I want to capture it, to have this day over and over again.

Day 2

Arriving somewhere new

Approaching through the open grassland, the housing development spread across the land in an arc. Thatcher turned left to enter the neighborhood. New construction stood on one side, framework only, allowing the light of newness to filter through unfinished walls. He followed the road past a modest building that housed the fitness center, according to Colin. Thatcher’s friend loved to entertain, although they’d spend half of their time together outside.

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#75

Day Three—brr, I feel cold after writing this, lol

Cold everywhere. Cold freezing the nostrils, flash freezing the lungs with every shallow breath; cold pressing shards of pain into eyeballs feebly protected by half-closed lids; voluminous cold blasting in behind people hurrying from truck to house, slamming doors quickly shut behind them to block the aggressive entry of the cold lest their warm refuge be stolen as they shake off heavy jackets, skidoo boots, scarves encased in frozen breath and gloves stiff and crinkly from their brief exposure to the elements. Next door the wife stands on her porch in her woolly socks and shrieks as she tosses a bowl of hot water high into the air, her son catching on his iPhone—cradled warmly in his hands to protect the battery from the sucking cold—the instant the water turns into a cloud of frozen mist, drifting gently down to disappear into the powdery snow at their feet. Cold amplifies the crunch of horse’s hooves as they plod through drifts in the field, blowing gentle, frosty breaths condensed into so many icicles weighing down their eyelashes and chin whiskers; cold freezes tires to the ground where early morning commuters bump, bump, bump their way down the road like so many Flintstone cars until the cold rubber warms and reforms; transport trucks growl protestingly down the Alaska Highway spewing great plumes of condensation from their exhaust, forming thick clouds that obscure the vision of other drivers. Cold makes a liar of the bright blue sky, whose weak winter sun shimmers and dances on the crystalized cotton frost clinging to the bare limbs and branches of dormant trees and willows.

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#76

Day three.

Rain everywhere. Pouring rain ticking on the roof. Raindrops running, chasing one another as they slid down the windows. Rain flowing forming small streams on the smooth asphalt. A calmer and slower rain fell down the renewed leaves. Puddles appearing while the rain kept falling relentless, constant, and timeless. Rain so heavy to block the sky and to make even the first day of spring gloomy. Rain so thunderous to cover any other sound of the nature that after a long winter returned to blossom. Refreshing and nourishing rain destined to stop, as foreshadowed by a timid twittering.

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#77

Day Three.

When there’s a mention of an ice storm, something happens to the residents of Gains Town. Brave, strong men rush to the store to get little bags of ice melts and sand. Brave, strong women rush to the store to get little bags of cocoa powder and marshmallows. All in anticipation of the attack—a treacherous icy glaze overtaking their town. Icy glaze everywhere, nearly invisible to their eye. Icy glaze covering their cars and making their car doors stick. Icy glaze taking over their streets, stealth-like, lingering for days, unyielding in the freezing cold. Icy glaze, an ambush, making normal activities, like walking, feel like an extreme sport. With fireplaces blazing and soup simmering on the stove, the captive residents of Gains Town await its defeat while fearless ice removal trucks scrape frantically into the wee hours of the morning.

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#78

Day 4:
Even though no boy could have felt more unloved and unwanted by his own mother, no boy could have felt more deeply about those around him. He felt nothing but hatred for his mother, but he felt boundless love for his grandmother and for his aunts and uncles who had raised him as if he was their son. Their love enabled him to survive the physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, and empowered him to look upon with forgiveness his peers who looked down on him because he didn’t have money or fancy clothes the way they did. Adversity made him a better, a more understanding, a more accepting human being.

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#79

Today, the deep green sea, with its tides’ murmurous haunt, seems to merge with the cloudless blue sky on the horizon. Not one white cloud. A street vendor walks by carrying a small tin of burning charcoal, cheese on sticks against its grade. Open short-sleeved shirt flapping in the wind, he has a casual walk. But it’s also a tired walk of someone who has worked up and down the beach, all morning, selling his fare to the hungry tourists, snotty kids, and accidental footballers, and occasionally to the women, matrons, and misses alike. I cannot see what the restaurants are cooking in their kitchens, but, with closed eyes, rightly guess the scents: fried shrimp, fish, rice, and beans, all but the same menu. It’s noon, and the beach is, at last, deserted.

All this beauty, all this heat, fast-fading with the approach of the Fall, still hitting my sun-soaked skin, all to myself. A book, a chair, a sun umbrella, and this beauty. It’s all I ever wanted. It’s all I ever needed.

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#80

Day Three

The temperature dropped below 7 degrees. Freezing everywhere, Freezing up the river where two men ice fish, freezing in the apartment complex where the water is cut off, freezing in the homes where they use a tent to keep the children warm. Even the gas lines freeze with busted pipes no water for the city. The freeze creeping into the cabooses of the trains of our city. The freezing snow, freezing ice burning my fingers as I scrape my windshield to go get water I can drink. It will be great to take a shower one day. The freezing cruelly pinching the nose and toes and fingers of young people walking outside in shorts. Texas has rarely been this cold. Chance people on the bridge peering at the strangest sight of the Concho river as a frozen block of irregular ice, almost as strange as an eleven thousand, dollar electric bill because of the snow and cruel pointy ice sickles from the roof with snow all around.

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#81

My Day 4 is along similar lines to Jerry’s above— Only mine’s re a former spy thinking of reuniting with his family. I tried to follow each sentence’s structure, whilst adapting it to my story, and was mind-blown at the result. There really is something to this process (and Mary Shelley’s writing in the extract, specifically).

‘Even cut off as he’s been, who’s to say this isn’t the way back? To deny Scott the love of his son which he might feel more deeply than any man, given the chance, would be depriving them both. The opportunity to heal from being loved, from being cherished, and for doing nothing beyond existing, has the power to potentially patch up his soul and make him whole again. Such a man, excelling as he has in duplicity, embraces his two lives: he may deliver death with a deft strike or silent bullet, and be overwhelmed with accumulated remorse, the bad stuff all blanked out; yet, when he has retired—both figuratively into himself and from the Service, he will be like a clean slate that entices him to write a new beginning, within whose four corners nothing is out of bounds.’

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#82

Day 4
Ever fleeting as time away might be, no one can wipe grief down by drying its suffering of tears. The dishes, the laundry, and every pernicious speck of dust long ignored by this wound, seem to insist on overdue recognition despite a lethargic response. Such tears have a woeful flow: they course the face, and are dismissed with a sniff; yet, when the last plate is put on the shelf, they are the balm grief spreads, like a dry rag with the right amount of nap, without which stained grout escapes.

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#83

Day 5 : Doing it like Dumas — I tried to adopt the same syllabus count from the snippet (which flows better than when I didn’t). Here’s what we (Dumas & I, haha, got):

‘Ernest, stunned and shaken, stood still, like one tormented at the sight of his demons, and fled out the door into the night.’

Suggestions welcomed please on replacements for ‘stood still’, which seems a little at odds with the 'and fled …" at the end.

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