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My Robert is Dead!

July 1, 2016 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

My Robert is Dead!

A bus stop somewhere in Northern Utah. It’s nearly eight o’clock in the evening and the summer sun is just now realizing that it has overstayed its welcome. A woman, about fifty years old, sits on the bench, scratching her newly styled hair. It’s short, curly, and dyed the color of old blood. A man, who can’t be younger than seventy, shuffles breathlessly to the bench and lowers himself beside the woman. His knees pop audibly. In one arm, he cradles a small gift.

The heat from the bench seeps through the old man’s stiff trousers. He shifts his weight and becomes aware of a sour odor coming from his crotch. “My doctor told me the sunshine’ll do me good,” he says, dabbing sweat from his brow with a once-pink handkerchief, “but I think he just wants me to die faster. Feels like California heat, don’t it?”

The woman stares at her off-brand sneakers and says nothing. She wraps her arms across her protuberant belly and begins rocking back and forth.

The old man wonders if he’d spoken loudly enough. He’s used to being asked to speak up by his wife and daughter. It’s been nearly ten years since his hearing began to fail him, but he obstinately refuses to wear his hearing aid. If my ears are meant to go, he thinks, let them go. There’s not much worth listening to anyway.

“I said it’s terribly hot,” the old man says, nearly shouting. “It started as such a nice day though.”

“It didn’t,” the woman says flatly.

The old man shrugs. “It wasn’t too hot this morning. Not too cold either—not that I mind the cold much. I’m not one of those old men who ache whenever the wind blows.” This is a lie. He aches all the time, and even now he longs for a warm bath and some Aleve to ease the pain in his joints.

“Who cares about the weather?” The woman looks up at the old man for the first time. Her face is yellow and wrinkled, aged beyond her years, and her eyes are wide and trembling. She looks away suddenly. “I just… I’m sorry.” She isn’t, really. “It’s just, there’s more important things than the weather.”

“That’s true,” the old man says. He thinks about his daughter in California, her present sitting in his lap, wrapped in gold, tied with a red velvet bow. Will she really come like she said? If her mother were here, she would make her, but… “You know, my daughter’s supposed to come up for Independence Day.” He gestures to the gift. “It was her birthday last week. I tried to call her, but you know how kids are. She texted me.” He scowls at the word. “Anyway, I got her the first book in that Outlander series. My wife was simply obsessed with them. I didn’t wrap it though. Had it wrapped in the bookstore. It’s poorly done, but what can you expect nowadays? Everyone’s in a hurry over something. Not my wife, though; she used to do all the wrapping. But that was before—”

The woman suddenly begins to sob. She covers her face and bends low over her knees. She’s making horrible gasping noises between cries like a child with whooping cough.

The old man is stunned. He sets the gift to his side and slides closer to the woman, tentatively placing a hand on her shoulder. “Now then, what’s this? Did I say something to upset you?”

She looks up at the old man, her brow tightly corrugated, her expression defensive—shocked, even. Then the corners of her mouth curl down and her face screws up into a mask of pure misery. “It’s my son.”

The old man’s mouth, which hitherto has hung slack with confusion, forms an ‘O,’ and he straightens up in his seat (as straight as a seventy-something-year-old man can, in any case). He looks at the passing cars for a moment, thinking how to start. The woes of aging parents is an epidemic that no doctor cares to address.

“Let me guess,” he says. “Your son promised to come up for the holiday, too, but now he’s not sure he can make it.”

The woman sobs even louder than before. The old man pats her back.

“The older you get,” he says, “the more knowledge you accumulate. Now, I’m very old, and I like to think I know a thing or two. And one of the most important things I’ve learned is that children are their own people. We try to teach them right, to give them everything we can, but sometimes there’s nothing we can do. Now, your son, does he live far?”

“He’s dead!” the woman shouts, drawing the attention of a young couple who are passing by on the sidewalk. They take one look at the two elderly folk sitting on the bench and hurry by like old age is catching. It is; they just haven’t accepted that yet.

