Category Archives: Beginnings

Leg Day, Part I

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Welcome to another Round Robin story from the folks at the Parking Lot Confessional. If this is your first time reading, here’s how it goes. Today I’ll post the beginning of a story. My cohorts have no prior knowledge of what’s going to happen beyond these italics. That gives the next person only two days to figure out the next part of the story. Then another two days goes by before the final installment created and posted for your pleasure. I’m kicking this Round Robin Story off with an idea a friend planted just this weekend. Enjoy!

Leg Day

For the third time that day Char got the wheel of her chair stuck in a divot. The third time, and telling from the wrenching crunch, a bent rim. She could look past it though. Look past the ill luck, excessive stares and nervous jitters. She could look past all of it because tomorrow she got her legs.

The closer she got to the day, the more she couldn’t focus on anything else. It was the same every year.

Char looked around the courtyard. Not for help, but to check for witnesses. Not much is more embarrassing. Sure, the kids of the town get stuck and break wheels all the time. The adults, not so much. This will be her eighteenth Leg Day. She shouldn’t be breaking any more wheels.

Rocking side to side, she was able to roll herself out of the divot and continued home. Every few feet her chair lurched to the right. The wheel was definitely bent, but she’d be able to make it home and swap the wheel before her dad would even notice.

Really she knew better than to cross the courtyard, but she was in a hurry to get home. The sooner to sleep, the quicker tomorrow would be here. Char quickly forgot her lurching chair and went on creating her mental list of things she’d do once she got her legs.

When she was younger, and Leg Day came, she ran. She ran until her breath struggled to catch up. She ran until she saw stars. She ran until she puked. She ran up and down the wheel ramps, but mostly she ran through the grass, up the hills, and every place her wheels couldn’t take her.

Char still planned to devote part of her day to running. Running and more. Her dad used to love to climb. Trees, mountains, walls, really anything vertical, so he claimed.

She thought about Cleo and Eddie. They had the same Leg Day and every year they danced. Char didn’t know if it was good, but they smiled, laughed and loved as they spun, hopped and held each other close. So it must have been good. If Char shared her Leg Day. She would chase and be chased, though she never wanted to be caught.

Eventually the running would stop. It was far too easy to tell the homes of Day Afters. They were always too quiet. Quiet unless they had children. It took years for them to get use to the Day After. One year Char thought that if she kept running, run right through the night, she could have her legs for another day. It took her father three hours to get to her amongst the trees where her legs became lifeless and dead to the touch. Char didn’t like to think about that day. There would be plenty of time during her own Day After.

She rolled through the front door, and hurried to the mom’s old room where they kept spare chair parts.

“Charlotte? Is that you?”

She didn’t expect her dad to be home. Her hopes for covering up her bent wheel sank, almost bringing down her mood. Almost.

“What’re you doing home?” She turned to find her dad wheeling in from the kitchen. A waft of bacon followed him.

“Is that–”

“Breakfast for dinner? I know it’s your favorite.”

“Yes!” Char did a little victory wiggle in her chair. “I wasn’t expecting anything until tomorrow.”

The smile on his face faltered. He tried to master it back, but it only looked forced and perhaps painful.

“Char. We need to talk about your Leg Day.”

Come back Wednesday for Part II of Leg Day…

Beginnings In the End

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There are only three parts of the novel that are the hardest to write: the beginning, the middle, and the end. And to keep these posts from going into epic fantasy lengths, we’ve sectioned it out over the next three weeks. To keep things chronological, we’re tackling Beginnings first.

Little side note: The easiest part of writing? The ideas. Everybody gets them. It’s taking that idea and translating into words for others to read where most trip up. Because, really? Where do you start?

That in itself can be a daunting question. After all there’s so much emphasis on a story’s start. Books have been written solely on the importance of the first five pages. I can totally understand wanting to get it right. Those pages will be the ones judged on whether a reader will want to continue. Blow it, and it’s pulped. Own it, and you’ve made at least one new fan. I can see how this thought stymies most ideas from ever becoming novels.

Again I ask, where do you start?

Here’s my answer: It doesn’t matter. When you’re all done with the novel, your first chapter will have changed a MINIMUM of two times. Some might find this intimidating. For me, I found it the most freeing realization.

…permission to write bad.

When I first started writing, I used to write the first chapter over and over and over trying to get it just right. Was I telling too much? Did I keep too much hidden? Is it starting in the right place? Funny thing happens when you write and rewrite the first chapter again and again. The rest of the story never gets written.

So here’s what I did. I gave myself permission to write bad. This did two things. First and foremost, it got me writing. It’s impossible to gain momentum if you’re not moving forward. The second thing it did was take the pressure off creating brilliance on a first go-around. It might also keep you from sharing your work before it’s really ready, but that’s a topic for another week.

It’s like when I first learned how to drive stick. It wasn’t pretty seeing my dad’s ‘82 Montero lurch, buck, and stutter as I ground down first gear attempting to get out of the driveway. Once I got going, though, third and fourth were easy enough. If you only saw me drive by at cruising speed, you’d have no I idea I burned out the first two gears getting that far.

Remember all those questions I had earlier, the circular ones that kept me on chapter one? Sitting in front of a finished first draft, I could answer them all. I knew if it was too much or not enough, because I had the rest of the story there to reference. More than likely there were a number ideas that sprouted during the middle and end that I wanted to elude to back at the beginning. I could see the full story arc and decide if I started a chapter one too early, or need to tack on an extra chapter before the original. These are things I wouldn’t have know if I didn’t write right on through.

It comes down to not letting the beginning bother you in the beginning. It’s the ending that always makes it clear on how the beginning should be.