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Ramblings by Bill Coburn And now for something completely different. I do a lot of writing. I write for this website, I write for the paper, I write for clients, I write technical papers. But I don't do much writing for fun. A couple years ago, the Library offered a several week long writing workshop, to be directed by local USC Professor James Kincaid. I thought it might be fun to actually get a little professional training in writing, as I hadn't ever had any formal training. I graduated high school in 1976, and checked out the various local community colleges, but don't think I even got a full year of college credits under my belt. But with the exception of one poem I wrote in 1998 (a whole other story), I hadn't done any real "creative writing" since high school. So this sounded like a good way to learn about what I do. Sort of. There's a big difference between reporting facts and writing creatively. I was a little scared going in. I only made it through two weeks of the class, as schedule conflicts arose and I didn't get to go back. But I had fun while I was there, and learned quite a bit about myself and my writing ability in those two weeks. Here's a couple samples of what I wrote for the class. The first exercise Prof. Kincaid assigned was to take a story that's familiar to all of us, and start telling that story someplace other than the beginning of the story as we know it. Start at the middle or the end, but re-write the story, telling the whole story with a different beginning. Here's what I wrote... The Trio of Sightless RodentsA new look at an old story…by Bill CoburnWhaaaap!! The sound of the cleaver connecting with the wood of the kitchen counter startled the farmer as he sat enjoying his early morning breakfast. He looked over to see what the matter was, and saw his wife hurrying alongside the kitchen counter, cleaver in hand. On the counter, he observed three gray mice, running this way and that, bumping into each other in their haste. He couldn’t recall a time when he’d ever seen such a sight in his life. They scurried in the direction of his wife, which startled her and she momentarily backed away, while they again ran into each other. Whaaap!! again, as his wife brought the cleaver down once more, and he heard the squeal from each of the mice as the heavy blade landed on their tails, separating a part of each of their tails from their owners. Now why would they have run towards her, he wondered, when her intent was obviously to inflict harm? See how they run, he thought, as he continued to watch, and saw that these three little stooges seemed to have no idea which direction to run, as they bumbled and stumbled into plates, the fruit bowl and each other. Suddenly, one mouse turned left and bumped into the wall, then scurried along the wall until it reached a crevice in the kitchen counter, and disappeared into the framework of the house. As he darted through the hole, he squeaked an alert to the other mice, who turned in the direction of the squeak, and they each headed in his direction, darting toward the origin of the sound. The first of the two remaining rodents ran a little to the right of the crevice, and bounced off the wall, but had felt enough of the gap that he made the adjustment and darted through the hole. The last mouse, who had come up nearly on top of the other, felt his partner’s now tail-less posterior and followed him through, just as another whaaaap was sounded from the cleaver. The farmer chuckled, and couldn’t wait ‘til later in the pub, when he would regale his friends with the story of the battle between his wife and the trio of apparently sightless rodents. Three blind mice(!!), indeed, he chuckled, as he returned his attention to his breakfast. The second story, I don't remember what the parameters were of what we were to write, or why I wrote what I did, but I still have the story, so here it is.... A Man of Ideasby Bill CoburnBen stood there in the rain. His hair was dripping, and he was glad that he had years ago decided against wearing the powdered wigs which so many of his contemporaries favored, as right now his hair would look like a bowl of soggy oatmeal if he had not. He grabbed the key from his pocket, and slipped it on the string of the kite, making sure that it would hover up near the kite, and, if his theory was correct, attract the energy from the lightning. The idea had come to him when he was working on his roof the other day with his friend Rod, whom he felt would somehow have another part to play in this before it was all over. Rod was a very grounded chap, a stand-up guy. As he was tying off the string, the burning in his stomach returned. Well, actually the lower esophagus. Every time he ate too much chocolate, or overly spicy or fried foods, or nipped too much Madera, the burning in his pot belly started, working its way up toward the esophagus. He tried to gurd his muscles against the burning, but it always seemed to happen. He wondered if the heat rising had anything to do with the configuration of his stomach, and promised himself he would someday lose weight to do a comparison. Or perhaps, he wondered, “could I recreate the configuration of my belly and the esophagus in steel and determine if heat would still rise in the prototype”, as it seemed to do inside him. He stood there in the rain, waiting for a bolt of lightning, hoping upon hope that his theorem would be borne out by the event of the lightning being attracted by the metal, and having been drawn to it, transfer the energy into the key, which he would then touch to determine by heat or some other as yet undetermined method, that the energy had indeed been transferred to the key. Just then, a fluttering in the grass caught his eye. He looked over and saw that it was an almanac, similar to one that he had seen farmers use. He went and picked it up. He opened it, and saw that the owner, Richard, had put his name in the front for identification purposes. How sad for Richard, he thought. It was quite possible that this Richard fellow depended on the almanac to help determine the proper time to sow seeds, reap harvests, and much more. And here he was, standing in the rain with poor Richard’s almanac. But back to the task at hand. He was startled from his reverie by a flash of light against the dark night, but no, it was too far off in the distance. A second flash, closer this time, and he felt his heart rate start to increase. A third flash, and this was the one. The lightning struck the key, and as the key slid down the string toward his hand, his excitement was nearly overpowering. Sure enough, the key was hot to his touch, so hot he couldn’t hold it, and he let it drop to the ground. The theory he had begun to work on several weeks ago, that lightning was a form of energy, which, if harnessed, could power machines and other contraptions, now appeared to be a reality. He started toward home, across the field to the lane. As he walked down the lane toward his house, past the Adams’ barn, past the brick home on the corner, he wondered how he would be able to get word of his discovery to Rod, who had pretended he had understood what Ben was talking about when they were up on the roof. Of course Ben knew he did not entirely grasp the intricacies, or in fact, the significance of what this discovery would mean. Rod was away to Boston, and hiring a courier was beginning to be a quite expensive proposition in light of recent increases in fees charged by those who delivered messages between cities. What if there were one centralized location where people could drop messages, and from there, the messages were distributed to the desired location by multiple employees, each with a designated area for which they were responsible, he wondered? Or was he dreaming again? Is something like this possible? What would you call it? Where would you locate it, even in this town, for instance? He turned down his street, past the abandoned office on the corner. He had always thought it odd that this office, unlike most of the brick homes or the houses constructed with siding that lined the streets, was made entirely of posts, a kind of a “Post Office,” so to speak, and thought to himself, I’ll have to give this idea some further thought, as he approached Franklin Manor, and turned down the walkway to home…. Anyway, that was fun, and I hope you enjoyed it... I'll be writing in this space on an occasional basis, more about things I think and feel, and less about things I'm reporting on. I hope you'll check back now and then to see what I've written about now... |
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Copyright © 1998 - 2011 by The Coburn Group, Sierra Madre. All logos, trademarks or product names mentioned or displayed herein are the property of their respective owners. All photographs and videos on this site Copyright 1998 - 2011, by Bill Coburn, Sierra Madre, CA unless otherwise noted. Any reference to the City of Sierra Madre or Sierra Madre applies to the community of Sierra Madre and not the city government. The City of Sierra Madre, California government is not affiliated with Sierra Madre News.Net at this time. Any city government information provided herein has been previously published for public dissemination and is shown here as a public service of Sierra Madre News.Net without explicit permission of the government of the City of Sierra Madre. |
