Wednesday, December 13, 2006

a hundred words

In an attempt to get myself to write every day and not capitulate to the call of the duvet and comfort of a book I am going to follow this idea and write exactly 100 words of anything every day.

Today's 100

Her fingers were numb. She couldn’t wait to finish the dishes and watch the DVD. The familiar cadences of her mother tongue would envelope her like a shawl knit with comforting words. She rubbed the SV etched on the surface of a tumbler. “So when you lend sugar to neighbours they’ll know which vessel to return.” Amma had explained.

But that never happened here. There was no milk man, iron man or call of ‘Post!’. No flower seller beseeching her to buy an extra strand of malli. She was alone and cold with nothing but an imaginary shawl for comfort.

8 comments:

Jayaprakash Sampath said...

The familiar cadences of her mother tongue would envelope her like a shawl knit with comforting words

cha... ennamaa ezhuthaRInga....

Anonymous said...

You're off to a great start. =]

Anonymous said...

Absolutely lovely!

I've signed up too!

Just had a question: how do you know when you've reached 100? Do you do a word count as you go along or do you edit once you're done?

Terri the terrific said...

Wonderfully descriptive, as usual, Shoefie. The loneliness and pining really come through.

Do you think if you live away long enough, with solitude as your only friend, you start to resent daily human interaction when you actually move back?

J. Alfred Prufrock said...

The content is very "been there done that", but you still make it read well. (Two weeks ago, I decided to do 1000 words every day. Now I have three scraps of 600 words each. Oh well.)

And loved your piece on Christmas shopping.

J.A.P.

The ramblings of a shoe fiend said...

Icarus, Vi - :D Thanks so much!

MW - I usually write and then edit.

Terri - On my last trip home I did find the constant stream of neighbours and friends dropping in all the time a little trying. After a week I got used to it though.

J.A.P - Thank you! And when do we get to read these 'scraps'? Miss your posts!

The ramblings of a shoe fiend said...

MW - There's a problem with the comments section on your blog! It doesn't like me for some reason:(

Akira said...

Hey loved this one..."so neighbors know.." so cute!