Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Wednesday, June 04, 2008

  My failed attempts at fiction

Tom Trumpinskijust finished writing his first book, which takes its title from The Hellbound Train. I'm sending a lot of empathy, joy and jealousy his way. One thing that he wrote that really struck home: writing makes you insufferable, and yet you need stability and support while you are wandering around inside your mind - and on another planet.

I've been there while writing, too - I try to reassure people that the real me will be back soon - when I remember - weeks later - that maybe I was being a bastard....

Tom also penned some good tips while his ordeal was still fresh in his mind.

He actually *read* Steven King's book "On writing". I didn't. I thought the audiobook was much better. I could listen to it while NOT writing, in the car, or on the beach, mixed in with some prog-rock. To this day I still hear King's voice and the Moody Blues at the same time, in a combination much like that of Stephen Hawking and Juno Reactor on "Transmissions".

These days I can toss off a decent 1000-1200 word essay in half a day. 3000 words takes me a month. 9,000 words takes me somewhere between a year and forever. It's frustrating as hell, and that doesn't even count my sorry attempts at fiction like the below:

After the anniversary...

The next morning she got up early and made tea for herself, and coffee for me. I woke with the breath of her kiss on my forehead, and the taste of a biscuit in my mouth. Her smile illuminated the whole world.

As the real sun rose, we sat in chairs by the window.

A prism dangled against the light - it was a figure, a Michaelangelo figure, five pointed, arms and legs spread, stretched out, reaching in to the room, and at the same time, trying to fly, like Daedalus.

The light illuminated dust motes in the air and glimmered, here and there, against the carpet.

Later on, we went for a walk. There was still a slight winter chill in the air, but the spring flowers were blooming, and we walked hand in hand down to... well, nowhere really, we just walked, and laughed, and chatted, and the day passed like thousands of days before them, and ultimately, became night.



There's nowhere to go from there. It's all cliches from there on out.

The Casablanca version:

The pathological serial murderer version:Or the poisoner: The ghost story:The hard techno-pR0n version:And let's not forget the zombie story!



I kind of like the last one, actually.

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David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


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