Northwest Writing

Have a headcanon you want written? A short story idea you don’t feel like writing yourself? Need an idea for a gift for someone? Or maybe you just want to pretend like you’re some sort of renaissance dignitary who commissions artists and writers for fun.

Come to me!

I’d be more than happy to write you a...

Short story

Essay

Article

Poem

Fan Fiction

Play

Screenplay

Voice over script

DnD character backstory

And much much more!

I can write for any fandom and have no issue with researching shows/movies/games I’m not familiar with.

Check out my blog for samples of my writing.

Three aisles away and sometimes two,

You speak as if you are mother yet there is

No love in you.

Don’t you remember?

The baby you fought so hard to keep,

Held tight for all nine months,

Another soul wrapped in your own

Because you thought it was sacred

Because you felt that way

Because you chose to.

Don’t you remember that?

Now you’re here in the store

Brought your child and yourself into the world

And I am made to watch

As if behind hard glass.

Little hands are yanked

“You’re as bad as your father”

“You’re embarrassing me”

A jagged, hot tone.

This is not protecting.

What is this all for?

Were these your plans for that little soul?

If there is no love here,

At last, I have decided to touch on this, my most heated opinion.

Beginning as far back as I can remember, this recurring problem has caused me unparalleled frustration.

Can I describe for you a scenario?

Dinner time has arrived once more, some evening in a winter of my childhood, and my family is preparing to head out the door to drive to a restaurant.

Even though I have donned my shoes and socks and am all ready to go, I am stopped by my mother.

"For crying outside, Gracie," she exclaims, "aren't you going to be cold?"

God.

How could my young mind formulate a response that fully communicates my argument against her point?

I, of course, am not wearing a jacket, which my family sees as pure suicide.

Jacket's are, to me, for wearing when you are going to be outside for an extended period of time--not for putting on for two seconds to walk from my warm home to my warm car, where I will take it off until it is time to walk ten feet from the warm car to the warm restaurant, where I will once again take it off and have to babysit it and keep it from sliding off of the smooth booth seat and onto the filthy restaurant floor and try not to forget to take it with me when the meal is complete and it is time once again to depart the establishment and reverse the entire process once again, concluding the journey back at my centrally heated house.

Knowing all of this intrinsically does not help young me to articulate the silliness of the matter.

Like a good daughter, I go put on a jacket anyway.

My life has been riddled with these sorts of situations.

No one seems to ever be able to deal with the idea of me not wearing a jacket for the cumulative sixty seconds a day that I might be spending outside.

Of course I still wear appropriate garments if I'm going for a walk or someplace that might actually be cold, but I'm not going to bring an outer layer with me if I'm going to be wearing it for two minutes and carrying it around with me for an hour.

Perhaps you think I am being unreasonable.

Questioning my sanity even.

Really though, I bet more people agree with me than are willing to admit it.

Stop giving in, I say.

Tell the pro-jacketers in your life that your wardrobe choices are aspirational.

"Um, you're supposed to dress for the job you want, not the job you have," you must say, "and I want to be inside."

Very likely they will roll their eyes and give up on trying to reason with you.

Wow, that means you've won the argument.

X-rated films show more skin than me, not that I consider that the bar, just sayin'.

Yes, I am cold sometimes, but I am always a form over function type of woman, and if the outfit doesn't call for a jacket, the weather doesn't call for a jacket.

Dear Flight Attendant Who Gave Me Extra Biscoff Cookies,

    I’d like to issue you my sincerest apologies. I’ve worked in food service and retail, so I know what it’s like to have to deal with the general public, but I have no idea what it must be like to be trapped in a big metal tube in the sky with them for hours at a time, knowing full well that you could die at any point and your last breaths would be partially comprised of their farts. That alone would be a lot to go through every day, and I only complicated things further. I do my very best to avoid being “people,” but on that fateful flight from SeaTac to JFK, I failed us both.

