The Bench is a short flash fiction story which I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Flash fiction is rather popular online these days as it consists of a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 1000 words.  Flashfictiononline. com is a good site dedicated to stories of this nature!

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After sitting on the same public bench for five years it was hardly surprising that he had memorised every ingrained crack and groove. As a painter he would have done a brilliant job at replicating it onto canvas; but he wasn’t. He was just a lonely old man, minding his own business day in and day out. He enjoyed his mornings watching the ducks glide past the shimmering lake. He bothered no-one, and usually no-one ever bothered him. He liked it that way. 

So it came as something of a shock one day when, out of the blue, someone else was sitting on his bench. She was fair-haired and appeared to be middle-aged, and very pretty in that sort of well kept and ‘lived-in’ kind of way. At first he was going to growl at her or walk away in disgust, but he didn’t. He sat at the other end and cast a few sheepish glances her way. Eventually she glanced back, and he caught a brief smile. It quickened the pace of his heart and seemed to upset his nervous system. He hadn’t been prepared for this, but then again, who is prepared for something like this? 

He tried to see what he could of her in that hazy peripheral kind of way. It reminded him of his teenage years, and his lustful eagerness to eye up the girl beside him in the darkened Cinema. But that was long ago, and where he might have tried to touch a bare knee or shuffle closer back then, he knew it wasn’t something he would dare do now. In fact, he didn’t really know what to do at this sudden intrusion; it was as if she had just walked into his home and sat beside him on the settee. He couldn’t really handle having this lovely creature on his bench. 

It all felt very awkward and so he took out his sandwich and chewed it more quietly than usual, whilst she simply stared at the lake with her hands loosely resting on her lap. He thought he could feel an aura of sadness around her and there was a terrible urge inside him to talk to her, to find out all the what, why’s and when’s. But all he could do was sit there silently and struggle over appropriate words. He didn’t want to scare her off by bothering her. 

Come on do it, he urged himself. Just a small hello. Then she stood up, and he felt a panic rise in his chest. He wanted to shout, ‘No please wait, don’t go yet.’  But instead he gave a respectful nod, and with a small smile she was gone.

Dull winter days passed and the bench didn’t feel quite the same again. Sitting on it made him feel even lonelier now and he thought it was odd how a brief incident like that could change things. He felt foolish because she had only been there for a few minutes after all.

When Christmas morning arrived he saw from his window a luscious carpet of snow, and it gave him a funny sort of idea in his head. He hurried to the bench hoping to see her imprint there, maybe a message or phone number scrawled into the ice. But there was nothing.

Then he got angry with himself and the bench, and decided to change his seating area completely. Perhaps that would make him forget about her, he thought. Hopefully he would forget her face, even though part of him didn’t want to. So that’s what he did. He began to sit on a different bench.

The new one faced the road, but it wasn’t as comfortable as the other, and it irked him that he’d have to learn all the new marks that were etched into it. The good thing about it was that he felt a little less lonely seeing the cars go by. In some silly way he felt as though he had moved house, even though he could still see the old abandoned bench. It bothered him too when a frivolous young couple came along and decided to move into it, so he couldn’t move back there even if he had wanted to.

Spring arrived and he returned to the lake one morning to find two little birds squabbling together on his old bench and no sign of that canoodling couple. But by now he had given up hope of her ever returning, so it didn’t matter which bench he sat on any longer.

‘Maybe I’ll just buy a newspaper today and go home,’ he thought to himself miserably.

Crossing the busy road, he walked around the corner to a newsagent. Picking a paper off the display, he fished about for change in his pocket, not noticing the soft face smiling at him as he approached the counter. ‘Sixty pence’ please the female voice asked. He looked up and their eyes locked. 

“It’s you,” he blurted, without meaning to.

 “Yes, hello” she replied.

 “I hoped to see you again?” he said, then felt his cheeks flush.

 “Sorry, um married,” she sort of whispered under her breath, as she counted the coins in her hand.

 His face dropped. Of course! How could he have been so bloody….?’

 “But not anymore,” she said looking up at him with soft twinkling blue eyes.

 Somebody grumbled impatiently behind him. His heart beat rapidly.

