My daughter Ellie bought me a wonderful book to inspire my writing:
642 Things To Write About and, when I’ve not been working on a draft of the novel, I’ve started a few of the exercises. Here’s the beginning of one that I’m going to complete as a full short story this month (and I’ll then publish here when I’m happy with it):
Write a short story that is set in Argentina in 1932, in which a teacup plays a crucial role.
At night I would lie restless on my filthy bed, a single worn blanket pulled tight against the bitter winter’s cold, and listen to him pacing on the creaking floorboards of the room above. My father was a poor sleeper and that made him a poor, tired farmer, and us a poor, tired family. Even before the sudden death of mother he had found sleep difficult and would often complain loudly at breakfast of his tiredness and aching back and the worries that had tormented him through the long night hours.
How I missed those days.
After we buried mother in the shallow grave in the backyard father wrapped himself in his remorse at her murder, and sleep became an even blacker stranger to us all. He forbade us talking about the events leading to her death, hoping to shoulder alone the suffering of our combined guilt, as if he could protect my sisters and me from the pain and regret at our actions. He was a good father, but a bad man, and he paid for that badness in his torment.
His insomnia was contagious and our home became an exhausted, joyless and wearying place, the darkest secret within its walls weighing heavily on us, shared but unspoken.
But he couldn’t protect us. And I cannot forget.
(It will have a teacup in it later. Honest.)
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