Species of Spaces

This week’s task requirement was to visit a location in Cape Town and describe it as completely as possible while drawing from Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (1998). I really had fun with this task. I decided to go on a breakfast date with my boyfriend at Mugg and Bean in Cavendish Square and write about my surroundings there. I described the shop in front of us – Markham – as well as the sounds, smells and appearance of the restaurant. I then got quite distracted by people watching. There was something mesmerising about watching people’s interactions, and trying to figure out their background stories. There are so many different and interesting people that I struggled to narrow it down to who I would write about in my piece. Our food was then delivered to our table and we ate our delicious breakfast sandwiches. So I decided to describe that experience as well. How could I not?

References

Perec, G. (1998). Species of spaces and other pieces. London: Penguin Classics.

Poison

This week’s reading was Poison by Henriette Rose-Innes (2007). The story is about a nuclear explosion in Cape Town that results in many people becoming trapped on the roads while trying to evacuate.

I particularly enjoyed the irony of the story. Lynn (the main character) spoke about how she led an unhealthy lifestyle – constantly eating junk food as well as regularly drinking large quantities of alcohol. This is another kind of poison that features in the story, in addition to the more obvious poison – that coming from the explosion. It is only after the explosion has taken effect and started to impact her health that Lynn decides she will cut out the unhealthy food and begin a detox as soon as she has been rescued. I found this irony to be sad, and was left uncertain about Lynn’s fate.

References

Rose-Innes, H. (2007). Poison. South Africa: African Pens.

A Collection of Quotes

In one of our recent seminars, we spent our time reading passages from our first short stories. We were asked to write down quotes and phrases from our classmates’ stories which we particularly enjoyed and would like to try and draw from for our future writing. There were so many incredible phrases from the different stories and so I will pick just a few of my favourites. I’m not going to speak about each phrase but will rather leave them as they are, as I don’t think I need to explain why I enjoyed them so much.

“No subtle side agenda.”

“That was the last sentence of the letter.”

“This nugget of valuable information.”

“Your body stops being yours.”

“Welcome to the lonely island.”

“Chandeliers like astronomical gentries.”

“I am you.”

“I’m fixing Arnold.”

“Sincerity was for the loser.”

“Dance around the proverbial elephant.”

The Little Mug

Recently, I have been working on my first short story for the seminar. I spent most of my high school career writing stories and essays on sad and serious topics and so I decided to try a more light hearted approach to some of the tasks for this course. I’m not so sure how I feel about my story at the moment. I really like the idea behind the plot but I feel like it could be improved upon greatly.

I’ve been interested in Roald Dahl’s adult short stories lately, particularly his more unusual stories, and so I decided to write mine from the perspective of a mug. My second inspiration for the story is the cat (Troy) that my cousin and I recently adopted from DARG. Using these two inspirations, my story follows the life of a little mug from Checkers. All he wants is to be adopted by a family that he can call his own. One day, a lady comes into the store and purchases the mug. And so his new life begins. I think it is important that I state that although the story is sad at times due to the mug being forgotten, this is obviously not how Troy’s life with us is going to be. I know the story sounds strange, but this is a creative writing course after all and writing from the perspective of a mug has been fun for me.