    Maybe it was the fact that I was on my way to college that made me feel entitled to an extra packet of Biscoff cookies, or perhaps it was a blind, uncalculated fervor spurred by my borderline-animalistic passion for those delicious little brushed suede-colored biscuits. I should’ve known they would one day be my downfall. I need you to know that when you pushed your little drink cart up next to my aisle seat, I was not thinking straight. The box--no, we’ll call it a crate. The absolute crate of cookie packets that couldn’t have been more than three inches from your shins, poking out of the bottom shelf of your trolley, entranced me like a siren luring in a horny sea captain.

    My plan--if you could call it that--seemed flawless. I was only going to filch myself one extra packet; there was no need to be greedy. I would be quick. Maybe you wouldn’t even notice my heist over the sound of your little shovel digging up a scoop of ice for the ginger ale you were serving to the passenger across from me. What I hadn’t planned for was my hot little hand’s perfect caper to be blocked by an unforeseen extra layer of clear plastic that bound together all of the cookie packets into one big, impenetrable, crinkly temptation. My cellophane mistake instantly triggered your fight attendant or flight attendant instinct, which manifested itself as a curt, effeminate “oh, you can just ask for some,” and the disappointed distribution of an extra pair of Biscoffs to my desperate little folding tray table.

    I think this is how Adam and Eve must’ve felt when God caught them being gross in the forest or whatever. I wouldn’t have felt more ashamed of myself if my own mother had scrunched her German face at me and said my full first, middle, and last name. I pondered whether I should even eat my guilt-flavored treats. Did I even deserve them anymore? Should I just put my name on the no fly list? This inner turmoil of course only lasted two whole minutes before I remembered that I had unopened Biscoff cookies in front of me. They tasted fantastic, made all of my regrets melt away, but they could not rewrite the past. So, from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry that you got caught up in my speculoos-inspired crimes.

Sincerely,

This morning I was doing my usual routine of completing household chores (bed making, laundry folding, etc.) and listening to my carefully curated boogie playlist while dancing around my room, when I found myself doing something I’m sure every person born after the release of the Sony Playstation has done at least once in their lives--engaging with the lyrics of Fountains of Wayne’s 2003 hit, “Stacy’s Mom”. Absurd and uncomfortable enough in both its subject matter and execution, this favorite of every roller rink and bowling alley DJ for the last seventeen years need not be absorbed with much of a critical ear at all in order for any listener to feel its discomforting effects. The chorus alone already tells the very clear story of “I’m hot for some poor teenage girl’s single mother.” It is important here that I digress for a moment to clarify: I like this song. It was in my boogie playlist for a reason and that reason is because I believe there is a time to dance and a time to think critically and they simply do not overlap. Would a lot of people disagree with me that “Stacy’s Mom” is even a song you can dance to? Probably. Make your own playlist. You can include all of your dumb songs about being attracted to people your own age. People that have more important things to do with their time don’t often extend their critique of the story of Stacy and her hot mom very far beyond the well known chorus or perhaps the first verse. I have found, however, that the more carefully I listened to the lyrics of this song, the more thoughts I had about the plotline being presented to me. Without further delay, I would like to share those thoughts with you.

Introduction

Stacy's mom has got it goin' on

Stacy's mom has got it goin' on

Stacy's mom has got it goin' on

Stacy's mom has got it goin' on

Already, the piece starts off strong by introducing us to both the main subject of the song and a rough idea of the narrator’s perspective on her. Thus far we don’t quite know the full nature of the relationship between Stacy’s mom and the narrator, so we are enticed to continue listening. The repetition of the same line four times could perhaps be representative of an obsession based in desire. This section evokes the image of a young man rocking back and forth in a corner somewhere, repeating to himself the one thing he still knows to be true, “Stacy’s mom has got it goin’ on.”

First Verse

Stacy, can I come over after school?

(After school)

We can hang around by the pool

(Hang by the pool)

Did your mom get back from her business trip?

(Business trip)

Is she there, or is she trying to give me the slip?

