Lost and Confounded
Yesterday I got into the car to go and promote my twitter tale at another school. The route was remarkably simple – from the main road I travel on almost every day, I had just two turns to make (both to the right).
I cunningly made a wrong turn.
I cunningly confirmed the turn was correct by observing the name of the first street was correct (it happens to join that street and the correct one).
I cunningly continued driving for another twenty minutes, telling myself that the street looked different because of the time of day (um. . . ).
I cunningly drove into the wrong state of our fine country.
I cunningly realised my error at precisely the time I was due to begin my day’s work at a school I have never worked at before – where one of my new aunt-in-laws teaches, and had recommended me (based on – what? My ability to drink champagne at family events?)
I cunningly realised that I didn’t have any possible numbers to call to tell anyone relevant what was going on.
I cunningly discovered that neither did my husband. And his mum’s phone was, by then, switched off. Because she was at work.
I did find my way – rather easily, it must be said. I even parked in the right carpark (the teachers’ one). I may have been hyperventilating a little as I grabbed my bag, keys, and phone and hurriedly stumbled out of the vehicle.
I cunningly sensed something was wrong.
I cunningly looked at the keys in my hand (I’ve locked them in the car – in the keyhole – once already since beginning work on the twitter tale).
Nope. They weren’t in the car. In fact, the car door was still open.
And moving.
The car was rolling steadily backward on a collision course with a perfectly innocent van.
I cunningly stared at it, thinking I was imagining things.
I cunningly dived in through the open door and grabbed the handbrake. (Again with the superhero moves.)
I drove the car back, put it in park, but the handbrake on, and went to work.
And the day went well. I’m teaching at the school again today.
I think there’s a moral to this story. Too bad.
Today I’m “riding with the red baron” (which makes standing up – while, for instance, teaching – painful). I’m also sitting, at 6am, at the hosue where I’ll be overnight nannying all this week (the mum just left and at least one child is still crying). I’m also teaching at three more schools on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – while also tutoring, and editing the twitter tale.
What could possibly go wrong?
I think the key is to plan my breakdowns – rather than weeping and cursing spontaneously at a crowd of 10-year olds, I’ll spend my afternoons eating, crying, and sleeping (between class teaching and private tutoring sessions). That will probably get me through until Saturday, when I can do it all day.
Last night my partner and I edited the flashmob video, so I’ll be posting it various places (beginning with my other blog – twittertales.wordpress.com) this afternoon (hopefully).
Companion to Day Three: Food
Hello to Dorian, Scott and Hayley who I met today (along with the rest of their classes)!
Like Ulandin (the person telling the story of, “Worse Things Happen at Sea”, I love food. Here’s a recipe for soto (Javanese chicken soup) which I invented after eating it at Jakarta airport.
Ingredients:
1 Onion
Asian spices
A clove of garlic
Half a kilo of chicken in small pieces (no bones)
Sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)
Lime juice
One can coconut milk
Four boiled eggs
Prawn crisps
Two fresh tomatoes, sliced into about eight pieces each.
Cooked rice to serve four people
Method:
Fry the onion, garlic and spices, then add and lightly fry the chicken. Add the coconut milk, plus as much sweet soy sauce and lime juice as tastes good to you (perhaps two tablespoons each). Simmer until it’s cooked, then add the tomato at the last moment.
Serve with rice, quartered boiled eggs, prawn crisps and quartered limes – with extra sweet soy sauce if anyone wants it.
Serves four.
YUM
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you mean by ‘real time’?
I mean that if the pirates attack at dawn, the tweet is sent at dawn. If nothing is happening (eg the pirates are asleep), there are no tweets until they wake up/do something interesting. It also means that some tweets will happen at odd hours of the night.
But. . . the time is wrong. Why?
The time zone is set to Jakarta – including sunrise, sunset, and weather. I live in Canberra (which is Jakarta plus three hours – making “dawn” 9:00am), but the setting of the story is a tropical island world much like Indonesia, where people are dark-skinned with black hair, and there’s no Winter (because it’s MY fantasy world). So it makes sense to make the real-world connection in Indonesia.
Who is the narrator?
The narrator’s name is Ulandin. He is a teenage ex-slave. His interview is here in this blog.