 “Look, erm that bench…” he told her, “come by anytime for a chat.” 

 She nodded shyly, “Ah yes the bench! That would be lovely.”

At the end of last year I created a workshop in Gibraltar for those who might be interested in writing. If anyone ever had an inkling of a desire to write a horror story, thriller novel or a Catherine Cookson romance then this is the place to begin! Here will you find advice, encouragement and mentoring  in the fields of fiction and non-fiction.

Each week I provide writing prompts and help people to develop stories and improve their skills. I also discuss the different writing markets, publishing channels, and preparing work for submission. The world of publishing is something most people fear but in reality, there are thousands of markets looking for stories, novels, articles, screenplays, reports, readers letters, magazine content and so on.

Here is just one example. If you have some specific knowledge on the subject of Cars or Health or Cookery, there will be a health or car or cookery magazine (or probably dozens) out there looking for articles. Don’t forget housewives write and get paid for fictional stories in popular magazines too. The only difference between these writers and every one else, is that they have practiced their writing and learnt what it is these magazines want. 

I have found that many people often like the idea of writing, but lack confidence in their language abilities.

Let me tell you that grammar and spelling are important, (of course they are, for without them we wouldn’t be able to make head nor tail of what we are reading,) but it is not the most essential to being a writer.

I repeat not the most essential!

If you are reading this and not looking in your dictionary every two seconds, then don’t worry, spelling and grammar can always be fixed with help from other people, but what other people cannot do is come up with YOUR story or use YOUR imagination!

Other’s say to me ‘Well I can’t come up with flowery words.’

Who wants to read flowery words? Writing in today’s world is actually preferred in ordinary and plain English. In fact the days of flowery prose and over the top verbosity are long gone. Most Editors today want clear, understandable words, and have a preference (genre permitting) on shorter sentences too. This is because the majority of readers today want ‘lighter’ reading and are put off with difficult words, so it is a relief for many writers who have spent years struggling with their Thesaurus!

People who are interested in writing, (and will find every excuse in the book not to do it,) must learn that the only way to actually succeed at anything, and I mean anything, is to practice. Give it your best shot! Nobody is born a writer, how to write well can be learned! What to write about comes from inspiration, and that is what you get in a writers group.

The greatest painters probably started off no better than you and I, (assuming you are as rubbish as I am at painting) and it was constant practice which catapulted some of them to extraordinary heights.

When I first drafted my book, ‘The Last Gift,’ I was so disheartened at how badly written it was that my eyes almost bled at the second reading. I could see that I had a good story in there, it was just hidden between the mad rush of words. In fact, I couldn’t have done any better if I had eaten a tin of Alphabet Soup and extracted the whole lot onto my page. (Ok, bad image, but you get the idea!) What I’m trying to say is that the first draft of anything (ask any successful writer this) is always going to be awful. Then it gets better, and better the more you write.

The writing process can be wonderful and painful, you start to love your characters but you can also tire of them, and possibly want to murder them all by the time you get to the last page! But when writing just keep your eyes on the main prize, the goal, the ultimate glory!  Always! Just remember one thing:

Forget top-notch bestselling authors. It is possible for ordinary human beings, yes, you and me, to create interesting stories!

I’m not saying everyone is a ‘Dan Brown’ or even a ‘Stephen King,’ but one never knows what can be achieved without trying. If you read Stephen King’s Book about the writing process, he talks often about the start of his writing life and the ‘truck load’ of rejections he received from various publishers, one of whom told him his stories were…’ bizarre, somewhat childish and he ought to ‘grow up!’ I’m sure that particular publisher spent a long time beating himself up.

There is nothing more self-rewarding or self-gratifying than someone becoming emotionally moved by the characters which YOU have invented, or scared out of their wits by a story YOU have created. Once you improve (and you will improve all the time just as long as you keep on writing) you will notice how much better your words flow, how much better they read aloud, how your reader’s expressions become less screwed up. The more you write the less that will happen, trust me!

Group meetings are held in an informal atmosphere, where we relax over a drink or two, whip out our pens and have an interesting and sociable time over our writing. I mean after all, we are not in a Dickensian Classroom (though that would appeal to me as a writer of historical fiction!) Some people have been surprised at how many ideas flow, and how many things they realise they could write about once they interact with other like-minded individuals. It’s really about using your imagination and not being afraid to make mistakes. Learning how to correct mistakes is essential to improvement.