(Give me the slip)

Now we are clued in to the narrator’s connection to Stacy’s mom through Stacy, who we know has both a house and a pool and lives with her mom who sometimes goes on business trips. We can assume based on this one sided conversation that Stacy and the narrator are classmates, most likely in middle school or high school. At first, it seems as though the narrator has a genuine interest in spending time with Stacy herself, but any hopes we might have of a happily ever after for her are quickly dashed by the second half of the verse, where we get an even deeper view into the narrator’s fixation on Stacy’s mom. He has even begun experiencing irrational concerns as to whether or not the adult woman who occupies his every thought has been deliberately avoiding him.

We here at the WHO would like to address some of the complaints we have received from women and men across the globe about some of the official medical terminology for common gynecological health related issues. We’ve listened to your problems and have assembled a committee of dedicated professionals to cook up some brand new medical terms that will be incorporated into the curricula of all accredited medical schools starting in 2022. We are excited to announce some of the new terms you can expect to be hearing in the gynecologist, the endocrinologist, hell, maybe even the dentist!

Period→ Full Stop

A word that many have said “is gross,” “feels bad in the mouth,” and by one testimony we received, “my least favorite English word, and yes I’m counting moist,” has now become a thing of the past. Paying homage to its original shared title with the classic “.” the part of your menstrual cycle in which you shed your uterine lining and cry when someone cuts you off in traffic will now be referred to as a “full stop.” We hope this new term will serve not only to ease some of the tension for those who find themselves needing to discuss the subject, but also put a greater emphasis on just how detrimental this part of the month can be for every aspect of some people’s lives.

Vagina→ Coochie*

Everyone was already saying coochie anyway. Now you don’t have to be afraid your doctor will think less of you for telling them your “coochie itches”. Many are reluctant to use the word “vagina” for many of the same reasons that they don’t like saying “period” but even ignoring all that, “coochie” is irrefutably a more fun word to say. We hope that this change will spur people to talk more openly about their coochies and promote a more coochie-positive global culture.

Yeast Infection→ Gunk

While we understand that “gunk” can refer to anything from gum on the bottom of your shoes to the dead bugs on your windshield, we would like to make the official statement that within a medical context, this term specifically refers to an overgrowth of yeast in the coochie. Over-the-counter products designed to treat this common affliction will also be required to change the labeling on their packaging to reflect the change.

Breasts→ Gazongas

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Estrogen→ The Good Stuff

Sometimes referred to as the “female sex hormone,” we thought it was high time to start calling this hormone what it is. Responsible for things like gazonga growth and proper coochie lubrication, as well as bone health and cognitive health in all genders, this great juice is finally getting the recognition it deserves. We also wanted to grant the opportunity to those seeking to undergo Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to say to their doctor or pharmacist, “gimme some of the good stuff.”

Discharge→ Slime

OK, we admit we didn’t do a good job making this one less gross, but we were looking at it from more of a Flubber angle. The WHO is all about buying into the whimsy and not taking life too seriously. We also feel that this term more effectively communicates what healthy excretion from the coochie should look like. If your slime turns into gunk, well, there you have it.

Although these terms won’t be official in the medical community until 2022, we would like to encourage all members of the public to begin using them in regular conversation in place of the outdated terms and phrases in order to ease the transition. We hope that this will pave the way for more open and serious medical discussions with your healthcare providers.

Dear Abby,

I need your advice about how to deal with my son. My husband and I love him dearly, but he is getting to that adolescent stage in life where he is beginning to get on our family’s nerves. He sleeps all day, talks back to his father and I when we tell him to clean his room or do the dishes, and he stays out late with his friends every night, but by far the biggest issue we have started to notice is that his arms seem to just keep getting longer. I’m aware that every boy goes through the occasional growth spurt, but at this point it is getting a bit ridiculous. By the time he was sixteen, his hands were down to his knees. Now his seventeenth birthday is a few weeks away and it’s like he’s dragging a pair of garden hoses around the house! More times now than I can count, I have nearly fallen on my face from tripping over his wrists that he has left in the hallway. I just know it’s only a matter of time before someone is going to get seriously hurt. And god forbid he actually try and use the floppy things, he ends up smacking them into just about anything and anyone in the room. He’s knocked family photos off the walls, pushed the cat off of the back of the couch, and gotten tangled in the ceiling fan in the living room on more than one occasion (don’t worry, we stopped turning it on a long time ago). Teenagers just have no self control. 