So her son is dead, the old man thinks. What a cruel turn of fate. Death and its first cousin Sorrow have made themselves intimate with him, and he understands their debilitating effect. It’s comforting, in a horrible sort of way, to meet others who have been likewise acquainted.

“Excuse me,” the old man says, “that is something quite different. I’m sorry for your loss, truly I am. I should have known. You see, death is no stranger to me. My wife—”

“He loved that stupid bike,” the woman says with a sigh. She wipes the snot from her nose with the inside of her sleeve, leaving a shiny trail on her wrist. She seems to be preparing herself for a recital. “I told him a thousand times to be careful on the streets.”

“Ah, yes,” the old man says, “motorcycles are dangerous machines.”

“Motorcycles? No, it was nothing like that; that would have made sense, but this?”

The old man gives the woman a confused look.

“My son had been trying to lose weight for years,” she continues. “He worked from home. He didn’t get out much. He was the kindest man, but he worked from home, you see? I bought him a bicycle for Christmas one year.” Her lips tighten, threatening to let loose another wave of cries, but she stays strong. The old man is glad for it. “He loved that stupid bike. He loved to ride it. He said—he said it felt like flying.” She smiles weakly. “He rode it to work every day. Every day.”

There is a high pitched screech as the route 446 bus slows to a stop in front of the pair. The woman quickly wipes her eyes and digs through her purse for her ticket. The old man pulls out his own ticket from his shirt pocket; it’s not his bus. Apparently, it’s not the woman’s either, because she replaces the ticket, hugs her purse close, and resumes her bent posture.

“You know,” the old man says, rubbing his chin, “I used to ride when I was younger. I didn’t even have a car in those days. Of course, it was much safer then. The roads weren’t filled with so many people. I don’t even drive now. I could, if I wanted to,” another lie, “but it’s not worth the risk. People get crazy behind a wheel. It’s no surprise so many bicyclists are killed each year. He was struck then? By a car?”

The woman bites her lip, looks toward heaven, gives it a knowing, sarcastic look, and shakes her head woefully. “Oh, he was struck alright, but not by a car.”

The old man blinks. He is becoming weary of this woman’s oblique explanations. He considers that he might have avoided this conversation altogether if he had just stayed home and ordered his daughter’s book from Amazon like everyone else did these days. But there’s no help for it now.

A mother and daughter strolling by, hand in hand, catches his attention. He notices that the daughter is wearing a heavy felt shirt. It’s too hot for a shirt like that, he thinks. If his wife were here, she would have a word or two for that mother. But she isn’t. How long had it been? Six months now? He realizes the woman has started speaking again and forces himself to give her his full attention.

“My Robert was very conscientious,” she says. “Every time we spoke over the phone, he assured me that he was being careful. We spoke almost every day. He loved me dearly. Every day, that is, until… Until he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” the old man says, now utterly perplexed. “My God, by whom?”

“By God.”

The old man’s face contracts into an expression of incredulity, but, becoming aware of it, he quickly changes it to one of deep thought. Where is his bus?

“God plays a role in all our deaths,” he says sagely.

“He murdered my Robert,” the woman insists. “My Robert was riding home from work in the rain—I told him never to ride in the rain; the roads aren’t safe; people can’t see; no one can see… But he loved that bike, the bike that I gave him. God struck him dead with a bolt of lightning, not five miles from where we sit. A bolt of lightning, straight through the head. The doctors said it was the metal bike that drew the lightning. The bike that I gave him.”

The woman is a mess now: fluids leak from her eyes, nose, and mouth, and she’s pulling at the sides of her shirt, writhing in her seat.

At this point, the old man feels a powerful desire to run, if only his knees could take it. But being unable to escape, he feels obligated to say something. He touches the woman once, lightly on the shoulder, then withdraws his hand as if from a hot stove and buries it in his pants pocket. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s a bad turn,” is all he can think to say.

