Let’s write some more story!
Y’all are jazzed up, I can feel it. (<-fun fact, I just spelled it “feal” so we are off to a good start)
I think I will use the part I wrote for the beginning, but put it somewhere else. I really want to plant my main character into the middle of a disaster. It’s not much of a disaster to walk into a beige house.
How About a More Exciting Beginning?
Beth furiously stomped her way up the hill to the small farmhouse. The dirt road she was walking (stomping) on was narrow and it was dark out, so she kept looking over her shoulder. Trucks fly over the hill all the time on her morning runs, so this wasn’t unusual. Except the stomping and the pounding in her ears and her clenched fists. The indignant anger that was rising from her depths and swirling around her stomach.
How dare they! The entire town was nuts. All of their heads in the sand. Stuck in this tiny little bubble of white fragility. And they were just books! To see the parents’ faces you would have thought that Beth personally murdered all of their little porcelain babies.
The fifth graders all loved the books. It was the parents who were throwing hissy fits. And who were trying to throw her out of school if she didn’t remove the scandalous reading material with two dads or black people on the cover. Come on!
Do they realize there are other people in the world? Do they realize there’s a place outside of Crystal Lake, Nebraska? Travel to the “big city” of Omaha every once in awhile.
The last street light was almost out of sight, so Beth turned on her phone to use the flashlight. No go. Shit!
She knew the way though. Daily runs for the last year. Daily runs past the cornfields and cow shit. Daily runs in this small, close-minded town for her sanity. What else was there to do?
Okay I like this type of opening a little better than the last one. Doesn’t it make you want to know what the heck is happening?!
Something else I’ve been wrestling with is writing stories while also being a first grade teacher.
How much can I push the envelope? (<-I tried to use the phrase “push the line” but my husband and I and Google agreed that’s not a thing.) I mean I’ve been reading Stephen King and he doesn’t really write the stories that parents of first graders would want to read…
When I was taking a walk today, I was thinking about writing risque and also realized that Stephen King used to be a teacher! I think he was an English teacher…so maybe in high school. And he’s also a dude so it’s probably more acceptable to have a man write all the filth and still teach kids. Shit. Or should I say sh*t?
Maybe I just won’t share this blog with people yet.
