Welcome to Week 10 of CU This Tuesday Writing Group! I am continuing on this path of writing about an eating disorder clinic on an island, exploring the characters, which so far consist of two girls: Maisy and Hazel (there will/should be more) and their psychiatrist, Dr. Binet. After today’s writing, I’m starting to like Dr. Binet more and more. So, Monday’s Wordle guess was MOUSE and my random number generator came up with 1, so the prompt is Mouse in first-person POV. Here are some ideas for you:
Mouse in a restaurant: Your character is on a first date/job interview/last date at a restaurant and there’s a mouse scurrying around. How do they react?
A seemingly, innocuous, mousey librarian/grade school teacher/grocery store clerk has a secret double life as a __________ …
A child’s beloved cat brings them a dead mouse and they need to grapple with the ideas of instinct and mortality.
Writing prompt: MOUSE in first-person POV
Maisy: They called me Mousey. My big brother was Moose, I was Mousey.
Dr. Binet: Do they still call you that?
Maisy: What do you … I’m here now. They don’t call me anything. They don’t like, exist.
Dr. Binet: Your family still exists, Maisy. And you’ll return to them when you’re better.
Maisy: [silence] [I pick at a crusty splotch on my chair. What is this, tomato soup? Who would eat soup in Dr. Binet’s office? Who would eat outside of enforced eating time? Who would actually just have a snack, like without thinking, just a bowl of soup in a comfy chair without obsessing about calories, without feeling the warm broth like a reverse current of bile down her throat? Who would do this?]
Dr. Binet: Why Mousey?
Maisy: Hmm?
Dr. Binet: Why did your family call you Mousey?
Maisy: It sounds like my name?
Dr. Binet: [penetrating glare]
Maisy: And I was little. I was the little one.
Dr. Binet: And your brother, Moose?
Maisy: He was the big one.
Dr. Binet: And how did that make you feel?
Maisy: Little. Like I had to be.
Dr. Binet: [Lights up. She’s greedy for this, for all of her stupid theories to be true. My family named me small so I felt I had to be. I’ll show them how small I can be. Small as the mouse they wanted me to be. Like anything is ever that simple.]
You felt you had to be little?
[Wipes the corners of her mouth with her index fingers. Hopes I don’t notice her drooling for this.]
Maisy: Yes, I thought I had to be their little mouse so they’d love me.
Dr. Binet: What do you think, Maisy?
Maisy: They should love me for who I am.
Dr. Binet: Let’s go beyond the after-school special, Maisy.
Maisy: I brought a mouse home from summer camp once. Not on purpose. I was unpacking in my bedroom and I saw these dark eyes looking up at me from inside my bag. It was totally still. But the shock, I guess … I screamed. Moose came in and he grabbed it in his fist. This little head popping out from his fingers. He told me he’d take care of it. And then I heard the garburator.
[This is true. I didn’t make this up. Dr. Binet just stares at me with her fake sad eyes. She’s conjuring sad memories, conjuring empathy the way boys told me they’d picture the crud between our librarian’s teeth or their grandmother’s breath—a sauna of manure-tinted banana—to stave off coming. Dr. Binet is nodding but I don’t see how this story relates. She makes connections like a conspiracy theorist. She can find her conclusions anywhere, in anything. But has she ever helped any of us?]
Dr. Binet: So you are the mouse in the garburator?
Maisy: That’s not what I meant.
Dr. Binet: Isn’t it?
Afterthoughts
I’m seeing this now as a good way to develop back story for the characters so that, when I do begin writing a draft of a new novel in earnest, I’ll already know who the characters are, where they come from. Maybe this will make the writing process so much smoother and quicker? One can hope! Also, it’s great to play with form and voice, too, to sort of land on something that might work before I actually get started. Let me know how your writing is going! CU Next Tuesday!