Cover created using a canva template.
When clichés are footprints on our minds, or Ursula writes a novel.
Don't you hate it when cliches get stuck in your mind and they seem to be stuck there? This is how I interpreted this week's prompt. Let me introduce you to Ursula:
Ursula sat down, with an exaggerated quality, to write her first novel. The tea cup she had been balancing precariously on her pretentious little saucer slipped some chai over the lip. Undaunted by the rattling porcelain, she lowered it to desk’s surface and the little maroon pillow which cushioned her derriere sank a little bit further into the chair as the rotund woman adjusted herself into what she imagined was the pose of a serious writer. She closed her eyes and repeated her new mantra, a gimmick that the self-help book she had borrowed from the library had promised would lead to guaranteed success!
Ursula adjusted her purple rimmed spectacles and with a sip of tea, she positioned her clumsy little fingers above the keyboard. She wrote out the first meagre words of her masterpiece, ‘The wind howled…’ and then she stopped. She considered herself a serious writer, of the breed who would not resort to a cheap cliché in order to craft an image. She sat back in her chair and, noticing a pencil off to the side of her laptop, picked it up and began to twirl it between her fingers. She was certain that she’d seen pictures of famed wordsmiths twirling pencils, and she felt assured that the little yellow lead would offer her a new understanding of the world which she sought to evoke.
The pencil snapped as she attempted a particularly grand pirouette with it betwixt her fingers. Yet, it was that crack which led her to exclaim, ‘The thunder cracked, and the wind howled’. She carefully wrote down those words precisely as they had come out of her mouth. She marvelled at her correct use of a comma separating two independent clauses. As a serious writer, she understood the value in needing to impress an editorial team from the first words on the page. Yet, as she stared into the screen, she did not feel assured of the originality of the turn of phrase – her phone rang.
‘Hello’, she offered in voice she imagined was rather charming and somewhat stately – dignified, as a writer of her quality ought to be, but which was in fact, not particularly endearing. She continued by offering her name and was immediately disappointed when the voice on the other end of the line was an automated machine asking her to donate to a worthy cause. Her benevolent qualities were at that moment underdeveloped and she hung up the phone in a huff. She took another sip of her chai, and on returning the cup to the saucer in too hurriedly a fashion, allowed some more to slip over the edge. With a degree of meticulosity she deleted each letter in her word document.
Looking around her room, she attempted to find something which would act as her muse – to allow her to find a flourish in her expression in the pursuit of a dust jacket on her debut novel which praised every word from the opening sentence. She spied her slippers poking out from her cupboard and she felt overcome with a coldness that only the warm fluff around her feet could cure. She raised herself indelicately from her seat and fetched her shoes. They had not been given to her by a lover, a relative or a friend – but rather, she had purchased them as an end-of-season sale at the local department store. The faux pink suede which at the time had brightened her mood, now, only made her upset at the loneliness in her small apartment. She returned to her desk to raise her fingers in a writer’s pose, and began once more, ‘The thunder was lonely in the crowd of the storm, and the wind howled’.
Ursula pursed her lips to the side as she scrutinised those words. If you modified a cliché, she wondered, did it remain cliché? She was overcome with uncertainty and declared to the world that she had writer’s block. She understood this condition to be one which afflicted the greatest of minds, and she was confident that she was in good company. She turned in her seat, readjusted her flattened maroon cushion and sighed. It was a long drawn-out expression of her intention to be artistic, yet the inclination of her mind was to wonder what she’d prepare for dinner. She quickly dismissed this thought, however, as inconsequential. She knew that if she was going to position herself as the suffering artist, that perhaps she should skip dinner and opt instead for a quick dessert she could eat while she poured herself into her work. The story of the starving penman was one which she believed she could embellish during her book tour, and that the sympathy of the crowd would lend itself to higher sales. Ursula allowed her mind to swoon in delight and she –
The moment, however, was interrupted by the noisy neighbours who lived above her. She had never had the propensity to introduce herself to whoever they were, but she imagined that there were elephants clomping above her head. She shook her head in an act of defiance and with a practised roll of her head, willed the footsteps to stop. And then Ursula stopped. She swung her chair back around to the screen, and began to type, ‘It was a dark and stormy night, the howling wind was the elephant in the room’. With a sense of satisfaction, Ursula leaned back in her chair and attempted to cross her legs, but, as she swung her left leg upwards she knocked the table, the shake leaving her small cup and saucer to rattle, before another swoosh of chai moved over the lip of the small cup.
(And they all lived happily ever after).