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“What do you mean, you don’t know what’s going on?” John Dran asked Macy. The rain outside stopped for a moment, and, without the band playing in the apartment above, the world seemed eerie and still.

“What do I mean?” Macy looked around, confused. Water was still dripping off of her hair and her clothes were soaked. “The power went out in my building. Someone tried to break in. Then someone else tried to abduct me. I’ve been chased around the city all night. That’s what I mean when I say I have no idea what’s going on.”

John looked surprised, and a little nervous.

“Wow. Chill out. What are you, a convict or something?”

“No! I’m just a, a nothing. I’m nobody.”

“So you have no idea why these people are chasing you, breaking into your house?”

Macy shook her head, then reached into her pocket.

“Before I ran from the last girl she asked me if I had this.” She held out her lottery ticket. “Please, take it. I don’t want it.”

He took the ticket and looked at it. His skin paled. He walked over to the table, slid the bowl of soup to the side and picked up his own ticket.

“You can keep yours,” he said in a flat-line voice. “I’ve got my own.”

Macy looked at John’s lottery ticket

“You played the same numbers I did,” she whispered. Then she looked up at him. “So what are you going to do?”

A knock sounded at the door. Macy and John froze in place, like prey hoping they hadn’t yet been noticed. Both instinctively held their breath. Whoever was in the hallway knocked again. Then a voice shouted.

“Hey, idiot, I know you’re in there. You know who you are, always banging on the ceiling! Get your ass out here!”

Macy glanced at John, who heaved a sigh of relief and went to the door.

“Listen, Jordan, now’s not a good time.”

“Not a good time to get an old fashioned ass-kicking?”

“Listen, man, I’m sorry for banging. I just, I was on the phone with my mom, you know. I couldn’t hear myself think.”

“Open the door,” Jordan said.

“Look, I’m opening the door but I have to keep the chain on, so don’t break my door down.” John latched the chain, then eased open the door, revealing Jordan’s very red face.

“Hey, you’re the guy who changed the number on my lottery card!” Macy said, moving towards the door. A panicked look spread over Jordan’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about lady.”

“No! It was you! I know it was you!”

Just as Macy began walking toward the door, the power in the building shut off. Darkness descended  like a blanket. The only light in the room came from the large windows facing the street, glazed with rainwater. Macy crawled to the window and peeked out, her face just over the sill.

She remembered being a little girl, barely able to see through her parent’s row house windows. They had lived on the outer street of the city – the wall rose tall and imposing on the other side of 90th Avenue. Macy had spent many days wondering what was outside the city walls. Who was out there. Now she had a chance to escape, to start over.

A car pulled up along the sidewalk, it’s brake lights glowing red in the darkness. A girl got out.

“Penelope!” hissed Macy.

* * * * *

What happens next? Vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1) Penelope comes into the building and starts calling for Macy to come out

2) Penelope runs down the alley looking for Macy

3) Jordan runs off. John and Macy call the lottery organization and say they have won.

4) John and Macy escape into the city

To read the story in its entirety, go HERE

Today’s guest post is brought to you by David Nilsen, someone who’s blog I recently discovered and have come to enjoy quite a bit (although I don’t agree with his certainty that he will “never be a famous author”).

Today he writes about writing, and being known.

* * * * *

I’m about to type something no self-respecting artsy-fartsy writer is ever supposed to say:

I don’t write because I need to.

There, I said it.

Now that all the English majors who think they’re destined to reinvent poetry as we know it have stopped reading, allow me to spend some time qualifying that very un-writerly statement.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke says this to his young pupil:

“Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all–ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.”

Well, I don’t have to write. And neither do you.

Now, hear me on this, because writing is central to my life, and yes, there are certainly ways in which I would no longer be me if I were forbidden to write. I have read Rilke’s words many times and affirm them for what they are. What I am getting at today is not that the motivations for writing are unnecessary to me or you, but that our medium of words is just one possible outlet for a deeper, more central need.