“He killed him. He killed my son. And for what? My son was an honest, religious man. He was a good man. He was a good man. I taught him to be a good man, to care for his mother. And who will care for me now? I’m alone! I’ve been alone for years now! How could God be so cruel?”

The old man looks up at the darkening sky, feeling suddenly very out of place and disoriented. Years? Her son has been dead not for days or weeks, but years? He looks around the street, at the cars speeding by, his vision blurring their lights into streams of yellow and red. Where is his damn bus?

“Excuse me,” says a young man, stopping in front of the bench. His sudden appearance halts the spinning in the old man’s head, pulling him back to reality.

The young man wears a large, greasy coat, patched with silver tape. The hood is pulled down low over his eyes. His large work boots are covered in something black. He looks at the old man uncertainly and says, “I just ran out of gas. I’m trying to get home to Provo. Could you spare a dollar?”

The old man stares dumbly at the young man for a moment. He has heard this routine a hundred times. It’s almost always bullshit. But it doesn’t bother him anymore. He derives a strange sort of pleasure from giving money to those who have the bravery to ask for it. Small amounts of course. Rarely more than a dollar. But it’s a pleasure he seeks out when he can. He remembers himself and leans to one side, reaching for his wallet.

“Excuse us,” the woman says, her tone an affectation of distress, putting a restraining hand on the old man’s arm. “If you don’t mind, we are in the middle of a conversation. I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but you have no right coming up to us and begging for money. Go bother somebody else with your lies.”

The young man looks down and shuffles his feet, his dirty cheeks reddening. When he looks up again, it’s at the old man, a pleading look in his eyes.

The old man, for reasons unknown to even himself, removes his hand from his back pocket. He becomes suddenly very interested in the gift in his lap, too ashamed to look the young man in the face.

The young man nods, rubbing his mouth with a greasy hand. Then he sulks away. Before he’s out of earshot, he mutters, “Old prick.”

The old man’s hearing works well enough to hear it. He feels heat radiating from his cheeks. He purses his lips and gives the woman a sideways glance. She apologizes, saying that she can’t stand people like that. They have no shame, no decency. She says she never gives their type money.

“They just want alcohol,” she says, “or drugs.” The woman’s face screws up, and the tears start flowing again.

The old man closes his eyes. He wonders why alcohol and drugs are so bad. He remembers a time when he tried to buy a homeless man a bottle of alcohol and was stopped by one of the employees before he could. They told him the homeless man couldn’t have alcohol, that he was not allowed to drink. The old man felt bad about that. He wasn’t sure if he felt worse for not getting the alcohol or for being reprimanded by the young employee. His wife always said his heart was in the right place, but…

“You know,” the old man says, as if coming out of a dream, “I lost my wife, not six months ago.”

“My Robert is dead!” the woman shouts, pulling at her hair.

There is a high pitched screech as the next bus arrives.

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Filed Under: Adult, Journal, Short Story, Story, Story sketch Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, scene, sketch, story

What is Conflict?

January 3, 2016 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

What is Conflict?

In a previous investigation I talked about what a story is and I defined thirteen potentially essential elements of a story; that is, thirteen things that every story must have. But there was something missing, a driving force that may not exist in the most mundane story, but should be present in any good story. That force is conflict.

Conflicts drive a narrative forward; they are the challenges that must be overcome, the trials that reveal who a character is and how they have changed, the motivation behind all the actions that shape a story. I want to share with you a diagram I’ve been working on that breaks conflict down into its parts. This diagram should aid in the purposeful creation of conflict in your stories.

Before I explain the diagram, take a minute to look it over:

Conflict Diagram — Click to enlarge.

Conflict Diagram — Click to enlarge.

In my diagram, conflict begins with a desire — the feeling of wanting to have something or wishing that something will happen — then an opposing force is introduced — which can be internal or external — and together they create conflict.

Here’s a handy little equation to remember what conflict is:

Desire + Opposition = Conflict

We must begin with desire, because without desire, there can be no opposition, since there is nothing to oppose, and so there could be no conflict. Desire is always internal, it is a movement of the brain (and soul if you like) and is by its very nature personal and internal.

