The Free Writing Becomes a Rough Draft

Well, I always did intend to come back and let you know how my free-writing session went. As I am procrastinating on a major project tonight, I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about it.

I decided to write the three run-on sentenced pages of whatever first came to mind, and the first things to fall out went from affectionately reminiscing to something much darker.

I recalled how I had learned this writing technique from an English teacher I once had. Somehow this reminded me of how that teacher had once described to me what it was like to teach English in an Australian prison a few years back. I thought of how the At-Risk students whom I love statistically could go that route if they don't get my message and reclaim their lives from adversity. I thought of all their hope and promise, and I thought of how depressing my old English teacher had found the job at the prison. These were people who had messed up their lives far worse than what they were born to. Surprisingly, perhaps, many of them were charismatic, likable sorts. You might find yourself rooting for them to learn to read and then use that knowledge to make something of their lives, but few of them actually ever did. Plus, too, the very environment was not conducive to learning - cinder block walls in drab, dirty colors with guards posted everywhere and a strip search to look forward to upon entry... okay, so I made the strip search part up, but I know there was some sort of oppressive routine upon entering the building every morning, and I believe even leaving in the late afternoon.

Then my free-wheeling mind wandered to a stray line I had written in my journal that described an unwanted or uninspired orgasm as "feeling as if your body were wordlessly, involuntarily shuddering out tears of loss" -- to that asinine congressman who had claimed that rape victims can't be impregnated because their bodies "shut down" if the contact is unwanted. I can't believe a male person in this century would even say anything so ignorant. The body acts independently of the mind all the time - or maybe the other way around. People with PTSD know that all too well.

What I've ended up with is a very rough draft of a rather dark story about a triangle of sorts in which there is a lot of unspoken tension between character actions and desires, a teacher, a convict, and a woman, all of whom know one another but who have never all been in the same room together. I had kind of hoped that I would come up with something a little more pretty and inspiring than that for my first short story in a decade, but I have to assume that if it came out of me so easily that it needs to be out. Maybe I'll post it when I find time to actually write out a more fleshed-out draft, but that will have to wait until I've completed what I'm procrastinating on.

Back to the grindstone...