prizes | Sledgehammer Writing Contest

Mini Sledgehammer: February 2011

Posted on February 8, 2011 by writer

Can you believe it’s February already? The diamond companies certainly won’t let us forget. Why don’t we throw them a bone and write something loosely wedding based? Be romantic or cynical, literal or digital, but make it literary and use all the prompts!

Prompts:
character: a wedding planner
action: putting on the oxygen mask
setting: on an airplane
phrase: “I’m allergic.”

Only writers present can compete, but if you’re writing from home for fun, be sure to post your story to your own blog or website and then put a link in a comment below.

Thanks for writing!

Congratulations to Man Price, who says of his prize package, “I love all my new toys!”

***

"Self-Portrait"

What Money Can’t Buy

by Manchester Barry Price

Being rich is a mixed bag. I know you’re all thinking, “Yeah, right!” and I understand how you feel. The problem with being rich is that you have the money to do, basically, whatever you want, so there is this pressure to actually do it. More specifically, you’re often pressured to do what everyone else says you want.

After I proposed, my bride to be, Sandy, picked New Zealand for our wedding and honeymoon. I live in Utah for good reason: it’s mostly flat, there are few bodies of water, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, earthquakes are rare and you can go anywhere you want in your very own car. “Sandy! What are you thinking? I can’t go to New Zealand. Are you crazy?” Sandy was not about to give me any slack. She had thought this out; she had a plan. Tough Love was to be her wedding theme. “Why can’t you babe?” she cooed, “It’s just a plane.” “Because I’m allergic!” I yelled.

“Allergic to what?”

“To everything!”

Cue the wedding planner and the life coach and the couples councilor and the hypnotist. Cue the mock airplane. Throwing money at the problem, Qantas delivered a shiny 747 flight trainer and every day for a month, our whole crew gathered. We trained and trained and trained.

Just climbing the ladder and going through that small door had me freaked out. “Keep coming, babe,” said Sandy. “You can do it,” cried the rest of the team. “Remember the visualization,” said Sandy, “Visualize a huge desert with nothing in it,” she said, because all the typical visualization scenes made me even more anxious; oceans and waves and hawks flying and just floating on the water. So I visualized nothing but empty desert and made my way down the isle. “Row, three! Row nine! Row eighteen,” they all cried, “You’re almost there!”

By row twenty-two I was on my hands and knees. I was sweating, cursing, mumbling to myself, whining; and they were all happily and lovingly screaming at me to “Go, go, go; you can do it!” I made it to row twenty-six, way the hell back. It was like visiting all the levels of hell. I pulled myself up into the chair and began hyperventilating. The oxygen masks dropped down. I had the clarity, the urgent sense of survival to remember the safety video we had gone over sixty times. I got the string around my neck, the mask on my face and I looked to the seat beside me, ready to put a mask on the child who was always there in the video, but of course the seat was empty.

And then finally, my mask began to fill, and I had the first sense that I just might live. I didn’t calm down right away, but it was better. The wedding planner was rubbing my shoulders. The hypnotist was mouthing the words, “Deserted desert… flat… alone… safe…” Sandy was in the row ahead of me, her knees on the seat and leaning back to face me. Her eyes were like all the pictures you’ve ever seen of God looking down and saying, “I am love. You can do it. You may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

They told me later that they had spiked the oxygen supply in the customized flight trainer with laughing gas. I’m here to tell you; friends, that stuff works. “Movie,” I’d drooled, “Where’s my cocktail and peanuts? Get this baby up in the air and lets get cranking for New Zealand.”

My first training flight was a smashing success. Literally, as it turned out. Descending the ladder, still unbelievably high, I fell fourteen feet onto the tarmac and fractured ribs, broke bones, scraped, bruised, sprained; you name it. We spent our honeymoon, four glorious weeks, at a secluded vacation spot in the high desert. It was wheelchair equipped.

There’s talk of California for our first anniversary. We can drive there in our very own car.

