#AtoZ — Iris

Join me during the month of April as I blog through the alphabet. My theme will be What’s In A Name. I will attempt to write up a short fictional character sketch beginning with a different letter of the alphabet each day. Remember that a place can also be a character.

Iris

“Eerees.”

“Earrees?”

“No. Eerees. Your language, Iris. My language, Eerees.” Shyly, he repeated her name and watched as she returned his smile with a slight nod. “May I walk you to the bus stop, Eerees?”

He really wanted to spend a lot more time with her than the couple of minutes it would take to walk to the end of the block and across the street but he knew if he suggested a longer meeting she would not accept. Who knew? Maybe it would even insult her. They didn’t know each other. Not really. He had been watching her get off of the bus three times a week and walk in front of his book shop on her way to Mrs. Symons’ house where she took cooked and cleaned. Mrs. Symons was more lonely than she was old so it was not an every day thing  and Iris didn’t work long hours. He had watched her for weeks before he had the nerve to walk out to the sidewalk one day and say hello to her as she walked by. She had averted her eyes after a very slight smile. It took another couple of weeks before he had tried another hello. The next time, she had returned his greeting and before long they were exchanging a couple of sentences, mostly about the weather.

There was some chemistry there. They both felt it. As they walked toward the bus stop together, he decided that he was going to close up shop early one day and ride the bus home with her if she would let him. That way they could talk a bit. Who knew where it would go from there? He just knew that he wanted to spend a lot more time with Eerees.

Alexa

Babs

Curtis

Diane

Eve

Fran

Grandma

Harold

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More Thoughts On Yesterday

Yesterday’s post told about the annoyances of attending the all-state Nanowrimo write-in.  After sleeping on it, I’ve come up with some of the positive things from yesterday.

I took my iPod and listened to John Williams soundtracks and some Santana for a while so I would drown out the noise but I took ear buds instead of headphones and the buds just aren’t comfortable for me so I had to take them out.  Next time, I will fit my headphones in.

I did end up writing at least 3,051 words (in a total writing time of less than two hours). I also wrote my blog post and Twittered a bit and kept an eye on the news of the fire in Sylmar. (I used to live near there for many years so I was more than interested in it.)

I managed to turn the most annoying of the teen boys into a minor character in my novel; one who was as annoying in the novel as the actual model!

One of the leaders had some prompts for us that were fun to try to incorporate into our novels.  The prize?  Charms Blow Pops.  I got several of them and I think having that thing in my mouth kept me from shouting “Shut Up” at the kids!  From the suggested prompts, I actually wrote some things I would not have that turned out to fit nicely into the novel.  One prompt was to incorporate a person that we had just met at the write-in into a character in our novel, however minor.  So I was writing a party scene in which my MC was stuck at a table where one woman was talking about her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy in detail.  I had met a woman at the lunch just before the write-in that did exactly this during the two hours we were there.  It fit into my novel very nicely and gave it a little bit of authenticity.

I also drove a woman from Portland to the write-in and on the drive over and back, we talked an awful lot and discovered some commonalities.  She just moved here from California in May.  She has no car.  I’m picking her up in a while so we can go to a coffee shop and write!

So not all was lost!

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