Restrictions

Confession: I'm very shy, and I hide that behind a shell of extroversion. Don't knock it, it works.

Reading:

• The Van, by Roddy Doyle

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I'm at my most creative when I'm at my most restricted. If someone gives me a blank piece of paper and tells me to write anything I want, I blink in consternation. What the hell should I do? But if someone tells me to write a story about a leper dreaming about joining the circus, and to make sure a single red rose is somehow very important to the main character, well, then the ideas start to flow.

What does the rose represent to him? Something pure and unblemished, maybe. Or what if the rose has black spots on it too? Or it starts to develop those black spots as the story goes on. Does it mirror the progress of his leprosy? What would he do in the circus... strongman? No, something that takes skill rather than brute strength. Juggling, maybe. He learned to juggle because he could do it by himself, just for himself, but someone told him that he had real skill and could join the circus. It was said in a offhand manner, but he took it to heart, and now it's what keeps him going.

One of his friends at the leper colony is a gardener and gives him the rose when the circus comes to town. Does he sneak away? Dunno, I'll have to check if leprosy can be cured or contained in modern times. Just checked wikipedia... turns out leprosy doesn't cause body parts to rot, only a lack of sensation. (Oooh, that could make his juggling harder later on.) So he runs away, but his gardener friend gives him a rose as a going away present. He goes to the circus, but they want him to join the freak show. Or what if they don't tell him at first, he thinks he's a juggler, but he juggles in the freak tent. Everyone laughs and jeers, and he runs back to his trailer where he finds that the rose has turned all black and splotchy from age, just like him.

Is that how the story ends? I don't know, and I doubt I'll ever actually write it. What I've just written is my train of thought as I'm developing a story. Without even meaning to, I established that the theme of the story was decay. This is overt in terms of the disease, and carried through in the metaphor of the rose.

I also got some ideas for characters. The main character is a little idealistic, and believes the world is a much better place than it really is. He wants to be accepted, but doesn't realize that even though his colony is accepting, the rest of the world isn't. Who is the gardener, though? Male or female? Dunno yet, but it is in conversation with this character that I can get across some of the characterization of the main guy early on.

There would need to be a head of the circus figure to serve as the mouthpiece for the discrimination he faces. What about his fellow freaks? What if he were repulsed by them? (Oh, the irony.)

By the time I start outlining the story, breaking it up into scenes, I should already know what each section is supposed to accomplish in the whole story, what happens, and who is in it. That way when I write the story, I can concentrate more on how I'm saying it rather than what I'm saying.

So see, this post was originally going to be about restrictions, but instead, it turned into an exercise in creativity. Huh.