When we write we capture in words something that existed only in feeling before that moment, to form sentience from sentiment. Art, ultimately, is communication dressed up and modeled. When we read a writer who has done her job in sharing herself we close our eyes and whisper I know, me too.  The writer who shares nothing, trapping beauty in a locked journal, is just talking to herself. At some point what we have written must be shared if both the reader and the writer are to gain from it.

And so I do not write because I need to write per se. I write because I need to express myself to witnesses, because as a human being I was created to be known, to communicate and be understood, and writing happens to be the way I’ve been given to do that. It was the tool that felt right in my hand when my personality was taking shape in my teen years. It could as easily have been music, or public speaking, or painting. But I am grateful it was writing.

We have a deep and abiding need to know and be known. We require witnesses to our existence, communion in our solitude, love to break the darkness that can overwhelm us. These things are not optional.

I don’t have to write, but I do have to know and be known. And I’ve found no better way for me to attain that than writing. Language is how I best love and best know love.

So I guess this is all a way of saying that yeah, I need to write, but there’s a sense in which it’s just the rope ladder that gets me into the tree house, to find communion, to know and be known. There are others. Yours might be another art medium, or you might just be better at making friends than I am and your favorite thing is football. Either way, we’re after the same thing.

I love beauty, to be sure. And writing satisfies that need too. But at the deepest level, writing is communication, and communication is relationship. Have you read me? Then in a way, you know me. We’ve talked; we’ve met. And if there’s a time when I cannot write, I’ll still know I’ve been understood.

And that, friends, is something I do need.

* * * * *

The winner of last month’s contest to guess the first warm day here in Paradise is Brandon Smucker. If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s my cousin. He’s pretty smart – it runs in the family.

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of the “choose your own adventure” story I’ve been writing, where you get to decide the direction of the story each week. You can catch up on the story HERE.



If something only seems to be working, maybe it’s time to take it apart.

If a project you’re working on is plodding along, maybe it’s time to put it out of its current misery and rework it.

We can get stuck in the status quo to the point where we are blinded to the possibilities. Maybe you’re writing a book and it’s time to turn it on its head, rewrite it from scratch, or break it in half and tell the story in a fresh way. Maybe you’ve been mulling a business idea for years but there are a few key things stopping you from moving forward – it’s probably time to smash that model and start doing something you can do, right now.

* * * * *

You know how you go into a store and some of them have signs, “You break it, you bought it”? There is an important truth hidden here: if you break something, it becomes yours. If you tear an idea apart, you now own the pieces.

* * * * *

Stephen Furtick, in a recent video, called for an end to hating and challenged people to take on a mindset of honor. “Stop criticizing and start creating,” he implored.

Stop critiquing your own ideas ad infinitum; start breaking them open and re-creating them.

Jesus had a habit of saying things like, “Listen! The old saying was this, but the new saying is better.” I’m no Jesus, but that’s a good formula for bringing about change, so today I’m challenging you:

“The old saying was, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ The new saying is, ‘If it ain’t broke, break it.'”

Now go break something.

* * * * *

Is there anything you’ve worked on in the past that had to be broken before you could move forward? Anything you’re working on now that you have a feeling needs to be taken apart?

I saw this saying on someone’s Facebook page. When I googled it, I learned that it’s the title to both a business book and a Meatloaf song. It just goes to show you…well, I’m not sure what that shows you, but I’m sure it shows you something.

I bought Cade a new baseball glove a few days ago. We went out back and threw ball. We were in Charlotte and the sun was warm. The grass was still mostly brown, but the trees were white with buds.

Talk about flashbacks.

* * * * *

Twenty-five years ago a little boy yelled for his dad to come outside and throw ball. And he did. The two of them stood in the grass and the ball flew back and forth between them. They didn’t say much. The ball was their conversation, back and forth, thwopping into their leather gloves like compliments, or points well made.

The air smelled of freshly mown grass. The cows wandered over to the fence and watched, with their endless chewing and tails flopping back and forth. They watched as if it was the most boring thing in the world, but the only thing.

