What follows here is my short story Helen Finds Her Way to After, which won 2nd Place in the 2017 Writers’ Community of Simcoe County’s Short Story Contest. Unfortunately, the WCSC has since become defunct. My short story had been published on their website, which no longer exists. So, I’m sharing it here.
HELEN FINDS HER WAY TO AFTER
Both of Helen’s feet bled steadily as she walked. She fought to ignore the blisters making a nasty soup of blood and puss in the heel of each of her merino wool socks. It was nine a.m. With each passing hour she lost a little more of her will to carry on. She held on to the memory of her ex-husband’s laughter at the folly she displayed in thinking she could make this journey. She carried her daughter Meagan’s doubt, freely given when she had told her of her goal. Their lack of support was perhaps the only thing left to propel Helen forward to Santiago de Compostela. And to the apostle James, whose bones lay waiting for her there, whether she made it to the cathedral or not.
Must keep walking. It had become a mantra Helen hated just as much as she needed. Must keep walking.
Helen’s left baby toenail had fallen off two days earlier, somewhere between Sarria and Portomarin. She had mourned for a moment before bandaging up what was left and carrying on. Must keep walking. Rationality had left her long ago.
“Buen Camino,” a couple mumbled in tandem as they passed her by on a narrow dirt pathway leading to a cobbled bridge. Their walking sticks click-click-clicked as they walked by without looking up from the uneven ground.
“Buen Camino,” she said before reentering her gloomy thoughts.
You may have noticed by now that I relate things to a circle of a few of my favourite obsessions…most notably music lyrics and the Camino de Santiago. Okay, and Paris. Paris is the filter for all of life. Today, while writing a short story for a specific short story contest deadline that is quickly approaching, I stopped in my tracks and said, “What are your intentions?”
That sentence, or variants of it, were heard and overheard on my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago almost constantly. “What are your intentions?”, “What is your intention?” “But what are your Camino intentions?”
Today, I had begun a short story without having intentions. It’s a habit of mine, like watching the sun go down (excuse the gratuitous song-lyric relating). I write without purpose or plan or intention quite often. I always had faith that the story would reveal itself to me as I went along. Whatever I start doing to my characters, they’ll eventually discover a path for the plot, arc, story, etc…and they’ll take it from there. They’ll run with it. Why should I do all the work? I did create them, after all. They shouldn’t be so lazy. They should pull their weight. I shouldn’t have to do everything.
I’m SUCH a lazy writer…
Enter lately. Lately is not a friend to my style of writing because lately I am discovering that stories are fizzling out, ending abruptly in a puddle of purposelessness. I can’t always rely on my narrators and characters to see the story through to the end after all. That’s a nasty realization. Am I getting old? Is my memory slipping? Am I losing my mind?
Or have I just been too lazy to do things properly, and up until now very very lucky that it seems to work out in the end anyway? I’m suspecting this is most likely the case.
Today I full-tilt stopped writing long enough to ask myself, “BUT WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION!?” When I looked around me and came to the realization that I did not in fact have my backpack on–and I was not in fact in the north of Spain on a dirt path following yellow arrows all the way to Santiago de Compostela–I knew that I had struck a chord. As much as pilgrims on the Camino talk about carrying intentions and purpose for their pilgrimage, so too should writers carry intentions and purpose for their stories. We should always ask ourselves what those intentions are. If we do not know, then do we have any business whatsoever even writing the story in question?
Probably not.
This is my new plan. Before I run headlong into a story, I’m going to demand of myself what my intentions are for the story. Not quite the same as Camino Intentions, but the same idea. I won’t rely so much on my characters to figure out the plot path. I should do the heavy lifting. I’m the one wearing the backpack. I’m such a lazy writer, you have NO idea.
On the Camino, we often answer the WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION?question with things like I will be okay if I need to slow down today.I will not be judgemental today.I will be kind to others today.I will release something that I am holding onto today. I will breathe today. We choose these daily intentions and we walk while meditating on them.
In writing, I think my answer to the WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION? question is quite obvious…even though I have almost never held myself to such scrutiny while exploring story.
Today I set up a homeless guy to spend the night taking refuge in a hidden cubbyhole in a library. It began interestingly enough. I thought it went well, actually. The hoops he had to jump through to pull off the deed seemed plausible. He overcame the odds and tricked the library staff into forgetting him. He made it! Victory. He found himself alone in the library overnight.
Then, once the dust settled and the character glared at me awaiting the next move in his adventure, I hit the proverbial brick wall. That’s when, without thinking, I whispered that age-old Camino question to myself. WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION? I have/had absolutely no idea. Getting him locked inside was the extent of my vested interest in the story. Clearly that’s not enough. The STORY has to be about what happens after the set-up succeeds. CLEARLY!
