WRITERS WANTED!

[Bush Chickens]

x

what happened???

 

[miss heny]

Anyone on my story or no?

 

[Bush Chickens]

your story was good!

 

[Fluffballs]

sorry,i didnt actually mean to end up writing something, i will go back over it though. Which part did i cut too fast?

Well, I guess I would have liked to hear more about the "dragon flies" and other things you saw through the telescope. But then again, I've heard that if someone tells you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they're most likely wrong. So... Yeah. I don't really know what I'm saying; I'm an beginner too.

 

[Bush Chickens]

Yeah,I kinda did too. But I couldn't think of anything else!

 

[smccuen]

Quote: Burning Brush - 2012


I awoke today, the sun already bright and creating a lacy stencil through the curtains onto the walls. Sundays, thank goodness, require no alarm and I awake when my weariness is all but gone. All but. I'd slept almost twelve hours. Actually getting out of the bed reminded me more convincingly than had my pride yesterday that I'd worked hard at the Property, hauling cut limbs and saplings to the fire. Traipsing here and yon time and again as the dew evaporated
and the clouds gave way to the sun that brought steam from the ground. Traipsing, sawing, lopping, dragging, tossing and kicking with the boots that by day's end held feet that burned deep in sweaty furrows and ankles that itched where the sock elastic was now too effective. I was grateful through the day to have uncovered no snakes and to have discovered in time enough to avoid them countless spiders tending their webs and none lurking in the logs that had lain long enough for the years to turn them to soil with still hard cores that would have lingered several more if not tossed into the fire. And I was mesmerized as ever by the intense crackling of green branches, leaves and needles thrown on the fire and their release of drifting white wisps that are unmistakable signs of what has happened to them but already cold remnants that will, upon landing or being caught, collapse to nothing. And I was disappointed to realize I'd put no memory card in the camera and would have only the internal memory of it to capture images of the day, not knowing how many that would be - until the camera told me that the photo of my parents sitting beside me and one another, gazing out upon the work of their children and over the forty years they'd owned this land would be the last. Save the many I cherish in my mind.
For years Daddy would not "let" us have a fire there, for fear it would get out of hand as one somewhere back in the 60s had at their rented farm in Easley when Billy and the Scouts camped there. The last one, okay, the ONLY one, we'd had at the Property since Momma and Daddy moved to town 28 years ago had been one these same three children and son-in-law had made for these same purposes a good 7 or 8 years ago. And Daddy had fretted. It had been huge, twice as big as yesterday's, and though it left a large circle of scorched ground - there was in a year no sign of it having burned.
There being no running water now, because of a burst pipe under the porch and the well being shut off until that's repaired we were fortunate that rain fell before dawn yesterday and there was no wind until our work was done. And fortunate that the pool was full to the brim with water that, though none of us would have been willing to enter it nor to offer suction enough to the end of a hose to start a siphon that could put out the fire downhill from it - was just what we needed at the end of the day for our bucket brigade. And it will likely bring about a lush re-growth of the scorched earth through its offering of fermented leaves and bullfrog and duck manure.
George lit the fire and started a long day of running the chainsaw. Jane and I hauled brush and the things that George cut into manageable pieces. We dismantled longstanding wood piles, stacked neatly years ago and all but rotted, halved in height and home to all manner of fungi, beetles and climbing vines, bark husks like half-pipes finally letting go, falling away from trunks long wrapped against the elements. Cosette arrived with more loppers and removed the tiny forest from the dog cemetery and any number of low hanging branches that make mowing a test of aging flexibility on a mower with a deadman's switch that cuts the engine if one's buttocks leave the seat. Hillary reminded every one of us of the unending labors of the young parent with toddlers afoot, the vigilance, the encyclopedic knowledge that must be translated and condensed into toddler digestible and satisfying tidbits about all manner of things in the natural world and the strain on one's imagination, patience and skills at distraction wrought by children who find no fascination in the work of adults past the first hour.
Fallen trees with solid trunks seemed by mid-afternoon too heavy to lift into the truck bed, even in pieces, so these were dragged by chain to the fire and rolled in. Daddy's last apple tree had, for the first time in close to 40 years, made no fruit this year and half of it had fallen away this Summer, riddled with holes and blackened by some pestilence, the trunk overtaken with poison ivy. But George couldn't bring himself to cut it down so two stronger looking branches remain and will have another Spring to muster what they can. The peach surrendered years ago and stood black and fragile and was gone in minutes once hauled to the fire, having no lingering sap or leaves to even give it a voice in those final moments. The pear, though having produced nothing this year either, looked far too healthy to think it might be done and was granted a bit of pruning of its criss-crossing limbs and saplings that had encroached beneath its small canopy, as if at fault, were removed instead.