***

Man Price eagerly awaits the March issue of The Sun; the first time his work will appear in print. He loaded Kerouac’s On the Road to his iPod in January. He just keeps listening, 34 days and counting. Man’s blog can be found at http://manprice.blogspot.com/

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine & Atomic Cheese, free, Indigo Editing, Manchester Barry Price, Portland, prizes, Sledgehammer, writing contest | 2 Comments »

Mini Sledgehammer: January 2011

Posted on January 11, 2011 by writer

It’s a cold, blustery night here at January’s Mini Sledgehammer, but the shop is warm and the wine makes us warmer, so we’re still writing away. Join us from home!

Prompts:
character: a pet (remember, this does not have to be your main character)
action: doing web research
setting: under a dripping ceiling
phrase: song lyrics (from a real song, recognizable by anyone)

Only writers present can compete, but if you’re writing from home for fun, be sure to post your story to your own blog or website and then put a link in a comment below.

Thanks for writing!

Congratulations to Elissa Nelson, our first-ever writer to win two MiniSledgehammers!

***

“Untitled”
by Elissa Nelson

The dog was lying under her computer annoyed as usual that Cynthia was on the computer instead of curled up with Fluffy. Peter was on the couch watching TV, and Samantha was in her parents’ room reading on their bed, hiding out from the dripping ceiling in Samantha’s own room, but Fluffy still wanted to be where Cynthia was, even if Cynthia was the only one occupied in an activity that prohibited cuddling.

But she had no choice. It was 9:45 on a Tuesday night, she’d promised her students their presentation grades by Wednesday, and she was still verifying that everyone had used an actual song. In the past, students had been known to make up a song, confident that Cynthia was too old and too uncool to know that 2Pac did not sing—rap, whatever—anything called “Yo Auntie Wasn’t a Black Panther.” So now Cynthia verified all the songs she didn’t personally recognize. This year, that eliminated Yoko’s Joni Mitchell presentation on “California” and Vicki’s Bangles presentation on “Manic Monday,” which included a photo of a dashing young Rudolph Valentino. She had to look up pretty much everyone else. It didn’t help that her own daughter listened exclusively to what she called “emo” music in which the singers felt sorry for themselves and went on about their pathetic lives. Apparently Samantha felt sorry for herself and her pathetic life, but this was not something she discussed with her mother, it was just something Cynthia had inferred, inference being a major skill she taught in ninth grade English and one that she relied on heavily both as a teacher and as a mother. Not to mention as a wife and a daughter. And as a friend. Inference was important. Cynthia couldn’t believe it wasn’t a skill that had been taught when she herself was in middle school. She’d just picked it up along the way. A drunkard of a father was helpful in that regard, if perhaps only in that regard.

Tonight she had looked up and verified lyrics by Sam Cooke’s gospel band The Soul Stirrers (who knew?), a song that she probably would have known if she’d gone to church with her mother and/or paid attention to any of the music her mother had listened to when Cynthia herself was growing up. But until her father took her bedroom door off its hinges, Cynthia avoided the gospel music pervading the house by slamming said door at every opportunity. When he took it off its hinges, saying—slurring—that he was tired of her slamming it all the damn time, and damn it she was part of this family too, why didn’t she come out of that damn room once in a while and spend some time with her parents, she just moved down to the finished basement that no one spent any time in. Granted, the edges of the wall-to-wall carpet were always wet—it was rather a leaky basement—and it was very cold in wintertime, but she figured it was worth it. The basement door stayed closed, and even when it was open, she would’ve heard her mom or dad on the stairs before they could see her. Not that she was doing anything, but maybe it was more about other kinds of preparation than, say, extinguishing the cigarette. That house reeked anyway, and her mother smoked so much that she probably wouldn’t have even noticed if Cynthia had a cigarette. She certainly couldn’t have said anything about it. Not that her mother minded much about hypocrisy, but yeah. Regardless, it never came to pass. It was never an issue.

So she’d looked up “Farther Along.” Yep, a real song. Not that Sally Simmons would lie, anyway. Interestingly, Elvis had also sung it, and so had Johnny Cash, along with about a thousand other people.