Across the street from where the little boy threw ball with his dad was a church with a white steeple, and a graveyard. The boy used to look for monkey’s gold in the macadem, play hide and seek amongst the headstones. Beyond the church was a creek where he once caught a monster carp which his dad toted around in a five-gallon bucket, showing it off to all the neighbors before dumping it back into the muddy water.

But on the days that he threw ball with his dad, there was nothing else. Just the small white orb with spinning seams smacking into their leather gloves, the smell of green grass.

* * * * *

“Two hands, Cade. Use two hands, buddy.”

“Step toward me when you throw. Look at your target – your head’s flopping all around!”

He laughs and throws the ball. It falls short.

“Sorry, dad.”

“Don’t be sorry, buddy! Don’t worry about it. Just step and throw.”

He reminds me of that little boy. Regular throws, back and forth, bore him. He wants me to throw the ball to the side so that he can make diving catches. He wants me to throw it over his head so he can chase it and catch it over his shoulder. He wants to grind grass stains into his knees, muddy up his elbows.

* * * * *

The little boy’s dad went inside, but the boy stays out, throwing the ball up into the air where it pauses, like a large star, then falls to earth. He whispers commentary to himself as he chases the ball through the darkening sky.

He catches the pop-fly that wins the World Series nearly every night, throws his glove into the air in celebration, rolls around in the sweet grass clippings and closes his eyes. He is the only person in the whole world.

You know the drill. I’ve done this with Napoleon Dynamite, Dumb and Dumber, The Princess Bride, and Airplane.

I’ve taken great movies and proven their multiplicity by gleaning immortal writing secrets from their depths. (Is multiplicity a word? Even if it is, there’s no way I used it correctly).

In other words, I waste time re-watching my favorite movies of all-time, at the end of which I quote the movie and make stuff up about “hidden secrets” and “ancient truths.”

Sounds like a bunch of Stonecutter nonsense, right? Oh, well.

Here are 5 writing secrets I learned from the movie, Inception:

1) You need a compelling hook early on, something that snags your reader and won’t let them turn away. This movie starts off in someone’s dream, but not only that – in a dream inside a dream. That’s what I call a hook.

2) Imagination is essential. You can’t perform inception without using complex images, setting up a detailed scene and making sure all of the gaps are filled in:

Eames: If we are gonna perform Inception then we need imagination.

Writing is no different. Use your imagination. We’ll all be better off.

3) What Mal says in the movie about being a lover also speaks to being a writer:

Mal: Do you know what it is to be a lover? Half of a whole?

Being a writer is like being a lover – always half of a whole. You are one half. The reader is the other half Never forget that writing for only yourself is kind of like, well, masturbation.

4) Every writer needs a totem. What’s a totem?

Arthur: So, a totem. It’s a small object, potentially heavy, something you can have on you all the time…

Ariadne: What, like a coin?

Arthur: No, it has to be more unique than that, like – this is a loaded die. [Ariadne reaches out to take the die]

Arthur: Nah, I can’t let you touch it, that would defeat the purpose. See only I know the balance and weight of this particular loaded die. That way when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt you’re not in someone else’s dream.

Every writer needs a totem. Every writer needs something that helps them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re not in someone else’s writing. Maybe it’s your narrative voice. Maybe it’s your style. Your structure. Maybe it’s what you write about. Once you have your totem, hang on to it. It will help you find your way.

5) Loose ends tied up are what people want, but ambiguity gets them talking. People want happy endings – they want to know that they can close the book and all the characters are taken care of. But what gets people talking around the water coolers? Endings like “Lost” (which I haven’t seen yet so keep quiet).

I’m not going to spoil the ending of the movie. Watch it, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

What writing lessons did you learn from Inception?

* * * * *

Don’t forget to go by yesterday’s post – it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure style post in which the reader’s determine the direction each week.

John Dran stared into his bowl of noodles, trying to divine some sort of wisdom from the tangled lump of strands. It was late. He pushed his spoon through the broth, and when he blew on the noodles the steam scattered. And the muse evaded him.

