The Midwest Writing Center is based in Davenport, Iowa... a mere stone’s throw from where I live. I mean that almost literally. I can look out my back door and see the Bucktown Center for the Arts, where they are headquartered.
I’ve done some volunteer work for them over the years, participated in the occasional reading and my son was even lucky enough to attend their conference this past June. My favorite event of theirs is the annual Iron Pen contest. Everyone who signs up gets a writing prompt at the given time (generally 5pm on a Friday) with the goal to submit a completed short story, poem or non-fiction piece within twenty-four hours. It’s a good challenge and a great way to get the creative juices flowing. Better yet... this year my son Peter entered too, in the youth division.
The appointed time came and our prompt arrived. It was the same for both of us... “A bridge will be written”. Okay, then. I didn’t know if this was a random slop of words or some obscure literary reference. I did know that I had no clue what I would do with this prompt.
Peter, for his part, started right in on a fantasy story. I sat and thought, letting the phrase tumble around my mind.
“A bridge will be written”
Should write about an architect, struggling with designing a new bridge? What sort of metaphor might work? I thought that bridges weren’t just over a river or a highway. Bridges were... oh yeah, music. That might work. I did a little research and found the following definition...
A unique passage that comes between and connects two distinct sections of a song; a musical “segue.” A bridge will often build anticipation for an upcoming chorus.
So a musical bridge was the way to go. I knew I would want to reference the musical bridge explicitly as well as incorporate a bridge as a metaphor in some way.
It was finally time to use the most powerful weapon in my writer’s arsenal... thinking. Generally what I do when I come up with a promising idea is to let it gestate for a little bit. I might come up with an overarching idea, perhaps a few scenes or characters and then let my brain help me fill in some of the blanks.
The story’s opening scene came to me fairly quickly, along with a good sense of the main characters. I started writing in earnest... I wasn’t 100% certain where I was going, but given the contest’s deadline, I needed to get going. Fortunately the first scene pretty easily led to the second, the second to the third... it was akin to knocking down a line of dominoes.
Peter and I both got our stories submitted before the deadline. We found out just days later that we won awards in our respective age groups and were invited to an awards ceremony/ reading that was to take place on his birthday. Fantastic.
“Emil” is one of the fourteen stories that I’ve included in my new book, “Advent: A Short Story Collection”, now available on Amazon.com.
Should you want to learn more about The Midwest Writing Center, click here...
I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick peek “behind the scenes”. You’ll see more “Story Behind the Story” blog posts very soon.
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