That was the problem. Just looking up the songs and verifying their existence wouldn’t take her so long. But then there was You Tube and all the background information. 2Pac didn’t have a song called “Yo Auntie Wasn’t a Black Panther,” but Rashid really did his homework for the assignment, except for making up the song. If he would’ve talked to her ahead of time, she would’ve excused him from the song assignment and let him research Assata Shakur (Tupac’s mother’s sister!) and the Panthers as an alternate assignment, but when he made up a song, what was she supposed to do?

She also looked up a lot of top 40 hits, some heavy metal, too many contemporary Christian rock songs, and some “emo” music that Samantha probably could have loaned her—although she had tried talking with Samantha about this assignment last year, thinking maybe they could at least have a conversation about it, if not bond—and Samantha had rolled her eyes so many times that Cynthia gave up. She had eyes rolled at her enough at school, and at home there was no Principal Woodman to send her daughter to. There wasn’t even a Mrs. Sheehan—and Cynthia had her doubts about some of Mrs. Sheehan’s methods, but there was no question that some of the students really loved her—perhaps loved her too much—and she had probably stopped a few from attempting suicide or running away from home. Who was Cynthia to dismiss her efforts? All Cynthia could do was try to make the difference she could make, and support or at least not interfere with others’ efforts to do the same.

She looked up “A Taste of Honey” and then was very embarrassed to see that of course she knew that one, it had been on that early Beatles hits record that her sister had owned. She’d heard it thousands of times. But Sari Marshall did her presentation on a version recorded in the oughts by some terrible jazz singer, and she didn’t mention the fact that it had been released by the Beatles. Not that that would mean something to every child in high school now, but—sometimes Cynthia couldn’t believe what a world she lived in. How many worlds they all lived in, neatly or messily lined up next to each other. She stopped reading about that terrible song, “If You Wanna Be Happy” (which of course she knew this was a song, did she really need to look it up?!) and leaned down to pet poor Fluffy. Then she looked up a couple more, shut down her computer, and went to watch TV with her husband, Fluffy curled up between them and Samantha now sullen in her dripping bedroom, “emo” music coming from under her door.

***

Elissa Nelson is a high school English teacher and a writer who is really close to being finished with her first novel.

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Mini Sledgehammer: December

Posted on December 13, 2010 by writer

Ah, the holidays. Apparently it’s my time of year to be late for everything. Sorry for my tardy prompt posting. If you’re writing from home, monitor your time yourself, post your story on your own blog or website, and then leave your link in a comment below!

character: transit driver
action: surprising someone
prop: sparkly wrapping paper
setting: traffic jam

Congratulations to Fufkin Vollmayer, a first-time Sledgehammer participant, whose story ran away with the prizes!

***

“Untitled”
by Fufkin Vollmayer

My breasts are leaking and it’s rush hour in the rain and because of the rain the Muni metro shuts down. We’re in the big tunnel from downtown to the Castro and Javier is just making noise. It’s that gnawing noise familiar to every new mom, the kind that the nurse who posed as a lactation consultant explained to me, “See those little movements of his head and his lips parting, that’s rooting.” I stared at her dumbfounded, rooting as in a fruit tree or bulbs in the fall? so she went on, “Rooting means he’s looking for the breast, so it’s a good thing.”

Anyway the rain has shut the tunnel down and the overhead lights of the train flicker on and off, like a disco ball right inside the steamy crowded train that’s bound for the outer Sunset. Someone’s got Chinese takeout, because I can smell it from here.

Javier is revving up to a whimper and even though it’s crowded, all of us packed in like sardines and damp and mushy, I am going to have disengage him from the baby Bjorn, undo my raincoat and get my breast out. Out and in public. Maybe with the lights going on and off like last call, maybe no one will notice.

To the teenager next to me, who’s silent and focused in some deep way on their i-Pod, I say, “Excuse me, I need to sort of elbow you to get the baby out.” He stares at me, maybe not hearing. Or hearing and not caring.

He doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t even blink.

Now Javier is crying, and it’s that piercing cry of the newborn, a bleat, a thin wail so primal and high, it’s excrutiating. Like some illustration out of the nursing manual, I leak into my thick padded nursing bra. Too late, it’s gone straight through to the shirt.