He wished the rain against the windows was louder – anything to drown out the band practicing in the apartment above him. The drum beat was unbearable – not because of how loud it was, but because of how off-beat it was. He grabbed a broom from the corner of the room and rammed the wooden end up against the ceiling. Suddenly the music grew louder and more chaotic. Several people stomped on their floor (his ceiling) in response.

Just as he sat back down, shaking his head in frustration, his cell phone rang on the other side of the room. He slid the chair over the kitchen linoleum toward the counter and looked at the display on the phone before picking it up and answering.

“Hey, mom.”

He slid loudly back to the table, picking up a piece of paper. It was a lottery ticket.

“No, I’m fine.”

He blew on his noodles again.

“I know it’s late. What are YOU doing up?”

John stared up at the ceiling, then grabbed the broom and knocked again, getting the same response.

“Well, you shouldn’t worry about it. I’ve got a good shot at getting that job. Mr. Campbell’s the only guy in the city who’s still hiring.”

He slurped up a spoonful of noodles, then shook his head.

“No, I’m not eating those sodium-laden noodles…What am I eating?…What does it matter, mom?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Stop it, you know I don’t roll my eyes at you any more.”

He inhaled another spoonful, burning his tongue.

“Yes, mom, I played the lottery tonight. Same numbers as usual.”

He lifted the ticket and looked at the numbers.

“No, mom, I never lie to you.”

He dropped the ticket and slid it under his bowl.

“Look, mom, I’ve got to get to bed. Talk to you tomorrow?…Okay…Yeah, you, too…”

He hung up, slammed the broom handle up against the ceiling a few more times, then stared at the lottery ticket lying on the table in front of him. He hated lying to his mother, but for some reason he had changed the last number. Unbelievable.

John poured the rest of the noodles down the drain and pulled a bag of trash out of the bin. The rain battered against the windows of his first-floor apartment. He had a side door that led out to the alley – there were six bolts that went down the side, and he began unlatching them slowly, one at a time.

* * * * *

Jordan shook his head, and his oversized ear lobes swayed back and forth. Five beleaguered band members stared at him, waiting.

“We suck,” he finally proclaimed.

“Aw, come on, Jordan, just…”

“Get the hell out of here! We suck!”

He started throwing pieces of equipment. His band members knew when it was time to bale. Jordan threw a guitar against the door behind them. Then he heard the person in the apartment below hitting his floor with something.

“Shut up!” he screamed before collapsing on his sofa.

* * * * *

Macy stared at her phone, then peeked around the corner of the dumpster. The girl looking for her had stopped just inside the alley. Macy heard six loud clicks coming from the other side of the alley. A door swung in, and a young man threw a bag of trash in a high arc into the dumpster behind which she was hiding. He moved to close the door but then squinted through the rain toward Macy.

“Who are you?” he asked. Light from the apartment illuminated the alley.

“What’s going on back there?” the girl shouted, walking toward them.

Macy had one second to think. “Sorry Pen,” she whispered to the phone, pushing “ignore.” Then she sprinted across the alley and through the open door into John Dran’s apartment, nearly knocking him over.

Water dripped from her shirt and her hair and formed a puddle on the linoleum floor as she slammed the door closed behind her and slid all six bolts into place. She quickly turned off the kitchen light.

“What are you doing?” he asked, annoyed.

“Shhh!” she hissed dropping down, sitting on the floor. “Get down!”

“What?”

“Get down!”

There was banging on the door. John dropped down behind the cabinets. The banging stopped as abruptly as it began, gave way to the sound of the rain still pelting the glass. Macy jumped to her feet.

“I have to get out of here – she’ll be here any minute.”

“Hey, hold on a second,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong? I’ll help.”

Macy looked at him with a confused look.

“How can you help me? I don’t even know what’s going on.”

* * * * *

The question for you to answer this week is, “Who is John?”

1 – Someone who just lost the lottery after changing the last number.

2 – A guard who knows his way around outside of the walled city.

3 – A psychic.

4 – Someone who just won the lottery with the same numbers as Macy.

To read the story in its entirety, go HERE (you’ll have to return to this page to vote in the comments below).