The Zoysia Daddy bought as sod decades ago and planted around the pool has spread thickly down the slopes and into the orchard remnants (said pear and halved apple) to greet the outreach of the square yard or so of sod he'd left unplanted, ignored but vigorous at the tip of the parking area. In these 35 years they have crept toward one another and are within feet of blending and closing the gap that had once been dozens of yards. Zoysia so plush from benign neglect that one would rather not have to use a pushmower to trim its slow upward growth, for dread of having to push through the bogginess, but can happily almost vacuum with a rider mower. So plush that toddling Avery walked on it as if struggling to walk on a trampoline someone else was simultaneously traversing. Thicker even than the beds of moss there. It will be brought in strips one day to the cemetery to spread a blanket there.
Hungry elders agreed that Hillary should be sent to more populous realms to find food and lull the wee ones to sleep in carseats - yea, that's it, it'll give them a chance to nap and her the chance to enjoy that…..send Hillary. We knew, of course, that sitting that long would likely bring an end to our labors and we had more work to do. But within minutes of their departure, strangely, all of us had sat down to rest on quilt, hammock and trees in the shade.
I called Momma to see if she and Daddy wanted to drive up to join us and she rousted Daddy from his nap and called back to say they would. They arrived just after the Bojangles picnic did. And as he has without fail for years now and more often of late, Daddy immediately expressed gratitude for children who work happily to maintain this place and who've lifted from his shoulders and Momma's the burden of physical tasks and financial worries. And Momma marveled again at having children with white hair.
After a while in chairs set in the soft grass upwind from the fire and a report of what we'd seen fit to do they walked with me to the cemetery. Daddy at first said he'd seen the great grandchild's headstone before, had driven up and noted it. When we got to it, having carefully made our way downhill over fallen twigs and cones and irregularities in the path, and past the water-filled milk jug set in the grass Momma had from afar thought was the marker they paused and asked "what's this?", then read its face and were reminded of the child they'd never met, she being stillborn that sad day in July, their sixth great grandchild. And Daddy, his imagination having stepped up where his short term memory now fails him, realized he'd not seen it before. And, though they kept them to themselves, I can only imagine their feelings about their cemetery opening to accept into its care and offering remembrance of someone before them. But they can see now and feel certain of it that their children and their grandchildren will protect this resting place for all who choose it.
They walked on recalling for me when this tree and that fig were planted and by whom. And Momma stopped by the next bed of moss and recalled that for years she'd hoped to find the time to learn more about all the many mosses growing on this land. I hadn't known and this now will linger in my thoughts each time I stand on the moss beds there. Daddy paused there, too, facing away from the moss to a tall sweet gum and put his head back as far as he could to study it and the blue sky above while I envisioned how quickly I might close the distance between us to cradle his head in my hands and stop his fall should his balance, his spine and his walking cane fail to allow him that moment of wonder and enjoyment. We moved on to check on his boxwoods and the damage done to one when a locust finally succumbed to the winds this Summer and toppled over to block the driveway to the barn. He's tended these boxwoods for decades and allowed only locusts to encroach at the edges of the patch. He stood with me at the upper road facing the barn and fretted that Momma had walked down to the barn and said, finally, "don't let that child wander down there. She's liable to step on a snake." And he turned and made his way up hill and I, feeling as if I'd been so directed to calm his worry, joined Momma as she made her way around the barn and through its hall where, Daddy knew, and Momma didn't recall, I'd seen a small copperhead last month. She walked halfway through the pasture and then Jane joined us to climb back through the woods by the chimney and go back to where Daddy waited in the shade. He was ready to leave and let her know he was when she was. Jane advised them to be careful on the drive home and Daddy, as he folded himself into the car, legs so thin now they seem hesitant to bend but half of what they might looked at me and said, "I'll keep my hands off her so she doesn't lose her mind." And when I circled the car to tell Momma goodbye as she took the driver's seat, she said, "Between the two of us we ought to be able to find the way back." I told her what Daddy had said about keeping his hands off her and she smiled and he chuckled. And Lord knows what they might have recalled on the way home.
As Jane and I approached the fire to finish up we simultaneously voiced gratitude that the way home was a right out of the driveway, rather then the risky left just over the rise of a hill too many take far too fast these days. And I've no doubt all three of their daughters did not feel at ease last evening until they knew Momma and Daddy had made it home those 15 miles - having been handed from them THAT burden as well. It's been a couple of years now since Momma asked me to call her when I got home to NC from a trip to her house and I'm glad she is at last free of that worry. Now it is ours - until she, like Daddy, decides she will no longer drive.
Jane, George and I made a tiny, tired bucket brigade using misshapen vessels found by the pool and the well, Jane's spewing water from two holes as she walked from the pool to the fire over and over and mine having been upturned over an anthill whose sanctity was ruined when I borrowed the warped pail with the bulging bottom. And we tossed the brown water, bucket by bucket, on the charred logs and heaped ashes, quick steam rising from a satisfying wet sizzle and thumped hush unlike any other, the fire gone as quickly as the caught drifting remnants of the burnt leaves it had consumed that day. And just miles up the road I encountered the rains and thunderstorm that would make its way to the Property before dark and silence what embers remained.

