Week 2!
Alright, here we go! I’m going to continue using Monday’s Wordle as my guide, so today, the word is FLORA. I chose which POV to write in using a random number generator to choose a number from 1-4 and it came up with 4 this time. 4 = first-person collective POV. So, from the point of view of “we.” This is kind of exciting, because I’ve only written in this POV once before, so this’ll be a new challenge. For my writing, I’m just going to use this word and try to come up with something for the novel I’m trying to find my way into, but, I’ll give you some suggestions:
Write from the perspective of the members of a farm cult when someone (fresh blood) stumbles onto their property.
A kindergarten class is on a field trip in a public park. Write from: (a) the collective POV of we the kids or (b) the collective POV of we the parent chaperones.
Write from the perspective of all the trees in a forest observing (a) a gas pipeline protest, or (b) a couple having a picnic on a first date, or (c) one of their friends being logged.
Here we go: Flora in first-person collective POV
I timed myself for 30 minutes and this is what I came up with:
We followed the poet to Olivia’s grave. Roses gingerly in hand, as though they were a child’s snotty tissue. Careful of the thorns. We understood why he would visit Olivia’s, and not Astrid’s grave. The children, for one. George skipped and hid behind crumbling tombstones, Elizabeth contemplative, dragging her toes behind her like a ballerina.
We notice a drop of blood on the poet’s thumb—a crisp, spherical ruby—and we curl our heads together and laugh. We laugh like schoolgirls at our principal’s back, though this authority figure cannot see or hear us. We’re still not used to this haunting thing, this spirit world.
We clap hands, a high-five, not as satisfying now as it was in the living world. Our flesh is not flesh so much as a goo, the meeting of our hands like Post-it kissing Post-it.
Revenge—having drawn the blood of our tormentor—is not so sweet from this side of things.
We flank him and hold each other’s hands, form a cage of resentment around him. The children are off to look at the crashing waves across the road. The wind causes the poet to huddle into his sweater like a lost orphan, its collar flapping into his cheek. A dozen soft smacks as effective at eliciting pain as were our words. If only there were a zipper.
We begin to skip in a circle around him, the mulberry bush. We look into each other’s eyes that are now like the eyes of an addict, the kind of marble eyes one can’t look into to find a soul. We create our own wind with our skipping—a giant gust, a twister. The poet pauses his disingenuous muttering of regrets and he stands.
He reaches an arm out and touches the goo of us. We melt to the earth, all fall down, at his touch. His goddamn fingers electrified with what, we wish we knew. His self-centred passion, his intense and shifting focus, his brilliance. Could there be the brilliance without the menace? When we were of this world, would we have devoted every sane particle of our beings to a kind poet? We roll into each other on the earth, goo against goo. Look into the glassy voids of our eyes. Kindness will never be the bedfellow of desperation.
Afterthoughts
How did this go for you? I’m still not sure if this idea I have is actually going to be enough to make a novel of. Still not happy with these bits of writing I’m creating, but this is only the second one. Maybe I need to do a bit more thinking about what exactly the plot will be … or maybe these bits of writing will help me to get there? I’m not sure, also that a group of two is enough to really make the first-person collective voice work.
Let me know how you did and please subscribe and share. I’ll CU Next Tuesday!