His hazardous appendages don’t seem to be negatively impacting his grades so far, but it does make it difficult for him to operate a steering wheel, which has not made it easier for me to get him to stop dragging his knuckles about getting his license. Of course, I know he’s not a baby anymore, and I wouldn’t be raising such a fuss about his changing body if he just learned to take more responsibility for the way he is affecting others. I have tried reminding him time and time again not to leave his arms all over the house, and still, every day I find myself having to step over his elbows just to get to my own kitchen. As a parent, I am not sure what I should do. Should I put my foot down and play the hard-ass mom card? Or should I be taking the whole thing in stride, accepting that every young boy goes through phases? Please help me 

Sincerely,

AIDS killed Keith Haring in 1990 and still, thirty years later, I am filled with an anger at the violent injustice of such an infant soul ripped from the world early as if he were my own offspring.

Blossom Galbiso enters my sphere of knowledge by accident as the Hawaiian school teacher somehow solely responsible for the popularization of the now largely-forgotten game known as POGS.

Cordless drill is a drink I named for its resemblance to a screwdriver, sharing almost every ingredient except POG stands in for the OJ.

Death and juice have little in common.

Everyone dies.

Forget about death; drink some juice.

Good things came out of Keith Haring until his very last moments of his very last day.

He believed that art--something previously only available to the wealthy--belonged to everyone.

I think about this--and many other things--for only a moment as I sit on my bed with a fat-tipped Posca paint pen in my shaking left hand and an old, time-tattered school photograph in front of me that is of someone I have never met and will soon erase completely from this physical receipt of existence with my own renditions of the vivid, thick lines that are uniquely mine yet unmistakably reminiscent of the iconic style of a man I never met who I know, even still, would feel only loved and touched by this act of domesticated, imitative graffiti.

Just like Keith Haring, I believe art is for everyone, even those of us with an unsteady hand.

Keith Haring probably never heard of Blossom Galbiso.

Letting yourself work with a permanent medium like paint when you do not fully trust your own body to follow the instructions given to it by your brain is made vastly easier by painting only on bits of trash.

My brain tends to dart from one thing to another in randomly spaced intervals.

No one fixation is ever granted very much time in my direct line of sight.

One day I will decide to buy a pack of paint pens from Dick Blick and a stack of vintage ephemera from Etsy upon which to loose the pens, and when I get tired of that, I will decide to learn as much as I can about a woman whose effect on an elementary school classroom must have been so strong to have popularized a game to an entire country from a tiny Pacific island.

Perhaps before any of this, I will set out to do a school report that will lead me to a deep connection to a man who was famous even among the NYPD officers who would arrest him for vandalism.

Quite possibly, Blossom Galbiso never heard of Keith Haring.

Realistically, I do not exist as some sort of connecting thread between these two people.

Still.

Unrealistically, I could reach back through time and join the hands of two people who brought light into the world with their own simple devices, from their own simple stations.

Vibrant colors and wholesome philosophies are at least commonalities between Keith, Hawaii, and POG, so maybe they would have enough to talk about.

When a college student walked past Keith Haring painting a mural commissioned by the school and asked him what it was for, Haring answered: "It's for you."

Xanthan gum is not one of the ingredients listed in POG.

Years on, Blossom Galbiso has been largely forgotten by the people of Hawaii, yet New York struggles to omit Keith Haring's colorful cartoons from any gift shop or post card or t-shirt in the whole city.

Having trouble coming up with a gift for someone important in your life that’s unique and personal? Do they like to read? Do they like fantasy? Sci-Fi? Romance? Maybe you have a lot of inside jokes with them that they’d love to read in a fun short story that’s just for them!

I know it’s a federal crime to talk about the winter holiday season before Thanksgiving happens, which just goes to show how much of an edgy badboy I can be. Enticing.

Don’t know anyone who likes short stories? No problem! I also write:

poems

short plays

screenplays

etc.!

This is also a notice that I am changing my rates to $0.02/word.