So he’s a guy then?
Yep.
Can I get the story on my phone?
Australian twitter doesn’t allow you to receive SMSes. But if you email your mobile number to me at fellissimo[at]hotmail.com, with the subject, “Phone Tweets”, then I will send them to your phone at the same time I release them on twitter. I can also send them to you in real-time via email if you email me with the subject, “Email Tweets”.
Why do you have two names?
It’s a crude ratings system – if a story is written by Louise Curtis, it’s PG or G. If it’s written by Felicity Bloomfield, it probably isn’t. Felicity Bloomfield is my main online personality, and my blog (mainly about the writing process and being mentally ill) is at felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com. This blog is all about the story.
How are you getting paid for this story?
I’m not. The whole idea is to get better-known as an author.
Have you been published?
I’ve sold about thirty short stories around the world (including some online), and sold one book (which I’m fairly sure was never produced). I am working on a number of books at the moment, most of which involve pirates.
What is it with you and pirates?
I wrote pirates into my young adult book “Stormhunter” and then realised I knew nothing about sailing. So I decided to “research” tall ships by travelling on the Young Endeavour sail training vessel. I’ve written an entire children’s trilogy since then, all with pirates in.
What’s the deal with the flashmob?
Because it’s a twitter “novel” (of about 3000 words) I had a book launch – of sorts. Instead of speeches and wine, we gathered at some local shops, then for half an hour whipped off our normal-person disguises and looked like pirates. You can see 1.30minutes of highlights by watching “Pirate Flashmob Canberra” on Youtube.com
*Add your questions in comments, and if I think they’re common enough I’ll edit them into the main post.
Companion to Day 2: Tricksy Pirates
If you’re wondering what the island looks like – look up. I based it off the island in the home page photo (although Sol and Ulandin’s perspective is rather different).
On to today’s topic.
Pirates were infamous for using their wits and sheer bravado as much as their cutlasses at times.
In 1719, Captain Rackham’s pirate ship was trapped by two more respectable vessels. He managed to last the day by sheltering behind an island, but the two respectable ships places themselves overnight in such a way that he couldn’t sail either forward or back. All the pirates could do was wait until dawn to be slaughtered.
What’s a pirate to do?
They left their ship empty and managed to take over one ship (the best of the three!) by climbing aboard in absolute silence, and taking over the whole thing without a single scream for help or alarm rung.
Then they quietly sailed it away.
The next day, the remaining good guys set the pirate’s ship on fire. Too bad it was empty – and their companions captured along with their VERY pretty boat.
Pirates win!
(This story is taken from the book, “A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates” by Captain Johnson – an obvious pseudonym – first released in 1724)
Companion to Day 1
Oh no! Captain Sol is barely alive and our main character is unconscious! What will happen next!?!
Some of my friends predicted the following:
Day 2
Dead.
Day 3
Still dead.
Day 4
Starting to bloat.
Twiction, flash, drabble, dribble, and hint fiction
Novels are tiring, partly because you have so much freedom – whole worlds to invent and so on. So every so often I take a holiday into the world of the weird. Stories without the letter ‘e’. Stories with just dialogue. Stories inspired by a picture. More often, I go to unusual lengths – unusually small lengths.
Twiction: twitter fiction (can be any length, but 140 characters at a time). Join my piratical twitter tale by clicking on the link at left (it’s located above the story so far – read upward from August 1).
Flash: 1000 or less words
Drabble: 100 or less words
Dribble: 50 or less words
Hint fiction: 25 or less words
Hint fiction also has the quality that’s it’s not MEANT to be a story – not meant to show the reader who the character is; not meant to have a beginning, middle and end. It’s just a moment – and all the rest is just hinted at. The creepiest story I’ve ever read was hint fiction, which you can find here with the title “Progress” (not suitable for children – but everything is implied, of course):
http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=78
There’s a really cool hint fiction competition getting run at the moment. Those who were at the flashmob yesterday would have read “Risk” which is one of my entries. If you want to know more, go here:
http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8
If you have an idea, the story is almost finished.
Flashmob: Report
I’ve just returned victorious from the bizarro launch of the twitter tale – a pirate flashmob at Lyneham local shops in Canberra.
