This is a peculiar thing. This story that came out last year. I wrote this and it still manages to get hold of me and pull me back. Why does it do that? What is it that drags us back into something that’s finished, all done and yet, It says its not. I’ll explain all this, the best way that I can and I’ll admit, this had me confused for a while.
Okay, let’s hit the road. Dark Places. A short story I wrote last June. Not the first piece I wrote. Dark Places was the fourth. It was a short story, a one off that started, had a middle and then it finished. Good job I’d say and here is where I add that from here, it all went a bit squiffy. It wasn’t supposed to, it clearly from the off was a stand alone short story. I was looking at the next story, just something different than what I’d written about previously. The first story I wrote was As Loud As A Whisper, a rather silly little story about a couple, Vicki and John. Their story was based on the idea that their relationship was a little up and down and events conspire against them, but they manage to get through all the hassles and have a happy ending. I have since rewritten this story, I started the rewrite last September and only finished in March this year. The second story is very, very short. About four pages long and It’s one of those really simple tales of two people who meet and I set this one in and around Cork City. But this story remains one of my favourites, it’s called One Fine Day and it’s just a sweet little piece, a few pages and it was done. I have tidied it up where it needed it, but otherwise I left it alone. The next one is called Drawn and Quartered. Again, very short and as I think about this, I don’t like it that much at all. I still have a copy of it and I don’t read this as much as I’ve read One Fine Day. Two characters are in this one as well and I still don’t think much of it. Now, I had three written pieces and was about to jump into my fourth and this is where I think it all went sideways.
June 2008…
Travelling home from work one evening. In my car, one of those evenings where I had to get some shopping and my bike was left at work. 14 miles from door to door. An odd thing happened here, I was driving along, the CD player is left off. Just me and being quiet and then… Brown and Ferrell. Who? The name of the company. Brown and Ferrell. The names seemed to appear just like that. They were to be the heroes of my next story and I had no idea of what it was they were supposed to be doing. As I got home though, these two men weren’t going to be as clear cut as that. There was someone else who would come along and change everything around them. She was called Christina and she was 24 years old and rather odd. That’s what I had when I got out of my car, grabbed the bag of shopping and as I got into my flat. Three names, two men and a young woman. That’s it. That’s what I started with and Dark Places is born.
I had absolutely no idea of what Dark Places was meant to be about. I could see the characters, I had 3 to start with. I figured that this was enough, it was a short story and I didn’t want a load of characters to just stand around waiting for me. Okay, so, what happened then is that other people had to become involved. I made tea and sat down and had a cigarette. I looked at the pack and got Christina’s surname. Benson. The story is set in London, beginning in January 2008. A couple of more pieces that fell into place. Now, perhaps I could get on with it. Not quite. I still had no clue as to what this Christina Benson was meant to be doing, what her connection to Brown and Ferrell is and what the story was supposed to say. I had another smoke and I hit the first word. Cassie. That’s the first word that landed on screen and who she is, I didn’t know. She turned out to be Christina’s flat mate and that’s as far as she went at this stage. the other flat mate is Mag’s. She showed up a little and then more or less vanished, it was starting to open up a little now that this wasn’t about Brown and Ferrell as such, this was about Christina and what happens to her. This was her story, or so I thought, but as with anything, we touch other things and here, Christina isn’t as straight forward as I’d hoped. It started to get weird.
I had Brown and Ferrell, two old boys who own and run the company that’s named after them. The company isn’t run by them at all. Something else that came up. In truth, I wanted them to be figureheads only. They’re are as weird as Christina and they seem to know ‘What’ she is. Christina doesn’t, she doesn’t know and then when the weird got rolling, I had to have someone who really did run the company, someone who could be that tough, but not forget who she is. This is Helen Myers. I saw her as a Commander and I refered to her as such, I like the idea that Brown and Ferrell were seen as the bosses but they’re not. Helen is the sort of woman who I found to be quite tough in business but away from that, she is a woman. Maybe I’m being sexist but It’s not meant like that. It’s just what I ’saw’ in her. The initial meeting between herself and Christina isn’t quite what we think, there is a coldness from Helen, but Christina can see straight through all this, but couldn’t understand why. The interview takes place between Brown and Ferrell and Christina and it’s here at this point, I wanted Christina’s story to really take off. I wanted to get this done really fast, as if we’re all caught up in what is about to happen, but Helen got in the way and when the shit hit the fan, its Helen that’s the strong one. Someone I didn’t really look at until I gave her a husband, Dan and an 8 year old son, Peter.
Areas that I wanted to stay away from. Here I was, getting buried in people that just appeared as if by magic and it was beginning to piss me off. I had Brown and Ferrell, Christina Benson, Helen Myers, Dan Myers, Peter Myers and Cassie who had slipped a little further out of the story. Now, I had to get on, get this done and stop messing about with it. I then pictured Helen to be 36 years old, with Dan a couple of years older. But, questions were cropping up and I didn’t know how to answer them.