The meetings are just £5.00 a session to cover administrative costs, and the constant reparation of my bleeding eyeballs (I trust you will realise that was my pitiful attempt at a joke!) Well, I never claimed to be a comedian now did I?  :)

I have often wondered about this concept: Talent. Where does it come from, and if it’s so necessary to progress in the world, why is Posh Spice so rich?

Ok that last comment might be a bit catty, but I’m sure that you know what I’m getting at? The concept of talent also makes me wonder whether it’s something we can actually recognise within ourselves, or is it something only recognised by others? Is it just the product of hard work and the development of some latent ability, or could we all aspire to become geniuses at something if we pledged a life long dedication to perfecting it?

Many questions there, all of which would probably evoke different lines of argument. In writing, I am sure that talent could vary from one degree to another. For instance, I find myself pretty good at creating sentences as making words flow comes easily to me. I know plenty of words, trust me. Mrs Thesaurus Head. Yep, that’s me. Yet, I do think that I have had to work quite hard to make my sentences out to be interesting enough for others to want to read them. I find it hard to gather story ammunition whilst others, and this is proven, can tell an interesting yarn at the bat of an eyelid!

We all have areas in which we excel a little more than others, even within the same field, which is why we often need to go over certain ‘areas’ of our writing which don’t come up to scratch. I find that I don’t have to make too many grammar corrections, yet other things can frustrate me more intensely, such as plot and structure.

Here are the top five things which really irk me when I’m reading something:

1. Their, They’re and There all mean different things, i.e.

They’re over there!

There are the trees.

Their hats look silly.

I often want to grab a pen and correct these myself whenever I see them.

2. LOL (as in laugh out loud) within a story, and God forbid within the printed pages of a self-published book. Yes, I’ve seen it. Unforgiveable!

3. Weird adverbs or ly words used sillily I picked up a published book once and turned to the first page; this was the first sentence:

I watched the LED display of the clock on the bedside table flash redly. (Hmm, good job the light was not lilac or blue!)

4. Crazy Dialogue Tags:

(a) ‘Oh My God,’ he screamed aloud.

Firstly, if he screamed we already expect it to be loud, so aloud isn’t necessary. And ‘screamed’ is an over-used dialogue tag in my opinion. I have even seen the tag, ‘he screamed silently.’ (Pardon?)

(b) He stared ahead blackly.

Well I just can’t visualise anyone looking at something blackly or even purpley can you? Strangely, it was the famous Stephenie Meyers who wrote that in her book ‘Twilight.’

5. This last one drives me nuts – ha cliche!

I would of gone out if only I could of.

Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!

I cried in my bed last night. I read the last few chapters of ‘The Time Travellers Wife.’ It made me think of life, death and all the colours inbetween. It made me look at my son’s baby face and weep, did I say that already?

My review of ’The Time Traveler’s Wife’ in another blog post was made prematurely. I believe I gave it a good review when I should have given it an excellent review. I was disheartened by a few things, but then again, just like life, books can have their rough and bitter edges, and will give us occasional words or sentences we might prefer to skip over inattentively. To be honest, I cried over the sad letter Henry wrote to his wife (such letters ought to come with a box of kleenex).

I was blown away. Niffenegger took an ordinary couple and made them extra-ordinary. Not just for their dedication in trying to live a normal life within Henry’s transcendental and universally mind-blowing illness, but as a reflection of humanity, their endurance teaches us that we can and do survive the many cruel blows along the way.

And all for what?

Well for love of course.

Time travelling became the norm for these characters, and the consequences of that were sadly accepted long before any bitter-endings arrived. This is the cream of characterisation. Whilst most authors settle on less impossible scientifically brain-puddling themes, the message is the same everywhere, we endure all, because we must.

