The Story of an Hour

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is one of my favorite short stories. It was this story that piqued my interest in literature. The imagery and creative writing is so great. I can't believe that in such a short space so much can be said and felt. I attached it below for your reading pleasure!

"The Story of An Hour"

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. 

Dear people in the Public Relations field

Dear people in the Public Relations field,

I applaud your work in getting the word out about your clients' events, accomplishments and so on. However, PROOFREAD! You may think that you never make a mistake, always have the correct date and format, and never make a typo, but you are wrong in that assumption. There is no shame in proofreading, I promise. No one will look down on you for taking the extra minute to look over your press release to ensure accuracy, they will, however, look down on you for multiple mistakes in your press releases. If you want anyone to take you seriously, proofread!!

Do us all a favor and double check that your day and date match, that your event does not begin at 3:30 a.m. and end at 5 p.m., and, for goodness sake, if you want to send an important press release about the concerning lung cancer epidemic, don't accidentally type "lunch cancer". The serious tone of your writing will take a turn for the worse when the reader begins to giggle upon reading your horrible mistake!

Sincerely,
Ashley 

Step #1 to getting out of this funk

Last night I sat with my computer on my lap, nestled comfortably in my ugly mustard yellow arm chair, staring at a blank screen. I wanted to write. I had the time and attention span to write. I even had the proper amount of caffeine in my system to write. But I lacked one key factor, I did not have the inspiration to write.

This gray cloud has been hanging over my head for far too long. I want to give it an eviction notice, but I can't find a way to do it. I wish it would go for a walk to get some fresh air, and in its absence I could sneak into it's place and haul all of its belongings to the curb and change the locks. Then maybe I could write again.

I usually find inspiration by writing about a place or experience that is familiar, but right now, I wouldn't even want to skim, let alone read, those familiar experiences myself. My mind and writing have burrowed down to a dark, cynical place deep within me and I don't like it. Nobody wants to read that. Not even my mother, and biggest fan, would make it more than a few pages in that book. People want to read books that make them feel good about themselves, or stories that help them to escape the crap of their own life and lose themselves in a new world that a book creates. Nobody wants to lose themselves in the book that is written from the crappy place I have been mentally lately.

What it comes down to is that I need some new adventures. I need to travel and explore and just do what I love with people that I love to be around and forget my troubles. These adventures don't need to be anything grand. I don't have to go to far away places and do things that I have never done before, though that would be fun too. I want to again fall in love with where I am and who I am with already. It has been too long since I've played the tourist. A small cash flow and this dreaded winter weather haven't helped either.

Maybe this weekend I will take some time for myself. Maybe I will go to a downtown cafe in some other nearby city and just sit and listen to the people around me and write. It will very likely be crappy writing, but at least I will have gotten words on a page, and that is always step #1.

Turning 25

I have been 25 for 3 days now and it is definitely living up to my low expectations. Friday night, the eve of my birthday, was great! I went to a special dinner with my sister and a good friend of ours and had a great time laughing and eating fondue! Our waiter looked like Justin Long and we did our best to make him feel uncomfortable every time he walked over due to our inability to control the laughter. Tears were running down our faces and sticking to glasses! That was a great way to spend my last night as a 24 year old.

Saturday I impulsively decided to do a 5k walk with my friend. The night before I had bought new shoes and was starting to get pumped to get outside and be active. Then at 4 a.m. I was pulled out of a dead sleep by a feeling comparable with someone sawing off my left leg. I had the worst charlie horse of my entire life. So when it was time to get up 3 hours later I was not well rested and still very sore. But my stubborn nature forced me out into the cold to prove something to myself. I limped and complained both silently and vocally for the first mile and a half. Then about the 2 mile marker I had forgotten the pain in my left leg (sometimes being replaced by pain in my right ankle) and was enjoying the walk through downtown Holly. When we crossed the finish line I was relieved to sit down and take more meds, but happy that I finished! (I rarely take meds for anything, but on my birthday I didn't want to try to work through the pain like I usually would.)

I went home, took a hot shower, and sat in bed watching a movie for an hour. When I got up to get ready for lunch with some friends, my feet hit the floor and then was shortly followed by the rest of me hitting the floor as my sore legs reminded me of their plight. Luckily my bed caught me and I was able to recover again before my second attempt. Lunch was a great time. I share a birthday with a new friend, so I went to her birthday celebration and we enjoyed it together.

For dinner I was planning to go to On the Border with some friends, not looking forward to their birthday tradition of standing on my chair and dancing in front of the entire restaurant with corona salt and pepper shaker bottles in hand. It seems like a lot of torture for a tiny bowl of ice cream! A few friends from very different corners of my life showed up and I enjoyed myself. I had a new friend from work, a roommate from college, a friend I met while I was in high school, a best friend I've known forever and a friend who I don't see very often from my time working at the church. It was fun to watch so many aspects of my life collide and interact! It was definitely awkward at times, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I obliged to dance for ice cream, but refused to stand on my chair. I'm not very shy, but I don't like to be the center of attention!

