Abby Rosmarin's Blog, page 19

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Nine

 

Obit for Your Favorite Character: Write an obituary for your favorite fictional character (literary, television, etc) including how the death occurred.

Lara Croft met her untimely end yesterday afternoon.  Croft was known for her worldwide adventures, her mastery in hand-to-hand combat, and her witty one-liners.

Croft died due to complications from a poisonous spear, a rampaging T-Rex, or a giant snake, depending on when you failed to hit the $#%&ing up button in time.

Lara Croft is survived by a goofy sidekick, a team of graphic designers, and a whole legion of sexually frustrated teenagers.

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Eight

 

Full Disclosure: They toured the house with the real estate agent.
“We love it,” he said. “Is there anything we should know about the house’s past?”
The agent looked down.

“Well, I didn’t want to bring it up, but the house was built over an old Indian burial ground,” the agent said solemnly.

“And how did you find this out?” The husband asked.

“Well, because, y’know, things, and, well, stuff,” the agent fumbled.

“This house was built in 2005,” the husband replied. “I remember driving by here when I was a teenager.  Nothing but forest.  I’m pretty sure this area would’ve been protected from any construction if that had been the case.”

“Well, what I really meant to say was that…the previous residents were murdered,” the agent said, clearing his throat.

“Murdered?” repeated the wife.

“Yes, grizzly murder, committed by the husband.  Killed his whole family…”

“Let me guess: because he was under the influence of demon?” the wife repeated.

“Well, yes, actually.  Did you hear about it in the news?”

“No.  That’s the storyline for The Amnityville Horror,” said the wife. “Plus, judging from the bins of children’s toys in one corner and the dirty zippy cup in the sink, I think the current residents are still very much alive.”

“But, this house…is haunted!”

The husband sighed and looked at his watch.

“Is there anything we should know about the *actual* history of the house?” the husband pressed.

The real estate agent pressed her lips together.

“Good neighborhood, basement finished in ’09,” she mumbled, her nose in her binder. “Family relocating for wife’s job…”

“Why couldn’t you have said that in the first place?” asked the wife.

“What’s the fun in that?” the agent replied. “What’s the fun in talking about oak stairs and nice porches for hours on end?  It’s exhausting and it’s tedious.  Is it too much to scare people off every now and then?”

“It is, actually,” said the wife. “Maybe it’s time to change careers.”

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Seven

Blogger note — I had said “tomorrow”, but I ended up needed an extra day just to process.  And by “process” I mean, “write yet another essay for Thought Catalog.”  But it’s a new day and hopefully things can go back to somewhat normal.

Back from the Future: A knock at the door catches you off guard.  Upon answering it, you’re greeted by a man who says he’s from the future — and he can prove it.  More important, he says he has information that will save your life.

“I’m from the future,” he said. “Come with me if you want to live.”

I stood in my doorway, cocking an eyebrow at the man in leather pants and a dirtied lab coat — like he couldn’t choose between Doc Brown and the Terminator.

“I’m not kidding,” he pressed. “I’m from the future.  And I can prove it.  But first you must come with me.”

I turned and looked back at my kitchen.  My coffee had just finished brewing.  Toast was resting in my toaster getting cold.  I was still in my PJs.

“Please, you must come with me.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Fine.”

In my fuzzy slippers, I stepped out onto my front porch and followed the random man.  I continued down the path away from my house, my PJ shorts doing little to keep out the cold morning.

“You said you could prove you were from the future,” I said.

“Tomorrow, it will rain.”

“Well, that makes you a meteorologist — or someone you checks the Weather Channel,” I replied.

“Something horrible is going to happen you to — that is, unless I can stop it,” he said, turning left onto a side street.

“What is that something horrible?” I said, my eyes locked on my shoulder as I readjusted my tank top strap.

“I can’t say.”

“Oh,” I said flatly. “Well, if you’d excuse me, then, but I think I have to…”

“Please, you must stay with me,” he pressed.

I crossed my arms over my chest and huffed.  We circled around my neighborhood in silence.  I kept my eyes on my neighbors’ houses, hoping to find someone checking their mail or getting their newspaper — anyone I could possibly flag down to call the cops.  Before I could plan out a proper exit strategy, we were back at our house.

“You can go in now,” he said.

I tilted my head toward him with my lips pressed and brow furrowed.

“You came all the way…from the future…to take me on a walk?”

“And by doing so, I have altered the course of history forever.  You’ll thank me in ten years,” he said, readjusting his lab coat. “Well, technically you won’t, because the future has been changed forever.”