It’s high time I started asking myself these rather important questions prior to wasting several thousand words on a story that is not a story. I don’t need to outline. God knows I’ve tried doing that enough times to know it doesn’t work for me. But I DO need to know my intention. I need to know what I want the story to be about prior to sitting down to write it…at the very least. At the bear minimum I should know what the bloody story is going to be about.
I have to stop doing this to myself.
So, do yourself a favour. And not only at the beginning of your story, but all the way through it. Whether it’s a novel or a short story…or a poem or an article or an essay or a blog post. Ask yourself that all important question at every step of the journey. WHAT IS YOUR INTENTION? If you don’t know what your intention/motivation is, figure it out. It’s better than leaving yourself high and dry or leaving your poor character abandoned in a library overnight with nothing to do. You deserve better and so does your character. Don’t do what I did. As obvious as it is that a writer should ask themselves what the hell it is they want to accomplish in a story, they sometimes forget to do so.
Ever since Bob Seger sang about going to Kathmandu in the 1970s, I have dreamed of going there!
Without further ado, this is exactly what we did the next morning. Our goodbye to Pokhara was bitter-sweet. It’s nice to arrive in a place with zero expectation and fall deeply deeply in love with it. It happened a few times during our wonderful G Adventures itinerary, but never more powerfully than with Orchha and Pokhara.
Have I recommended G Adventures in any of my previous posts? If not, I have been remiss. It’s a fabulous tour company! We were so impressed, we actually started searching upcoming getaways for our next adventure…while we were still on this one.
As we boarded the bus for Kathmandu, a street vendor approached us with fresh baked goods. By fresh baked I mean the chocolate inside the croissants was too hot to eat. An entire basket of baked delights just for us. Delicious!
The road from Pokhara to Kathmandu is not a long one, but it is an incredibly busy one. Near the end of the journey, there is a mountainside traffic jam that can take one-two-three-four hours to get through. We sat and we sat and we sat. I’ve never seen anything like it. But the reward at the end of the journey was worth the inconvenience of the jam. I’ve just never seen so many trucks in a row in my life. The road zigzagged up a mountain, so we could look across the divide at places and see the line of trucks just go off to what seemed like infinity. It took a few hours to get through the last few miles of our journey…
The reward for our patience was the Swayambhunath Stupa (otherwise known as Monkey Temple), which we visited prior to checking in at our hotel. Situated atop a large hill, Monkey Temple offers gorgeous panoramic views of all Kathmandu! It was founded by the great-grandfather of King Mānadeva (464-505 CE), King Vṛsadeva, around the beginning of the 5th century CE. And it is filled with monkeys. (-:
With all the monkeys and the music makers and the tourists and the bells and the prayer wheels and the mayhem, Monkey Temple is a festival of noise and a feast of sights.
That was a quick journey! We were in and out in 40 minutes. I could have spent a day there. I am drawn always to prayer wheels. And to hear the Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ chant coming from the little shops does a heart good! I see the words every day, as they’re tattooed on my left forearm. The chant swam up and down the alleyways and alcoves of the magical space.
After the temple, we went to our hotel–FUJI HOTEL–located in a sort of back alley in the heart of Kathmandu. It was a lovely bustling neighbourhood and a glamorous old hotel that felt like it held a history of its own…a history worth knowing. I immediately liked the owner, who spoke to me on several occasions. He was animated and really appeared to love life. He had, I am certain, as many stories to tell as his hotel did.
Alas, all great adventures come to an end. And we were there, standing at the end of the trail with our hearts in our throats and our lungs filled with the life we lived on the long and winding road from New Delhi to Kathmandu. Blessed and blissful and sad beyond measure, thirsting for more adventure and exhausted from our endless travels.
One last meal with the family we had created along the way, a group of strangers who found ways to connect and share a great adventure and form a bond of memories to carry forward into futures spent apart. Forever locked together as travelers with a shared experience on a chaotic dusty muddy pot-holed road filled with trucks and buses and pedestrians and cows and water buffalo and goats and hens and wheel barrels and bicycles and motorbikes and scooters and tuktuks and rickshaws and more.
Promise me you’ll never forget. Swear to me you’ll always remember.
After the temple, we went to our hotel–FUJI HOTEL–located in a sort of back alley in the heart of Kathmandu. It was a lovely bustling neighbourhood and a glamorous old hotel that felt like it held a history of its own…a history worth knowing. I immediately liked the owner, who spoke to me on several occasions. He was animated and really appeared to love life. He had, I am certain, as many stories to tell as his hotel did.