When I created Maggie in ‘The Last Gift,’ I wanted her to overcome a life of slavery and upper class brutality, even though thousands didn’t. But if she hadn’t my book would have closed its doors by Chapter Two. Maggie had nothing to live for really. Possibly all she had was the (less than perfect) air which she breathed and the protective love of her kind parents, who too frequently had troubles of their own to contend with. The fact that my heroine smelt the scent of death every day only served to make her a stronger and more resilient human being. In my story, Maggie lives on to witness and experience better things, whilst many of her loved ones perished. No matter what century we live in, we can relate to that. To love and death. Its equal intransigence and totality. It is the sum of all things of which we care and write about. 

I relate to death in fiction because I feel I am always sitting within it’s ever present sneer of inevitability. I know it will grab me one day no matter how many crunches I do on a weekly basis. La vida es asi! Through books we should be able to visualise the brutality of life and its beauty; the same with death. As a writer I will always strive to comprehend the two, and then my aim is to be able to make my reader feel what it is that I have learnt.

What do you do when you lose all interest and momentum on your writing project? I am close to the finishing line on my second draft, yet cannot muster a single piece of enthusiasm to cross the finish line. Answers on a postcard please!

Ok, so I’ve called upon the services of another writer who will be able to read through my work, and give me either a deeper sense of inadequacy, or hopefully guide me into completing what may be a ‘good-enough-to-be-published-book’  and hope that an Editor might not use it as cheap and cheerful bedding for his pet rat!

Either way, a culmination will be arrived at, whether it is the former, (and I quit in an instant to become a bitter old peg on the very bushy unpublished author tree,) or the latter - where I’ll soldier on to find myself worthy of some small gain!

I feel I have a lot to give in the writing world, and yet.. the way in which to give it largely depends upon many factors. Circumstance, time, energy, will!

“Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see a way to fly.” - Richard Bach

I’m sure a lot of authors will agree with me that the first draft of their book is just the first layer of a multi-tiered cake! One of the problems with a first draft too, is that it can either be too long or too short. I’m not entirely sure which is the more irritating offender there, but the problem with my first draft is that it is too short. This means that I have either skimped out on a plot detail or two, or been scanty with my descriptions. Either way, today was the day I decided to tackle this problem head on, and it began with storyline/plot/structure analysis.

I began by opening an entirely separate document and writing a complete outline of my book from beginning to end. This ended up being two pages long and 18 chapters deep. Under each chapter heading I wrote the ‘beats’ of the chapters which I talked about in one of my previous posts.  After scanning this, I could see that when my heroine reached the age of about twenty years, I had somehow missed out the following twenty years of her life, skipping right on excitedly to include the next scene I had in mind.

Twenty years of a person’s life is alot of words/paragraphs which I unnecessarily lost out on, in my hesitation to jump into a particular scene in her forties! What’s worse, I’m not even quite sure why I did it, other than to have her attend some event, and so I paid little attention to the fact I had aged her  between one chapter and the next.

This is why it is so important to be methodical with times, dates and places. These are the things, ( if your Editor doesn’t pick up on,)your readers will drag your name through the mud for! Don’t give them the pleasure. Check your story once, twice or a hundred times if necessary.

So somehow, I had to find a few chapters worth of extra story and integrate it seamlessly! It was a challenge!

Armed with strong coffee, I then scanned back over the outline of all my previous characters to see if I could plausibly bring back any interesting characters into my heroine’s life, (or alternatively, have her forge relationships with some new ones,) all without it seeming a bit contrived. Fortunately I managed to come up with some interesting turn of events, somehow linking to my heroine’s past and hotting things up for her future. I decided that an old flame would return, a secret would be cast into the open and a baby would be born and voila! I had created the possibility of fleshing out my book by an extra three or four chapters, and all I had to do is make sure that they worked in the gap of my time-hopping heroine.

My next step will be to write out the ‘first drafts’ of these new chapters in full, making sure they neatly fit in with the rest of the story without adding even more gaping holes.

The only nagging problem I could have run into with the process of budging chapters along whilst inserting new ones, is that it can be tricky and very confusing. Want my advice? Make a whole new folder and call it ‘Draft 2.’ Leave Draft 1 of your book untouched and work on moving chapters around in the second one. Trust me, there is no chocolate cake out there good enough to compensate for the loss/destruction of your original work. I even keep a copy of my drafts in my memory stick, should my laptop ever break down/get stolen. I may even do the same with Draft 3, and so on.