I want to start writing some fiction tales. Since I was a little kid I have loved stories, both reading and writing. I used to want to be an author after my third grade teacher told me I could be based on my writing skills. I created a couple things here and there. One of my favorites was a spoof of Harry Potter called Peary Hotter. It was really stupid lol. Or one about a fairy-type (I think?) community in the jungle. I never committed to a full story or book but I was so inspired by the things I loved to read and watch, like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Lemony Snicket…I wanted to create a world like that. I still do!! But I’ve mostly just written in my journal over the past many many years. I just found something from 2015 when I had told Kate I wanted to write. We had taken up emailing each other because this was when I lived in Finland and she was in California. I’m gonna copy it here because it’s funny and ALSO kind of want to elaborate on this plot lol! I was just thinking today about how maybe a train ride could be a cool setting for a plot intro when I remembered I wrote this in an email:
“Karen settled into her seat on the Amtrak just in time for it to start rolling away into the misty morning. Gazing out the window at the landscape swiftly passing by, she peeled apart the top of a family size bag of cheesey puffs. It would be a long while before she was back in her beloved town of Arcata. But, she internally reasoned while licking yellow powder from her fingers, at least she would still be nestled somewhere else in the Redwoods. It was late September, and she had decided to pack up her meager belongings and take the train down the coast to a small town called Pleasant Hill. She had never traveled to Pleasant Hill before, or even heard of it before a couple of weeks ago when she stumbled upon an ad for a work-away position at a hotel on the edge of town. It was her best friend and former roommate Talysha who truly convinced Karen to up and move for “at least the winter.” And Karen knew it was the best decision too. You see, Karen loved Arcata and her life there, but things were getting weird there. First of all, over the summer Talysha had married her Latvian sweetheart and moved off to Europe with him, leaving Karen all alone in an awkwardly shaped 2-bedroom house. Karen had other friends, but most of them were smelly pot growers who climbed up the hill this time every year to work on their crops for a few months. And that was the other problem. Karen was a big pothead and getting stoned consumed her entire life. In fact, Karen had been completely stoned almost every single day for the past six years.
The train arrived at its first stop and allowed the passengers to hop off for a stretch or a smoke. Karen stood outside in her thin pajama pants and a zip-up sweatshirt she had actually stolen from Talysha, hugging her shivering self for warmth and dragging on an American Spirit. She liked to watch people, so being on this ride was quite entertaining for her. She especially enjoyed observing how people act when they aren’t doing things they normally do. Everyone’s sort of uncomfortable, sitting all together but apart in a mobile metal time-warp, eating snacks instead of meals, with nothing to do but look this way or that. She wondered always what they were thinking about. Before Talysha left that was a big hobby of theirs, sitting somewhere in public and guessing the names of random passers by, pondering and laughing over what their stories might be. She automatically did it now too, while smoking her cigarette. The chatty woman in the in the ill-fitting gray jeans with the cropped blonde hairdo was totally a Carla, and she no doubt loved her family more than anything. Three grown sons and a teenage daughter, probably. Most likely worked in a stuffy office, but consistently brightened it up with her spirit. Yes, that was Carla. Carla then sort of caught her staring so Karen threw down her butt, stomped on it, and climbed back aboard. She wasn’t trying to make conversation today.
She felt weird, you see, because this was the first morning Karen had got up and dressed and on the road without getting high first. She leaned her head against the window and thought about the strange feeling of sobriety. It was a peculiar alertness that struck her first and foremost. The murmur of conversation from the other passengers sounded louder and clearer than it usually would have. Alert and a tad bored was how this new Karen felt today. She also had a vague ache all over her body. Alas, this was her mission and she knew it was time; she needed to take a break from the stoned all week, get carried home drunk on the weekends lifestyle that she has been upholding for a little too long. Plus, she just wanted a break from that town. She wanted to clear her head. And, she didn’t want to run into any of the ghosts from her recent past around town. Arcata was a very tiny, close-knit town after all. Pleasant Hill, she had gathered through research, would be similar in that way, but at least nobody there would know her.
As she slouched and pondered, she slowly drifted off to sleep due to the boredom and the horrendous hour at which she had to wake up that morning to catch the train. She slipped into an astonishingly vibrant dream.”
THAT’S WHERE IT ENDED lol do we need to know what happened??? I think so. Stay tuned.