Suzannah

 

[Bush Chickens]

I like it!

 

[peacockprincess]

Peacock, your writing was amazing! At the very start, I was a little worried because of all the long words (don't get me wrong, I love big words, I was just afraid I'd be reading a boring essay or something), but then the story sucked me in! Write more, please! Bush Chickens, your story was great too! Don't beat up on yourself! I think you could have taken more time, and have written more before moving on to the next scene. Describe, show the reader, transport them into your world! That's what I'm struggling with in my writing. You know, not being afraid to set the stage before beginning an act or fulfilling the first act before showing the next. But it was really interesting, and I want to know more! Okay, hoped that was sense....

WOW! Thank you so much! yes I plan to keep writing.. i am writing a mini novel at the moment about a southern family in 1800s who has a slave boy to work and the daughter falls in love... its gonna be good!! but thanks for your support. I like big words, but try to keep everything in structure! LOL
To everyone who thinks they are horrible: aka bush chickens, hannah... never stop using your creative powers! You will find it gets better with time!

 

[peacockprincess]

Count your blessing, no matter how dark the road gets, there will always be light.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining! It is when you find it that the past is set free and a new door opens!

 

[peacockprincess]

Burning Brush - 2012


I awoke today, the sun already bright and creating a lacy stencil through the curtains onto the walls. Sundays, thank goodness, require no alarm and I awake when my weariness is all but gone. All but. I'd slept almost twelve hours. Actually getting out of the bed reminded me more convincingly than had my pride yesterday that I'd worked hard at the Property, hauling cut limbs and saplings to the fire. Traipsing here and yon time and again as the dew evaporated
and the clouds gave way to the sun that brought steam from the ground. Traipsing, sawing, lopping, dragging, tossing and kicking with the boots that by day's end held feet that burned deep in sweaty furrows and ankles that itched where the sock elastic was now too effective. I was grateful through the day to have uncovered no snakes and to have discovered in time enough to avoid them countless spiders tending their webs and none lurking in the logs that had lain long enough for the years to turn them to soil with still hard cores that would have lingered several more if not tossed into the fire. And I was mesmerized as ever by the intense crackling of green branches, leaves and needles thrown on the fire and their release of drifting white wisps that are unmistakable signs of what has happened to them but already cold remnants that will, upon landing or being caught, collapse to nothing. And I was disappointed to realize I'd put no memory card in the camera and would have only the internal memory of it to capture images of the day, not knowing how many that would be - until the camera told me that the photo of my parents sitting beside me and one another, gazing out upon the work of their children and over the forty years they'd owned this land would be the last. Save the many I cherish in my mind.
For years Daddy would not "let" us have a fire there, for fear it would get out of hand as one somewhere back in the 60s had at their rented farm in Easley when Billy and the Scouts camped there. The last one, okay, the ONLY one, we'd had at the Property since Momma and Daddy moved to town 28 years ago had been one these same three children and son-in-law had made for these same purposes a good 7 or 8 years ago. And Daddy had fretted. It had been huge, twice as big as yesterday's, and though it left a large circle of scorched ground - there was in a year no sign of it having burned.
There being no running water now, because of a burst pipe under the porch and the well being shut off until that's repaired we were fortunate that rain fell before dawn yesterday and there was no wind until our work was done. And fortunate that the pool was full to the brim with water that, though none of us would have been willing to enter it nor to offer suction enough to the end of a hose to start a siphon that could put out the fire downhill from it - was just what we needed at the end of the day for our bucket brigade. And it will likely bring about a lush re-growth of the scorched earth through its offering of fermented leaves and bullfrog and duck manure.
