I bought an ice cream sandwich from a vending machine during a break between classes on campus. After sitting down at a nearby table, I pulled a book from my backpack and opened it to finish up some homework before my next class.

“Mind if I sit?” a girl asked. The room was crowded, but I was the only one occupying this table.

“Help yourself,” I said, glancing up from my book.

That was my first look at Julie. She was beautiful, blonde, and had bright green eyes that danced with friendliness and life.

We chatted for a bit and somehow I mustered up the courage to ask for her number, then called her a few days later and took her on a motorcycle ride and a picnic up the canyon.

We stopped at a secluded picnic area near the river and sat down on a blanket in the shade. As we began getting acquainted, everything about her made her seem more and more like the perfect girl. She was intelligent, fun, charming, confident, thoughtful, and easily in the top 1% of beautiful girls I had ever seen, whether in the movies or real life.

But just as I began getting ideas about pursuing her romantically and seeing if it turned into something permanent, she began to hum a pleasant little tune under her breath, and birds in the nearby trees began to sing along. A pair of butterflies flitted by, hovering briefly over her head like a halo, suspended in a stray shaft of afternoon sunlight. I felt quite certain that a young deer raised its head to listen, hidden somewhere in the nearby undergrowth.

“Oh, great,” I thought dejectedly. “I should have known.”

Julie was a Disney princess. If only I had been a handsome prince, I might have stood a chance. Then we could have lived happily ever after.

But no, I had learned all too well many years ago that I was the ugly duckling, and I had no place with such a perfect princess.

In hindsight, I ought to have recalled the end of the ugly duckling story. The part where it turns into a beautiful swan. Maybe I was a handsome prince after all, but whether I was or not, in the end, made no difference. Instead of reality, my deep-down, unconscious beliefs and expectations dictated my behavior and destiny, and despite staying friends for a while longer, I never even held Julie’s hand.

Discussion Quotes & Questions

1. What do you believe about yourself? What do you feel perfectly capable of accomplishing and what could simply never work out? What do you deserve to enjoy, and what is “out of your league”?
2. How have such beliefs steered you through the billion opportunities that stand there waiting for you to recognize them every single day and hour of your life? Do they encourage you to dream big and go for it, or to know your place and play it safe by staying small?
3. When was the last time you wanted something but didn’t try to get it?
4. List at least three things you’ve wanted for a long time but have not pursued.
5. Pretend you’re finally going to “go for” those things and get them! What feelings does such a decision stir inside you? Do you feel excited or uncomfortable and afraid?
   
   “You act based on what you expect, not what you want.” – Jennice Vilhauer
   
6. Why haven’t you pursued those things?
7. Does it have to do with expectations? Do you think it would be too difficult or that you would fail in the end?
8. Do you believe that such deep-down expectations can change?
9. If so, how?

…

The post Expectations appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

“Use your words,” her mother often chided to help Jesse through frustration and impatience of childhood, and once she mastered those infinite combinations of letters, those endless compilations of phonemes, her childhood seemed to fall behind her, and everyone around her began to treat her, more or less, as an adult.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” she often replied to children who teased her about her advanced vocabulary, “but words will never hurt me.” She stopped saying that after one child picked up a small rock and hurled it at her, striking her in the neck and bruising her sternocleidomastoid.

Even her father, a school psychologist at the local junior high school (who secretly wished to be a motivational speaker, Jesse felt certain), reinforced her powerful conviction that words shape reality each time he reminded her that, “Your reality is nothing more than the story you tell yourself.”

The teachers she most admired further entrenched her faith in nouns, verbs and prepositions, showing real-life, world-changing applications throughout history, including the Civil Rights Movement and famous quips like “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

As her knowledge and understanding of the wider world expanded, so did her confidence and her willingness to step into new roles and try out new experiences. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked herself simply. “If anything goes awry, words will always be there to rescue me and set everything aright.”

During freshman year of college, in a creative writing course, Jesse met her soulmate, Jimmy. They were kindred spirits, sharing an equal fascination with all things lexical. Together, they attended plays, sat in the shade on campus and read, and argued about their favorite punctuation. Jesse loved the interrobang above all others, for obvious reasons, while Jimmy revered the pilcrow more than it deserved. Sure, it was cute, but utterly useless. Somehow, though, she found it in her heart to forgive his lack of practicality and taste.

Incrementally, inevitably, they fell irreversibly in love.

They married after spring semester, and by winter, a bouncing baby boy entered their home. The child was adorable, much of the time, but less so when he cried, when he filled his diapers with the most offensive-smelling goo several times each day, when he peed in the bath, which often hit her in the face, and when he laughed and laughed at that like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen in his entire, short life.

Jesse longed for her past when she had plenty of time to read, but now, even when the infant fell asleep, she felt too tired to crack open a book, and even when she did, she was too exhausted to sink into its plot like a warm bath, to absorb its comforting illusions, and to escape this unruly and unkind reality.

The evening after the toddler’s first birthday party, when a weary Jesse realized that she had only made it HALF WAY through diapers, and that the “terrible twos” would then begin by the time potty training stopped, that she might need to wait until the child turned five and spent half the day at school before she could hope to properly balance her life again, sank to her knees in despair and wept. How could everything have come to this?!

The desperate interrobang at the end of her question comforted her just enough to regain the slightest grip on her senses. On her inner strength. On her determination, and above all, on her savior – words! Words had never let her down before, and they would not desert her now in her hour of need! “Use my words!” she reminded herself, a desperate hope suddenly welling up inside.

Two words, that is. Two words that would fix everything! A sentence, sort of, despite the lack of predicate. An exclamation, actually, which she had learned from her creative writing professor the year before.

Jesse slowly rose from the floor. She stood, tentatively at first, then firm and determined. Yes, she would utter the words. She would make all the bad go away. She would set everything into its proper place.

She took half a dozen steps to the front door, opened it, then turned her face back toward the home’s interior and its two occupants, and shouted the words:

“Plot twist!”

With that, she stepped outside and strode away into the gathering dusk.

She didn’t know where she would go, or where her new plot would carry her, but she would work everything out in good time. She would revise as needed and create happy endings to each and every day. Reality was nothing more than the story she told herself, she told herself, and she would tell herself the best story she possibly could.

The post Plot Twist! appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.

I found this book years ago and LOVE it, and wanted to pass it along to all other aspiring writers.

It’s MORE than just a thesaurus of positive traits, it ALSO includes a REALLY INTERESTING forward section explaining character arcs to help design your whole plot. Very helpful. Very concise and readable.

Get yours from Amazon at bit.ly/ptraitthes

Even if you don’t want to buy the whole thing, download the free sample and get a lot of the value!

While you’re at it, also check out the Negative Trait Thesaurus: bit.ly/ntraitthes

And the Emotion Thesaurus: bit.ly/emotiont

Okay, fine, you don’t want to read a post on UtahFF.com without a short story. Here’s a super-super-super-quick one for you:

Once upon a time, a hard-working, diligent, industrious, tireless, indefatigable, unrelenting writer ordered The Positive Trait Thesaurus, which saved her so much time and energy that she also took up water skiing, basket weaving, and even earned a degree in Russian.

The End.

Yeah, I know, that was the worst short story ever. Aren’t ya glad it was so short?!

The post Awesome writer’s thesauri appeared first on Utah Fast Fiction.