Yesterday’s experience at the Anglesey Writing Festival seems to have unlocked a couple of interesting things. One of them is the rediscovery – or perhaps, remembrance – that my website has a blog. I have not used it in ages and yet there is much I am inspired to share here. So that has felt like a timely nudge.

But a spontaneous decision to attend one of the workshop sessions has led to a whole unexpected experience. A whole completely left field, curveball experience that has been unfolding today. 

I decided to attend  one of the afternoon sessions of the Festival yesterday and kind of fluctuated between the one on supernatural fiction or the one on historical fiction. I was very interested in them both, but ended up going with the one on historical fiction, based solely (as I alluded to in an earlier Facebook post) because I love Elizabeth Cunningham’s Maeve Chronicles which reflect the story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus through a truly inspired lens. And her attention to research and historical accuracy was something I definitely noticed with a huge amount of awe and respect. I can’t even imagine how one would broach such a thing, so I thought a talk about it would be fascinating. 

I was completely unprepared to actually WRITE! But after a fabulous intro to the topic, the presenter (Nicola Edwards who wrote This Thing of Darkness: Heathcliff’s Lost Years) handed out envelopes to everyone, telling us that each envelope held 3 words and we had 20 minutes to write a story somehow incorporating those three words. Flash fiction! What?! I have never written fiction in my life. I lie! I have one story I wrote in Grade 3. About pirates. Okay. No worries. In for a penny. Here we go.

I opened my envelope and this is what I saw:

Orange          Dinosaur          Recipe

I sat for a moment, quite literally just having “what the hell” running over and over in my mind. I thought of something Nicola had said. That one could have a liberal interpretation of the word. Dinosaur didn’t have to be the ancient beast, but rather “a mind-set”, for example. So I thought of an old man. Someone maybe who felt his time had come and gone. And this came to me.

It had been the hardest week of his life. And that was  saying something. A man who had cut his teeth in the Depression. Shaved his first whiskers during the second of the world’s worst wars. A man who had dug a shelter during the Bay of Pigs and a grave for his fifth child. There had been hard weeks, but this took the cake. This was the week he laid his life’s partner to rest. And when all the kindness that came in the shape of casseroles and puddings slowed to a drought, he was left, bereft, in the chair beside the empty chair contemplating his empty stomach. Not that food held any joy, but the body needs what the body needs, and the kitchen, with its bright orange floral wallpaper – that had been a bane when he had put it up, but it had brought her so much joy – that room beckoned and repelled in equal measure.

When his mind could no longer resist the insistence of his stomach, he pulled himself achingly, anciently to his feet and ambled ponderously as the dinosaur he felt to the kitchen. It was a heavy heart that reached for her well thumbed cookbooks. It was a shaking hand that pulled her favourite from the shelf. And it was a heart that spilled over with the fullness of a life well-shared that read the words: Duck a l’Orange. Her specialty. The recipe of her love.

He turned to the fridge and began his new life.

This was in part inspired by my Dad. A few details relating to positioning his age and some life experience. But that’s about it. But it was such a weird experience. This person kind of just came into my head and this whole scene just unfolded. I was happy with it and even more happy the exercise was done.

Ha!

Then, Nicola had us position our bit of flash fiction in a specific time and place. The historical part of the historical fiction. Determining the when and where. Well, I’d kind of shot myself in the foot by being some specific in my use of world events to highlight his “dinosaur” age. And I kind of also narrowed location with a Bay of Pigs reference. 20th century America, it is. But then I started to think. If there was going to be something significant around this new life, what other world event might there be? The time came quickly. 2001. I even knew what day this scene occurred. September 10, 2001. As for the place, I didn’t want it to be in New York. I wanted it to inform but not be the centre. I decided to place him in a suburb of Washington. Using technology to help navigate this task, I zoomed in on Google maps to try to get a sense of place, especially what might be a suburb between Washington and New York. Well, do you know what lies somewhat in a line between the two, although much closer to Washington? Gettysburg! And that was that! There was some lovely encouragement to continue to flesh it out, but I was done. I don’t write fiction. It was a fun afternoon, but that was that.

Except that, as I was making the bed this morning, I kept thinking about this guy sitting in his little house in the suburbs, a little ways away from Gettysburg, on a street that has a riding centre at the end of it (so says Google maps!) I thought about his life in this place of such rich history so close to a place that kept making history. Was he a politician? Or a military man? Or neither? I didn’t have a clear sense yet of what the shape of his life before this moment had been, but I did have a sense that he was someone with an understanding of history – the history of place. 

I thought about how the story might actually enfold a story within a story. Focusing on the tragedy of family against family or friend against friend that happened in the Civil War. Juxtaposing that perspective to that of pulling out to a more global perspective of the same dynamic. These dynamics that have played out again and again through history. Remembered through the land – in Gettysburg – and experienced in the now with this old man. That the new life he is stepping into is a world that is about to be forever changed. 

And THEN, I remembered that my Dad wrote a book called The Terror Behind 9-11. Self-published. I don’t know who even has any copies of it. But I do. On my Ancestor Shelf. My goodness! So then (still making the bed) I am thinking about how the 19th century Gettysburg scenes will unfold and how the 21st century Gettsburg scenes will unfold. And I’m wondering about using snippets from Dad’s book as chapter headers.

What is happening here????

And I go to the shelf and start flipping through Dad’s book. I turn to the last page and read: “Religions always stress the distinction between the secular and the sacred. What happens if the secular becomes the sacred and the so-called sacred becomes man-made, man-inspired, man-centered? Does it turn the world upside down? Our value systems would certainly be radically changed. So would we. We would see sermons in stones, books in the running brooks and good in all. We would see acts of religious violence as crimes against humanity. We would see whereas previously we had been blind.“

AND THEN, I have it. I know the ending. I know how the book is going to end. And I know what it wants to say in the telling of the story. And I know how this man will be changed through the course of the story. 

All this from 3 random words in an envelope!

But, it’s never going to happen. Because I don’t write fiction.