I rolled my eyes one more time.

“Well, thanks for the walk, I guess,” I said, surreptitiously slipping off my slippers and treading barefoot through the grass on the off chance I would have to make a run for it.

“Never underestimate the butterfly effect, Susan!” he called out.

“My name is Bridgette.”

The man’s face dropped.

“Oh.  Shit.  Um…” the man cleared his throat. “I mean, in the future, you changed your name to Susan, because something horrible happened!  Now, if you’d excuse me I have to…check over some files…”

The man bolted from my front lawn, dirtied lab coat flapping in the breeze as he disappeared from my street.  With a sigh and a shake of my head, I went back inside, poured myself a cup of coffee, and placed two fresh pieces of bread in the toaster.

In Memory of Brilliance

Given everything that has happened in the past 12 or so hours, I cannot in good faith do a writing bootcamp today.  My responses to the writing prompts have been facetious and lighthearted, and I feel the opposite of that right now.

Like many people my age, Robin Williams has played a huge role in my life.  From his roles in childhood movies to his insanely hilarious stand-up specials and his heartwrenching roles in more serious movies.  I quoted Hook as a child, Live on Broadway as a teenager, and any slew of his movies or routines as an adult.  I am also reminded of a difficult time in my life when I had to deal with the loss of a beloved mentor due to suicide.  I touch upon that briefly in an article I wrote for Thought Catalog today, and, to be honest, right now that’s all I want to say about it right now.

Robin Williams’ humor was the embodiment of lighthearted and facetious and tongue-in-cheek and snarky.  And tomorrow you’ll get another installment of my lighthearted and facetious and tongue-in-cheek and snarky bootcamp entries.  But today I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my most favorite movies: Dead Poets’ Society.  You might know it as that voiceover in that recent iPad commercial, but, for a good number of us, we know it as one of the most inspirational quotes about poetry and art (and life in general) that you will ever hear:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.  Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.  To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?”  Answer. That you are here — that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

What will your verse be?

 

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Six

Alphabet Poem: Write a 26-line poem using all the letters of the alphabet.  Have the first line start with the letter “A”, the second “B”, the third “C”, etc.

A poem written that must
B “beetle”
Conform in a such way that it
D “defenestrate”
Efficiency uses every letter in the
F “fennel”
Gahd-damn alphabet seems a bit
H “hat trick”
Insipid, especially given that
J “jester”
K “kryptonian”
Most people will start using random
N “neophyte”
Or forced words to complete the
Poem, like
Q “quagmire” or
R “ruckus” or
S “sassaphrass” or
T “Timbuktu” or
U “utilitarian”.  I mean, honestly it’s not a
Very good
Way of creating an engaging and
X “xenophobia”
Yokeless poem
Z “zephyr”

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Five

American Graffiti: You’re downtown, and see graffiti in an unlikely place — graffiti like you’ve never seen before, concerning someone you know.

Growing up in the city, you see a lot of graffiti.

Everything, from spray painted walls to Sharpie on the bathroom stalls.  There’s so much graffiti that it will apparently make you rhyme while explaining it.  Much like accidental poetry, you get used to it after a while.  People tagging their names, defiling other people’s names, letting their opinions be heard, one misdemeanor at a time.  It becomes part and parcel of the environment.

Yesterday, as I walked through the downtown area, i saw one of the windows completely plastered over with spray paint.  It was early in the morning, but a crowd was already starting to gather around the graffiti.  Curiosity got the best of me, and I wove my way through the crowd to get a better look.

“What does it say about Molly Sanchez?” I heard one person say.  My ears pricked and I stood up a little straighter.  Molly Sanchez and I had known each other since middle school.  I strained to hear what the other person might have said in response.  When I got nothing but a mumble, I went back to maneuvering around people.

There, on a storefront window, in pastels and glitter spray paint (I didn’t even know that made spray paint in glitter varieties), read in big, ballooned letters:

WE HAD OUR DIFFERENCES BUT MOLLY SANCHEZ IS A PRETTY COOL CHICK.  I’LL ALWAYS TREASURE THE TIME WE HAD TOGETHER EVEN THOUGH WE BROKE UP.

“Well, it’s not the most eloquent thing I’ve read this morning,” one person noted. “But possibly the most coherent piece of graffiti I’ve ever seen.”

“Obviously you’ve never seen Banksy’s work, then,” another replied.

I was tempted to call up Molly and let her know about the weirdly positive bit of tagging done in her name, but I hadn’t had her phone number since we graduated high school.  Besides, even though most graffiti goes undetected, I got the feeling that this little piece would be garnering some serious attention.

