Welcome to the Spot Writers’ weekly flash fiction post. This month’s prompt is “into the void.” Today’s post “Enter the Void” comes from Tom Robson. Check out his book, Written While I Still Remember. Amazon Smashwords
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Enter the Void
Autumn, 1947.
Blank pages exposed for the English Composition class.
Words to be inked onto that empty-page void
Which matched my eleven year old, Monday morning mind.
My empty imagination is not stimulated by suggested titles,
Six to choose from chalked, uninspirationally, on the blackboard.
They are not an invitation to fill the void.
It is a demand that, armed with pen and ink,
On a subject not of our choosing,
I will enter the void and produce a finished story.
It will be
Grammatically correct.
No misspellings.
Scripted in unblotched penmanship.
Punctuated.
Sequential.
Perhaps even interesting.
And it will be completed in one hour.
On Friday, our evaluated essays will be returned.
Decorations in teachers’ red, pinpoint the many errors,
Offer a destructively, critical comment
And an arbitrary letter grade.
The only rewrite will be six corrected repetitions of each misspelled word.
And on every Monday morning,
Period one,
Through this school year,
We will confront the void again.
Winter 1967.
Official, legal, confidential assessment reports,
To be perused by so many people.
Three for me to draft this week.
Court ordered, during the appointed stay
Of the newly sentenced delinquent boys,
At the Classifying Approved school.
Deadline. The Monday morning meeting.
My findings will be presented
And a treatment plan prepared, by committee.
The already thick file that came with each boy,
Provides some material to fill the void.
On my blank sheets I must compose a history
And a plan which will suggest a conformist future.
Drawing from –
School reports,
Court documents,
Probation reports,
Psychological reports,
Pre-sentence reports,
Social workers’ home visits,
Delinquent history,
A personal interview – and
Observations made during each boy’s three week stay.
Lined pages of foolscap paper are the void
To be filled with accurate information,
Grammatically correct,
Legibly ballpoint penned,
Error free,
Accurately punctuated,
Consistent and objective,
Following an ascribed pattern
So supervisor’s editing will be minimal
And – most important –
The ladies in the typing pool will not complain at the quality of my prose.
The considered words of this draft,
Filling the void on the foolscap,
Must also fill the void in knowledge
Of those, elsewhere,
Given the responsibility for the reform
Of the still unknown-to-them boy,
During his three years sentence for residential treatment.
The report will give the treaters awareness.
If they choose to read it.
Summer 2016.
There is no void until I create one.
Now, if I choose to write, I determine
What I write,
How I write,
When I write
What form or style the writing will take,
Whether to set myself a deadline,
Whether to share the writing that will fill my blank screen void.
Whether to even finish what I start.
Some writing is to be shared.
I may ask for feedback or criticism.
I may be self satisfied with what I’ve written to fill my void.
I may try to publish.
I may choose to consign this work to the depths of my computer’s memory.
And, if expedient, this will not be the first void-filling-prose or poetry
Whose fate is best served by pressure on the ‘delete’ button.
Why? Because my writer’s void,
Whether it be a suggested challenge
Or just blank space to be filled,
Is created in the mind of the writer;
A creator who can choose whether to
Enter the Void.
Or look elsewhere for one that’s more inviting.
One where content is the priority.
Because the mechanics of the written words
Can always be made to work better
Later in the process.
***
The Spot Writers—Our Members:
RC Bonitz: http://www.rcbonitz.com
Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/
Tom Robson: https://robsonswritings.wordpress.com
