J. S. Kuiken

Work in Progress Wednesdays were started as a way to get creatives to post a little update on their current project. It motivates us to continue working on those projects by simply encouraging us to produce something, however small.

I’m going to give Work in Progress Wednesdays, or WIP Wednesdays, a go and I’ll start with a snippet from my novel-in-progress, The Weight of the Impossible. The story is told in first person by 15-year-old Zach, a competitive figure skater. He’s struggling from strange blackouts and leaving his own body at times. Along comes Daniel, a figure skating coach, who helps Zach make sense of these strange events and confront some deeply rooted terrors from his past.

This excerpt is from their very first meeting and it’s still a bit rough. I’m still learning Zach’s voice.

# # #

“Fuck you.”

I whip my head in the direction of the voice, balling my fists, ready for a fight. But it’s just some rando on his phone in the parking lot. He hangs up. 

“Fucking asshole,” he says to no-one. 

He’s not like anyone in the Ice Hall, that’s for sure. His rolled up sleeves reveal colorful tattoos. He’s wearing a V-neck sweater and it just shows more tattoos peeking from under the collar. It looks like he’s tried to dye his dark, curly hair some kind of weird colors but it didn’t really work so the tints are all just washed out and messy. 

He sighs, loud and long and pats himself like he’s looking for something. Then he pulls out a bright purple, blue and green packet from his back jeans pocket. It looks just like one of those little packets that one of Laura’s friends liked to carry around, bursting with tasty Granddaddy Purple gummies. They always made me feel so chill and soft, like I was butter simply melting in a warm pan. Now this guy pops like two or three of them in his mouth. Like la-de-dah, not a care in the fucking world, this guy. That or he’s got a massive pair of balls to be gulping down gummies like that within a frisbee throw of the Ice Hall, where there’s a bunch of kids running around with their parents and coaches. Most of these kids are from out-of-state too, where pot isn’t exactly legal. 

Yeah, he’s got a pair.