Paying by the Word
Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass is amazing!
I recently signed up for the Masterclass.com subscription and am binge watching Neil’s courses. In one of the classes he says:
“Instead of thinking of being paid by the word, I am paying by the word. The fewer words I can pay to tell my story, the better.”
I love this mental image paying vs. paid. Another person I know said something similar:
“Each word needs to buy my attention for the next.”
Thanks Josh Appel for sharing this photo (https://unsplash.com/@joshappel)
Every word is an investment to tell my story. I’m buying attention. Reminding me of “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steven Krug. Take whatever you wrote and cut out half the words. Then take whatever is left and cut out half of those words. Get to the bone.
Returning to my project The Wisp, I examined what I said, why, did I get the ROI for the words I used? A resounding NO surrounded those questions. So I re-wrote the story with this mantra. The result is cleaner, more engaging and in the end…shorter.
As a struggling reader, I love to write stories for struggling readers and keeping it short is a major hurdle. The first thing I check on a story is the page count and paragraph density. I’m terrified of dense, countless pages that will take me forever to read. Because in that forever I start to remember unfinished reading assignments from school and the horror of waiting to be called on to talk about a book I couldn’t read. Sitting, hiding into my desk, moving to put anyone else in the eye line between my teacher and me. When it came, the dreadful calling of my name, and I had to talk, I’d turn so red that I could have popped like an angry zit and then said: “I didn’t do the reading.” Not, I tried but couldn’t finish it. Not, I have trouble reading can I get some help. No, just I didn’t do it.
I don’t want people to feel like that. I hope they can build their confidence with my stories. I hope they find that if they made it through one of my stories then they can take on something a little more dense, something with a few more pages. Neil Gaiman’s quote about paying by the word drives this idea home for me.
An Assignment
In Neil’s class he provides some great assignment ideas. One is to start a “Compost Heap” where you collect ideas. That’s been fun as I write about my senior prom and the time I found a teddy bear in a grave yard (attached to a grave). This week for poetry Friday, I’m going to do another assignment.
Inspired by the movie “Home Movie” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1267319/ ), I’m going to twist a popular fairy tale. Enjoy!
Breadcrumbs
She left them
where I told her to leave them.
The boy blankly watches
his step mother
go off into the woods.
The girl blankly watches
the boy
waiting for her cue
to follow their trail back home.
Rustling branches quiet
as the step mother vanishes into the woods.
They step to the trail
the boy left behind
following it with
vacant faces.
I hurry ahead of them
to get to my house before
they realize their path
isn’t leading them home.
The forest
devours the sun
chasing away the day’s light
flooding the enchanted forest
with mist and still silence.
Not a snap of twig
nor a rattle of leaves
alerts me to the kids approaching
but the
CRUNCH
of snapping candy from my house tells me
they’re here.
Greeting them at my door,
I’m sucked into their empty stare
falling through the nothing
behind their eyes.
I invite them in.
Giving them more candy,
more sweets,
the boy’s gaze tracing the treats
the girl’s gaze fixed on him.
Then both children looking to me
their gaze taking in the feast before them.
Stepping to the oven
I open the door to pull out the cookies
leaning in
to reach them
burning my hand through my too thin oven mitt.
Snatching out the pan
turning
seeing the children
standing there
a breath away
as I drop the pan
cookies raining to the floor.
They lunge at me.
I dive away.
The boy stumbles into the oven.
The girl pounces onto me.
Kicking her back,
kicking her into the oven,
slamming the door,
scorching my hand with the iron handle,
locking the latch,
as their eyes,
those empty, blank eyes
glare out at me.
Lighting the house on fire,
burning it all down
taking those children with it
I run through the woods.
Snapping twigs
and crackling leaves
bring the life back to the forest
as I arrive at the step mother’s house.
Knocking.
The step mother answers
her eyes brighten to see me
as I step in
telling her
“It’s done.”
The father cries at the table
holding the hands of two children
under their death shroud.
“Where did they come from…?”
The step mother mumbles through tears
of loss and relief and fear.
I look to the children on the table,
the boy and girl,
and their lifeless eyes
the same eyes stolen from them
the same eyes staring at me from the oven.
“Demons can take anyone’s appearance.”
I tell her.
She holds out a pouch of coin.
I snatch it
feeling the weight is about right
for payment.
”Where ever your kids were, those demons found them.”
Stepping towards the door.
”Sorry you had to deal with this.”
I leave
them to their tears
to their goodbyes
stepping out to the forest
listening for the silence of those demons
hearing
chirping
snapping
crunching…
crunching…
silence.
Thanks for hosting poetry Friday Linda! Check out here blog here!