Creative Writing

There are lots of ways to explore your interest in creative writing at LREI. From Creative Writing English electives to the Art and Lit Magazine, from monologues to zine writing honors projects, LREI students are bringing their ideas to paper. Read on for an example from a recent creative writing class assignment.

These two examples are from a “flash” fiction project in Creative Writing class. Students had to choose an image from a number of 2 dimensional pieces that our Studio Art students created and shared with the Creative Writing class, and then write a flash fiction story (under 400 words) based on this image.

Flash fiction comes in many forms, but there is no single defining characteristic of a flash piece other than its length. Stories told in this mode often capture individual moments—just before or just after a moment of significance for a character—and in this way they often resemble paintings or photographs, capturing a single moment of stillness that implies action both before and after.

“He’s only in Boston,” my parents had assured me, “you’ll see him plenty.” I hadn’t known how to respond. Now thinking about him, I realized how bored I was without him. Last year, this trip had been fun. Now it was low key and without some lighter humor to keep me distracted from my grandpa, who in his old age was beginning to feel a bit desolate.

There wasn’t a ton to do in Cape May when you were waiting for your family to eat their food, which they appeared to be eating at a rate of a bite per argument. My little sister, my cousins, and I got bored and walked out of the restaurant and started to stroll. It was when we passed by the liquor store that I noticed it. The biggest, most terrifyingly vibrant spider I had ever seen. I paused for a second, then remembering how much my sister hated spiders, I called her over and showed her. She shrieked and ran off. We laughed at her awkwardly sprinting away in her flip-flops. I thought that it would be something my brother would do. I frowned and looked at my watch. My brother had probably arrived by now. At the gate of his new world, leaving his old world behind, with me still in it.

I sat down on the curb while my cousins talked. I felt like I didn’t have a brother anymore, and he was lost to the outside universe and we could never do any of the crazy shit we always did. “He’s only in Boston,” I heard my parents’ voice in my head. Well screw them. They don’t know him like I do. They aren’t attached to him like I am.

Someone sat down next to me. It was my little sister.

“You think he’s going to be alright?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I said, blowing her off.

“Are you going to be alright?”

That caught me off guard. She and I never talked about our feelings. I tried to think of a response that was both true and bold, and I realized that response didn’t exist.

I closed my mouth. She slid over and put her arms around me.

Picking up his father’s electric razor, Brendan proceeded to shave all his hair off, letting it fall on the squeezed out tubes of his acne medication. Smiling, Brendan admired his handiwork in the mirror. His mother had often told him through the pages of her Vanity Fair that his hair was ‘a bit too unruly’. Bullshit, he had thought, it was edgy, and it would change everything. Yet his hair only came with more coddling, and requests to see his hair dresser, Katie. His hair did not change everything. His hair had only made him more self-aware of the fact that he was fifteen.

Now his head felt smooth. Smooth, yet truly unruly. Ten months worth of hair sat before him, and he couldn’t help but watch as each lock proceeded to droop mournfully into a heap. It was sad to think that this ‘mane’ of hair was an act of rebellion.

Looking at the pile, he thought he must have been nothing short of matronly with such a head of hair. He wanted to pay tribute to it in a deeply impersonal fashion. With complete fortitude, Brendan gathered each lock and placed them in a large Ziplock bag. Each clump of hair felt caustic. Yet the Ziplock bag was more than appropriate to support the heap.

Bag in hand, Brendan pinned it to his wall, and let it hang for all to see.