Will word for food

So – I’m doing a creative writing course at the moment – and I thought I’d share some of the homework I’ll be doing. I’ll also (on the Twitter suggestion of @catnip) be sharing it before and after feedback. So here’s my first homework, for which I’m still awaiting feedback – should be available next week. In the mean time, feel free to feed back yourselves – let’s see if you think the same as my teacher!

The lesson leading up to this was about cliche and similies – and as part of that we produced some mixed-up, non-cliched similies. Choosing a favourite, we then wrote a page of… anything, really, around it. This is mine. My simile? “As quiet as a sleeping beatnik”.

The bars

There was a choice he made when he started going to the new bar. He could be one of the cool guys with the confidence or he could be the endearingly shy type. Going to a new bar was reinvention. It was a chance to shake off the rejection of the last – or to drop the commitment expected of the successes. So he always had this choice.

In terms of success, cool and confident was nudging ahead of endearing and shy by five to four. Logic dictated that he should stick with the more successful technique and further refine it, but he felt sorry for Shy. He wanted to give him another chance. He was certainly more likeable; more likeable to other men, because he was less of a threat. And he got more follow-up, received more emails and voicemails than Brash. If I ever stop doing this, he thought, I will be Shy forever. I will find my attractive barmaid and we will settle down and I will get a cat. I will spend my Sundays on sunshine patios, dozing with tea, quiet as a sleeping beatnik.

So this evening he became Shy again, decided to give him a last hurrah and hoped that things would work out OK for him. He packed his challenging books and his pens and notepad into his battered satchel. He tugged on his cordroy jacket and his brogues. He left his tissues and his receipts in his pockets. He took the padded wallet, the one which didn’t show the ring of rubber so brazenly imprinted into the leather. He took a little less care about shaving. He took the bus.

Shy ended the evening laying on his back with a woman standing over him, although the route there was not quite what he’d hoped or planned. Shy, he realised, was a nice bloke. He did have many redeeming features. He probably was the one who would do the retirement from this game. But he certainly wasn’t the one to deal with the barmaids who moved jobs and swapped stories.