Early Writings

I've always enjoyed writing about moods and settings. For example:

She awoke to the sound of rain on the roof. The early morning was gray and somber. The house was cold, and lying in bed under the blankets felt good. She was warm under the blankets. But she had to get up. Not to go some place, but to do things. She had to start her day; her tasks were calling.

That's an example I just wrote. But here's a little piece I wrote when I was 18:

A Winter Night

Outside the lodge a cloud of tiny, feathery snowflakes settles slowly over the countryside.  Even though night has fallen, the white landscape reflects enough light to enable one to see clearly.  A mile to the west a ragged line of evergreens, now colored a spectral white, stretches from the northwest to the south and back toward the northeast in a great curve.  On the eastern edge of this curve stands the lodge, nestled beneath tall evergreens at the foot of a long, bare hill.  Gusts of wind drive a white plume from the crest of the hill and pile a deep drift against one end of the lodge.

The lodge, a squat, one-story cabin, is constructed of rough-hewn logs and sealed with pitch.  So perfectly does it blend with the surrounding hinterlands that it appears to have grown there with the very trees.  A curtain is drawn back from one window, permitting a shaft of light to penetrate the darkness without.  Snowflakes falling past this window sparkle brightly, but elsewhere are invisible, so that it seemingly snows only in one small spot outside the window.

Though the land outside may be cold and dark, inside the lodge there is warmth and light, and with the sound of laughter and conversation mingles the smell of pine logs and coffee.  At one end of a long, high ceilinged room stands a large fireplace, obviously used for cooking as well as heating.  In this, a blazing fire crackles and roars as the flames are sucked up the chimney. Periodically, a noise resounds like a rifle discharge, accompanied by a burst of sparks which vanishes upward.  Waves of heat radiate outward, pushing the cold air into the far corners of the room.

Ranged about the fire in a semi-circle are several couples, their animated faces awash with a wavering orange glow.  An air of mirth hovers about them as their discourse carries them far into the night.  Finally they are overcome--drugged into sleep--by the warmth of the fire, and one by one each retires to a room in a colder section of the lodge.  As the fire dies low the shadows, once content with playing over the far end of the room, creep closer to the hearth.  Then, with a final flicker, the light fails, and darkness encompasses the room.

There are comments I could make about this piece of writing. If I were to write it today, I would have changed some things. But it stands now as a slice of my artistic history, a one-page manuscript that has entered my historical record through this blog.

Here's another writing effort, also one page, also made when I was 18:

On the Arctic Road

The moon has not yet risen, and the night is singularly dark.  The land consists of barren, wind-blown tundra, conveying an almost tangible impression of desolation.  Even here, though, man has left his mark; a single, narrow road stretches across the tundra—an insignificant scratch across the face of the north.  The road is seldom traveled, however, and a strange quietude pervades the land, the effect of which is somehow heightened, rather than lessened, by the rustle of a frozen wind sweeping from the northern ice fields and across the flat wilderness.  On this night the sky is clear and cold and black; and the stars are bright, distant points of light sprinkled across it.

Far down the road a light flickers into sight and approaches.  It is a car, and it travels slowly and cautiously, for the road is continually glazed with a thick crust of ice, and even a minor accident in this unfrequented land could be fatal.  The land is flat and the road is straight, so the lights point unwaveringly ahead, neither rising nor falling, never deviating toward either side.

Suddenly, there is a glimmer of light miles above the earth, and a coruscation explodes across the sky.  Flaming reds, greens, oranges, yellows--all the colors of the spectrum dance across the heavens, forming gleaming rainbows that stretch from horizon to horizon, and shimmering curtains that tower miles above the bleak landscape.  It is an awesome spectacle, one that only this extreme latitude could produce.

The car stops and a figure emerges.  He stands beside the car, oblivious to the frigid wind that pierces even the heaviest clothing, and gazes skyward, his uplifted face colored by the fires above him.  Presently, he absently draws his heavy coat closer about him, but still he watches the panorama above him.

Then, without warning, the performance is finished; the spectacle has ended as suddenly as it had begun.  A strange, luminescent quality seems to cling momentarily to the atmosphere, but then that, too, is gone.  The stars emerge, the icy wind is suddenly colder, and the land seems abruptly even more forbidding. The hostility of the wilderness had parted for a brief moment, perhaps to give a traveler an insight into the true nature of the frozen land, but now it has closed back up.

The figure beside the car continues to stare at the empty sky. Perhaps he is moved by what he has seen, or perhaps he thinks that another performance will follow. Minutes pass without event, and finally the figure turns, steps into the car, and resumes his interrupted journey, possibly with a different picture of the north.  Soon the lights of the car fade out of sight, and the face of the north is once more desolate.  There remains no trace, save in the mind of a traveler, that anything unusual has happened.

I started writing fiction when I was about 14 years old. It has continued to this day. It will never make me rich and famous, but it seems to have kept me off the streets and out of trouble. It hasn't kept me out of bars, though. I have an entire blog that I wrote about a bar I used to frequent and the various people I met there. I don't know why I feel compelled to write about things. It's probably some kind of mental derangement, but a harmless one—at least, so far.