Lost in my notebook
Two very short stories & some honesty
Some Honesty
Even if you surround yourself with people in an office or a café, writing demands that you ignore them and instead focus on the ideas bouncing around inside your head. That insulation is exaggerated when you’re writing fiction—literally opening your mind for your characters to live and grow. So it’s no wonder that writers can come across as aloof or distant. Sometimes, we’re just stuck in our heads talking to our characters.
That kind of mental gymnastics is also a challenging place to be when things aren’t going well. A few months ago, I lost my corporate gig—writing content and strategising marketing campaigns for a tech start-up. Since then, I’ve been writing more, editing my upcoming short story collection, and having semi-regular crises of confidence.
You might expect me to have a point to this. But I don’t. Or at least nothing profound. I just want to be honest and let you see behind the curtain of a struggling writer. It’s not all pretty prose and aesthetic writing spots. Sometimes it’s just showing up and trying to convince yourself to keep going. That’s what I intend to do, and you might even get a few more posts from me as a result.
Okay, now for some fun. These two shorts were written within ten minutes using the prompts ‘gun’ and ‘ravished’.
Gun
There’s a lot you expect when you pick up a gun for the first time: a sense of power, excitement, fear—all normal and rational. But I never expected the voice inside my head to be so loud. Drunk on the trio of rational thoughts, it digs its claws into my consciousness.
DO IT NOW! it demands from the back of my head, taking lethal drinks from each rational bottle. A sour taste rises up my throat as I retch.
DO IT NOW, coward.
Cramp tightens my hand as I shake the iron scope I’m trying to look through.
DO IT.
Cold against my fingertip, I feel for the trigger. How many grams of pressure stand between silence and thunder?
DO IT!
Rain starts to fall—cold and sobering. Across the range, I hear her whimper.
Ravish
Hunger, like wealth, is one of those things you tend to lose sight of if your needs are met. As if distracted while stargazing. One second you’re like, “Is that Saturn?”, the next you’re tracing a pair of miniskirts down the road.
But once you’re really hungry—hungry to the point of pain—there’s literally nothing else to think about. Okay, nothing is a stretch; you think all types of shit:
How much longer do I have to walk? Why are people looking at me? Will anyone care when I’m gone?
Can I smell bread?
But all these thoughts are set in the foundation of hunger.
Honestly though, I think I can smell bread. I should be close to a town now. There’s only so far you can walk without coming across one.
And there it is, perched perfectly on top of the next hill, smoke drifting west from its chimney.
A little about Gun and Ravish
With Gun, I was trying to set a sinister scene—first leading the reader toward the conclusion that the protagonist was pointing the gun at himself, before twisting to a more murderous outcome at the end.
As for Ravish, I had in mind an image of a lost hiker reaching the point of despair before stumbling into salvation.
Thank you for your support and encouragement (especially in person). Compliments make me very uncomfortable, but they are nice to remember on the bad days.
Love, Luke
If you want to support further you can:
Buy my book Love, Loss & The View From My Window (Amazon)
Subscribe to this newsletter lukeambrose.substack.com (or share it)
Follow me on Instagram @lukeambroseauthor
Gift my work to a friend