A Dialogue and a Descriptive Mishap
I joined the Mercury Bay Writers when it was formed back in February. We meet once a month and are given a topic and/or genre to write a 500-word piece about. Our first assignment was to create ‘a dialogue’ and the second was to write ‘A descriptive mishap’. I would like to share my attempts with you, so here they are.
1) The sad demise of Sam and Buddy
There was nobody at home to interview for Steven’s homework project, so I decided to interview two strawberries that I had just picked. I had read that plants can communicate with one another, so I wondered if they could with humans. I asked one of them, “Hey mate, how’s it going?” No reply. I said to the other, “Nice sunny day to be a strawberry.” Nothing. “Oh well,” I thought. “I’ll just have to imagine a dialogue between my two red, rosy friends, whom I named Sam and Buddy, and who were lying in a bowl on the kitchen bench. Here’s how it went.
“Hey Sam, howya doin’?”
“Hiya Buddy, to tell the truth, I’m feeling a bit disconnected after we all got picked yesterday. I was really enjoying it there in the garden, growing away in the summer sun with all the family. How are you finding our new home?”
“Actually mate, I was happy to be picked. It was getting so hot there under mother plant’s leaves that I was starting to go a bit soft and mushy and those disgusting, slimy slug things were beginning to gnaw away at me making these horrible holes in my otherwise beautiful body. Thank gardengod I’m away from them.”
“I was freezing last night in that big box over there that they put us in. Weren’t you, B?”
“Not really, as I said I was just glad to get out of the heat. Better for my complexion. By the way, do you know what happened to Sally and Brian and the others? They were just lying there with us in that cold dark box when suddenly we were flooded with some kind of weird light. It wasn’t sunlight, and a huge thing, like the one that picked us, came in and whisked them off somewhere and then suddenly it was dark again.”
“I must’ve been asleep. I didn’t hear them go. I’m glad we eventually got out of there though. It just didn’t feel natural being cooped up in the cold and dark like that. At least here we can see the sunlight. Hey Buddy, what do you think happens to us after we’re picked? Do we just lie here until we go soft and slushy?”
“Gardengod knows. But I can say that just after we got put on this bench, I heard a strange noise, and I thought I saw Sally going round and round in a weird-looking round box thing. She didn’t look overly happy. Then she disappeared and all I saw was red watery stuff spinning and spinning.”
“Really? Uh, hey Buddy, what’s happening? We’re going somewhere. Ouch, something just pulled out my hair.”
“Woah, mine’s gone too. Sam, what’s that strange noise? And why are we going around and around? I hope…………aaaaagh!”
2) Writer’s block
‘Descriptive mishap’. That’s the topic that Lynnette gave us for our next writing assignment. “Can’t be that hard,” I thought, so I went home and sat down at my computer to start writing. That flat blank screen stared back at me as if to say, “C’mon man. Show us what you’ve got.” “Nothing, must be just writer’s block. All writers get that,” I pleaded. The taunting screen maintained its incipient pale colour with no hint of encouragement. “Help me describe something for god’s sake. It’s no big deal, just a few adjectives and a lot of imagination.” “The quick brown fox jumped …” At least you can picture the fox and the lazy dog. I know, I’ll try to picture a mishap and then describe it, but hang on, how can I do that if my mishap is writer’s block and I am in the middle of it? I can’t visualise something that I am a part of. It’s impossible to visualise nothing. No adjectives like quick or brown to play with. No colours to fall back on. You can’t have red or green nothingness because then it would be something. No actions like jump or fall or dance, because again there would be something to describe like, “She danced around the room like a softly flowing stream, her chiffon dress brushing lightly against her partner.” Oh, to have something solid to describe.
More staring at the screen. I become distracted by the soft sound of the ex-cyclone rain patting the deck and the odd final gusts of wind heralding the demise of the much-anticipated storm with its predicted destructive outcome. Ocean bound seagulls squark as they leave the comparative safety of the sodden fields behind our house on their way to forage for tasty titbits on the-debris laden beach. But hang on. These are mere distractions of the mind trying to drag me away from the real task I have of describing this mishap of writer’s block. The mind often does that, takes us off on some random memory or intrusive thought, inducing longing or anger or some other equally distracting emotion. How to concentrate to enable myself to describe this feeling of nothingness.
Still nothing. You know, I’m beginning to think that writers’ block may be just nature’s way of telling us to slow down and just be with our lack of thought or inspiration, to simply indulge in mind quietness with no yearning desire to do or achieve anything else but emptiness. If this is so, then I am sorry I won’t be able to complete my homework assignment. Sorry Lynnette. I will let you know when I come up with something to describe.
Words by Ross Liggins
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