As I start to elbow the silent, sullen teen next to me, “I’m sorry, oh I apologize, shit,” and then as I accidentally hit him with my elbow, “Please forgive me.”

He spits out, “You can not do that no you cannot. I talk to the bus driver. Right now.”

Well, we’re stopped anyway, go right ahead. And with that, he pulls out an a white ear bud from his thick black skunk head style of hair and pushes his way up to the front. We’re not too far from the front, so he pounds on the driver’s bullet proof glass.

Finally, the driver, like a teller at a liquor store that doesn’t sell wine, only coolers and fifths and endless varieties of rum, she looks at him. She looks about forty or so, her brown institutional uniform, the one that I grew up looking at twice a day as I road the bus to and from school, her uniform is shiny from too much ironing. The yellow letters and MUNI insignia remind of a forest ranger. Maybe that’s what she is, a forest ranger and we’re all the wild life.

“She is doing something bad. Not right. Her, over there,” and the teen who’s taken both the ear buds out, puts his elbow into his chest because there’s not even enough room for him to give a full extended point.

The driver looks at me, and I dread what could be the inevitable break down. I know the look. Middle aged African American woman giving me, the blue-eyed white woman the once over. All those years on her bus when, as a teen myself, all I ever did was to keep the brothers who followed me, sat next me and knocked their knees into my thigh, and talked to me, Oh Miss White, what you doing? Lemme take you home.

Or maybe in my haze of no sleep and new baby and the lights dimming on and off like a metronome, maybe I am misreading her face.

The high crackle of the walkie-talkie comes through and she picks up the radio and listens to the report about the flooding in the tunnel, Uh-huh, how long? Well, we just wait then.

“So what you going to do about her,” i-Pod teen asks, again.

“Nothing.”

Javier starts a full forced cry. There are no other babies on the train, just big kids. Dark I want the dark to return, because then I can pull a Houdini move and maneuver Javier out of the Bjorn, under my jacket, up through the loose tunnel of my crappy shirt and close to his target. Get him and judging from all the faces on the train, the people who might be staring, get him nursing.

“No, not right.”

“Actually, it’s a public place.”

I smile and nod and shove Javier on to my boob and the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the latch, it happens.

We’re in the dark, and the closely calibrated trains, they’re all piling up. It’s gridlock in the tunnel as two trains in a row, with big round headlights, a full moon illuminating the pitch black darkness of the tunnel with no light, no light at all, the full moons are lighting them up. There’s a traffic jam and it’s completely silent.

The pneumatics of the door exhale as the driver sits there. The teen next to me, sits down again and bumps my arm and I’d totally forgotten about the package wrapped in crinkly wrapping paper that I’d shoved into my back pack, the birthday present for Granny Doe, the one I’d dragged little Javier out in the rain, out of his cocoon, to Macy’s, all to buy Granny Doe some plates to match her set from her wedding.

The driver now gets up and comes down the aisle, to avert the panic, “There’s flooding in the tunnel, a back up with an accident on the line outside, we’ll be moving in about ten minutes.”

As she passes me, she looks down, and looks at me and stares, “Well hello Karen, long time.”

“Excuse me?”

“How ya doin’?”

I stare and again that bovine look of stupidity must be overtaking my face, the one caused by exhaustion.

“It’s me. Deborah.”

“From Lowell?”

And she starts laughing and shaking her head and all the backstory that wound through the short fuse known as my brain, vanished.

“Yeah, you got it.”

“Hey. Hey Deborah.”

We looked at each other, right in the eyes. Deborah who I went to Lowell with. Deborah who smoked pot with me down in the pit. Who brought her plaid thermos full of milk and bourbon to school. We used to laugh and laugh, could’ve been the pot, could’ve been finally figuring out the George Clinton’s liner notes, Some of my Best Friends are Jokes.

We laughed and Javier nursed and the lights came back and stayed on.

