THE KID, part 2

THE KID, part 2

By Melanie Schulz

The teacher had just run out to pitch, giving Seth ample unsupervised time for his amusements.  Several others congregated around him, sensing the opportunity.  Just as things were getting good; Seth was really on a role that day, the crowd behind him jeering. THE KID seemed to flip; or perhaps he had seen a glimpse of all that Seth had tried so hard to hide.  Either way he was done taking his crap; you could only take a verbal weggie so many times before you just snapped.

And snap he did.

He delivered, in great detail, just what he thought about Seth and all of his berating remarks. It wasn’t just THE KID’S words that caught Seth’s attention, he had heard all of them and more when he was in elementary school; it was THE WAY they were spoken, with a hint of power.

Seth didn’t realize the extent of that power until THE KID uttered his last phrase before abruptly turning to head into the locker room.

It wasn’t until Seth turned to face the crowd to slam THE KID behind his back, in an attempt to save face, that he realized something was seriously wrong.

The way that people looked at him, their bodies recoiling; a few horrified murmurs being the only sound that was heard as the thick silence permeated the air.

Seth’s underlying insecurity quickly rose to the surface as he immediately became combative; hostile.

“What the hell are you looking at; do you really want to mess with me?” He asked each person in turn, misinterpreting their eyes as they all looked away; he just figured he had shown them, no one would dare stand up to him again.

Each person gladly took the opportunity to leave; no one wanted to be there when HE SAW.

THE KID

THE KID, part 1

By Melanie Schulz

The door slammed as Seth came home, quickly running up the stairs to head straight to his room.  He had considered going into the house quietly, to not draw attention to himself, but decided against it. It was so unlike his normal entrance that it would have done just the opposite, which was  something he wanted to avoid at all costs;  at least until he got this thing figured out.

It all began earlier that day in the most benign of settings; gym.

Usually he enjoyed gym, not that he was athletic or anything, far from it actually.  He just enjoyed hanging out with his friends, making fun of people who were even clumsier than himself.

In short, Seth was A BULLY.

He had not always been one, but in recent years, he found he attracted a lot more admiration being a bully than what he actually was; the nearsighted, overweight, middle-child of the high school janitor.

But over the years acting the part had made him become what he once only pretended to be.  By that point, midway through his senior year, he was well on his way to becoming a sociopath.

He had been making fun of this ONE KID; the enlarging group gathering around to observe all of the fun, grateful that today it was not them that Seth had chosen to humiliate. Seth never got physical; thankfully it had never come to that, then people would have realized that he had nothing to back up his threats.

But THIS KID was different from all the rest, or maybe other forces were at work. Whichever it was, by the end of gym class that day, Seth was no longer a bully; in fact, Seth was no longer anything of the sort.

New format

Thank you all for your patience as I have sorted out exactly how I am going to run this blog. After much thought, I have decided to turn it into a short story site. I will submit a variety of short stories, with variable genres, that will have continuing posts every Tuesday and Thursday until the stories completion; sort of how newspapers used to have a story that you had to wait until the proceeding week for it's ending. Guest story writers are welcome, please email me your intent at mikeala9hannah2@yahoo.com for me to review your story and assign it a date (or dates, depending on the length) for posting. Thank you all very much, I will talk to you soon, melanie

Never give up hope

     Here is a post from my first guest; my twelve year old daughter:

     I still remember that day in September when my mother came home and declared something totally unexpected, “I’m going to write a novel!”

     For a week or two, it was our own little secret. Whenever she wrote any of it in her journal, she would come rushing to my side, to read it to me; and I gladly listened. It was fantastic, a talent I never knew my mother possessed. I was able to help her on her novels journey, meet the characters, and help critique my mother’s ideas. I also remember when about a month ago she was strongly considering giving up on her near finished excellent novel due to writer’s block and noisy children—myself not included—and I was able to help encourage her on her book, and today she is finishing up her second draft and is done with a ruff first draft on her second out of three in the series.  I would say that there are five things you should never forget while writing a novel:

     5. Never get cocky about your writing, don’t be over confident.

     4. Never try to out due yourself, if you do your writing will sound choppy, bad, and forced.

     3.  Your voice needs to shine the brightest, it’s fine to listen to other people’s ideas, but never forget that it’s your novel.

     2.  Tell someone, anyone, that you are writing a book, someone to be there with you, someone to encourage you.

     1. Never give up hope.                                                               

     I myself am a writer, so I understand if in the beginning your novel just doesn’t click—trust me, I know. However, don’t you want to finish what you started? You’ve already spent weeks, no, months invested in your book, do you really want to throw all that away? Of course not. Look at Stephenie Meyer for example, she was just your average woman, has three little boys and had never written a novel before, and one night she wakes up with this awesome idea, a few months later her book is on the top seller list; she is you or me. I’m not saying you’re novel is going to get published, but don’t you want to find out? Even if it doesn’t get published, don’t you want to finish it, even if the only people that truly get to enjoy it are your friends, family, and yourself? Never give up hope.

When to say enough

We have all done it: gone back over our work again and again, tweaking this, changing that.  Like the child who hands you a fairly well done piece of artwork only to take it back, to fix it. The resulting piece given to you is loud, jumbled and overdone, if only they had stopped when it was something recognizable. 

     I find myself in the same predicament. I have overwritten the same paragraph so many times that it barely resembles what was originally intended. The other day I went back to my original journal for inspiration and found that the passage I had written prior to all of my revisions was actually much better than the one now in place. This led me to reread the entire rough copy; what else had I missed, left out in the re-writing process?  So I write this to those who may be reading this blog: Have you experienced this and if so, when do you say enough is enough?