I’ll upload some videos (much edited) tomorrow.
We had quite a number of midget pirates, and one girl who insisted on coming as a dragon. A cutlass-wielding dragon.
Picking on someone her own size
Our attempts at looking normal were going well until this girl and her mum showed up, when we gave up the game and turned pirate ten minutes early.
At least two video cameras were filming, and one was deliberately skulking about 100 metres away. My father-in-law spotted them (a three-person crew) and the most logical explanation (unless those fiendish ninjas had HEAVILY described their nunchucks) was that it was WIN television.
The crowd was about fifty people, as I’d hoped, with about three groups of people I didn’t know – so yay for advertising.
We had lollies left over 🙂
These are DINOSAUR pirates (yes, that's what they're doing. No, I don't know why).
Pirates Required
Amazingly*, the flashmob is on tomorrow!
(*Not that amazing if you subscribe to the time-space continuum.)
Who wants to help hand out free lollies (you’ll need to be someone I know and trust) and/or short-short stories?
Please bring digital cameras for still photos to send to various media.
I’d like someone to come with a video camera – all flashmobs should be recorded, since they’re basically performance art (although you’ll need to check with parents if you’re filming kids).
How to spot me on the day (eg to check who are the okay people to take lollies from): 175cm in heels, black corset, green lacey wrap, full-length red skirt. Probably shivering (also probably wearing a loose white undershirt). I will be there from about 1:00pm.
I’ll be handing out eyepatches etc to anyone who asks.
See ye on the morrow!
The details:
Lyneham shops (Canberra) outside Tillies and the bookshop.
Be piratical from: 2:00-2:30pm (ideally showing up disguised as a normal person beforehand for maximum effect).
Enjoy lollies, short-short stories, conversation (piratical or otherwise), the bookshop, and the two neighbouring cafes as long as you like!
One example of how it's done
I survived Year Five (and also Year Six)
Today I visited a primary school and took over two Year 5/6 classes for about an hour each. I met Aiden, Riley, Andrea, Nathan and many others.
Teaching is a little bit like getting executed and a little bit like having God-like powers. The combination is confusing, to say the least.
The kids were startlingly responsive, and I enjoyed myself. I think they did too. It’ll be interesting to see if any of them start following me on twitter over the next few days (or comment on this!)
I had them write character sheets and story outlines. The influence of “Twilight” was clear by the large numbers of vampires, and of very emo immortals. I had this conversation a few times:
“Your character sounds interesting. So what makes him happy?”
“Nothing.”
“Does he enjoy anything?”
“No.”
“So. . . he’s trying to be happy?”
“No. Not really.”
—————-
Clearly Edward Cullen, yes?
A lot of the story ideas were BRILLIANT. In one class, we had a character who could fly. Her problems were that (a) She couldn’t stop – even when she slept (b) SHE WAS CONTAGIOUS! (I am definitely stealing that idea.)
In another class, our character had psychokinetic powers (since when do kids know what that word means?) They gave him the problem that whenever he used his powers, he fainted. What a great problem!
Conclusion
Pirates: 1
Ninjas: 0
Oh! I almost forgot! It’s just two days until the pirate flashmob this Saturday.
How to join: show up at the Lyneham shops (outside the second-hand bookshop) at 2:00-2:30pm this Saturday in a pirate outfit (or just show up, and I’ll give ye an eyepatch). Bring your friends!
The Fear
I love the old farmer’s idea of how to get things done when you’re scared of them: “Throw your hat over the fence.” There’s a metaphorical dog on the other side of the fence, but you’re determined – so you throw your hat over. Then you have to face the dog to get your hat back.
My hat’s thrown.
So far I’m committed to teach short story writing at four different Canberra schools. I’ve advertised a flashmob on radio, in newspapers, and (hopefully) it will end up being on TV (particularly if people show up). I have over a hundred followers on twitter, and more who will be following the story on my twittertales.wordpress.com blog or elsewhere.
Scared now.
Meh.
PS Not following me yet? Join twitter (it won’t spam you – not even with my story) at:
http://twitter.com/Louise_Curtis_ (you have to manually add the underline at the end due to computer and/or my own stupidity)
Felicity Banks 