Eek! Sorry for this week’s post being late. It has been quite the busy week here at Art
Thief Headquarters. We have been holding
auditions for Homestead Theatre Project’s upcoming production of my show Empty Boxes. And I have been chained to my computer,
pounding out the first draft of My Mother’s
Daughters; which had its first reading this past Saturday.
On the
upside, Empty Boxes has its callbacks
confirmed with some wonderful options for each role and My Mother’s Daughters is in the mail for the SummerWorks
submissions, so I can focus a little more on this blog.
Now,
plunder for this week... well, this has actually been the hardest week for me
to come up with something because my thoughts have been so focused
elsewhere. In fact, as I sit here, I
still have not titled this entry because I haven’t decided what it is about
yet. All I know is that by the time
Monday rolled around, I was exhausted!
Anyhoo,
this might be a short entry, but I think my plunder for this week is something I
am stealing from the people who auditioned for us on the weekend. One of the auditionees talked about another
audition he did for a collective he was a part of; they were required to bring
in an object for their audition and present a story that they created based on
that object. His was a mason jar. As soon as he began talking about it, my mind
started running overtime with various stories, ideas and things flashing
through my head. I loved it.
This is
what I’m stealing this week. I think I’m
going to start using this idea as a writing exercise to keep those old creative
juices flowing. Step One: Pick a random
object. Step Two: Write a story about that object. Simple.
The
concept is quite interesting to me.
While writing My Mother’s
Daughters this past week, I came to a number of moments that I had planned
out but was not sure how to execute, so I sat back and gave the characters
control and let them drive the story forward (often to my surprise), some of
the characters took on a life of their own and things did not come out exactly
how I had intended but I think they came out better because I let the
characters develop into what they would instead of trying to drive them down my
path. That’s the thing, if you have done
your homework, you need to be able to trust that the characters and story that is
now living inside you trying to push out. As a writer, you just need to let it. I feel like this is similar to the object
exercise. There is something in you that
drew you to that object. You felt the
story it possessed, so you need to let the object lead you through the tale.
Let’s
try it:
I’m
going to steal the mason jar (because this is a plunder after all).
THE
MASON JAR
RILEY: This
mason jar once held a butterfly. The
butterfly was magical. I found it in the
field behind my house. I was sitting
there one day, reading a book. Mom and
Dad had gone away, so Nana was watching me.
Nana always makes me do boring things like: knit and sew and cook; so
when she is there, I get up really early and sneak out into the field before
she wakes. I walk out as far as I can
go; as far as I’m allowed. This morning
there was a fog that floated above the tall grass and the dew clung to the
blades. The cuffs of my trousers were
soaked by the time I was halfway across the field. I like mornings like this because the sun
dances across the fog turning the field into a misty rainbow of colour.
There is a little creek that runs through the
field. I often find a rock to sit on, so
I can read and listen to the water babble past me. The idea of a babbling brook has always
fascinated me and sometimes I sit and listen to hear what it is saying, but it
must be speaking in another language, because all it sounds like is water
running past. Sometimes a frog or bird
will chime in. Once a toad sat down
beside me and croaked. I tried to croak
back, but since I don’t speak the language, I must have said something that
offended it because it just looked at me and then hopped away.
On this particular morning, I had been sitting
by the stream since the sun was barely visible over the horizon and it was now
a quarter of the ways up the sky. The
fog had almost fully lifted and my trousers were now damp at best. I was about to head back to the house to see
if I could scrounge up breakfast without Nana seeing me, when I heard a
clinking sound that I had never heard by the creek before. I looked around but couldn’t see anything,
but the clinking sound came ringing over the reeds once more. I walked along the shore, but still couldn’t
find the cause. Once more, the
clinking. I took off my shoes and rolled
up my trousers and waded out into the creek.
A little ways into the creek, there was a rocky little knoll surrounded
by the tall grass. At the edge of this
knoll, something was peeking out. It
looked like the lid of a mason jar. I
bent down to pick it up, but it was stuck.