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Four

Sent to the Wrong Printer: You’re at work and you print something personal (and sensitive).  Unfortunately, you’ve sent it to the wrong printer and, by the time you realize it, somebody else has already scooped it up.

I didn’t mean to.  Had I known it would go to the wrong printer, I never would’ve done it.

I just wanted to say that I had used work time and office ink to print up something personal and sensitive.  But when I went to the printer right by my cube, there was nothing to be found.  I went back to my computer and realized with a sudden onslaught of dread that I had sent it to the printer across the floor.

Like an Olympic sprinter, I bolted from my area of the office, knocking over mail clerks and bumping shoulders with interns.  I overturned a cart in my efforts to get to that printer before anyone else.

But it was too late.  There stood my boss, scratching her head while holding a piece of paper up, an eyebrow cocked in confusion.  Before I could stop my forward momentum, my boss turned to me, the paper folding in between her index and middle finger.

“Is this yours?” she asked, motioning toward the folded paper in her left hand.

“I’m sorry, I really am,” I started babbling, my hands on my knees as I desperately tried to catch my breath. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I just don’t get it,” she went on.

“I…I am so sorry,” I said between breaths.

“Just, what would make you want to print something personal and sensitive?” she cocked her head to the side.

“I guess, I guess…I just wanted to say I did?” I said, pressing myself up to a proper standing position.

“You know, I don’t think that’s what people mean when people talk about printing something personal and sensitive,” she said, unfolding the paper and holding it out to me.  In big, bold, letters, Times New Roman font, size 54 with single spacing, read: SOMETHING PERSONAL (AND SENSITIVE)!

“I don’t think that’s what they mean at all,” she continued.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked, looking around the office floor.  A small group of people gathered around me, including the tackled mail clerk and sore-shouldered intern.

“For printing a random phrase?  Of course not.”  My boss paused and put her hands on her hips. “Now, for the ruckus you just caused, on the other hand…  I think we need to have a meeting with HR.”

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Three

Mystery Cookie: One day you come into work and find a cookie mysteriously played on your desk.  Grateful to whoever left this anonymous cookie, you eat it.  The next morning you come in and find another cookie.  This continues for months until one day a different object is left — and this time there’s a note.

It started on a warm April morning.

Waiting for me at my desk was a large chocolate chip cookie.  No note.  No nothing.  Just a chocolate chip cookie with a paper napkin tucked underneath it.

I asked around, wondering if it had been someone’s birthday — or if one of the interns had decided to bake everyone cookies.  No birthdays, no overager interns… in fact, no one had even seen anyone come to my desk with said cookie.  I eventually dropped the conversation, ate the delicious cookie, and went on with my life.

Except that the next day, yet another cookie awaited me, this time chocolate chocolate chip.  Again, no birthdays, no desperate-for-approval interns, no higher-ups attempting to make nice with their underlings.  Just a lone cookie and a paper napkin.

This continued on, day after day, week after week, month after month.  Each day, a new cookie awaited me at my desk.  Sometimes it was chocolate chip, sometimes it was oatmeal raisin, sometimes it was a sugar cookie… I must’ve had every potential variation of cookie-ness brought to my desk, anonymously and secretively.

Before I knew it, October rolled around.  I had gotten quite used to having a cookie every morning, although my pants were not used to the extra bit of me it now had to contain.  One chilly morning, just a week before Halloween’s, I came to my desk and found its top completely sans cookie.  Instead, a plain white envelope rested on top of my keyboard.  I picked up the envelope, carefully opened it, and emptied the contents of it into my hand.  Out dropped a red and black keycard and a folded note.  With the envelope in one hand and the keycard in the other, I opened up the note, which read:

Dearest Desk Dweller,

Have you been straying from your diet?  Are those extra sweets causing you to gain extra pounds?  Come to the Scorpion Gym & Training Center and get back into shape!  We’re only $75 a month!  Come shed that excess weight the Scorpion way!  Use your FREE KEYCARD to try us out! 
(Account will automatically be billed upon use of keycard).

 

I looked around the floor, wondering if anyone else was in on this.  I waited to see someone’s head pop up with a knowing smirk.  Instead, I was met with business going along as usual.  Much like the cookie situation before, everyone seemed oblivious to what was going on.

I looked at the keycard, I looked at the note, I looked at where my cookie delivery once was, and I looked down at the constricting waistband of a pair of pants that stopped fitting me five pounds ago.