George lit the fire and started a long day of running the chainsaw. Jane and I hauled brush and the things that George cut into manageable pieces. We dismantled longstanding wood piles, stacked neatly years ago and all but rotted, halved in height and home to all manner of fungi, beetles and climbing vines, bark husks like half-pipes finally letting go, falling away from trunks long wrapped against the elements. Cosette arrived with more loppers and removed the tiny forest from the dog cemetery and any number of low hanging branches that make mowing a test of aging flexibility on a mower with a deadman's switch that cuts the engine if one's buttocks leave the seat. Hillary reminded every one of us of the unending labors of the young parent with toddlers afoot, the vigilance, the encyclopedic knowledge that must be translated and condensed into toddler digestible and satisfying tidbits about all manner of things in the natural world and the strain on one's imagination, patience and skills at distraction wrought by children who find no fascination in the work of adults past the first hour.
Fallen trees with solid trunks seemed by mid-afternoon too heavy to lift into the truck bed, even in pieces, so these were dragged by chain to the fire and rolled in. Daddy's last apple tree had, for the first time in close to 40 years, made no fruit this year and half of it had fallen away this Summer, riddled with holes and blackened by some pestilence, the trunk overtaken with poison ivy. But George couldn't bring himself to cut it down so two stronger looking branches remain and will have another Spring to muster what they can. The peach surrendered years ago and stood black and fragile and was gone in minutes once hauled to the fire, having no lingering sap or leaves to even give it a voice in those final moments. The pear, though having produced nothing this year either, looked far too healthy to think it might be done and was granted a bit of pruning of its criss-crossing limbs and saplings that had encroached beneath its small canopy, as if at fault, were removed instead.
The Zoysia Daddy bought as sod decades ago and planted around the pool has spread thickly down the slopes and into the orchard remnants (said pear and halved apple) to greet the outreach of the square yard or so of sod he'd left unplanted, ignored but vigorous at the tip of the parking area. In these 35 years they have crept toward one another and are within feet of blending and closing the gap that had once been dozens of yards. Zoysia so plush from benign neglect that one would rather not have to use a pushmower to trim its slow upward growth, for dread of having to push through the bogginess, but can happily almost vacuum with a rider mower. So plush that toddling Avery walked on it as if struggling to walk on a trampoline someone else was simultaneously traversing. Thicker even than the beds of moss there. It will be brought in strips one day to the cemetery to spread a blanket there.
Hungry elders agreed that Hillary should be sent to more populous realms to find food and lull the wee ones to sleep in carseats - yea, that's it, it'll give them a chance to nap and her the chance to enjoy that…..send Hillary. We knew, of course, that sitting that long would likely bring an end to our labors and we had more work to do. But within minutes of their departure, strangely, all of us had sat down to rest on quilt, hammock and trees in the shade.
I called Momma to see if she and Daddy wanted to drive up to join us and she rousted Daddy from his nap and called back to say they would. They arrived just after the Bojangles picnic did. And as he has without fail for years now and more often of late, Daddy immediately expressed gratitude for children who work happily to maintain this place and who've lifted from his shoulders and Momma's the burden of physical tasks and financial worries. And Momma marveled again at having children with white hair.
After a while in chairs set in the soft grass upwind from the fire and a report of what we'd seen fit to do they walked with me to the cemetery. Daddy at first said he'd seen the great grandchild's headstone before, had driven up and noted it. When we got to it, having carefully made our way downhill over fallen twigs and cones and irregularities in the path, and past the water-filled milk jug set in the grass Momma had from afar thought was the marker they paused and asked "what's this?", then read its face and were reminded of the child they'd never met, she being stillborn that sad day in July, their sixth great grandchild. And Daddy, his imagination having stepped up where his short term memory now fails him, realized he'd not seen it before. And, though they kept them to themselves, I can only imagine their feelings about their cemetery opening to accept into its care and offering remembrance of someone before them. But they can see now and feel certain of it that their children and their grandchildren will protect this resting place for all who choose it.