I began clearing out all the mud around it. I discovered that it was still attached to
the jar. By the time I had freed the
jar, it and myself were covered in mud.
I went to the centre of the creek where it was a little deeper and
rinsed off the jar. To my surprise,
there was a butterfly in the jar. It was
the most beautiful butterfly I had ever seen in my entire life. We have a number of butterflies that live in
our field, but they are usually orange or black or brown. None like this one. It shone with the brightness of the sun and
depending on the way the light caught the wings it went between the sparkling
black of a night sky or brightest blue of the sky at midday. The colours rolled over it like waves on the
ocean. It was spectacular.
I was so excited to rush back to the house and
show Mom and Dad my discovery. I waded
quickly back to shore and already had my shoes on when I remembered that Mom
and Dad were gone. Nana would never
approve of keeping a butterfly in the house.
That was when I realized I was covered in mud and soaking up to my
waist. I was going to be in big trouble
when Nana found me. She despised dirt
and did not approve of playing in the creek.
In fact, if she had it her way, I wouldn’t be allowed out of the
house. She never liked the idea of
children running like animals outdoors.
Children need to learn discipline and responsibility, she would always
say.
I snuck back to the house and was halfway up
the staircase to my room before Nana finally caught me. She was livid. She ranted and railed at me. Why was I covered in mud? How many times did she have to tell me not to
play in the creek? Why did I insist on
making her life so difficult? Why did
she ever agree to watch such a wild child?
That was when she noticed that I was hiding something behind my back and
insisted that I show it to her. I
considered bolting and trying to hide the mason jar before she caught me but I
knew that would only lead to further scolding.
I held out the jar; mostly free of mud and Nana took it from me. My poor butterfly in the hands of that
woman. “Well, look at what we have here.” She said.
“It’s mine!” I shouted, “You can’t
have it!”
“No, she doesn’t belong to anyone. Come outside.”
I followed Nana into the yard. She explained that this was a magic wishing
butterfly and should not be kept in a mason jar.
“But I found it. I want to keep it.”
“It does not want to be in that jar anymore
than you want to be in this house. You
must let it go. But when you catch a
magic butterfly and let it go, you get a wish.”
My heart broke a little at that. Could it be that my poor butterfly was sad
inside the jar? Did it want to fly back
to the field through the tall grasses and rest by the creek and listen to the
water babble like I did?
“When I open the jar you must make your wish,
but wish wisely. It is not often that
you get to wish on a magic butterfly and you have to be sure you want it to
come true. A wish like this is a great
responsibility.”
She twisted the cap off the jar and the
butterfly burst out with two flaps of its wings. I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I
could and watched it flutter away. I ran
upstairs to my room and didn’t come back down until I heard noise at the front
door. Mom and Dad had come home
early. The weather had turned and they decided
to cut their trip short. Nana left the
next morning.
A couple weeks later, we received word that Nana
had died peacefully in her sleep. That
night I woke up when the moon was making its final descent and saw my butterfly
sitting on the window ledge. I crept
over to the window, but when I was still a few paces away, the butterfly took flight
and danced off into the night; off to make the wishes of other children come
true. But Nana was right. Wishing is a great responsibility. Now that she is gone, I have so many more
wishes. I wish I had taken the time to
ask her more questions. I wish I had let
her show me how to sew a button or bake a pie.
I wish she was around to tell me where she learedn about magic
butterflies and how she knew that their wishes came true. I wish I hadn’t wished my wish.
I wished that Mom and Dad would come back and
that I would never have to see Nana again.
Now, I’m grown and old, but I still have that
mason jar; the jar that once contained a magic butterfly. I always have it on me; just in case I see
another magic butterfly. This time, I
know what my wish will be.
So,
there you have it. My mason jar
story. Again, I didn’t know where it was
going until about halfway through, but whenever I was feeling lost, I just
remembered the jar and let it lead the way.
Try it. It’s actually quite the
interesting exercise. Until next week...
J
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