If our latest creative writing assignment, ‘Bells,’ has had you staggering around like poor Quasimodo, crying out, “The bells! The bells!” then here are some suggestions to help you.
Church bells offer a range of ‘ap-pealing’ story ideas, whether they’re ringing for a Sunday service, New Year, a wedding or funeral, being used as an alarm for an invasion or a flood, or just rung for practice.
As we’re members of Island Writers, the bell in John Donne’s prose work, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (why are poets so crap at choosing titles?) may have come to mind:
“No man is an island, entire of itself… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
The tolling church bell, signifying a death, could vary; in some parts of England, the bell would be tolled nine times for a man, six times for a woman, and three for a child, so people could tell which type of person had died.
Of course, they needn’t be church bells.
There are school bells and ship’s bells, marking the time through the day;
doorbells, alarm clock bells, bicycle bells and fire-bells, rung for attention;
bells worn by animals, such as cowbells in Alpine pastures, tiny bells on a cat’s collar or jingle bells on Santa’s reindeer;
or even bluebells or diving bells, which aren’t rung at all.
So, why are your bells ringing? Who’s ringing them? What would happen if they weren’t rung or didn’t work? Perhaps it is their absence in a foreign land which will stir you to create a poem or story.
Whatever you decide, ‘brrring’ it with you to our next meeting, which, as I’ve already ‘tolled’ you, is February 18th.