Five to Five Hundred.

For the past few years, I've written a lot of disjointed, scattered beginnings to stories, smatterings of songs accompanied by a guitar or banjo, and shoots of tales that I recall from my own life, and hope to someday connect into some sort of non-fiction piece, specifically about Christian spirituality. I'm a very easily distracted person though, and as soon as I have an idea and start to run with it, I slow from a sprint to a jog, a jog to a stagger, and a stagger to a nap on the concrete.

My friend Brad just started a writing group with a few friends and I where he basically gives us five random words from the dictionary on a Sunday and we have to turn them into five hundred words by Wednesday. I have a long way to go with my writing, but this project is great because I enjoy working with a bit of structure and some sort of constraint. Five words helped me to regain my focus and finish a project this last week- although, five hundred words only got me to the introduction of the story. I may write another completely unrelated piece this week, but I'm also considering taking the five new words Brad sends and using them to write the next five hundred words of the story. You'll see next week. Here's what I wrote last week:

I still know little about Charlie Dobbs except from where he came. I met Charlie when I worked as a concierge at an old upscale apartment complex in Back Bay. I was saving up for law school while juggling another job, hoisting myself paycheck by paycheck out of debt only to lower myself back into a newly established pit of loans for Boston University. My despondence towards work seldom afforded me any interest in conversing with my co-workers until the afternoon my boss walked Charlie over to the counter and said in his short banal manner, “Taylor, this is Charlie Dobbs. He’s training with you today. Get acquainted.”

I eyeballed my new co-worker with interest. Charlie was tall and wrinkly with slightly serpentine features. I imagine he looked pretty dapper as a young man, but time had altered him; he was a foreboding and weathered presence. “Hi, Charlie,” I said, “How’s it going?”
“Oh, alright. Can’t complain. It was a nice day today.” The sound of his voice was warm, esculent, and diplomatic. Perhaps it was just that he sounded like someone from an old movie, say in the fifties. There was an infinitesimal trace of old-time novelty that made me feel like he had a lot of wisdom under his belt. I have a theory that if people my age talked like that we’d all sound older and wiser by default.
“Where are you from, Charlie?”
“Here.”
“Boston?”
He grunted and nodded his head. “But I spent most of my life in New York City.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you to this job? In all due respect, shouldn’t you be retired?” I asked bluntly.
“Well, I most certainly was.”
“Yeah? So you’re coming back out of retirement?”
“I suppose I am.” He shot me a big, picture-perfect smile.
“What did you do?”
“I had a few business ventures.” He waved his hand nonchalantly, as if these words didn’t mean millions and millions of dollars.
“Sorry if this feels like twenty questions. You’re more interesting than most of my co-workers.”
“You can still have a few more questions, son. I don’t mind.”
“Well, I look at you and I see someone I’d expect to see on a golf course or a retirement neighborhood. No offense. What are you doing here, training to be a concierge?”
Charlie looked out the window, eyes flickering as they followed passing cars on the street. “I woke up on Monday and I was tired of being in these shoes. After seventy-two years, I was finally tired of it all. I’d rather be a social pariah than what I am today. I decided to return to where I used to be, for I would rather be the concierge I was at twenty than the weary monster I am now.”
He turned his head away and began to weep as a child would over a broken toy. As he sat, crooked and weeping, I feared the life that I should lead.

Okay, so that was that. Go back up to the top of this post, click on the link that says "Brad" and go to his blog. Read the "Writing Experiment 2" (or any) post. If he is Jonathan Saffran Foer, I am Stephanie Meyers (as writers go). Well done, Brad.