Next we introduce the opposition. Desire alone does not create conflict. Conflict arises when there is opposition to attaining a desire. Opposition comes in two types: internal and external. The simpler of the two is internal, so let’s start there with the opposing desire.

Opposing desire is the conflict between two or more desires that are, or seem to be, mutually exclusive; that is, the character’s desire becomes impossible if one of the opposing desires is fulfilled.

An example of an opposing desire could be: A character wants to save her drowning son, but she also wants to save her helpless daughter being mauled by a bear. Another example: A character wants to solve the murder, but he also wants to get out of the dangerous P.I. business. Yet another: A character wants to get married, but she also wants to have the freedom to go where she wants, when she wants.

NOTE: What about fears? Are not fears internal opposition? Yes. But fears fit under opposing desires. If I’m afraid to die, then I want to live; If I’m afraid to go outside, then I want to stay inside. So if a character wants to stop a bad guy from shooting a woman, but he is afraid to die, then the conflicting desires are to save the woman, and to stay alive.

NOTE: Conflict does not arise simply from the prospect of not satisfying a desire. If I have the desire to write a book, there is not conflict because I worry I might not write a book. That is not conflict. Conflict would be: I want to write a book, but I don’t want to take the necessary time away from my family.

External opposition is the conflict between desire and any force external to desire. I classified these forces as opposing circumstances. Exposing circumstances are of three types: personal, interpersonal, and environmental.

Personal opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by some physical problem related to that character.

An example of a personal opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to attend a concert, but they are too ill to leave their bed. Another example: A character wants to give an eloquent speech, but they suffer from Parkinson’s disease and their speech is slurred. Yet another example: A character wants to save her drowning son, but she can’t swim.

NOTE: Not being able to swim is a physical problem. It is not something you can overcome by any internal process.

Interpersonal opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by other characters (human or otherwise) who have the ability to communicate and reason.

An example of an interpersonal opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to get into a club, but the bouncer refuses them entry. Another example: A character wants to cross a bridge, but another character won’t let him cross without a fight. Yet another example: A character wants to win the girl, but another character thwarts his attempts.

NOTE: While interpersonal conflict is motivated by conflicting desires between two or more characters, the thing that actually causes the conflict is the physical action of the opposing character(s).

Environmental opposing circumstance is the opposition to a character’s desire by anything in the outside world, excluding other characters. This includes natural disasters, weather, technology, animals, time and space, etc.

An example of an environmental opposing circumstance could be: A character wants to get home, but is confronted by a pack of wolves. Another example: A character wants to save the world, but he is stuck in a cave on the face of a cliff. Yet another example: A character wants to finish his book, but he is old and he doesn’t have much time left to live.

That’s all I have time for today, but I will be returning to this conflict diagram in future entries. I hope this diagram helped you gain a better understanding of what conflict is and that it becomes a useful tool for your creative writing.

As always, if you have any comments, please use the form below or post to my Facebook. Thanks for reading, and keep writing!

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Filed Under: Journal, Story, Writing Tools Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, conflict, conflict diagram, what is conflict

Adam and the Storm

December 27, 2015 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Adam and the Storm

The following is a story sketch I wrote up in response to a writing prompt I got out of the book 642 Things to Write About. I wrote the whole first draft in two hours and spent only enough time editing and cleaning up to make it readable. I don’t want to present these sketches as finished pieces, but as they are: rough sketches done for practice. I hope you enjoy the sketch. If you like this public writing journal, please follow me on Facebook and Twitter and recommend it for your writing friends. Thank you!