What really is this about? An idea that almost from nowhere has started taking off and this is a short story, so why was I doing all this? What for? Who for? Dark Places is meant to be fun, I wanted a fun story and that isn’t really what happened. It changed, became something that much darker and that had nothing to do with the title. I was writing about two women, when it should have been about Brown and Ferrell really, but it went into Christina’s story and stayed there. But it’s not her alone. Dark Places told a simple enough story, had a twist at the end and that was that. I was happy that it had ended and I was ready to have a go at something else. A comedy perhaps, something funny. No. not yet. This weird thing happened and all these months later, I’m still writing about Christina and Helen and we’re currently into the ninth story and this is all over the place. I started this back in November and it’s still not done. Nine stories? What the fuck happened? That I don’t really know, only for me to answer by saying that I have written so much other material and yet, this wasn’t done. I couldn’t let Dark Places go, it wasn’t done and it should have been. It should have been a one story and out, none of this sequel malarkey, yeah, well it went wrong and what can I say? It’s not wrong in that sense, but I sit here in June 2009 asking the same questions I was asking myself months ago. No answers as yet and maybe, when I get to where I want to go, the answer will be there. I hope so but you know, I really like writing about these two and maybe that’s the answer. I call them my ladies, I started this little habit a while back and I still give them that title. My ladies, yeah, I like that.
That moniker, ‘My ladies’ I picked up last year. It seemed to apply itself as the Dark Places stories began a slightly different route. As that one story started the second and then the third and so on, I started seeing Christina and Helen in that light. Now, that I’ve done that, I’ll move on and see if any of this gets any clearer. What I don’t want to do is give the impression that Dark Places is all that I wrote. It wasn’t. There were other things that needed doing, there was all the writing for evening classes that started in September, there were the other little stories that popped up, some of which are in basic note form, and it was still moving on. The other thing that was happening with Dark Places was that each successive story got that much more complicated and that much longer. As I said before, none of this should have happened. But it did.
Evening classes for Creative Writing began in September and ran for 10 weeks. The class was taught by Tina Pisco, herself a published author and I liked her more or less straight away. The hook with her was her enthusiasm, her push for us to write something and that’s what the majority of us did. I was one of those boring fuckers who each week would have work done and a friend from work, Donna Crean, would read my work and comment accordingly and she was great, I mean that. She’d read what I’d written and tell me exactly what she thought. So thanks Donna, thank you very much.
Evening classes resumed in January this year for 10 weeks and I was still at it, churning out work and the reasons behind this I’ve already gone into on a previous blog. This is just to give you an idea of what was going on and that I was still writing the Dark Places stories. The ninth story was originally lost along with all the notes and updates and additional material when the hard drive packed up. That’s been discussed before as well, just another hiccup along the way.
I started out trying to find an answer to a question. I asked this question myself and I hoped that by me writing all this I could answer it. I’m not sure that I’ve found anything except a bit of confusion. Why did I even start writing in the first place? What made me come home from work and start typing away like I knew what I was doing? Something must have triggered this, there would have been a spark from somewhere that said, okay Jim, let’s start writing stuff… I haven’t got a clue as to all the why’s here. The what’s will have to take their turn, there are a few things to put right first.
Dark Places is a supernatural story. That theme ran through all 8 of the stories that have been written. I didn’t want them running off into the ‘blood guts and gore’ department, although some of the events that happen in the stories were quite nasty, I didn’t want to get bogged down by having blood flying around all over the place. The ninth story doesn’t really follow the previous 8, here I thought I could just take a slight step back and look at my ladies and go, “Okay, but what if we have a few days with them that make them seem more human?” I think my ladies have changed in that so much happened to them, they had to change as well. Any event can change what we are and here is the key to story nine. Influences, from an outside source affected the way this story got rolling. It does start slowly enough, unlike the previous stories, they all seemed to just fly out of the box, but this doesn’t. It is gentler, not so much of a rush to get done in any way, just pick up from where I left them and we can stroll along with them and see what happens. I have had a few ideas of where this story should go and I’ve narrowed it down to just two now. One is something that was talked about in the previous story and that’s the route I’ve decided to follow. It’s make or break for my ladies, an area that I wouldn’t really want to get into but I thought why not? Why can’t I have a go at this. Each story that I wrote has to try new things, look at different themes and in most cases that’s what I’ve done. It might have worked, it might not but I gave it a shot and I can always go back to them, as I save them on Eddie.
I’m hoping that I can draw this to a close. I start sounding so boring otherwise. I went off and did a bit of tidying up and here I am now. Back at this again in the hope that I will finish this and that it won’t end up the way it started. It wouldn’t do any good to just fire off a list of what I’ve written, it just doesn’t mean anything. This writing thing for me has to come to an end, I can’t see me going on with it as I do little writing now, I started uploading short stories onto a writers site and I’ve read a lot of stories that are on there and I get the impression that some of the people have been writing for a long time, whereas I’ve been writing for a year. I sound like a real baby at this and that’s most probably so close to the truth, in comparison to some, It’s like I just found the lock to the door. I’ve wandered away from where I wanted this to be and I don’t mind, I suppose it has a point and that’s more like one of my rants and yeah, it is.
… I got an e mail from Angelika a short while ago. This is the lady I’d sent part of Faith of the Heart, so she could have a look and let me know where this part was wrong, this is a scene where Christina and Helen are back from their walk and a drink at the pub, they make love and share a bath. Thanks to Angelika, who was very kind in going through this for me, I have opted to dump this piece so that the story can get a shake on and get done. The love scene isn’t necessary, it doesn’t really move the story on at all, to me, it just slows it down. So, this scene is scrapped and I can get back to full power again. The other option I have is to dump the whole of this story and fold the opening chapter of this onto the back of story 8, it’ll work, I just have to modify the chapter. That may also signal the end of these stories and that perhaps is no bad thing. I’d like to go back to the short ’shorts’ that I started out writing, no sequels, no prequels and only a limited number of characters and situations to worry about, but that’s if I do any writing at all, I mentioned this before and that I noticed that I do very little writing now, perhaps my interest in it is starting to slacken off, that’s no bad thing either.
So, with that in mind, this is where I’ll sign off. Take care and please, mind the gap…
