Instructions:1. Walk to car.
2. Open door.
3. Insert finger between hinge.
4. Close door.
If you followed the above instructions -- I envy you. Because I would rather follow them than do what I did last week.
Two words: house hunting.
Don't kid yourself. It's not as fun as it sounds. Unlike other types of hunting you don't get to shoot at anything.
Even when I really really wanted to shoot I didn't get to. Not even in self-defense. Not even when the Realtor endangered my life by slamming the golf cart brakes so hard that I turned into human graffiti on the outside of her office.
Not even when I asked her, "Does this house have an alarm system?" and she answered, "It sure does. It's the box right here."
"I don't see any buttons on it," I said. "How does it work?"
"Well," the nice brake-slamming Realtor said, "If you hear someone breaking into the house, you pull this cord and the box chirps at you."
"It chirps at me?"
"Yes. Just to let you know someone's breaking in."
"So... I pull the chord to let myself know someone's breaking in?"
"Exactly."
People have been known to do strange things under stress. I begged. I cried. She finally took me back to her office.
Then the brake-slamming Realtor closed our meeting by handing me a piece of paper.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It's a lease. For the house."
"The house that chirps?"
"Yes." She nodded.
I told her to go follow instructions one through four.
****
One thing I love about writing a newspaper column is that I get to make stuff up. Part of this column is truth, part of it is fiction. Which parts do you think are true?
For you fiction writers out there -- how much of your fiction is based on a true story?
I'd love to hear from you.
****
B.J. Hamrick is the editor of Real Teen Faith.
Love your story BJ! :)
ReplyDeleteI base the personality of my characters and incidents that happen in my story on people I know or things I've done. That makes for an interesting story...
;)
Haha! Nice story BJ:)
ReplyDeleteUsually my main characters (there's usually more than one) are based on my self and different aspects of my own personality. Some of my other characters are based on my friends and those characters and my mc's interact with each other in much the same way as I would interact with the character's base.
Jessica - Awesome! So, do you do a lot of comedy, or mostly serious novels? I'd love to hear about them.
ReplyDeleteKira - I've always thought that's how I'd do it if I wrote fiction... at least how I'd start. Getting inside your own feelings is hard enough, how much more the feelings of a stranger. Cool.
Thanks for sharing, ladies!
BJ,
ReplyDeleteI like to write comedy (and it's only short stories, nothing like a novel!) but, well, I'm really not that funny. :) My favorite thing to do when I write is make it both descriptive and emotionally deep. Hmm that sounds a bit funny, but there's really no other words to describe it. I like to hook the reader by connecting with them on their level of feelings. It seems to work so far! :D
Blessings,
Jessica
BJ,
ReplyDeleteActually what I love doing, when I'm not writing deep, emotional *wink* short stories, is to write children's books! I love kids and after reading some children's books to kids I would babysit, I started having a lot of ideas running around in my brain. My dream is to one day get them published. I guess I'll see where God leads. :)
HAHA! Nice. I wouldn't be surprised if the cord alarm was true. These days.... ::tsk tsk::
ReplyDeleteLove it! Haha!
ReplyDeleteHey Jessica! That's an awesome dream. There are some great conferences out there for people who want to write childrens' books. Let me know if you want to learn about them. And the deep serious stuff is cool too! That's how I started out, oddly enough :)
ReplyDeleteBetsy - Actually, the alarm WAS true! It was really bizarre, haha. You're getting to know me too well.
Christina - Thanks so much, girl! I always appreciate your comments... they make my day.