follies
A very, very long time ago, in some forgotten corner of the early internet, I came upon a fellow writer who referred their projects, labeled their folders, branded their notebooks, as "Follies." Which I promptly adopted.
If you're unfamiliar with the word folly, you should firstly know that it's a lovely one and you should really use it more often; and secondly, the definition—
Foolishness, a lack of good sense, a ridiculous thing, an absurdity.
Ah yes, I said to my fourteen-year-old self. This is exactly how I want to think of my works of art. Even then I knew that the mind bent on Perfection is a mind dead to Whim—which is, of course, the heart of Creativity.
Once, the term "Follies" held all my works. Now, it holds only my abandoned, incomplete, messy, cringy absurdities for all of You to behold. Because realistically, they'd never see the light of day otherwise. And I have the feeling they've been lonely sitting untouched and unread in my silly little Follies folder.
Brandbury Hall
As so many of my projects start, this one began as a dream. I was being chased around a crowded and dusty attic, and I was hiding in all the precarious nooks and crannies, and I very specifically remember a very old revolver. Once I managed to get out of the storage side of the attic, I found the door to a hidden room. Locked, of course. All very intriguing.
It gave me the feeling of Jane Eyre and Bertha's attic room (you may notice the reference to her in Aunt Bertha, the Mistress of the House). So my brain did as it always does, and fills in the cracks until the general form of a story appeared.
This piece was very dear to me, as it held the record for highest word count in a project for a very long time. It's still intriguing, the budding romance of Jeremy and Ari, the dark secrets hidden in the attic. But really, I was never going to finish this. In fact, I've never come back to it since I wrote these pages in a fever over the course of a week almost fifteen years ago.
Ruby
This is a short story I did for one of my critique classes in college, and boy, was it controversial. I admit, it was a bit experimental, with its excessive grammatical and spelling errors. I was going for authenticity. Unfortunately, a large portion of the class couldn't see past them. And that's fine. In the end, my professor thought it was very poignant and emotional, and that was all the validation I needed.
The concept—a grieving widower coping in the twilight of his life—was inspired by a family that we were very close to when I was growing up. The love of his life—a woman of music and mirth and such vigor of life, it seemed she would go on forever—died of cancer. Their daughter recorded the fallout and woes following the loss. To preserve anonymity, she referred to her mother as Ruby.
Karousel Kaleidoscope
A shy and anti-social guy goes on a date with a cute girl—and brings with him his hoard of Mental Manifestations.
This was a piece of weird fiction I wrote for a local writers group. I still like the concept of watching a day in the life of someone whose reality is questionable. But life has to go on, you know.
What is weird fiction? I'm so glad you asked. Weird fiction is an amalgamation of several possible genres—sci-fi, horror, maybe fantasy, maybe teen angst—to create an altogether foreign space where the reader should expect to feel lost most of the time, because you are experiencing the inexplicable, the unusual, and the strange.
I just love weird fiction, and this was one of a couple pieces I played with the genre, to mixed success. I hope I can make something really cool one of these days.
If you're interested in weird fiction, start with Jeff Vandermeer. Astounding imagination he's got.