Writing – Page 13 – Chrys Buckley

The Perfect Couple: A Complete Short Story

May 24, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I am sick. Yes, very sick. My psychological problems go well beyond any normal adolescent developmental problems or troubles. I doubt my condition could even be classified by any therapist. I fondly refer to it as the Unconditional Love Disorder. I think it started the moment I read my first cheesy romance novel, at age seven. Ever since I have been totally obsessed with finding unconditional love, someone who would do absolutely anything for me.

Ironically, I have been in some of the worst relationships ever, even though my standards are so demanding. My first boyfriend, Charley, after two months, told me he had to leave me to find his inner self. I’m not stupid, though. I knew he really just wanted to spend more time with his “cult,” whose only purpose was to play Dungeons and Dragons day in and day out. I wonder if that can even really be called a cult, probably not.

Continue reading The Perfect Couple

~~~

This one’s from my senior year of high school. It was my first attempt at writing a satirical story. I knew so many girls (myself included at times) who were so over the top melodramatic when it came to love and boyfriends and I wanted to take it to a whole new level to sort of poke some fun.

Angie suffers from UCS, Unconditional Love Syndrome, a mental fixation on love and romance beyond any normal teenager’s. When she expresses concerns to her best friend, Jade, a science geek who wants to perform Frankenstein experiments on frogs, about her new boyfriend’s loyalty, Jade concocts a contraption and a scheme for Angie to test her new guy’s devotion.

As always, for more writing samples, you can always check out the Samples page. There’s also a section for Published and Early Work (most of this latter section is downright mortifying, but you know, oh well).

~Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, Samples, Writing

Warding Off Eclipses with Sex and Music: A Memoir Chapter

May 17, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I was fourteen. I was an alternative rock goddess. I’d found Nirvana. I was in love with a dead man.

I sat with my brother Randy, my neighbors and my friend Lissa from blind camp in the very back of the backyard on pink plastic chairs. “So, which would you rather do?” said Ryan from across the street, turning to me. We were playing Questions. “Have sex with Kurt Cobain for one hour, Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam for ten hours, or the guy from Silverchair for twenty hours?”

I was a loyal girl. “Kurt,” I answered without a thought. “Okay, Lissa. If you were going out with a guy and he wanted to 69, would you do it?”

Continue Reading–>

~~~

Hahaha, so, it only continues from there. This chapter was published in Shark Reef a few years ago and so is also available through the Published page on the site, but I know sometimes those things can be hard to find so I thought I’d bring it out for this week’s writing sample. Fair warning: it’s not a particularly easy read. Still though, I once was reading a passage from this piece at an Open Mic type deal and was laughing so hard I was crying and could barely read and almost peed my pants.

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Josie – Sunshower Chapter Four

May 10, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

To start this book from the beginning, click here.

“Josie, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Ray Ann and I were unpacking in our room, after a late lunch and a morning in the control room. I took a shirt from my bag, folded it and then placed it in the open drawer in front of me.

“Don’t you think you were a little cruel to Arden before?”

“You heard that?”

“Yeah. I could be mistaken, but I think the guy was trying to be nice to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to be nice to him.”

“Why? Is there something he did that you haven’t told me about?”

Continue reading “Josie – Sunshower Chapter Four” →

Samples, Writing

Moonchild: A Complete Short Story

May 3, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Here’s a short story from about fourteen years ago, that is, as always, mortally embarrassing and totally freakin’ weird:

I stepped carefully over the broken branch on the fork in the road, and turned south. It was barely visible on the dimly lit path. Trees to my right swayed in the crimson autumn breeze, breathing ominous power all about. I felt chills race each other up my spine. The sky was the deepest blue, so deep that it almost looked black. It was sprinkled with the calculated mystery of tiny stars. The moon was high and brilliant. Its iridescence reminded me of hollow, glowing eyes, yet I worshiped its magic. The air was cool and restless around me as I stopped and stood in the darkest clearing these woods had seen. Again the trees shivered, and I saw their shadows dart across the grass.

I had always loved darkness, but during that month, it was a full-fledged obsession. I just couldn’t get enough of it. I wished to drink it, feel it trickling down my eager throat. It had been my only solace since he left, only an eternal month ago, in the middle of October. Here, and only here, could I wallow in my sweet agony.

Continue reading “Moonchild: A Complete Short Story” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Constant Eclipse: A Memoir Chapter

April 26, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I was scared that Mom or Dad would kill me in my sleep. Dad was an FBI agent and he had a gun that he sometimes kept in the house. I thought even he was afraid of Mom, who screamed all the time, got hysterically mad and spanked me when I was little. It was her I listened for as I laid in bed in my thin yellow nightgown, reading Nancy Drew by the light of my night-light, while I tried not to think about getting murdered.

My parents’ bedroom door opened and I heard Mom’s sharp footsteps in the hallway. They sounded mad. I waited curled on my side with the book under the covers and screamed No, Mom, No! inside my head. If either of them came for me tonight, I’d jump out the window. I didn’t care that my room was upstairs. I’d jump anyway, land mangled on the driveway and run across our yard as fast as I could. I’d pound on our next-door neighbor’s door. If she answered, I’d tell her my parents were chasing me and beg her to protect me. If she didn’t believe me, I’d run faster and pound harder at the next house and go through the neighborhood with wild desperation until I found someone who would keep me safe. It might not last. My parents might follow me, shoot into the distance or use the authorities to take me back, but that was like the second story window and the driveway; if I wanted to survive, I’d have to think about it later.

The bathroom door opened and Mom went in. I kept freezing. She finally stalked back to her room and I breathed. The quiet lasted a few full chapters.

