June 23, 2012

Literary Freestylin': I'm Finna Try it Again

So it's 2:30am. I'm eating grapes and gyrating to dancehall music. I have Chaka Demus and Pliers' "Murder She Wrote" on repeat and just finished working my thang in front of the mirror like I'm sexy or something. You can't tell me my dutty wine isn't Hall of Fame worthy. Prior to this, I was perusing my blog archives and reunited with a short story I posted on here 3 years ago. I wrote it chapter by chapter over several weeks. It was about the adventure of an overweight bookworm who met a man intent on introducing her to a new world of eroticism and fear. Here's an excerpt:


"Tell me what you desire most."
"Do you have all night? I desire a lot of things."
"As do I. But every list begins with one thing. That thing, or desire, is usually the most important."
Sweety held the phone to her ear the way she would have held his hand to her cheek.
"A man’s touch."
"I see," he said thoughtfully. "That's interesting. Tell me, Sweety, would you say you are suffering from skin hunger?"
"I never thought about it that way, but yes, I would say that."
"What terrifies you the most?"
"Drowning. I can’t swim and almost drowned when I was little."

Raymond, "Papi," took some time before replying. Sweety knew he was contemplating something profound, everything he said seemed like it belonged in a text book. She had discovered his blog Mind Factor two weeks earlier and was immediately intrigued at his eloquence and intelligence in his latest post in which he described the often taboo relationship between fear and eroticism. She left a comment and the link to her own blog, Loserville, Population: Me. Papi visited her blog and over the course of several days generously left detailed replies to all 75 posts. This was her fourth consecutive night of intense phone communication with him. During that short time, he had managed to coax experiences and personal admissions from Sweety that she dared only repeat to herself.

Finally he said “I know what you need. For the two extremes to collide--can you imagine what that would do to your senses? To fear your surroundings, but to squirm in pleasure beneath the hands that confine you there."
And that's when he started to tell her about a special underworld he governed, complete with clients and a collage of "wishmasters" who served those clients' needs.



Read the whole thing here

Promise me you won't judge me. I'm just a writer relaying a story a character told me.


Well, I was impressed by myself to say it was a literary freestyle. Meaning I didn't think about it beforehand or cut and paste it from an existing document. I just looked at what I last wrote, started a new post, and got to typing whatever came to mind.


I want to do it again. It's a great way to relive writer's block and to get the creative juices flowing as the saying goes. I'm not going to promise a certain number of chapters or anything because literary freestylin doesn't work that way. It just flows. By the end, I hope it will have improved my flow on my short story collection. 

So, later on today, after I've gotten some rest, I'll sit down and get started on Chapter 1 of some type of story. It's been a while, I hope the old brain can still do it on the fly. I'll let you be the judge. While I said I don't plan ahead for freestyles, I'm giving myself a start time only to hold myself accountable. I won't cheat, it'll be totally as I go.


Signed,

JenntheEditor (I've never used this handle before establishing it on Twitter. I kind of like it. I think 'JenntheEditor' will be my new thing. It has a nice ring to it.)

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