Writer's Block

Greetings all. Here is another scrap of writing that I recently put through the editing process and ended up with a short story. I am enjoying this compression of plot, even if it costs me pages of description. It's easier to stay on task and finish a thought with such condensing afoot. Enjoy!

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Standing at the front door, Myron fidgeted in the waking day’s groggy wakening. Writer’s block, he frowned as the thought danced through his mind as it had danced for the past 48 sleepless hours of his crestfallen life. Myron had been on a writer’s spree up until this point, THE point, actually. He couldn’t close this novel, not on his own as it was no longer his own.

Arnold was a childhood friend by trade, but in Myron’s case, Arnold was his publishing agent. Their relationship soured in the weeks surrounding Myron’s first accomplished publication, which through shrewd tactics and ventriloquism throughout the chain of unknowingly participating companies, found its way into Myron’s damp basement by the crate-load. The novel was a flop, and in turn Myron was a flop, and both of them were forever branded by the publication world as unsavory and dishonest fellows.

If it weren’t for that bastard Arnold, Myron wouldn’t be here right now, toiling over the most irrelevant of minutia. Myron needed to finish his redeeming novel; he needed to make everything right. Myron fidgeted again as the sun peeked through the low hanging trees in front of Arnold’s sleeping home. Turning the knob quietly, he watched as a sliver of golden light expanded on the foyer floor. Myron needed to end this novel. He needed to right his wrongs, and as he tightened his grip on his raised sledgehammer: he knew exactly what changes were in store.

Only Darkness Remained

This was written for an exercise, I took about ten minutes writing and editing this piece and then did some finer/minor tuning when I transferred it to digital. This short short is a self contained tale, I meant it to be something of a commentary on attitudinal difference between my generation and its parent generation as well as some other old world themes. As always, I am open to any commentary or criticism. Enjoy!

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The crowd hissed and swayed, a chorus of ten thousand locusts. They paid for blood, from the lowly, wracked gambler to the naïve infantile, who knows something momentous is occurring and yet can not comprehend its vessel. ‘DEATH,’ they jeered, screeched, and volleyed. The dim arena below, a macabre theater of abject gore, beheld two nameless figures too sorry to have escaped such a fate. One stands bent albeit proud, a gray and withering old man. On the arena floor, drowning in both blood and bile lies the other, a helpless adolescent hardly able to wield the sword issued to him at the start of the duel. The surging masses in the stands mouths frothed with ravenous bloodlust, eager for the axe’s inevitable and terminal descent. The grizzled victor to-be towers over his young challenger. Shaking and haggard, he knows he will not see the New Year’s dawn but reassures himself that his life is worth this one last effort. Anything to ensure his own survival, he reassures himself, as he raises his bloodied and worn axe.

“I am sorry, my son, for I have not the courage to face my own mortality. And so I must perpetuate this season of death so that I, not you, may inherit this defunct world to which I have you brought you in to. One last day, for myself.” And then only darkness remained.

Under The Dunes

Part II of my cruel revival, this is shorter and less edited but more developed than my previous post. Here I dissect the question of motivation at large. Enjoy!

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I’ve spent countless nights willingly feeding my soul to the toiling of ostensible failure, digitally submitting my life as I search for its very definition. What is it about my emotional discharge that fascinates me so? What is it inside of me that forces me to exit my fantasy and begin to pour myself onto digital canvas? It is my unwillingness to conform to the forgotten body that is my generation? It is my unending effort’s fruition that, although seemingly forced, causes me to record these fleeting gasps of breath as they radiate from the recent corpse that is my creative instinct. Who am I kidding? I just want to become famous and remain unforgotten whence my corporeal form has returned to the soil from which it came. I only want to live long enough to see my constructs bury me, and only then will I be able to slip into the sands and rest under their dunes.

To Be Forgotten

It's been over two years since I've taken anything and put it online. I've grown significantly in terms of cognitive maturity, the voice I write with, and the subjects I prefer to linger on. I willingly let this project slip away while I went about whatever it was I was doing. Anyway, I've decided to start fresh by not dumping what I've written during this two year gap and instead to post some things that were written today. I think it's a good start to what may evolve into a routine, which is what I intended to do with this project when I began. Enjoy!

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I’m obsessed with filling a void I’m told exists within the depths of my conscious soul. This void is played out in a meaningless menagerie of thoughtlessness insistent on being that which is thoughtfulness. I’m told this void exists in every person, and I’ve observed how my peers and associates cope with their own existence in the shadow of humanity’s pass. I am unlike my peers in that I am exactly like them; I proclaim my individuality by proclaiming my singularity. Every thought and every opinion is not of my own just as every material possession in my home is not of my own making. I have barricaded my soul behind the thoughts and dreams of recent decades passed and I am content with living in moral squalor so that I may be comfortably lulled to sleep by what the world tells me is important. I constantly question my motives for continuing my journey, naively believing that I know enough to see my path's conclusion. My happiness is wrought digitally, my sadness, however, is culminated in a fine mist that is only apparent when I occasionally open my eyes. The age of harmlessness is in actuality the most deadly age we have ever come upon, where a man cannot disappear into the wildness of nature to construct his living but rather must disappear into the masses to construct his identity among an unending sea of dreams that have already been dreamt. And even then, what was it all for? To be remembered is to be immortal, to be forgotten is to have lived. Mortality is our gift to each other before and after, it is a tribute to never be conquered nor matched. Mortality is what equalizes the façade of conjured happiness, wealth, and notoriety. It proves to us that we are no greater than the sculptures we create in our likeness or the winds generated by our wings’ flap. In that thought, I find great comfort.