Dear Paper Towel Lady,

From the bottom of my heart, as if to serve you a bowl of gratitude soup, I would like to thank you. If you were to look at your ratio of time you spent in my life and things you taught me, you would probably be one of the wisest people in my life, if that’s the math you’re doing. Our encounter was long enough ago and benign enough to you that it’s very possible you don’t remember me, but I remember you clear as day. You were tall (probably) and you had long dark hair and glasses that...had frames I think. I was perhaps four years old and I had just finished up some important business in one of the stalls of the McDonald’s restroom. You had just finished washing your hands as I approached the sink. You dispensed yourself the necessary number of paper towels and dried off your hands, then once they were dry, you grabbed one more.

“Y’know,” you said to me in the infinitely unquestionable tone a late-twenty-something can only possess when talking to a four-year old, “when you dry your hands, you should grab another paper towel to grab the door handle with, because some people don’t wash their hands.” You did the actions you described as you spoke, and then, like an ancient fast food bathroom witch, you vanished. After you left, I grabbed an extra paper towel and used it to open the door when I left the bathroom, and I truly don’t think I have touched a bathroom door handle with my bare hands since that day.

The Classic “I have Essential Tremor. It’s a neurological condition where my brain doesn’t produce enough of a certain protein, so some of my motor functions are slightly impaired. I’m perfectly healthy and not contagious. Thank you for your concern though.”

The Play Dumb “I’m what? Oh man, I have no idea. Probably I have low blood sugar or something. Could you bring me a snack while I take a rest?”

The Quick Misdirect “Oh, looks like I had a little too much coffee this morning!”

The Half-Lie “When I was three years old, I fell out of a window onto my head and it stunted the growth in parts of my brain. I also can’t taste cilantro at all.”

The Full-Lie “I was in a coma for a year and when I woke up I had this tremor and also I could speak fluent Canadian French.”

The Get-Out-of-Jury-Duty Caliber Bogus Lie “Five years ago this October, on the eve of the harvest, I was abducted from my chamber by a race of technologically advanced, cosmic beings who spoke to each other in clicks and buzzes. They took me aboard their interplanetary vessel and conducted a series of tests and experiments on my brain that left me with the ability to interfere with radio signals with my mind, and an incurable phobia of pre-Toy Story Tom Hanks that would make it so I can never watch the movie Forrest Gump. Oh yeah! Also I have a tremor because of it. Oh, I’m dismissed? Ok, thank you anyway.”

She kept her eyes now

on her fingernails.

While her mind wandered elsewhere,

her gaze rested on the water

spilling over the topsoil

caked under her manicure,

paying occasional visits

through her kitchen window

to the purebred passers by.

Clark and Debby and Spots.

Pools and pearls and ten page pedigrees.

They were all just furniture

but she was an instrument

and just like a grand piano becomes a side table

she had become decorative.

As she watched the water

spiraling down the drain

fading from red to yellow to clear,

her vision became obstructed

by a single blonde lock

drifting calmly but hastily

from its assigned place

in her flawless and organized updo

and coming to rest

against her nose.

It did not contain a single strand of grey.

She left it there.

After turning off the faucet,

she glanced once more

out the kitchen window,

this time at a single daisy

situated at the edge

of the driveway and the front lawn.

It would continue to grow.

No one would be mowing the grass.

She kept her eyes now

on her fingernails.

There was a single chip in the scarlet polish

Four coworkers sit in the breakroom at their minimum wage retail job. TIM, twenty-two, is sitting up in his seat at the breakroom table, shaking his left leg and holding a cup of coffee with both hands. EMILY, nineteen, is leaning slightly back in her chair, looking at her phone. MATT, thirty, leans over the table, writing something down on a piece of paper. KEVIN, thirty-eight, is leaning way back in a chair with his feet up on the table and his hat over his eyes. TIM stares up at the clock.

TIM

D’you guys know if anyone’s ever thought of fixing that clock on the wall?

EMILY

Still looking at her phone 

What clock?

MATT

I didn’t even realize it was broken.

TIM

Yeah it’s like always four fifteen? (Beat) Could you imagine if it was always four fifteen?

