The book-sentence meme

[ksmith]

It's taken a while for this one to come around again.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now. Turn to page 56. Find the fifth sentence. Post that sentence along with these instructions in your LiveJournal. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

"She headed toward the riverbank; the others began to follow."--Riders of the Storm, Julie E Czerneda

Comments

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Because I'm at my workdesk, the closest fiction book is one of my own, that I've been using as reference for the new book. "I--don't know." I don't think it's fair to use my own work, but both the closest fiction books are mine, because what I'm working on flows out of them.

At my right hand, equally close, are _Animal Tracks_, yielding no complete sentences on p. 56; the fifth pseudo sentence is "Running pattern of mink in mud (Wyo.)."

And _Women in the Field_ has as the fifth sentence on p. 56: "That time never came for her."

Those three together create tickling sensations in the brain that make this writer want to leap off the current trail and go haring after something else.

"I--don't know" where the mink went, or why it was running, or what time never came for her, or who she is. Was she the mink? Was she a woman who didn't recognize mink tracks? Was she the one who scared the mink into running? What didn't she know, or is it the mink who doesn't know?

This is why I don't engage with these memes most of the time.

Maybe we're in the head of the man who saw the woman coming and but he'd been watching the mink and now he knows it's going to run across the mud and leave tracks and he doesn't know if the woman will step on the tracks and mess them up...or he doesn't know her...or she doesn't know him...or the mink didn't know she was coming....

(get me OUT of this...)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Weremink.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Of course!

But only tiny people can be weremink. (Wereminks? Wereminken?)

Like, maybe, the mikki-kekki of Dzordanya.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

But the mikki-kekki live in northern Europe.

This mikki-kekki does not know this place. He does not know how he came to be here. He does not recognize the smells, the sounds. The path to the house where they left him bread and milk? Gone. The roads he would dash across to move from lake to lake, pond to pond, are different. And where are the ponds? It is too dry here.

He does not know what he did. He remembers the fish. Quite a good fish, fat and golden like the sun. So intent was he on eating that he didn't hear the woman come out of her house until she screamed at him, didn't understand the words she threw at him. Koi? Prized? Medals? All he remembered was the blackness, and the sensation of falling, and the lumps of fish like ashes in his gut.

And then he was here.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Holy minksh*t! You are SO much better a writer than I am. I bow before you and limp away, leaving confusing tracks in the mud, too large for mink, the wrong shape for human.

The remains of the fish I leave where I heaved them up. Watch Gaby. She thinks it's something to roll in.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Oh bollocks! You're in the middle of a book, and I'm in limbo, awaiting the revision letter. I can let the mind fiddle. You have to see to other matters.

[patinagle.livejournal.com]

Kris, you could sell this as flash fiction. Seriously.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Is it considered published because it's on my blog?

[patinagle.livejournal.com]

Um....Quick, take it down!

Yeah, it could be considered published. You might still be able to interest someone in it. Maybe. I dunno.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll just flesh it out a bit and post it on my website.

[patinagle.livejournal.com]

The closest book to me is Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 2. It doesn't have a page 56, but on page 2056:

"c. Special Combs : palace car, a railway carriage fitted up in luxurious style; so palace traincar; palace-crown, a counter used by officers of the Palais Royale in France; palace-hotel, a hotel of palatial splendour."

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Sounds like someone was working?

[patinagle.livejournal.com]

Nope, that's just the first book I could touch from my desk chair. It's on the end of the nearest bookshelf. I have some more interesting books on the desk, but they're just out of reach.