***

Fufkin Vollmayer worked as a journalist before kids and is finishing a memoir of the whole goofy enterprise known as single parenting, anonymous donor insemination, and having absolutely no idea on how to be a good mom owing to Really Terrible Parents (warning, alcoholism and mental illness and living in Reno, Nevada, are covered) in her upcoming book, “Because You Love Them Like Crazy.”

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Mini Sledgehammer: November Bonus

Posted on November 16, 2010 by writer

We had a great time at the November Bonus Mini Sledgehammer at Third Street Books in McMinnville. We were joined by three creative writers and inspired by the book displays and holiday lights. ‘Tis the season!

Congratulations to Theresa Homolac and Daryll Alt, who each took home a prize package. We were impressed by your stories!

Prompts:
Character: a cartoon character
Setting: in a bookstore
Dialogue: “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Prop: umbrella

***

“Untitled”

by Theresa Homolac

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

The voice startles me. I give my umbrella a final shake, splattering water on the mat in front of the doorstep, and look around. Nobody. Must be a radio. I step inside the bookstore.

The lady at the front register waves at me. I nod in return then walk toward the mystery section. I’m in the mood for crime.

The voice comes again as I thumb through an Agatha Christie classic. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

I flip the book over. Look around. “What’s it to you?” I ask.

The voice laughs. “Got you thinking you’re crazy, don’t I?”

“Hell no,” I say. “Only crazies won’t show their face.” I put the murder mystery down and walk to the children’s section. Glance around. Still nobody.

“So what’s your game?” I ask.

“No game,” the voice says. “Just that you’re not from around here, are you?”

I glance at the lady at the front desk. She’s shuffling a sales ledger. I grab a Charlie Brown kid’s book. Thrust it inside my coat.

“Gotta be so rough?” the voice says.

I don’t reply. Instead, shift the umbrella to my right hand, nod at the lady at the front register, and walk back out into the rain.

“You definitely aren’t from around here,” says the voice.

I smile. “Got that part right,” I say.

***

“The Morning After the Past Before”

by Daryll Alt

I’ve traveled through time and I’ve traveled through space. I’ve memories laden with faces, and places, and feelings. Childhood fled far too fast. Loves and lovers have been both too few and too often lost.

In moments like these, in times like now, I am reminded of the philosopher, Bugs Bunny, who said, “What’s up, Doc?” Indeed.

So often it was me in the driver’s seat. Master of my own destiny. Steering my life through, over, and around the bystanders I managed to notice.

Seemed to me I was always headed somewhere else.

“You’re not from around here.” Was a common refrain.

The past. Always running from it. The future. Always running to it. It seemed like a simple thing. I figured I wanted to get laid. I figured she was lonely. It happened before.

Play a few songs on an old beat up guitar in a coffee house, on a sidewalk, in a park, at a bookstore. Lonely shows up everywhere. I was thinking I knew it. It sure as hell knew me, really, really well.

It caught me off guard. It put me in the here. It made me face now. She was there. Then she wasn’t.

Closing time was coming quick. The owner of tonight’s venue was wrapping up and I glanced at my hat. Six bucks. Damn! I realized it wasn’t so much about getting laid as it was about a shower and a soft bed.

So much for the here and now. Put Old Guitar back in it’s case and, like the song says, “Hit the road.” Of course it was raining.

I picked up my backpack and slung it over a shoulder. Old Guitar and me moving on, now. I looked out the window, and there she was. Her raincoat was yellow. So were her shoes. Her umbrella was black.

I’ve traveled through time and I’ve traveled through space. This one is something. Maybe my traveling days are done.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Daryll Alt, free, McMinnville, prizes, Sledgehammer, Theresa Homolac, Third Street Books, writing contest | Leave a comment »

Mini Sledgehammer: November 2010

Posted on November 9, 2010 by writer

We had two Pams and a Pamela at this month’s Mini Sledgehammer, which almost swayed us to make one of the writing prompts someone named Pam–or a variation thereof–but we held strong with our pre-chosen prompts.

Prompts:
Character: spy
Action: painting
Setting: amid a scheduling conflict
Dialogue: “Spare some change?”

Congratulations to Pam Bejerano, who stole the prize!

