How to finish this gosh-darned motherlickin' short story for extension 1 for crying out loud, you jerk face
It made me
accepting and loving 
"I completed this assignment as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl puts on her last good pair of stockings."
How I did it: Back circa May, I panicked and freaked out and cried at my teachers and got two letters notifying me that if I didn't finish it I would flunk 2.5 years of HSC studies.
So I got my boyfriend to help me out. It was meant to be a technique of forcing myself to get SOMETHING done (I just needed to make an attempt) really really quickly out of guilt for taking up his time. We spent about.. six (?) hours over two days, and it actually turned out to be pretty fun! We enjoyed experimenting with horrible racial stereotypes and getting more and more ridiculous as we went. We want to write a horror story next :D
I had experienced a massive mental block and thought that I simply could. not. do. it. If I can't think of a crime, I can't think of how it would go down exactly, how it would be covered up, and the tracks and clues that a detective could / would uncover.
As it turned out, writing meaningless "clues" and secrets at random wound up forming a vague kind of back story.
I actually abandoned an old draft of a story and developed this one based on what I wrote in an exam in which we had to devise extracts to stories in different styles. As I only had to write an introduction, I could throw out names of characters, like Wheels the gangster king and mentions of Baxter Jones' shady past without having to follow it up
e.g. "I wouldn’t let it happen again.
Not after what my sister went through."
Not after what my sister went through."
It gave me the freedom to get something on paper, having no consequences!
And that gave me something to work from.
If you want, you can check out my (OUR!) silly parody of a hard-boiled crime story, "Baxter Jones in.. The Grit, The Guns and The Gams", by clicking HERE. It is 99% the same as the submitted version.
Spot the reference to a popular television programme of the 1980s!
Lessons & tips: Ask for help, trust that others do care and want to make things okay!
If you chose to pursue a certain subject, something within it captivated you, and can again. You just forgot because you felt pressured and frustrated!
Sometimes stories come together after you start writing nonsense and then figure out a way to connect the dots :)
Resources: Related picture by the amazing Vania Zouravliov.
Raymond Chandler, who is famous for one of my favourite sentences ever, as featured in The Big Sleep:
"The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of- work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings."
We 'subverted' this quote eleven times, to explore the joy of metaphors. :)
"Pulp Fiction: The Crimefighters" by Otto Penzler and Harlan Coben
Dashiell Hammett
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
And my Sean Brown, who is definitely one of the prettiest faces this
side of 42nd.
side of 42nd.