It was eight in the morning on December twenty-seventh, a Sunday. Theodore Hartman, my uncle, was out back in his shed, looking for a tool he needed to remove the leather seat from my Dyna Low Rider, an old, beat-up Harley-Davidson I bought as a sort of Christmas present to myself at a good price from the dad of a buddy of mine. My buddy’s dad had given up riding after an accident on the I-15 put him and his wife in the hospital for three weeks. “I was going to have the damn thing destroyed,” he had told me. “It doesn’t run anymore after the accident, but if you want it that bad, I’ll give it to you for three-hundred bucks.” I did want it that bad; I had my reasons. So I got the cash together from what little savings I’d accumulated from odd jobs, called in a few Christmas favors from my mom and other relatives, and I towed that bike home on Christmas morning.

I didn’t know anything about motorcycles — I still don’t; I don’t even have my license — but my uncle had told stories on several occasions about his younger, crazier years spent tearing down the streets of Salt Lake City on his Indian motorcycle, splitting lanes, running red lights, out-maneuvering the cops, all that awesome stuff. “That was before I met your aunt Claire,” he would remind me after each incredible story. “Then when your cousin was born, I got rid of the bike and put my rip-roaring days behind me.” And he did. I knew my uncle as a cautious, reserved man, constantly concerned with the health and wellbeing of aunt Claire and cousin Adam, his energetic son who had just turned six.

Adam thought the world of his father. Every time I came to visit my uncle, Adam would be there, right at my uncle’s side, holding his hand, smiling at every word he said, like his dad was the most interesting person in the world — and he was in a lot of ways, cautious and reserved as he had become. Adam wasn’t at my uncle’s side that day. He had caught a bad cold the previous week and aunt Claire wouldn’t let him out of his bed. But he sat on his knees on that twin-sized bed, watching me and his dad coming and going from the carport where my junky bike leaned over its crooked kickstand. He would wave at us when he caught our attention, quickly dipping away from the window when aunt Claire came into his room, scolding him for doing everything he could to break her rules and remain sick.

“I am too old and tired to manage that boy,” my uncle said, returning from the shed with what I could only guess was some kind of hex-wrench, if that’s a thing. “Claire has a better handle on that spark plug than I could ever hope to. Let me give you some advice.” He knelt beside my bike and began working the tool with his elbow on the bolts holding the leather seat in place. “Don’t wait until you’re forty-two to have kids. The childbirth nearly killed your poor aunt and the child-rearing will put me under before Adam turns eighteen.”

“I think you’re doing alright,” I said. “Even for an old guy. At least Adam likes you. If my dad was still around, I don’t think we could have the kind of relationship you have with Adam.” It hurt to talk about Dad; it hurt to think about him, but spending time with my uncle helped. I don’t know, maybe the only reason I got that bike was to have an excuse to spend more time with him. I did feel a bit jealous of Adam, I couldn’t help it. I loved Adam like a brother, but there was that little part of me, a primal, dark part that wished my uncle didn’t have a kid at forty-two, that I was the only one privileged to the stories about his rip-roaring years, that I had him all to myself. For almost a full five years after Dad bailed, it was just me, Mom, aunt Claire, and my uncle Theodore.

“Can I do something?” I asked, watching my uncle remove the seat and setting to work loosening the bolts around the fuel tank.

“Damn!” he said, dropping the wrench. He rubbed his index finger where he had jammed it against the bent frame. “Yeah, you can learn something. This bike is going to require plenty of work and I’m not keen on the idea of spending all of my free time in next year split between your cousin and this mess.”

He said it with a smile, but I felt a sick tug in my stomach. Didn’t he enjoy spending time with me? Did he really not have room in his life for both Adam and me?

My uncle must have noticed something wrong in my face, because he stood up and put a dirty hand on my shoulder. He was perceptive like that, a real good guy. I would follow him wherever he went too if I were his son. But I wasn’t. “Actually,” he said, “if you could run to the shed for me real quick and grab my toolbox, that would be a big help. I need to start teaching you the names and purposes of all this stuff anyhow.”