They walked on recalling for me when this tree and that fig were planted and by whom. And Momma stopped by the next bed of moss and recalled that for years she'd hoped to find the time to learn more about all the many mosses growing on this land. I hadn't known and this now will linger in my thoughts each time I stand on the moss beds there. Daddy paused there, too, facing away from the moss to a tall sweet gum and put his head back as far as he could to study it and the blue sky above while I envisioned how quickly I might close the distance between us to cradle his head in my hands and stop his fall should his balance, his spine and his walking cane fail to allow him that moment of wonder and enjoyment. We moved on to check on his boxwoods and the damage done to one when a locust finally succumbed to the winds this Summer and toppled over to block the driveway to the barn. He's tended these boxwoods for decades and allowed only locusts to encroach at the edges of the patch. He stood with me at the upper road facing the barn and fretted that Momma had walked down to the barn and said, finally, "don't let that child wander down there. She's liable to step on a snake." And he turned and made his way up hill and I, feeling as if I'd been so directed to calm his worry, joined Momma as she made her way around the barn and through its hall where, Daddy knew, and Momma didn't recall, I'd seen a small copperhead last month. She walked halfway through the pasture and then Jane joined us to climb back through the woods by the chimney and go back to where Daddy waited in the shade. He was ready to leave and let her know he was when she was. Jane advised them to be careful on the drive home and Daddy, as he folded himself into the car, legs so thin now they seem hesitant to bend but half of what they might looked at me and said, "I'll keep my hands off her so she doesn't lose her mind." And when I circled the car to tell Momma goodbye as she took the driver's seat, she said, "Between the two of us we ought to be able to find the way back." I told her what Daddy had said about keeping his hands off her and she smiled and he chuckled. And Lord knows what they might have recalled on the way home.
As Jane and I approached the fire to finish up we simultaneously voiced gratitude that the way home was a right out of the driveway, rather then the risky left just over the rise of a hill too many take far too fast these days. And I've no doubt all three of their daughters did not feel at ease last evening until they knew Momma and Daddy had made it home those 15 miles - having been handed from them THAT burden as well. It's been a couple of years now since Momma asked me to call her when I got home to NC from a trip to her house and I'm glad she is at last free of that worry. Now it is ours - until she, like Daddy, decides she will no longer drive.
Jane, George and I made a tiny, tired bucket brigade using misshapen vessels found by the pool and the well, Jane's spewing water from two holes as she walked from the pool to the fire over and over and mine having been upturned over an anthill whose sanctity was ruined when I borrowed the warped pail with the bulging bottom. And we tossed the brown water, bucket by bucket, on the charred logs and heaped ashes, quick steam rising from a satisfying wet sizzle and thumped hush unlike any other, the fire gone as quickly as the caught drifting remnants of the burnt leaves it had consumed that day. And just miles up the road I encountered the rains and thunderstorm that would make its way to the Property before dark and silence what embers remained.

Suzannah

There are a few parts that seem confusing but overall good. I absolutely love the ending! Like a poem!!! Try to revise using less fragments/runons...makes it slightly confusing! For instance: the second sentence seems slightly confusing. You might try something like: It is Sunday, thank goodness, which requires no alarm...etc. PLease realize I am not a professional and this is my personal opinion! Thanks for posting and keep me up to date on your work!