On Sunday I went to church and then to my parents, where I had to frost my own cake. It seems like as you get older, things are a lot less magical. You lose Santa, the Tooth fairy, birthday surprises and so much more that are replaced by doctor bills, and license renewal fees, and insurance, and frosting your own birthday cake. (a couple years ago I got so fed up with waiting for my family birthday celebration that I ended up making my own cake while home alone in mid-January. Well over a month after my actual birthday! It sucks getting older.) We decorated mom and dad's Christmas tree, and ordered pizza. My parents also try to be really nice and include people in everything, which is fine except on my birthday without asking me about it. So I was a bit annoyed. The pizza was wrong, so the 1 topping that I said I wanted was missing, and I got more annoyed. And then, because I'm an overly emotional girl at times, and because I am not loving being 25 and for so many other reasons, I cried at my birthday celebration. Maybe Lesley Gore could relate when she sang "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

Then my mom and I had a heart to heart. I expressed that this is not exactly where I would have guessed I would be at 25. Her words of wisdom to me were to join a bowling league, take a photography class or maybe a line dance class... Usually her advice is really insightful and hits home, but I have to admit that advice left me more confused than before. 

I'm going to try to be happier about my age and less cynical, but it's not looking likely today! I had very low expectations for this mile marker, and I have to say, so far it is pretty much what I expected. 

Ode to 25

I realize that people turn 25 every day, but I only turn 25 once, so let me revel in it for one blog post at least before I get the standard "Think about how old I feel" comments!


Oh, to the year I turn 25. I never thought I would be this old. In just 8 short days, the day of my birth will be upon us. It is sure to be interesting and full of adventure and maybe even a little love along the way. One quarter of a century, what a comforting thought.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things to celebrate about it: lower car insurance, a sense of independence at being in your mid-20s, as well as getting farther and farther from those awkward teen years that I, for one, would like to forget.

In 8 short days the comments will begin,

                "I was married and had 3 kids by 25"
                "I was working full time and owned my own home at your age"
                                      and
                "You aren't getting any younger"

These people may think they are helpful, they may even mean well in some way, but let me tell you these words make me imagine punching them in the throat! However, I am older and wiser, right? So instead of fantasizing about punching people in the windpipe, I will just smile and say, "Bless your heart" and walk away.

While it may be true that many people are married, with a mortgage and three kids by 25, I am not most people. My father was right when he said "You never do things the easy way do you?"

Every other birthday I've celebrated, people were happy for me and told me how good that year was to them and so on, but this year is different. I have been told by a variety of people in my life that 25 was their worst/hardest/most frustrating year of life... what wonderful words of encouragement to a young heart! I love these people dearly, and I am glad they are honest with me and not getting my hopes up, but I could use some encouragement this year. I already know it's going to be a rough year, you didn't have to tell me that. I am older than anyone in my immediate family was when they got married. In fact, my parents were married (to other people), divorced, and remarried before they hit this wonderful milestone.

Some of my non-church friends have said things like "I don't understand how you're still single, aren't there guys at that big church you go to?" And to that I say "Yeah there are plenty of guys, but there's a reason they're still on the market!"

So I will leave you with these parting words: if you know anyone turning 25 or who has recently turned 25, give them a hug. Chances are they need it!

Is it possible to run out of words?

Some days I feel like words just flow so freely from my fingertips as I type out dialogue and set up scenes and conflict, but those days are too few and too far between sometimes. Maybe it has something to do with my busy days and short nights to myself. Or maybe my word cup is only filled so full for a certain period of time and I can write and write and write, but when the cup dries up I must wait for something to fill it up again. I wish that I knew what filled up that cup. I wish that I could say "Super-size my cup please and fill it as full as it can go."

I think one of the biggest things that fills up my word cup is the proper amount of sleep. I get less than the recommended number of hours most nights, so that can dry up my words quicker than anything.
I also think that being too busy can suck the words out of my brain. It's not that I don't have a few spare minutes, even sometimes an hour, to write, but when I get a sizable chunk of time to sit at my computer and allow my mind to wander through the story and carefully unfold the plot as I go words tend to flow a lot faster and a lot more cohesively.
Being in public helps too. I can listen to real dialogue and remind myself that people don't talk the way that I write most of the time. And I can watch people interact with each other and their surroundings and try to understand how they navigate through life.
These things really do help my story develop from the feeble meanderings I come up with in my brain and make it into something that people might actually believe.

It's not hard to convince people to stretch their minds around new concepts and things that have never been seen before, after all just last night I was in a sold out theater watching a movie about a sparkly vampire, but if I don't base my story in some sound life models the story holds no weight.

How sweet it is...

... to meet goals!

I'll admit, I didn't think I had it in me last night. I had writing to do, reading to do, coffee to drink and food to eat. And above all else, no inspiration. I was stuck in my plot. There was a conflict brewing and the resolutions were not looking promising. One was a repeat of something that happened earlier in the story, and the other option was way too simple. I hate stories when a conflict arises and in less than a chapter it's tied up in a neat little bow and hand delivered straight to the reader. As a reader, I beg for intrigue, surprise and maybe a little bit of dragging the villains name through the muddied waters of the plot.

As is the case for many writers, my characters come to life as I type. They show me who they are and what they are all about, far above anything I might have planned for them. The characters take hold of their own lives and force me to let them live it the way they see fit, and usually that change is better than anything I could have come up with.

So last night, I sat down at my computer at one of my favorite little cafes and quietly asked my group of characters, "What would you do in this situation?" And they came through like I couldn't have imagined. And before I knew it my word count went from 11,011 or 13,108! My goal by Thursday was 13,000, so that put me over by 108 words 2 days before my deadline! My prize? DESSERT!!!

I will continue to write this week. I'm not giving up just yet. Maybe I'll set another goal and push myself to meet it. Small goals are where it's at!