writing – Page 2 – Finious's Folly

Short Story: Diary of Forget-Me-Nots

Diary of Forget-Me-Nots by Jeffrey Beaty

I wrote this “Twilight Zone”-like short story about a war diary handed down from soldier to soldier in 1989. This was shortly before I actually joined the military, so it’s attempt to communicate a soldier’s life is pretty much a product of my imagination and watching too many war movies. The very brief story and my inexperience may have made the characters some what shallow stereotypes, but my later experiences in the US Navy during the Gulf War and its aftermath make me think none of those stereotypes are too far off the mark.

As far as the writing goes… I had very little writing experience when I wrote it, but I had written enough at this point to make a fairly good job of it. That and the fact that the story cites two very powerful poems by actual soldier poets from World War I and World War II make it into one of the few bits of my writing that I am not completely embarrassed by sharing. I had gotten the original idea in a college poetry class probably back in 1987, and it had sat around in my notebook and in my imagination for a year or 2 before I actually attempted to write it.

You can download the story in an Adobe PDF document that you should be able to read on most computers, mobile devices and e-readers with the appropriate app. In the near future I hope to add epub and kindle formats too.

To download the ebook, right-click the link below and select, “Save Link As”, or simply click on the link to open the ebook in your computer’s Adobe Reader app.

Download Diary of Forget-Me-Nots
203KB Adobe PDF, 11 pages, about 3900 words.

You Have a Story Worth Telling

You have a story worth telling. First, here is what we’re not entitled to: being listened to by the masses. The honest truth is that attention is earned. But there can be incredible epiphanies that come from telling yourself your story. There are so many possibilities inside you. It’s a worthy thing you do, exploring those paths.

Everybody starts with an audience of one, and nobody has the right to silence you, not even your own inner editor.

Food Court Philosophy

It is strange going to a shopping mall geared for the rich when you have no intention of buying anything and are there merely to pass some time. The obligatory shopping center food court can be a particularly thought provoking place to hang out when you’re not eating. Before lunch the mall itself was still fairly busy but the crowd was primarily the rich doing a little shopping. At lunch though, particularly at the food court, things get really busy and the crowd changes, becoming more blue collar. All these people… Continue reading Food Court Philosophy

Journal Category

The “Journal” category of this blog is mostly just to provide me, (the site’s owner,) with a convenient link to my personal journal posts. As such, (unless you happen to be me,) you won’t see much here, as I suspect I won’t be making many of my journal posts public. Any thing from here that I might deem worth public consumption will probably be added to other categories as well.

But then again, you never know. I may mark something else visible to the public in here every once in a while, just to see if I can sneak one by my non-existent followers…

Creative Reading

“There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson (essayist, poet 1803-1882)