Day Seventeen: Fact and Fancy

Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well - Brad Holland

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure? - Tanith Lee




This exercise is taken from The 3 am Epiphany by Brian Kiteley  

Write a brief autobiographical story or fragment in which you use alternating objective and personal sentences. One sentence should set down relatively objective, factual details, focused and clear-headed without bias or interpretation. The next sentence should be personal opinion; it should reveal feeling--deep or shallow; it should respond to the factual sentence but need not respond directly. Alternate like this. Write a total of 30 sentences-- fifteen objective, fifteen personal. 500 words

This is a study in sentence rhythm. Don't worry too much about the spaces, the offstage activity, between sentences.  It will be tempting to write reactions between the personal sentences and the objective sentences --thesis and antithesis. ex: I was born in a gutter. The geometry and engineering of urban sewer systems has always fascinated me. The best fiction that has been triggered by these instructions has used jagged and irregular relationships between the two paired sentences, tangential or associative, rather than cause and effect or point and counterpoint connections.

Later 
This exercise was hard, but also fantastic. It dropped me down into myself quickly--perhaps because it forced me to be non-linear.  

 Exercise Seventeen

by laurie Guerin

There are Three hundred and fifty days in a year, not all of them sunny. Michael takes the weather personally, and rails against the God of elements when fog muddies up the sky. Our dog, Winston, wakes me at the first sign of a squirrel, but I do not ‘rise up and give God my glory,’ as the old hymn commands. An anchor of dread pins me to my bed; muffling the beat of my heart; restricting the flow of air. People use daily affirmations to keep their minds positive and productive. I attach mine like buoys to the anchor until it lifts enough for me to slide out-from-under.

 “This dread is not a premonition,” I recite.

If it were, my world would have ended a million times over.

A ruby throated hummingbird, his wings beating fifty-three times a second, hovers near Michael in the garden. If anything happened to Michael, if his plane went down or his car jumped the concrete divide, I would lie in his garden until sprouts pushed up against my back; until the vines of Morning Glories bound my wrists.

                When you garden without gloves, the earth leaves a fine, chalky silt on your hands. I remember how her tears blazed a white trail down her dirt-smudged cheek.  She was twelve years old. I traced the trail with my fingertips, over her cheekbones to just under her chin and tilted her face toward mine. Brown eyes are more protected from the rays of the sun than blue eyes. “This,” I told her, “Does not define you.”

                The smallest monkey in the world places its nest far out on thin, light branches where larger predators will not go. Our baby boy grips Michael’s pinkie like a life-line.