***

Pam Bejerano

Henry stood staring at the work. It was a live exhibit and the canvass, it seemed, was being attacked by the artist rather than being painted. The man would stand for minutes, neither a muscle nor a strand of hair moving. Then suddenly he would burst into life, throwing, spraying paint, some even hitting the canvass. His grunts and moans of ecstasy made Henry feel he was intruding on a private encounter rather than watching someone paint.

“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Henry turned to see the source of the voice. A young woman stood, watching the painter with an expression he could only imagine matched his own. She was his age, he hoped, with very curly black hair going off in several directions. Her clothes were comfortably disheveled, giving a slight air of purpose in their arrangement. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Yeah,” was the only brilliant line he found. Looking around desperately, he spotted the title and pointed to it. “Can you spare some change?” he whispered. She looked at him, her eyebrows wrinkling together above her nose. “The title,” he said, pointing again. “It’s called, ‘Can You Spare Some Change?'”

She read the name and they both immediately covered their mouths as laughter spilled out. With a dirty glare thrown at them by the artist they quickly turned and ran away. They were still laughing as they stumbled down the stairs into the main lobby.

“I’m Helen,” she said, still trying to catch her breath. “You must be Henry.”

For the first time in three months Henry had been forced to say yes to his co-worker Jake’s insistance on a blind date.

“She’s an old friend. You’ll love her, I swear.”

Henry usually claimed he couldn’t attend previous attempts to set them up due to scheduling conflicts. But tonight, he and his coworker both were supposed to be at a board meeting that was cancelled, so he was free. And now, here she was. And damn if Jake wasn’t right.

As the evening wore on his ease with her made it feel like he had known her forever. They ate dinner at South Park, finishing a bottle of wine then moving into the bar to start another. After that they walked the waterfront, talking, laughing. She did an amazing impersonation of the artist that made him laugh so hard his side hurt. By the time she said she had to go, it was midnight, and he was in love.

“I’ve had a really good time tonight, Henry,” she said, both hands clutching her purse.”

“Yeah, me too. You know,” he said, plunging his hands deep into his pockets, “it’s been a really long time since I’ve been out with anyone.”

Helen nodded, “I know.”

Henry paused and looked at her. “How do you know?”
“Well,” her voice suddenly tightened as her gaze scanned the street. “Well, that’s what, um, your friend, that’s what he said. That it had been a long time.”

“What friend?”

“You know, the one you work with.”

“The one you’ve been friends with for 10 years? That one?”

Helen laughed. “Yeah, of course.”

“Helen, what’s going on? Jake said you were old friends. If he set me up with a stranger…”

“No, no, it’s not his fault.”

“Fault?” Henry felt his neck go red.

Once, once in his life, he had agreed to a blind date. By the time he made it home that night with one shoe, no money and a broken nose he swore he would never go on a another blind date again. And yet here he was, on a blind date with a woman who was lying through her teeth.

“I’ve gotta go.” He said, and turned to leave. “You can tell Jake to go fuck himself.”

“Wait, wait.” Helen was suddenly in front of him, blocking his path. “Wait Henry, please. This isn’t Jake’s fault. I’ve never even met Jake.” Henry glared at her, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I’m a spy.”

“A what?” Of all the stories he expected to hear this was not one of them.

“I’m a spy. I don’t know who Jake is, but my friend Amanda told me to come here tonight and find someone named Henry. I was supposed to report back to her if you were…well…I mean…”

“Good looking enough to go on an actual date with?” Henry was fuming.

“No.” Helen took a deep breath. “The marrying type,” she said, her cheeks flushing in the street light.

“Well?” It was the only response he could find.

“I think I’m going to tell her no,” she said as she reached up and gave him a long, slow, kiss.

***

Pam Russell Bejerano is a writer who works as an ESL director in Portland, Oregon. Pam has published a poem and was invited to read a short story at the Cannon Beach Historical Society. She is currently working on a novel to be completed in 2011. Pam’s blog can be found at http://clumsyseeker.blogspot.com/.

Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: Blackbird Wine, free, Pam Bejerano, Portland, prizes, Sledgehammer, writing contest | Leave a comment »

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