We weren’t able to post anything last week, and this week we both took significantly more than the allotted time to complete this exercise. Rationally, we know that nobody’s hurt by this and everything is okay, but it still feels like failure. It feels like one of the try-fail cycles that the exercise talks about. But I’m trying to think of them, not so much as try-fail cycles, as try-learn cycles.
For example, I’ve learned the differences between a mammoth and a mastodon. I’ve also learned that research takes time away from writing.
In fact, the prompts were not that difficult:
- Character: Skier
- Object: Bowl
- Genre/Tone: Historical.
Moreover, I’m actually kinda satisfied with the story that resulted; it needs a lot of work, but it’s basically coherent and even has a couple exciting moments. I might use it as an exercise in editing sometime. I really liked Megan’s dark survival story, too, and I liked that we both took “bowl” in poetic rather than literal directions. So in the end, I’m happy to have plenty to learn from in this week’s writing.
I hope you’re learning things from this, too, and even more from your own writing. If you’re joining us in these (or any other exercises), feel free to share or link in the comments!
Ronen could smell the wet, swampy musk of the mammoth, and he could see the damage it had done to the trees covering the foothills, but he still couldn’t see the beast itself. Up atop the ridge, he spied a tangle of hair from the massive animal caught in the branches of a fir.
The other hunters waited in a little valley, maybe half a mile away. But if he couldn’t find the mammoth itself, he couldn’t drive it into their trap. And if he couldn’t drive it into the trap, then they’d go another night—probably another week of nights—meatless, and this after an already-too-long winter had depleted most of their stores.
When he reached the top of the ridge, he pulled the mammoth’s wool from the branch and sniffed it. Damp, but cold. But he could see clearly where it had broken through the trees just ahead. He followed, finding on the other side of the ridge an open clearing, still covered with snow, and with a deep, round depression in the middle. He crept up to the edge of the trees and peered down below. There, on the north side of the bowl, the mammoth had found a patch of grass poking through the snow. It stood out in the open, and there was no way he could approach it without being spotted himself. He wouldn’t be able to entice it with anything sweeter than the first grass of spring, and he wouldn’t be able to frighten it with noises, because he couldn’t outrun it when it turned to charge him. Maybe if he made noises from the cover of the trees, he could get it to move? He crept round the rim to a point behind the mammoth, and pulled out his wooden clappers. When he pounded them, they echoed loudly within the bowl. The mammoth looked up, but simply trumpeted his call in reply. It began stomping in a circle, alert, its trunk curled in anger, its eyes darting every way looking for the source of the sound.
It was not frightened, and the only reason it hadn’t charged him was because the little depression had made it impossible for it to find where the sound had come from. But the mammoth wouldn’t leave the clearing. Ronen looked all around the rim, and noticed an opening in the trees across the way, roughly in the direction of the valley where his fellow hunters waited for him. If only he could outrace the giant creature.
Nearby, he saw a tree that had been split by lightning or maybe by the mammoth’s anger. In any case, the bole of it lay on the ground, each with a round side and a flat side exposed to the weather. They were as flat as the bottom of the sledges his people dragged over the snow. With a few strokes of his hatchet, he separated them out and made a small sledge for each foot, narrow but long enough to keep him atop the snow. Then, with a long branch in each hand, he waited till the mammoth faced away from him, and pushed himself hard down into the depression, shouting at the top of his lungs as he did.
The huge animal turned nearly a full circle before it spotted him, and by that time Ronen had already pushed himself halfway across the bowl. He had passed the mammoth by and was speeding for the opposite side, for the valley. He kept to the side of the slope so that he wouldn’t have to climb too much, and his momentum carried him most of the way.
The mammoth’s gallop shook the ground beneath him, but Ronen had crested the far side and was running through the gap in the trees, and heading downhill again. He kept to the snowy path, and felt the beast’s pursuit grow more distant. By the time he reached the opening of the valley, he actually had time to turn, wave and shout to the creature again.
That night, as the village gnawed on roast mammoth steaks, he polished the flat sides of the foot sledges and told his tale to the laughter and wonder of the children.