I got up and went to my window. It faced the driveway and our front yard with its giant tree. The moon was out, maybe full, I couldn’t tell. It was big and white and round and it cast shadows through the branches onto the grass. I had a huge feeling of dark and mysterious magic in my chest. If I could touch it, it would be like touching my soul. It would make me huge too, and magic. I stood watching the moon, the tree, and the shadows until I was finally tired.

Continue Reading–>

~~~

Yeah, it’s just a little dark, I know. This is what I was invited to read at “The Best Memoirists Pageant Ever” at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC in 2007. So the picture is from that event. Fun times.

Fun fact: I was kinda freaking about reading this piece out loud and so a good friend had me read parts to her beforehand, and from the first sentence we were laughing our asses off. It’s not really funny, it just somehow struck us that way. Sometimes all you can do is laugh. And that’s okay.

Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Violets are Blue: A Complete Short Story

April 19, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

I awake from a dream and look around me. I’m in my backyard. Sunset has come and gone. The sky is getting darker as each new moment passes. I yawn and stretch my arms, and surprisingly I don’t feel at all tired. I don’t know how long ago I fell asleep. It feels it could have been hours. I feel refreshed as I never have before.

I reach beside me and pick a violet. They are my favorite type of flower. Maybe I feel some likeness to the flower. They aren’t blue as the saying goes, but a beautiful shade of purple. I, too, feel I am often misjudged. I’m seen to all as a plain and simple girl, which isn’t even close to the truth. I put the flower to my nose and sniff it. Violets don’t really smell like much, but I smell it anyway. Instantly I’m overwhelmed with a wave of exhaustion. I lay my head down on the grass, holding the violet close to my heart. Soon I am asleep.

The dream continues. Or it returns. I do not know which, but I know the dream is not new.

Continue Reading –>

~~~

I wrote this story as a junior in high school, and it won first place in my school’s short story contest that year. It was partly inspired by the cover of Alice in Chains’ Dirt CD.

Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!

~Chrys

Samples, Writing

Grumpy Bear

April 12, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

The Care Bear Grumpy Bear. He was blue and soft and bear-shaped and sat on white shelves across the room from my bed. I had a bunch of Care Bears–Cheer Bear and Love Bear and Sunshine Bear and Lucky Bear and all that–and they all had these white patches on the stomach with a picture. Instead of a rainbow or hearts or a sun or a shamrock or whatnot, Grumpy had a perfect storybook storm cloud with little drops of rain falling from the cloud on his stomach. There may even have been a zigzag of lightning on there. I loved him best. Even if I couldn’t articulate it then, he was the most like me. I loved storms and thunder and lightning. I loved the rain. All the other bears were great but they sorta reminded me how my mom was always telling me to be more cheerful–even assigning me the line in a Girl Scout Brownie ceremony, “I pledge to be cheerful,” or some such. But I wasn’t a cheerful child. Grumpy got me in a way the other bears could not.

~~~

I thought that instead of posting some small excerpt from a longer piece (which can come w/it’s own complications at times) that is in the midst of being revised, I might post some short, self-contained responses to writing exercises. Not as polished, for sure, but there’s something to be said for that.

I’m taking a memoir writing class this term, and one of our writing exercises was to describe a familiar object from childhood, something you could see in your room, for ten minutes. Then we talked about the objects in small groups (my object prompted another group member to ask, “What does that say about you?” in a tone I’m not quite sure how to interpret) and discussed whether we could look them up somehow to verify our memories of them. I can but haven’t yet. I’m going to post the sample and then I’ll google image search it out and see how it measures up and include the pic in this post.

So, like I said, just off the cuff, no editing, no pre-planning, just, there it is.

For more writing samples, check out the Samples Page, Older Works, and Published.

What childhood object or toy do YOU remember? Freewrite for ten minutes if you want.

~Chrys

TV, Writing

Breaking Bad: Chekhov’s Ricin

April 10, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

It’s been awhile since a full Breaking Bad post, and I do plan to still do posts on the remaining episodes, just not on the schedule I originally thought.

Beware: This post will contain mentions of things that happen in Season 2, Season 4, and last summer’s episodes from Season 5. Continue at your own risk.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ricin on BrBa lately. Today, in a memoir writing class, my prof mentioned Chekhov’s gun, and it got me thinking about Walt and his ricin once again. For those that aren’t aware, Anton Chekhov was a Russian short story writer (and, I just learned from wiki, a physician). He said in several different instances and ways that if you plant a gun somewhere in your scene early on in a story, it must eventually go off, or there’s no reason to put it there in the first place.

Continue reading “Breaking Bad: Chekhov’s Ricin” →

Samples, Writing

Summer of Dreams – Prologue

April 5, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

Note: This was written when I was sixteen. Cringe cringe wince.

“You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth.”

When I look back on this summer I get this heartsick feeling, this desire to make sure that I’ll always remember it all. There’s no way I could let it become another half-forgotten memory swirling around my head with the millions of others. Writing this brings smiles to my face and tears to my eyes. No matter what, though, I’ll record all of it. I couldn’t bear to let all the events, memories and dreams just fade away.

Continue reading “Summer of Dreams – Prologue” →

Science, Writing

Did She Really Just Say That?!

April 2, 2013July 1, 2024 Chrys Buckley

So, I love Anne Lamott. It’s been awhile since I read it, but Bird by Bird was one of my favorite writing advice books. I’ve taken several writing classes with two wonderful women – Janet Thomas and Susan Reese – and both have read her “shitty first drafts” excerpt to encourage the class to write. I find her funny and wise and kind-hearted. There is a section of Bird by Bird that I can open to naturally, even taking the book off the shelf after years without touching it. I’ll excerpt it here:

       “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the light on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”
      “Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.
     “If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act–truth is always subversive.”