You may not always have a story to write. Or you may have a dozen books in process, but you don’t feel like writing in any of them. Why let that stop you?
Write a fight scene, or a love scene, or a character introduction. Practice dialogue without the burdensome constraints of plot and continuity. Jot down notes about that plot you’ve got tumbling around, but do it in prose form.
Allow your imagination to run wild and unrestrained.Let it flow, and you might surprise yourself for what you get out of it.
Lightning Rounds are collections of scenes, blurbs, conversations, etc., each no more than 1000 words (and typically quite shorter), written solely to practice the craft. Be forgiving with yourself – they’re not supposed to be good; they’re supposed to make you better.
–KTL
1993: The Year of the Rooster.
They say it started with the crows, but it was all about Corvids in general, really. Ravens were the first subjects (more robust), and crows followed closely after, since they would be the truly useful ones. It was a lovely experiment, to be sure. A beautification project: could we teach birds to pick up discarded cigarette butts and dispose of them for us?
With the help of a simple food dispenser to reward them, the answer was a resounding “yes.” It was simple, really: bird spots butt; bird picks up butt; bird deposits butt in dispenser receptacle; bird receives treat.
Simple.
Corvids were the obvious choice, as some scientists in the late 80’s had discovered their ability to pass learned behavior on to friends and offspring. After lab-testing the theory on a handful of captive ravens, a few hundred wild birds were caught, trained, and released, while a pair of dispensers were installed in Central Park. The results were impressive: a year later when a dispenser was installed in Milwaukee, WI, it was immediately flocked by crows who clearly had never been to New York. Now the dispensers are everywhere, on every corner, and ash-trays have disappeared. Flick a cigarette butt away anywhere in North America, and barely five seconds go by before a crow swoops down to snatch up its prize.
Things got weird quick, though.
A little ways into the project, a few dispensers had to be cleaned out after getting clogged with twigs. Some keen-eyed bluejays, observing the racket their cousins the crows were raking in, figured out that the dispensers couldn’t differentiate between actual cigarettes and relatively straight sticks of a similar diameter. A treat would still get dispensed, but the plunger that ensured a clean deposit of the butt into the trash bin underneath wasn’t made for harder substances like wood, and would quickly become jammed. Local parks departments were only just beginning to assess how to fix the problem when it fixed itself: the bloody corpses of the cheating birds were found, pecked to death, piled around the base of the machines.
Sales of singles at cigarette vending machines went through a significant uptick next, and as much as Marlboro and Camel want to claim it was just their rising popularity, you’d have to have your eyes sewn shut to believe them. Who these days hasn’t seen the odd crow, dime clutched in claw, buying smokes from the vending machines to deposit into the dispensers? They even found that they could break a whole cigarette into three pieces and get food for all of them.
Loose change is running low on the street these days, but Big Tobacco is making a killing. The rest of us are getting worried, though. The Corvids are watching.
Most of them are hooked now. Nicotine only transfers so well through the skin of a crow’s foot, but they are pretty small birds; it doesn’t take much. Just last week they pulled a heist on a delivery truck. A murder flew in the open lift-gate while the driver wasn’t looking and made off with a dozen cases of menthols. There has been talk of halting the refills to the treat dispensers, but we’re too worried to go through with it. Who knows what they might do in retaliation?
Despite the authorities best efforts, the Crow Market is thriving. It’s estimated that almost half the country’s crack-cocaine is moved through the claws of these crafty corvids at this point, and that number is expected to grow. The funny part is, no one even smokes cigarettes anymore, it’s too dangerous. No one except the crows.
They still don’t accept bills. Haven’t figured out how to make change yet, but it’s only a matter of time. For now though, whatever you need—drugs, stolen jewelry, shiny baubles, you name it—there’s a crow on a corner who’ll trade you for a stack of shiny dimes, quarters, or simply butts. God help us if anyone ever teaches them that they can use the money to buy food directly.
