Virginia Woolf's story, "A Mark on the Wall," begins with a curious mark on the wall. The rest of the story follows through her free associations, through things like Shakespeare, women's rights, and the question, "What is life?"
It begins:
"Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece."
Choose an ordinary object. (or look at your own walls) Breathe deeply. For five minutes focus on the object. Then freewrite for fifteen minutes, using whatever free associations come to mind. Don't worry about whether or not it makes sense or if one association transitions neatly into another. Just worry about getting them all down. When the fifteen minutes is up, circle any echoing images or themes. How can you make this into a short story without losing the stream of consciousness energy? Don't try to manipulate it too much. As in Woolf's story, the object and the associations *are* the plot. As always, have fun with it!
�The Mark on the Wall,� from A Haunted House and Other Stories, by Virginia Woolf, copyright 1944, 1972 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
