Once is not custom, I today attended the writing workshop Gwen, she apparently goes online every Sunday.
Here's how: Gwen offers a subject, now a photograph (a wooden door), with the following instruction:
"Watch it well this is it ... What inspires you? What are the first ideas that come to mind? The qualifiers, images? Write them.
From your notes on the spot, I suggest you write a story that the door will be the central element. Your character is faced with when the story begins. What is he doing there? What's behind this door? Will it open before him? Perhaps he feared that it just opens
... Well, your turn now. "
reads ensuing:
more step.
Fabienne stood outside the door. She knew her future lay before it, behind this door. It was a beautiful wooden door, old, who opened a breach in a stone wall dating back several centuries. Fabienne knew what was behind this door, without ever having crossed. She knew the history of this building. She knew what awaited him once she had crossed the threshold.
Fabienne was a little less than forty years. It was a dark woman, who was so great that he worries weighed so does it look like a tightly packed. She seemed much older than he; frankly, it looked like an old woman exhausted, burnt out. Behind this door, there was both his salvation and his end, she could be saved, but at the same time, she knew she was lost when she entered the field.
She constantly reliving the scene of the morning had brought her to the door. She had to repeatedly take place in his worst nightmares, repeatedly as she had hoped. It was hard not to be reassured knowing that the dreaded moment was finally arrived. But quitting is always complicated. Through that door, forget it was her life before, to accept another. He would forget who she was forgetting her comfort, her home, her daily life, to forget her anxieties, but also its joys morning when she woke up perky, confusing dream and reality, on the threshold of real life.
That morning, she received a phone call from his doctor. The latter asked him if he could go see her, he had insisted on telling him how his visit was important and that take the time to explain everything to him. Fabienne knew full well why his doctor had called. She knew that the time had come, and this time she could not discard. There comes a time when the point of no return is reached. For it was this morning. The doctor rang his door half an hour later. She had time to dress and prepare a few things she had gathered in a small suitcase. And she smiled. It needs only to imagine being in his house, and then she could come back, through the magic of thinking. Yes, she would do that. Imagine that was at home.
The doctor congratulated for his cooperative attitude. He explained the workflow. All he had to sit the entrance, staff were warned, a room was ready for her, she had only to ring at the entrance, and we welcome him. She was to appear before 17 hours was all that mattered. Fabienne remembered having had a funny feeling when the doctor had passed the door of his small house. She felt that the gates had closed his life before her and she came into prison. She was now taking his last lunch sentenced before joining his cell that would be the universe until his death.
She knew intimately the doctor was right. The internment was the only alternative. Life only became too dangerous, too complicated. Yet at first it was rather funny. His hallucinations made her laugh in retrospect, at that point in the early days, she had accepted these imaginary characters as companions in his lonely life. But the companions had made more and more present and had become cumbersome or even dangerous. They could take any form. Human, animal, or something else. His imagination had no limits on this subject. The last time was a huge spider she continued with her rolling pin. When she was finally caught when she was on the kitchen table and she was struck three times with her wooden rolling pin, she was abruptly returned to reality. The pain was called to order, and she had to call his doctor urgently. He was sent to radio stations in the hospital and she found herself with her left hand in a cast for 6 weeks. She was ashamed. At the hospital, nurses who had received had asked how she had her hand crushed. She had known what to say and the nurse had suspected abuse. She asked her if she was married, if she was alone at the time of the accident ... answers confused and embarrassed by Fabienne had seemed strange to the point that it had asked the name of his physician and a psychological assessment.
She was there, now, before the wooden door. Behind, she knew, was a delightful setting preserved. The vegetation was lush, the micro climate that prevailed in the small town Finisterian for acclimatization and growth of palms. Behind the walls of the old cloister was the psychiatric hospital. Fabian knew that his illusions disappear quickly. The drugs were going to brutalize, eliminate the hallucinations, but this tender and humorous it was about the world around him. She was locked in his madness, aided by pills given him every evening. And yet she longed to enter. She knew she would be safe. Plus she never would run behind his hand in the belief it would knock him out, it never set fire to the curtains, thinking she had installed a fireplace.
Facing the door, she grabbed the knocker, decided to knock on the door. It was 15 hours, she was on time. It was better for her to go as soon as possible. Otherwise, she might change her mind, and she wanted at any price. His life became dangerous, so dangerous! Yes, she had to go.
Fabienne dropped the knocker. Renounce his freedom, his imagination, his dreams, even dangerous, it suddenly seemed unthinkable.
It was dangerous. Yes, especially for itself. Soon, she may have lost touch with reality. But meanwhile, she did not want him stealing their dreams. She did not want pills that he would swallow.
She turned. She had her suitcase in hand, she decided on a whim not to enter, and start a new life. Elsewhere. In the street if necessary.
She would disappear.
Now.
Amelie Platz, January 2, 2011
Gwen Thanks for this great workshop!
