Writing practice: write a letter the main character finds at the beginning of an adventure story
[ok, this will be a journal entry, not a letter]
[ok, just write one or two sentences from a journal entry]
“January 17, 1873, 5:30 am. This morning I woke up on the verge of suffocation. I had no recollection of any fearful dream which may have induced a panic, but when I awoke I had to light my bedside candle and reassure myself I was in my own bed before I was able to inhale. I don’t know what I would have done, or if I would have survived, had I fumbled too long with the matches. Once my gasping and tears subsided, I realized I had come closer than ever to the edge of my mortality.
This was the worst episode yet since Wednesday last, when I woke in the early hours, my room filled with a cold mist from a window I absentmindedly left open the evening before. That first episode was mild compared to this one. They are getting progressively worse, and without abatement I fear my end is near.
January 17, 1873, 9:45am. I have resolved to consult the local physician, Doctor Tompkins. Perhaps he might be able to administer, or prescribe, some natural medicaments which might help. I have an appointment with him tomorrow mid-day, and I fear to fall asleep before then.”
[ok, just switch topic and write anything in story form, one sentence to one paragraph]
Water vapor condensed to water droplets. Water droplets began to fall, reaching terminal velocity at 3000 feet. Water droplets, driven in a slight SSW direction during their downward progression at about 7 miles per hour. Impacting Jacob’s face, the droplets, at about 63 degrees Fahrenheit, absorbed heat from the skin of Jacob’s cheek which had a surface temperature of about 78 degrees Fahrenheit; the ensuing heat transfer caused him to feel a sensation of cold along with the wetness.
[ok again]
January 18, 6:20am. Last night I dreamt of the mist, or at least I think I did because I was thinking of that when I woke up. It came through the walls, through the floor, and it filled the room, then started to condense. Puddles formed, then grew and connected. It started to rise, some of the furniture began to float.
[just keep writing. you won’t get better if you don’t keep writing]
Later when they tried to process when had happened, they found out they all had the same experience. As the mist crept in, they each had felt an anxious, non-causal despair. They could identify any particular reason for this feeling, but they each shared it. It was like the feeling one has when knowing there are bad things expected, but has temporarily forgotten exactly what, so that the anxiousness is felt without knowing why. Except in this case, they never knew.
[fine, again]
The rainbow was, for them, a renewal, a promise. It represented hope – a feeling they’d not had, not shared, for too long. It was a hope that didn’t wipe out the past, but allowed one to move past it. It represented an acknowledgement that something had happened to the town, something bad, but a common consciousness that whatever happened was done and was no longer worth considering. The rainbow was a circle, a cycle, a never-ending loop of hope, and all one had to do was look forward to the rainbow, or backward, but not away.
[ok, again]
Alexander felt the darkness take hold. He knew it was bad, he knew it and felt it, but it also satisfied an unmet need. Perhaps the need came from the darkness within as well, a need for self-loathing, self-abnegation, self-denial. Yes, not a doing-without type of self-denial, but a loss of ego, a loss of sense of self, of identity. In denying his very identity, his individuality, he could submit to the darkness as it grew. And the more it grew, the more he felt himself disappear, so that he became one with the darkness. And he felt a oneness with all others as well, a oneness with their darkness, a darkness that lay like dark puddles over a landscape, connected by thin rivulets which said, “We are one, one large puddle with a beautiful interconnectedness.”
[ok again]
February 27, 1872. This afternoon, as I looked out the window of my compartment, the trees rushed beyond, back to my past, with each turn of the train cars wheels. Or at least that’s how it was from my perspective. When I focused on a specific tree, there was a moment’s bond until the moment passed, but for that brief instant the tree was an individual, not a rush of green mixed with all the others. But from their perspective, I was rushing forward, to hurried and impatient to say hello. Did they think, “Does he have a purpose? Or is the seat of the train simply pushing him forward to its own destination, and he a passive driftwood in the rushing torrent? If I were pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to answer my mute inquisitors.
[ok, not bad for today. each day just get more words out, it’s just a numbers game right now]