Day 38 of #100daysofwriting and I am stalking like Jack the Ripper through the ghost stories of a Northern mill town. As we move with the ghost stories and tales of stolen giants, I can’t help but take notes. Ghosts are prominent in my work.
Day 39 of #100daysofwriting and here’s a little of the start of the third story I am writing. In 39 days I have worked my way through three stories, Ray Bradbury would have been proud of me, if I’d been on five we’d be talking about quantity over quality. Anyway, here’s Mausu:
This far out and the stars came back, at first she was scared that they were there, tiny faint points of light that grew brighter as the ship sailed further out across the waste. Her mother, now nothing more than memory, stooping to the soil; ploughing with her hands had said of the stars, ‘They went away, Mausu. We forgot to look up at them and they became sad and left’. Mausu had searched the night for them, pouring over the blackness, the two moons of her home chasing each other across the sky, casting perpetual shadows across the settlement. Mausu wanted to say to her mother that the stars were not sad, not in the same way her mother was, the universe was just expanding and stars drifted away. Like her father, Mausu drifted from the settlement too. Shortly after, her mother died.
Day 40 in #100daysofwriting and there is a lull in the writing, so time for some cold evening food.
Day 41 of #100daysofwriting and a difficult day at work means it has been hard to write. A writer must escape the mundane, but sometimes it crashes down on you and it all becomes about bills. I am sat here wondering what would bring joy to Mausu, and as I look out the window I know. Imagine a world with no stars, just the memory of them, then something as symbolic as fireworks takes on a whole new meaning. I still have to figure out why she does what she does, why she has doomed an entire crew.
Day 42 of #100daysofwriting can the memory of stars be heresy? I may have a way into what is driving Mausu. Eerily enough, this painting has echoes of my wife about it. I think she may be a time traveler, she creeps up in a number of paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Some are quite raunchy. Here she is playing Joan of Arc. Even this post is heretical.
Andrew Oldham's Boneyard 