Writing with a Flare (part II)

Spent Flare

Ok, so the challenge was thrown down and I accepted, I would write a descriptive paragraph about a flare instead of a candle.

We have 4 emergency flares, I think three is the legal requirement, and with a glint in my eye, I ask Himself if I can use one. He stares at me. You know you can't light that thing in the truck.

Indignant, I reply, Of course I know, I'm not a dummy! Then to myself, Damn, I was gonna do it inside, party pooper.

So here is the second attempt at the assignment about description.

I am sitting on the rough, black pavement of a truck stop parking lot in Michigan.  It's cloudy but hot and my hands are sticky with sweat. I am holding a red emergency flare, a 15 inch cylinder that looks a lot like Wile E Coyote's Acme dynamite.

I pull the cap off and use it to strike the top of the flare like a match on steroids.  A thrill runs through me, like shooting a gun for the first time, I feel powerful and scared.  Strike one. Strike two. Strike three.

Crack, whooompf! It's lit now!  It's brighter and hotter than I expected, the acrid smoke fills my nostrils, threatening to burn the hairs. I step back. I perch excitedly on a warm concrete barrier upwind. A seagull screams above me and my heart races. The flame is the color of Dorothy's ruby slippers but so bright it hurts to look for more than a second.

It's more macho sparkler than gentle flame sending hissing, buzzing sparks straight up. The sound like a thousand cicadas thrumming in a tree in summer. Two inches left, it won't be long now, the package said 20 minutes and it's been 15 at least. The flame is getting fatter, less stable.  Half inch left, it's almost to the cardboard packing but still it hisses and sparks. There, that's it, the end. The macho spark has turned into an average flame, like Clark Kent after a hard day being Superman.

Writing with a Flare (literally)

Emergency Flare and Me

So we've been on the road for 3 years and I still enjoy it but there comes a time when a girl has to try something new.

I manage the business aspects of our little company, writing down lots of numbers in a book, tracking our cost per mile and flipping around the radio dial. If you happen to read this and work for the IRS, I do A LOT more than that but for security reasons, you know, I'm not saying it. I Just felt the need for a creative outlet.

Enter the online creative writing course.

It started last Wednesday and I am really enjoying it, I don't know why I didn't do an online course before now. Well yes I do, I'm lazy but that's not the point here.

So we get a couple of assignments and I do them right away, post them (hand them in, as it were) and I'm off to a running start. Then we get a benign little assignment to write one paragraph about a lit candle. Just one paragraph using all the descriptive power we can muster to describe the burning candle.  I didn't have a candle the day the assignment came out but I wasn't too worried, I figured I could buy one at the next truck stop.

Twenty-four hours and 3 truck stops later I was still without a candle.

No problem, I know what a candle looks like, I'll just imagine it and write that down.

I stare intently into the middle distance trying to conjure an invisible candle.  My mind is a blank. I have no idea what a candle looks like.  I search the truck for something flammable. We have emergency flares, those suckers would glow  I bet, but quickly dismiss this, the assingment is for a candle.  I have matches, I'll just hold those and write what I see.  I light the first match and quickly write down the colors and shapes. It fizzes out. I light another, it fizzes faster than the first. I light another, drop it and burn my bare thigh, maybe I should be dressed for this exercise.

I think of the flares again.

I search for something else to light. A banana, my pencil?  I know;  a rolled up paper towel! I am excited, this will work, I think.

I roll it tightly, twisting it's paper neck.  It too fizzles, even quicker than the matches.  I search some more. I need some kind of accelerant. I make another paper towel roll, this time dipped in engine oil. I light it. It stays lit, hurray!

The truck fills with smoke, my nostrils sting, the embers flit around my bed. This is no warm glow, it's a conflagration. I drown the oily flame thrower, clean up the mess and write eight sentences about a flaming snake.

Still the flares beckon...


I managed to write about an imaginary candle but felt like a fake and a fraud. I didn't have a candle and surely the teacher and everyone in the class would know and I would be laughed out of the class and rode out on a rail, whatever that means. So I admitted (whined) I didn't have a candle and one of the students said why not write about the flare since the whole thing is supposed to be creative writing.


Now I had a challenge and I can't resist a challenge!

Next episode: The lighting of the flare ( this is not a dramatic pause, it's a pee break)