I jogged out of the carport through the six inches of snow towards the shed, an old, once-red wooden hut where I spent many adventurous hours of my own when I was Adam’s age. But my death-defying experiences involved rusty pick-axes, not high-speed asphalt, cobwebs and daddy longlegs, not pursuing police. I pulled at the door to the shed and a trickle of dust dribbled directly into my right eye. I cursed, quickly turned to make sure my uncle didn’t hear, then began rubbing at it furiously. I thought I had blinded myself. I’d never gotten anything so perfectly in my eye before. I spent several minutes trying to clear it out. When I was able to open my eye again, I tested it out by looking up into the sky. That’s when I first noticed its strange green glow and swiftly moving clouds.

It was such an odd sight that I completely forgot the discomfort in my eye for a moment and just stood gawking up at it. The sun was completely hidden, except in a few thin streams of gold in the distance, which shone down on chosen parts of the neighborhood. The wind picked up then, and I felt a chill run from the nape of my neck, down into my Nikes.

“Did you get lost, son?” I heard my uncle ask.

I looked down and began rubbing my wounded eye again, as if to give excuse for my delay. I pointed to the sky. “Do you think it will snow again?”

My uncle stepped out from under the carport and looked up. I could see the expression on his face change from mild curiosity to a strange look that could have been confusion or fear, which sent that chill down my back again. “Could be snow,” he said slowly. “Could be something else.” Something else? “Anyway, it looks like it’s coming on fast. We might have to put this bike business off until later.” Later? My uncle returned to my bike and began fiddling with the handlebars, glancing out into the distance every few seconds at the skyline with concern on his face.

Later? I’d already waited days to get started on that bike. Later? If we stopped now, we wouldn’t get back to it until next weekend, and then Adam wouldn’t be sick. Adam would want to spend the whole time asking his dad all of his annoying questions, ruining what little time I had to spend with my uncle, demanding attention for every stupid comment. Later? I threw open the shed door and let it slam against the wood. I started groping around in the dim light for my uncle’s toolbox. I found it in the far corner of the shed. It was big and red and weighed close to a hundred pounds. I tried to lift it, but I couldn’t quite manage the weight so I let it slam down. Damn Adam! I wish he wasn’t so clingy. I wish he didn’t have such a close relationship with his dad. I wish he stayed sick forever. I wish he would just leave us alone!

“Simon?” I heard a small, raspy voice say as a little hand caught hold of my shirt. I jumped and cursed again before realizing it was only Adam. He was standing in his pajamas, a zip-up onesie with Spider-Man printed all over them. He must have lost interest in watching from the window.

“Adam,” I said, more angrily than I meant it, “what are you doing out here? If your mom finds you—“

“She won’t,” Adam said with a grin. “I pretended to be asleep and she fell for it. I just wanted to see what you were up to with my dad.” My dad. “I really like your bike. Dad says I can’t never get one, but you can — that’s so cool! And Dad won’t care if I’m out here with you guys.”

Well, I cared. I cared very much. Now he wanted to ruin whatever time I had left today with my uncle too? And why would my uncle refuse to let Adam ever get a motorcycle, but have no problem with me getting one? Did he not care what happened to me? Adam just smiled up at me, snot oozing from his nostrils, like we were the best buddies in the world. It’s hard to describe the mixture of disdain and fondness I felt looking down at this little boy, a boy who stood directly between me and my uncle, a boy who in many ways reminded me of myself at his age: a rule breaker, an adventurer, and a complete daddy’s boy.

I finally let my anger win out over my sense of brotherhood and was about to threaten Adam with telling his mother if he didn’t get his sick butt back in bed that minute, when I felt the whole shed quake. Adam stopped smiling and I could see pure terror in his face. I felt it too, but I didn’t let it show. I heard my uncle shouting something outside and I rushed to the shed door to see what was the matter.

The wind whipped me in the face as soon as I reached the door. My uncle was pushing my bike to one corner of the carport to prop it against a support. The sky was a blackish, neon green now and the whole backyard was in a frenzy. Snow, bits of plastic and wood, and whole branches were twisting through the air. I saw a large branch laying beside the shed. That must have been what shook it so hard. I’d never seen weather like this in Utah, not ever, and nothing that came on so quickly.