KEVIN

I tried asking the old store manager about it once. He just said “why do you care about the clock in the break room?” and he had a point so I stopped worrying about it.

There is a silence as TIM stares at KEVIN

TIM

I sort of feel like that story’s not true and you just want me to stop talking before the team meeting.

KEVIN

It’s seven AM, Tim.

EMILY

Yeah, Tim, it’s like seven AM.

TIM

I know what time it is I just--

My SAT superscore after my first attempt at taking the test was a 1250. Following my second attempt it remained a 1250. This was not the fault of a coincidence or a lack of studying on my part, but rather the fault of a small town called Jasper, Oregon--the existence of which I would consider, perhaps, some sort of cosmic oversight. 

Originally, I wasn’t planning to take the test again.

“I don’t know, Grace. 1250 is a little low for some of the schools you’re trying to apply to. Students always do better their second time taking the test,” my father told me in an indirect attempt to convince me to take a second SAT. I wasn’t particularly excited about the idea. I had a job that was going to make it hard to make time to take the test, let alone study for it, and I thought that a 1250 was perfectly fine. Because I resisted my dad’s pleas for so long before finally coming around to the idea, I ended up signing up late for the test. With no seats left at any schools in Washington State, the closest testing center became Laurelwood Academy in Jasper, Oregon.

With about a five hour drive ahead of us, my dad and I left the house early Friday morning. I had all of the required materials: a protein bar, a bottle of water, two No. 2 pencils, a TI-84 calculator, a state ID, and my test ticket. I had studied by googling how to use a semicolon the day before we left. I was going to arrive on time and leave my phone in the car and there was going to be no one that could stop me from taking the SAT. 

The largest single piece of property in Woodinville, Washington is the 800 space grocery store parking lot in the middle of town. Surrounded by other staples of white suburbia such as Panera, Starbucks, Petsmart, AMC, and Barnes & Noble, the massive Haggen parking lot is the center of culture (loosely put) in the town. No matter what precautions you take to avoid it, you will at some point be faced with no other choice but to brave this treacherous asphalt obstacle course of tight dividers, stray shopping carts, and spatially unaware pedestrians.

The medians and barriers of the Haggen parking lot were not designed with the increasing sizes of 21st century luxury SUVs in mind, and thus, are too close together for cars to easily move past one another. Almost every resident of the town has jumped a curb in this nightmare of a parking lot at least once. To a non-native, it may almost seem as though the entire thing were designed one space at a time by several city planners who all spoke different languages. Historians of the town haven’t yet ruled this theory out as a possibility. 

Traffic jams, near miss accidents, and angry honking are quintessential to the Downtown Woodinville experience.  Anyone looking to completely destroy their passengers’ faith in their driving ability and their character as a human being should consider driving them to the Woodinville Haggen parking lot on a weekday afternoon and allowing them to watch as they fail to communicate with the other drivers and stifle curse words while attempting to back out of one of the spaces in front of Panera.

By day, stay-at-home wives of Boeing and Microsoft employees struggle to move their $100,000 Range Rovers towards the exits faster than straight-A high school students trying to speed back to their 6th periods in their used Subaru Outbacks before their lunch breaks are over. By night the same used cars can be seen doing donuts, blinking their headlights at each other, and racing one another across a vast expanse of painted white lines. The members of these two camps often exist in symbiosis in the same households; the used car drivers feed off of the grocery purchases made by SUV drivers while the SUV drivers pay off the speeding tickets of the used car drivers. In nature this is called parasitism.

Sweet Juliet

Oh what did they say to you

to make you act this way

you used to be so sweet, Juliet

Now look what you’ve gone and done

perhaps when you were small

they made you skin your knee

they told you something hurtful

or made you think bad things

did they say something about your dress?

your hair?

the way you walk?

Look what you’ve gone and done, Juliet

Aged Olive

Sometimes Olive pulls over

she thinks about her job

she thinks about her computer

and her desk

she thinks about her husband

she thinks about their wedding

and his receptionist

she thinks about her suitcase

she thinks about her keys

and the note she didn’t bother to write

she thinks about the pavement

she thinks about the mountains

and the grass between her toes