Here is my short fiction piece from the Flash Flood Journal

FRIDAY, 19 APRIL 2013
I.P. by F.C. Malby
The cardboard shielded his body from the shock of the pavement beneath his thighs. His trousers alone could not force out the early morning frost. Joe could see his breath disappearing into the daylight with the traffic and the bustle of people, all with places to reach, jobs to begin; lives filled with family, and co-workers. He filled his life with these once. Now it was full of strangers in the street, bodies sleeping on old bits of packaging. Discarded.

She always walked across the street from the bank, eyes focused on the coffee shop behind him. He waited for anyone to notice his hat between his toes – upturned, hopeful.

‘Joe,’ she said as she reached him, ‘can I get you a coffee?’

‘I’ve had one. Thanks.’

She leaned in towards him – her hair curled in bronze spirals, her suit pressed and the brightest of reds – and quietly placed some notes into the hat. Small coins usually clinked as they landed but she gave him notes.

It wasn’t the fresh pressed suits, or the bronzed locks, or the fact that she gave him money that made an impression. She made eye contact. She always offered him coffee. He said no.

As she turned to open the glass panelled door, her bracelet dropped onto the cardboard beneath him, nestling into the crinkled edges like a baby bird sheltering from a storm. He lifted it up but she was gone. In the next few moments the door became jammed open with the force of large numbers of suits either pushing in to the shop for a hot shot of caffeine, or trying to escape with an un-spilled cup. Fish swimming upstream.

Joe looked down at the bracelet, now shimmering in his hand. The initials, I.P., caught the light: Isabel Parker. He remembered his mother’s bracelet because his father had tucked it away into a handkerchief, deep into the recesses of his bedside drawer, and he remembered the look on his mother’s face when he gave it to her, wrapped in red ribbon neatly circling a black box with the silver embossed swirls of a jeweller’s finest.

Isabel Parker didn’t recognise him each morning when she leaned in to give him some notes, and why would she? Separated from each other when they lost their parents, Joe remembers the journey to his new home with the sharpness of an icy dawn.

FlashFlood Admin at 02:00
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1 comment:

Andy19 April 2013 12:56
Great! I love the feeling you create between the characters. I’ve had dealings with a few homeless people, and some of them are rough diamonds. One in particular said his father owned a number of casinos, but I reckon it was one of his ‘taller’ stories.

       Rubens’ son, Nicholas, 1916.

        Rembrandt’s Elephant, 1637.

I took the opportunity to see an exhibition at the Albertina Gallery in Vienna at the weekend. It is part of the Hofburg Palace and was built during the Hapsburg dynasty. The building itself is beautiful and the exhibitions are varied and interesting. While also viewing an exhibition of black and white landscape photos and an Impressionist exhibition, it was this temporary exhibition of Rubens and Rembrandt which caught my eye and got me thinking about outlining. 

I love art and can happily while away hours in galleries given the opportunity. I have painted a great deal in the past, but setting up a canvas and oils takes time and space so I haven’t painted for a while. These drawings are a collection of 170 pieces of Dutch art and were penned or (penciled) at over a period of time, but in the 1900s, drawing was becoming an art form in its own right, as opposed to being used as a preparation for larger paintings.

Outlining is an important part of the writing process and, as I wandered around the gallery gazing at the drawings, I was struck by the similarities between the two forms: Writing and Art.

Writing and Outlining

Many would argue that writing needs an outline, although not every writer works this way, and that it is an important part of the process of your work. I recently wrote a post on structure and plotting.

Outlining your work can be really helpful and speed up the process of novel writing, avoiding the need for major editing towards the end. An outline is a sketch, if you like, for the finished painting and an image of how your story will hang together, how it will look in the final stages, with its cover.

Art and Outlining

Although these sketches in the exhibition were mixture of both drawings in their entirety and preliminary sketches for a finished painting, I thought about how an outline is needed in both cases. If you look closely as many impressionist paintings, you will see the outline drawn or painted onto the canvas before the layers of oil paints are added with a brush or a pallet knife.

This process is similar to the layering effect of writing a book. You begin with the bare bones and the image in your mind, and then go back and add detail, scene setting, character idiosyncracies, plots twists and, in some cases, flashbacks.

The similarities between outlining in art and writing interweave in a way that clarified the process for me in writing.

Do you outline? If so, what are your methods and do you have a clear idea in your mind of where you are going? Can you see the finished picture?