“It’s some kind of hurricane!” my uncle said, barely audible over the now howling wind, even though I could see that he was shouting as hard as he could. “We need to get inside now!”

I rushed back into the shed to get Adam. He was hugging my uncle’s toolbox, tears rolling down his cheeks. “We have to go!” I said, grabbing his arm. He pulled away from me.

“No!” he said. “Mom will know I snuck out.”

I heard my uncle shouting some more and I grabbed Adam’s arm again. “Adam, there’s something wrong. The weather is going crazy, it’s not safe, we have to get inside — now!”

Adam just pulled away again and clung tighter to my uncles toolbox. He shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t, I can’t, I’m scared!”

I went to the shed door and looked out. My uncle was headed for the front door already, without me. He was rushing inside to his wife and… And little Adam. Adam who he actually cared about, Adam who he loved like a son because he had a son; he had a son and it wasn’t me. I glared at Adam. “You don’t want to move?” I asked, contempt rising in my voice. “You want to stay out here because you’re too scared to face your mom? Because you’re too scared of this stupid storm?” Adam shook his head, whimpering, snot and tears flowing down his cheeks. I looked out into the storm; the air was crowded with flying debris and snow. I turned back on Adam. “Fine,” I said, waving my hand at him, “You stay here then, but I’m making a run for it, and I’ll be sure to tell your mom how you were too scared and selfish to listen to me!”

With that, I turned and ran for the house. I could hear the faint cries of Adam as I pushed my way through the biting chaos of the storm. He was screaming something about not leaving him, about coming back. I stopped under the carport and turned back toward the shed. I couldn’t see more than five feet with all the snow and debris flying around; I couldn’t hear over the roaring clatter of everything crashing into everything else. What was I thinking? I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I had to go back for Adam, to drag him from that shed, to carry him on my back if I had to, but to get him safely inside to his Dad, no matter what.

I stepped out from the carport. My foot sunk deep into a mixture of snow and debris; I felt something snap. I heard Adam’s voice on the wind, scared and drifting farther away. I pulled at my knee trying to free my foot. There was an enormous cracking sound as a tree trunk smashed through one of the carport’s supports and the storm tore it to the ground, crushing my bike, only missing me by a few feet. My bike. Now what excuse did I have to spend time with my uncle?

That was the last thought I had before something hit me on the side of my head, sending me into darkness.

I woke up the next day in a clean, quiet hospital room by myself. My neck hurt so bad when I turned my head, I felt like I would throw up. I could feel the heavy wrappings the doctors had put on my head. I blinked several times. There was something wrong. I looked around the room, I looked at my hands, with the I.V. sticking out, I looked out the window at the clear morning sky, clear like nothing had ever happened, like the storm was just part of a horrible dream, but there was something very wrong. I could only see out of my left eye. The world looked flat and I felt disoriented.

I removed the bandages from my eye, checking if it was open. It was, but it saw nothing. It was totally and completely blind. I felt my face becoming hot. I felt tears threatening to spill out at any moment. All the pain and hate and anger and wanting pushed against my chest, preparing to burst out in a horrible flood of tears and spit. But before the dam broke, before all that pain could escape, I heard another sound — voices — and one of them was making the most horrible sounds I’d ever heard. The most chilling cries a person can make, the sound I had been preparing to make myself, only this was more sorrowful, more desperate, more true.

The voice belonged to my uncle, and his words told me everything I needed to know about that sorrow. Adam, little cousin Adam, my little cousin who I left in that shed because of my own fear and hate — Adam, the greatest love of my uncle’s heart, was dead.

Apparently he had tried to chase after me, because he left the shelter of the shed and he caught a chunk of wood — possibly peeled from the shed by the storm, possibly the same chunk of wood that half-blinded me — in the back of his head. Adam was not so lucky as to be sitting up in a hospital bed preparing to cry over the partial loss of his vision. He had died before he ever got the hospital.

