I have great fears. I’m terrified of guns. I’m terrified of heights, so I write about bridge-builders and gunfighters.
– Michael Ondaatje
Tag: fear
Quotable 447
There’s a saying in all writers’ rooms – it’s either fear or faith. You’re either trying to satisfy your guess about other people’s expectations, or you’re working through the genuine and authentic possibilities of the material.
– David Milch
Quotable 397
Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
– Salvador Dali
Quotable 279
I work on the assumption, or the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
– Clive James
Quotable 226
Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
– John Cleese
#quikfic 19
Horace was determined to act on his counselor’s advice to embrace his fears. So he ran toward the tornado with his arms wide open.
Fiction: Neighborhood Picnic
Sergeant Luckenstiehl wandered around the park, smiling at the children at play, nodding to their parents who were grilling hamburgers and brats and hot dogs – and the occasional steak – and setting the picnic tables. He would soon have to politely decline offers of food. “Regulations,” he would say with genuine regret; these people really knew how to barbecue.
He looked up; there were still a couple of hours before the sun would set behind the 25-story housing complex. The park was in the building’s hollow quadrangle, and Luckenstiehl respected how nicely the residents kept it.
A child ran up to her mother. “Mom! We can’t find Prissy and Janet anywhere!”
Luckenstiehl casually made a quarter turn away from the conversation.
Fiction: Flight
Karen’s single bag had been checked in. Her purse had been searched, and she had been irradiated to ensure she wasn’t a bomb-laden jihadist. Now she waited for her flight to be called.
I’m finally going to do it, she thought. I’m finally getting away from him.
Fiction: The Snowman Enigma
Leonard looked out the window to check on his children’s progress. Leila and her little brother, Leo, were working on a snowman in the front yard. They had made the bottom ball pretty big and had had some difficulty getting the next part of the snowman’s body on top of the base. Now they looked at the head and how high above their reach it needed to go.A moment later, Leonard walked out of the house.
“Need some help with that?”
“Yeah, Daddy. We can’t lift the head high enough,” Leila said.
“Well, I think I can manage that,” Leonard told them, and he knelt down for the snowman’s head. He hoisted it into place and patted some snow to secure it.
Fiction: A Normal Evening
The couple walked out through the double-wide sliding door as a woman pushed an older man in a wheelchair into the building. The door closed, leaving the couple alone outside.
“Now what?” the man quietly asked his wife.
She considered a moment. “Let’s go to Tim’s Pizza.” It was a normal thing for them to do.
They ordered a hand-tossed Canadian bacon and mushroom pizza and root beers. The girl behind the counter smiled at them because she’d been working there just long enough to realize it was their usual order.
They talked of this and that as they ate, just like always. When they left the restaurant, he opened the car door for her, which he usually did. They stopped at Barnaby’s for a bottle of her favorite merlot. “Always keep that in stock for you,” Mr. Barnaby said with a smile. They smiled back and walked out to the car and drove home.
She turned the TV on as he opened the wine and poured it into a couple of glasses. He handed her one glass and sat on the couch next to her. His wine was at his left and his hand lay between them, next to hers but not touching, as usual. They watched a nature documentary and the news through the weather. Then she turned off the TV and they got ready for bed, as they always did at this hour.
They got in bed, shared a perfunctory kiss and said “ ‘Night.” She turned off the light and they lay together in the dark as they had since getting married. The end of a perfectly normal evening.
Until she said, “I’ve set the alarm for 5.”
And unlike any night in their lives together, tears spilled down his cheeks and he took a slow, deep breath to keep from sobbing. That had been their tacit agreement. “OK,” he said quickly.
They had to be back through the double-wide sliding doors at the hospital by 6. Her surgery was scheduled for 7.