1993 is not the Year of the Rooster, it is the Year of the Crow.
The stream flows from Allegheny to Kost, gaining color along the way. It’s said the waters are dark and gray across the plains, but by the time it passes my abode the stream is a myriad blend of emerald and blue. To swim in it is to be saturated in ways not meant for mere mortals.
The stream has no name. We all know it well, all the same. All those of Kost, like me and my family. It hushes us to sleep at night, and babbles us awake each morning. Down we go, to draw in the bolts of silver in our nets, flashing against the gems of the riverbed.
Is it the ash and silt of Allegheny, that vibrant, robust, grayscale town, distilled and compressed and tumbled for years down the bends of the stream? Is this the cause of our wealth? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the stream itself—Herself? Himself?—who responds to the love of the people of Kost. She blushes with joy as she rushes to our arms; he showers us with presents to show that our appreciation is reciprocated.
You can learn a lot about a community from the way it treats its waters.
At 15 years of age, Ethan Lovejoy was a shy and awkward boy. His gangly physique screamed of a runt-of-the-litter who had only just hit a growth spurt. He was still shorter and smaller than the other boys, of course, but now he had the physical awkwardness of puberty to contend with as well.
Being lanky and uncoordinated wasn’t what made young Ethan shy and reclusive, however. That was a trait which rose from having perfect recall: every moment of his life, from breakfast conversation with his father and step-mother last week, to emerging from his mother’s womb and taking his first terrified breaths in this world; Ethan remembered it all.
It’s hard to be comfortable communicating with others when the sting of every former embarrassment endured is fresh as the day it happened. When every harsh, cruel word spoken to you rings out clear each time you see the one who’s long since forgotten they spoke it.
It was also this trait that had drawn the Observer to Ethan. He was an oddity in a mundane world—no guarantee of anything beyond this. But such oddities are what such Observers are looking for.
In the wisp of a shadow, in the corner of your eye when you look away—these are where the Observers exist. But they are not the only ones who move among us, and as ill-luck would have it, an Other had found Ethan as well.
The Other fell upon Ethan on his walk home from school. It’s what they do—pre-empt the Change, if possible. Take without confirmation. If they are wrong, the body can be disposed of easily enough. The prime difference between the Obs and Ots is as such: Observers watch; Others act.
The Change is difficult to trigger. Most who can, never will, throughout the whole of their lives. In most it is an aspect of maturity that brings it about. An understanding and clarity rarely achievable in a single lifetime. But in others, it can be triggered by suffering. As both the Observer and Other had suspected was possible, Ethan Lovejoy was one such candidate.
Unsuspected by the Other was that it had acted too late.
Mankind’s greatest defense against suffering is our ability to forget it. Time heals all wounds, it is said. It allows the pain to dull, so that we might learn from it. Not so for Ethan Lovejoy. His knee, once skinned when he tripped and fell on the basketball court, still stung in warning whenever he ran. His wrist, once broken when caught in the car door as a child, still throbbed when a door slammed shut nearby.
Perhaps if Ethan had more time to grow into his condition, to learn, and temper his pain with more pleasurable memories instead, his perspective could have matured. The sorrows of childhood we know lose potency when placed against those endured in adulthood and beyond. But to a child in the midst of it, that suffering is the worst they’ve ever experienced.
So it was that Ethan cried out first in terror, as the dark entity grappled him, and then in agony as his wings ripped free from his back for the first time—great, golden shafts of solid light, arching sharply out from his back like a second set of long, luminous ribs.
Then it was the Other’s turn to cry out: first in surprise as its miscalculation was made evident, and then in despair as the wings instinctively shot forward and down, burning holes through its smokey form. The wing tips flexed, and the Other shredded apart and dissipated into the air.
The Observer, safely distant as usual, retracted slowly away, unseen. It was too late. As the newborn abomination let out a mournful wail, it turned and fled into the early evening mist.
The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus 
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