But I got my wish, it seemed. I had my uncle all to myself then. All to my ugly, half-blind, miserable self.

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Filed Under: Journal, Story, Story sketch Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, storm, story sketch, Utah, writing prompt

Themes to Write On

December 22, 2015 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Themes to Write On

I like to write down themes in my writing journal so I can refer to them later when working on a new story. The following are some themes I wrote down yesterday along with a brief note on thought.


Themes to write on:

  • The role of the teacher
  • Tolerance as an intellectual covering for intolerance
  • Division as conflict: as long as there is a division between observer and observed, there is division and so conflict
  • The observer as the observed: I am not separate from my anger, I am anger
  • Thought as pleasure
  • Thought as something dead, the past
  • Thought giving vitality to something that is dead: possible raising the dead metaphors here
  • The conflict created by the me and the not me
  • Love and relationship as the destruction of dependence, ambition, and comparison
  • The deceptive nature of desire
  • The selfishness of desire
  • The violent nature of living: consuming other living things, overcoming others to get what we need, etc.
  • The deception of perception
  • Objective happiness versus subjective happiness
  • Humanity’s capacity for change
  • Mind over body
  • Accepting what is
  • Helping oneself
  • Personal inquiry

Note on thought: Thought sustains and gives nourishment to pleasure as well as to fear. Fear of the present, the future, death, the unknown, of not fulfilling, not being loved, wanting to be loved — there are so many fears, all created by the machinery of thought.

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Filed Under: Journal, Story Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, writing, writing journal, writing themes

What Is a Story?

December 18, 2015 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

What Is a Story?

When trying to define something, one is categorizing it, taking a set of elements which are present in one or more things and grouping them with a label. So in order to define what a story is, I must uncover the set of elements which are present in all stories, from the daily stories we tell ourselves and others to professional stories.

Like songs, stories are easier to recognize than to define. They are such a common part of our lives that we have learned to identify them without being consciously aware of how this identification happens.

[Read more…] about What Is a Story?

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Filed Under: Journal, Story Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, What is story?, writing journal

Why Do We Tell Stories? – Part 2

December 8, 2015 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Why Do We Tell Stories? – Part 2

Yesterday I spent some time on the question of why we tell stories. I started by going over the functions of story outlined by professor Harvey. Today I wanted to break from her list and start listing some functions of story that I observe, note any overlaps, and examine these functions more closely. I would also like to try and identify which functions of story are most important for socially impactful creative writing, since this is what I am most interested in.

I’ll start with a divergent thinking technique. I’m going to make a list, as long as I can make it, of all the things that a story can do. Remember, in divergent thinking, one does not go for quality, but quantity. Some of the items in the following list might seem silly and many will overlap, but bear with me.

[Read more…] about Why Do We Tell Stories? – Part 2

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Filed Under: Journal, Story Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, why do we tell stories, writing journal

Why Do We Tell Stories?

December 7, 2015 by Caleb Jacobo Leave a Comment

Why Do We Tell Stories?

“Let’s start at the very beginning / A very good place to start” 
—Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music

Today, as Julie Andrews suggests, I want to go back to the beginning and explore a basic question: Why do we tell stories? Not only in creative writing, but in daily life as well.

A couple of years ago I listened to a lecture series by Professor Hannah B. Harvey, an Adjunct Professor in the Storytelling program at East Tennessee State University, on the art of storytelling. While Harvey focused mainly on oral storytelling, nearly all of her lectures are also applicable to creative writing. In the beginning of the series, Harvey lists some of the functions of story. I would like to use this list as a starting point for my own investigation into the reason we tell stories, what functions they serve, then in later entries explore what story is.

[Read more…] about Why Do We Tell Stories?

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Filed Under: Journal, Story Tagged With: Caleb Jacobo, why do we tell stories, writing journal

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Caleb Jacobo

Welcome! My name is Caleb Jacobo and this is my public writing journal. Read More…

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