When I was in college oh, so very many years ago, I discovered what millions already know: writing can be damned hard work. This was brought home to me during the winter quarter of my senior year, when I found myself taking 17 credits on-campus and 8 by correspondence, all in a mad push to graduate in the spring. Why it was so important to me to graduate in the spring escapes me now; it wasn’t like I knew what I was going to do with a BA in English, but still, there it was. I was determined to graduate “on schedule,” and as a result found myself writing papers on Victorian Literature, American Romantic Literature, Writing Theory, World Literature, Old Testament History, and Fish Symbolism in Twentieth-Century Poetry. I was also directing a play.
Enter writer’s block. I found myself staring at black screens, a malevolent little orange dash flashing in the upper left corner, convinced I would fail. I would probably be sitting there yet, had I not discovered The Finn.
The Finn was the illegitimate child of all that Fish Symbolism, Romantic American Lit, and a typo. Late one night, instead of typing a research paper, I found myself typing, “The Finn slid slowly through the water…” From there on, it was easy. It had to be one of the lakes in Northern Minnesota, where many Finns settled, of course, and since he had two “n’s” it meant a man in a canoe, rather than a sturgeon, muskellunge, or pike. Sturgeon are bottom-feeders, anyway.
What was the Finn doing? Why was he paddling across the lake? I know nothing about Finns except that sometimes I think some of them deal with reindeer, but certainly this Finn wasn’t, not in that lake.
And so, as is my custom when I know nothing about my subject, I began to speculate, invent, and embroider. Before I had gotten the Finn safely extricated from his current predicament I had nicely busted up my writer’s block. And so it was that The Finn became a part of my writing system. When I get stuck, I write a Finn story.
And now you can, too. Here’s a bright, shiny clean thread I’ve set up for you and the Finn to get acquainted. Finn stories have only one rule: Events must follow one another. Logic can be strained, and even broken, as long as the writer acknowledges it by saying, “Through a chain of events that defy examination…” or some such thing. Coincidence is encouraged. Terrible puns are rewarded. Bad taste is de rigeur. I’ll start off in the time-honored fashion. Let’s see where this takes us:
The Finn slid slowly through the water. His heavily-laden canoe rode low in the lake. Hungry pike were circling. A storm was coming on. But The Finn noticed none of these things, because he was still reeling from the shock of having fallen in love and being heartbroken, all in the space of about five minutes.
He had portaging south from his summer fishing grounds in scenic Lake Eloise to his winter fishing grounds in the Bahamas when he happened upon a fine figure of a woman in an unseasonably heavy coat between Lake Eloise and Lake Superior. She was picking berries, or at least pretending to. Starved for female companionship he dropped his canoe–stoving a nasty hole in one side–wiped the sweat out of his eyes, slicked back his flowing black locks, and started across the meadow toward her.
She heard him, turned around, and grunted. A less discerning eye than The Finn’s might have stopped at the hirsute countenance, the black nose, the long fangs, but The Finn had been raised on the theory that True Beauty lies within. Besides, it had been pretty darned quiet up there at Lake Eloise. Women were nonexistent. The Finn was perhaps not as choosy as he might have been in, oh, say the Bahamas, just before he began his migration back north in the spring.
“Hey, Bebé,” said The Finn, going for the sophisticated French Canadian effect. Viva l’amour!
The woman grunted again. The Finn seized her in his manly arms, bent the astonished female backward, and planted a wet one right on her kisser.
They held the pose just long enough for The Finn to realize this woman had been eating a lot of berries, that she badly needed a manicure, and that she was With Someone. No stranger to the perils of love, The Finn knew precisely what to do. He…
What?
Add your two cents’ worth. Once a month I’ll put all contributors’ email addresses in and draw a name. The winner gets three free book cover sketches.
…returned the woman to her upright position and tipped his hunting cap.
“Pardonnez moi, Bebe,” he said. “I mistook you for my mother.”
The woman, perhaps understandably irritated, slapped him across the face. Fortunately, the Finn’s manly stubble was so thick and tough, it gave his failed amour a manicure rather than opening gashes in his cheek clear to next Sunday.
