Long Live

Written for the regular flash fiction contest held at www.terribleminds.com. We were asked to set our music libraries to shuffle and title the piece with the name of the song. "Long Live," by T. Swift

She was a quiet girl, a people watcher and a fervent proponent of introspection, trapped in an extrovert's body. She was caught in between wanting to be left alone and wanting to shine like the center of the known Universe. What was worse was that she was capable of being both. She had paid her dues;  she had been the work horse. She had risen like a shooting star and the time to exceed expectations was upon her. She was on her way out and she was poised to make her mark. She was positioned to leave a legacy.

Or so she had been told.

              

Inside, she was in turmoil. She was reevaluating things. She was reexamining the meaning of success. She hardly fancied herself something special or unique. Rather, she struggled to understand when and how her constellation had made it onto the map. Her humble beginnings of burlap had been woven into gold and it was expected to fetch a high price. Oh, the plans that many had for her!

               

The arduous journey was promised to lead to greatness, but instead it would  serve as the doorway to unindentured servitude. It would lead to the gradual decay of any desire within her to create something of her own, regardless of its profitability or location on the map of her "five year plan."

              

As she would lie awake in bed, futilely attempting to assemble the landscape of her future from shape shifting scraps of "maybe's" and "I hope's," she would think of the people in her life. She knew she could count on the heavy hitters, namely her family, to survive another day as ubiquitous change continued to stroke its brush across her canvas. But what of the others? she would wonder. What of the friends, the colleagues, the role models, and the acquaintances? Would they truly come and go, as many wiser than she had written? Or would time prove history wrong, surprising the world with this band of thieves' loyalty and honor?

              

She had lived long enough to see history repeat itself, and thus resigned herself to the inevitability that sooner or later, these people would cease to care. About her. About themselves. About everything that doesn't fit within the paradigm of the American dream. One night, as she stared at her ceiling, counting the fingerprints that she had left on its surface from trying to touch the night sky, she made the decision to draw arms. She made the decision to steel herself against the long painful deaths that were coming to relationships she'd been a fool to grow overly fond of.

              

Long live our dreams, she thought. Long live our ideals and our brazenness. Long live the promises we had made to one another and to ourselves. Long live our secrets, but may the truth someday set us free.

              

Long live the quiet girl who often wanted to be left alone. The phone was ringing. It was the Universe, calling collect.  

Author's Note

Anchors away, girls and boys!

Photo credit: www.miriadna.com

Reviews

[skote1972]

As with your other story, I found this one pretty good as well. My one glaring revision would be the word unindetured... to me it felt more appropriate to use the term indentured... rather than place the un on it.

Now here is a piece of advice I will give you that you can take or leave, it will help you in the long run though. It is obvious through your writing that you are educated, your use of vocabulary reflects that edcation... however, not every reader will also have that level of vocabulary. Sometimes we write and forget that not everyone has our level of education... I have a Masters degree and am married to a former English major turned History major... I can comprehend the vocabulary, but if you are trying to reach a broader audience, you may want to reconsider some of the vocabulary you use... not many will take the time to look up words they are unfamilar with and will just stop reading. If you are writing for a more high brow audience, that's fine, but if you are looking for broad appeal and profitability, you may want to take this comment into consideration.

Also, I agree with invs's review... the character doesn't create enough of a personality that holds the reader's interest... do you have a great start... undoubtedly, but I would like to see you flesh this out to something larger that adds more detail to help hold your reader's attention... I think that would help a lot... I realize this was a flash fiction prompt, but now you can do more with it.

Hope this helps!

[roarke]

As it unfolded, I thought of Joan of Arc......

flash fiction, the new short story, sort of. I like exploring this format, it's a lot trickier that it seems at first. I thought writing 300 to 500 words would be easy, but my writing was sketchy, and too "telling" the better I've started to become, it's hard for me to hold the FF down to 1k words. Now they seem like "nuggets" for larger pieces, for me to tackle again when I improve again...

I once wrote a story about one character, a woman, that was so ordinary I deemed it not necessary to give her a name. For a couple years that fit. But I was never comfortable with the piece. the minute I gave her a name, not changing anything else, the story improved. I was able to then go aback and eliminate the parts that didn't fit "Betsy" and focus the ones that did.

Even in FF, when a section feels too vague, ambiguous etc. Take a sentence or paragraph and ask the "W" questions. Write the answers. An oldie but a goodie suggestion.

The word "things" is so general as to not qualify as a word itself at all. Two common mistakes using it, first is using it too much expecting the reader to figure what "things" is... we don't usually. Second is using the word things then taking a paragraph to explain what things is.... redundant. In FF it's better to just take a different word of immediate sentence to describe "thing" and move on. Clarity and information in one stroke.

I like the crispness you can narrate in, mine is muddy, (old addlepated mind I suspect) your writing displays a natural sense of structure, like an outline. That's a skill and ability hard to teach or learn. You could easily go back into this piece and turn it into a very interesting 1-2k short story.

It's easy to see you have a sharp way with words and phrases, AND loads of creativity. Take the time in any write to be creative and original, it very quickly develops voice, style, and interest.
Good FF

[N.A.S.S]

well written, introspective, intuitive and nicely done. makes the reader think of many things, events and people around them. cheers. waiting to read more pieces from you.