“Clever girl,” was all I could say, attempting a British accent like I was the explorer in Jurassic Park.  All that got was a few inquisitive glances from my cube mates.  I smiled awkwardly in response and proceeded to sit down at my desk — but not before unbuttoning the top button in my pants and finding out where this Scorpion club was located.

Writer’s Bootcamp, Day Two

The One That Got Away: You bump into an ex-lover on Valentine’s Day — the one whom you often call “The One That Got Away”.  What happens?

I bumped into Fred at the grocery store one Valentine’s Day afternoon.

More accurately, Fred bumped into me — by placing a tentative hand on my shoulder and going, “Hey, you!”

“Hey…you,” I said slowly, with a big, awkward grin.

“It’s Fred!  Fred from high school!  Remember?” Fred took a step back and swung out his arms, presenting his torso — as if I’d better remember his torso than his face.

Sadly, his torso was even more unrecognizable than his face.  Both were long past their prime, weirdly bloated and slightly misshapen.  His shirt strained as it stretched over his stomach, hanging on for dear life where it tucked into his pants.

“Of course.  Fred.  How could I forget?” I said, my awkward grin slowly morphing into a grimace.

“I knew you’d remember me,” Fred said with a self-assured shrug. “No one forgets the one that got away.”

“Come again?” I said with a cocked eyebrow.

“We were high school sweethearts!  I was the one who got away.  Biggest heartbreak of your life.”

“Um… okay,” I said slowly. “We dated for 4 months.  You dumped me to get with my best friend.”

“Yes, but it was a great love, was it not?” Fred pressed. “The kind that makes you always look back and wonder, ‘why?'”

“A great love?” I repeated. “It was just a high school relationship.”

“But I redefined what love was in that short time!”

“You spent the entire 4 months nitpicking everything I did,” I reminded.

“To be fair, all guys think it’s annoying when a girl wears flip flops with jeans.”

“Ah…” I looked down at my grocery basket, making a mental note of what I was still missing.  Milk, cheese, bread, bagels…

“So!” Fred yelped. “How’ve you been?  What are you up to tonight?”

“I’ve been good,” I replied. “Just… grocery shopping.”

“Oh, what a sad way to spend your Valentine’s Day,” Fred cooed.

“Uh, I’m going home after this…and making dinner…for me and my husband…” I stated slowly.

Fred jaw went slack.

“Oh!  Husband!  So, uh…no lonely night on Valentine’s Day?”

“Nope.”

“So I see…” Fred trailed off.

“And, uh, and you?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah…busy night for me.  Totally.” Fred raked his hair back with his hands. “I mean, I’m a lady’s man.  Breaking hearts left and right.”

“Well, good for you, I guess.”

Fred stared at me in silence.

“Well, it was great seeing you!” Fred broke into a wide smile, touching my shoulder again. “And if you ever want to get together and maybe reminisce on the old times, I’m available.  Whenever, wherever, you say the word and I’m there.”

“Sure…”

“Do you still have my number?  I can give you my number,” Fred offered. “Oh, who am I kidding!  Of course you do!  That’s how lost loves work, right?”

“Yeah, sure.  Of course.”

“Well, try to have fun tonight,” Fred said, touching my shoulder. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

“Have a good Valentine’s Day as well,” I said slowly. “See you later.”

Before he could say anything else, I turned and walked left the aisle.  I immediately went to the checkout.  I was still missing a few key items, but I decided it would be easier to drive to the grocery store on the other side of town than potentially run into Fred again.  I went through the things I would need through my head again, which now included WetOnes for my shoulder.

Day 365 1/4 of 365: So, What Now?

Of course I couldn't leave this blog alone without a follow up. If you are still interested in hearing me ramble, you can go to my new blog That (Not This) Abby Rose . I'm currently doing the Two Week Writing Prompt Bootcamp, aka the Nicorette Patch for the 365 project. It's also a nice little hub for all the other things I got going on.


Of course, if you're a fan of my sporadic DIY projects, you can still mosey on over to Trial and Error Creativity . Or maybe you just want to check in on my Thought Catalog Writer's Page for the drivel that the editors find post-worthy.


And don't forget to add me on Twitter already . Sometimes I make 140-character length jokes. And sometimes they're funny.


Again, thank you so much to everyone who checked in on this blog from time to time. I somehow amassed roughly 10,000 unique hits during this year, and that's what any type of networking or promoting. If you end up starting your own 365 Blog Project, please let me know (so I can harass you about copying me, obviously... and you know, moral support, blah blah blah...)


Best of luck to all the writers out there. And remember: it's not necessarily important what you write, but that you write.


♥