The woman went back to her berrying, and the Finn went back to his broken canoe, carrying his broken heart with him.
Somehow, he repaired the hole, and now he was again sliding through the water, the heaviness of his sorrow weighing down the canoe.
Hey, that wasn’t Sara–that was ME! I’m Sara Deurell’s ever-lovin’ mom, and I’m here visiting her, and my comment got registered under her name. Dang!
Okay, then:
The Finn was so distracted, he failed to notice the huge tentacle writhing to the surface of the lake. Before he knew it, the tentacle had snatched him from the canoe and pulled him below the surface.
Pulling his trusty hunting knife from its sheathe on his belt, the Finn slashed at the offending appendage.
A squamous voice in his head said, “Desist, mortal! Know thou that I am Cthulhu, chief of the Elder Gods. Come thou to me and know damnation and eternal horror.”
“Elder schmelder,” the Finn thought back. “I’m not coming to you, I’m going to the Bahamas, you betcha!”
With a mighty slice, the Finn parted the tentacle from its owner and popped out of the water with such velocity he went three feet into the air and landed in the canoe, the force of his oblique landing driving it the rest of the way across the lake and up onto shore.
The force of THAT landing caused him to throw back his arms and he lost his grip on the slippery tentacle, so that it flew back into the water.
“Dang it!” said the Finn, blushing at his rough language. “Some people don’t like raw fish, but if you knew sushi like I know sushi….”
MA
Undaunted, he dove back into the churning waters, recovered the tentacle after another brief but tense conversation with the Great God Cthulhu, swam to shore, and took a rubbery yet strangely satisfying bite.
Before he could take a second he was interrupted by his Lady Love and her mysterious companion, who had worked their way around the lake, flipping salmon onto shore and consuming it raw. The Finn was forced to acknowledge that they did indeed know sushi like he knew sushi.
Drawn by the powerful alllure of The Finn’s sushi breath, they abandoned fishing and set their sights on the now partially-consumed tentacle.
…slowly righted the mysterious woman, taking care to gently steady her to her feet. In a very meticulous fashion, he began to smooth down the massive amount of wayward dirty- blonde hair that had stuck to the fresh berry juice half dried across her face. It seemed an eternity before he could see that beneath the tangled mess, her flesh was quite pale and a studded collar encircled her thin neck.
“Forgive me this indulgence mon ami. It’s just that I haven’t seen another living soul in ages and now that I have found you after all these years, you must know that I intend to take you with me.”
As the Finn uttered these words, the woman’s lips curled into what he somewhat pompously imagined was a relieved half grimace. Lightning shot across the sky, stretching it’s bony fingers around the berry tree beneath which the unusual couple stood.
It was in the pulsing flashes of what can only be described as the devil’s strobe that the Finn glimpsed the outline of the Someone the woman was With. It seemed to be part creature, part giant but the Finn found it’s physical countenance to be irrelevant as the Someone reached upwards into the lightning and with a thunderous voice pronounced “It is done! She will now collect her last berry, walk into the waters of the Wishing Well of Hell and toss it into the center. Thence, the sea creatures shall decide!”
Now, most people possessing more logic than desperation would have exited this bizarre predicament post-haste. Not the Finn however. He was prone to welcome the fascinating, to expect the bizarre and to face intense danger with his greatest virtue…an utter disregard for common sense. Besides, he was oh…so…lonely.
…dropped her to the ground, took off at a run and shoved a wet blanket in the canoes hole. Now you may think the Finn was frightened away by the woman’s companion. Not so, it just so happened that a mighty swarm of mosquitoes came out of the forest attracted by all that berry juice. So while the Finn suffered from a broken heart and canoe, at least he didn’t get West Nile and lived to seduce another unsuspecting female back in town.
Nancy
N. R. Williams, fantasy author
By the way, Sherry’s art is wonderful. She made me a fabulous book cover. Thank you Sherry.
Nancy
N. R. Williams, fantasy author
Thanks, Nancy! I look forward to seeing it in print.