I decided to post what I wrote this morning! The prompt was to describe a character's bedroom. Lamott suggested this as a way to make characters more real for the writer. Even if the description doesn't fit into the final draft, it is good to know where a certain character goes at the end of the day. Here, I've started to describe the bedroom of the main character of my novella. Her name is Lola, and she lives with her grandmother. Her mother died when she was young, her father doesn't come around much, and her brother has gone to prison. I guess the only other thing you need to know is that her and her father started building a boat together the last time he came home.
Lola's bedroom
Lola’s bedroom had become a shrine to the people who’d left her. She did not have a single picture in her room. She’d taken them all down five years earlier when she realized that her mother would look nothing like the picture if she were still alive. She was more interested in the things people touched, the things they cared for, the things that they wanted to survive in the world without them or because of them.
Her mother’s cactus sat on the windowsill in a terracotta pot. Come winter, she’d have to transfer it to a larger pot because it had grown so much during the spring and summer. In the months before her death, Lola’s mother had taught her how to care for the plant, as if she knew she wasn’t going to make it to the summer. Her mother showed her how to fill the plate under the pot with rain water once every two weeks, and told her she needed to keep the plate dry on the days between watering. Her mother told her to never water the cactus in winter, even if it shrunk and shriveled up, because it was resting. “Even if it breaks your heart and you think it’s going to die,” she’d said, brushing the hair out of Lola’s eyes. “It will let you know when it’s ready to be fed. When the weather warms up, start looking for growth. It’ll be sure you know when to water it. You just have to be patient.” Lola had been taking care of her mother’s cactus for seven years. Hairy buds were starting to form on the plant, and in a few days the cactus would bloom. The flowers were deep purple with dusty yellow pollen at the center. On the third day of the blooms, Lola would cut them and take them to her mother’s grave so she wouldn’t have to watch them die. Pretty soon, the winter would come and the plant would rest and Lola would want to rest with it.
Over her bed, Lola had hung the board of wood her father had written “Freedom” on over and over again, in different handwriting, different sizes, different colors. They’d decided to name the runabout “Freedom,” so he’d practiced writing the word on a scrap piece of wood to see what they liked best. He’d written the word eleven times on the wood in green, gold, black, and red. They’d decided on green block letters outlined in black. Lola had liked the red and her father had liked the gold, so they’d decided to go with neither, just to make it fair. Her father left before they could actually write it on the boat, so Lola had written the word herself. She wrote it in cursive with red paint, and once the red paint had dried, she outlined it with gold. She had thought about mounting the board that now hung over her bed on the back of the boat, but she thought she might burn it instead. When she couldn’t bring herself to throw it in the fire, she hung it over her bed.
After her brother went to prison, she’d moved all his records into her room. They were stacked up on her desk, and she listened to a different one every day. She thought she’d be listening to Led Zeppelin forever, and then one day she picked out a Bob Dylan album and it’d been in her CD player for two months. It had stood out to her because the case was broken and the little booklet was falling apart. Her brother must have loved that album. She turned it on after dinner every night and would listen to it all the way through before falling asleep.
I enjoyed reading your response to the prompt. I wanted to ask you what you think is the best way to really develop ones writing habit or style. I have spent so much time away from writing that have lost touch with writing in a way that is considered "well writing." I am excited to continue to follow you on your journey and hope that inspiration finds it way to when you seek it.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question about developing a writing habit and style, I'd have to say reading is what works best for me. Whenever I'm stuck or uninspired, I always read. When I read something I really like and wish I had written first, I copy it. I rewrite the sentences - same sentence structure, same type of conflict, just different words.
DeleteOver interim, I've been trying to write at the same time every day to train my brain to get in the writing mood at a certain time. So far, this has been a struggle, but the past two days have been somewhat successful.
Let me know if you have any more questions! Thanks for reading!
Hannah, this is really elegant. I really enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious what you plan to do with these exercises. Are they simply exercises or do you plan on including them in your novella? Or maybe your not planning to do anything with them but open to the idea of including something if it seems like it might be useful?
Happy writing!
I'm not sure what will happen to these writing exercises. Some of them might find their way into my novella. I see them more as practice. The thing about writing that I struggle with most is actually sitting down and writing. So, these exercises force me to write something and they might turn out to be useful later. In regards to this writing exercise in particular, I think the part about Lola's mother will definitely end up in my novella.
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