Hi, It's Me!

I am your first sentence. That's your throwaway. That means you're meant to get rid of it when you've finished writing this and go back to editing. Got that? Don't forget. Get rid of that first sentence or else dude. Yes, I just called you dude, get over it. Oh, by the way, you might want to keep in mind that the farther you get away from that first sentence, the harder it's going to be to remember to get rid of it. Out of sight, out of mind. Okay, that's wasn't very original, but it's approprose, isn't it? Nice word that, "appropropose" except you have no idea how to spell it, so I've got to point out that you have little business using it. You should try to use words you know how to spell, dude. Ha! Got ya again. Not to mention words you know the meaning of. Ow! Ended that sentence with a preposition, didn't you! And you know better, I'm sure. You've trained yourself in how to write properly, haven't you? You're proud of it!! I've heard you say so more than once! But hey, did you ever think that might be the problem, DUDE? That you taught yourself and didn't bother to learn the right rules for writing? But hey, no one, least of all me, is going to tell you how to write!

Okay, so you're tired of that paragraph and want to start something new here. Why not? It's your right. You're the author after all. You can write any damn thing you take a mind to write, and boy, you mean to practice that freedom, don't you!

What? Cutting that off so soon? I'm getting the impression you're trying to get rid of me. But DUDE, there's only one way to get rid of me. And you know what it is, don't you. I don't have to tell you. You stop writing and I'm outta here! But you being you, the author, you're just not gonna be chased off that easily, are you. Not by me anyway.

Okay. So you're still trying, aren't you. To have your cake and eat it too. What do I mean? You know what I mean, you're writing this stuff, aren't you? You want to keep writing but you want me to selflessly get out of the way so you can write ... what? Other junk? Stories? Fiction? Well good luck with that, dude.

Right, I hear ya. You're gonna stop, go pee, go fill your face, go watch TV, go do something else until I just fade away. Well. It might work, but I'm not promising anything. But I want you to promise me something before you go: get rid of that damn opening sentence!

The Writing Game

"What does it take to win at this writing game?"

Les sat on a folding chair a few feet away from one of his idols, the Great Writer X. X nursed his fourth scotch and squinted at Les.

"Lemme tell ya what I think about that, son. It's a damn shame, is what it is. So many people wanting to write, to tell their great story or whatever the hell it might be, huge egos on the line. So much sadness. So much suffering. It's a shame, is what it is." X closed his eyes and looked as if he might weep. Then his face went neutral again and he brought the scotch to his lips.

"Okay," said Les. "But what does it take? To write a great book, to get it published, to get readers, to make it in the business?"

"Yeah, well it ain't gonna happen. Not anymore." X finished his drink and poured another. The bottle Les had brought was almost empty. "Lemme tell ya why."

"Sure. Why?"

"Need three things to happen, son. One, talent. Ya got to write, and write great. Ya got to have that magic something that takes your story over the top, that makes it dance along the invisible edge, the razor's edge. You, the writer, you have to be able to throw yourself over and over against a wall that will never give. You have to bleed, and you have to be able to give that blood to your readers."

"Shit," said Les.

"And you have to have ambition. Real ambition. You have to want more, you hear me? More than the average person would ever want. I don't mean stuff, son. I mean Truth with a capital T. You have to have it in you to write great, and more than that, to want to write great work, not just trivial fluff. To have to have to do it. And hell, maybe you have to want to suffer too. You listening to me?"

"Yeah," sighed Les, finishing his own drink now.

"One more thing that's got to happen. You got to be lucky. You got to write books that're gonna hit at the right time. It's all in the timing, son. Because those readers ain't always out there, see. They come and go. Sometimes they're there, like they were in the twenties, and again after the second war, and like they really were in the fifties. Hungry for more than what was in front of them. Dying to know secrets. It has to be a time when people believe they can be more, and the culture and the media are telling 'em to read, to think bigger, to actually work at growing their understanding of how life works. During those times, and they're rare, people queue up to devour anything that comes along that might lift them from their dumps and remind them that there's more. You have to publish in a time when people believe it's possible to become fully human."

The old man sighed and put his glass down hard on the table. He looked at Les. "Son, you came at the wrong time, that's all there is to it. I can't help you. Because right now, let me tell you. There's maybe one of those hungry readers left out of the thousands that used to crowd into the book stores. Maybe not even one. Son, the time's out of joint. Truth, especially the hard core subtle truths that used to make our hair stand on end, stuff like Dostoevsky and Waugh and Hesse and Hemingway and maybe even Salinger or Updike used to write. Christ son, that hunger is just gone now. Eat up by triviality and illiteracy and stupid computer games and sports bars and ...."

X poured the last of the scotch into his glass and raised it to his lips once more. This time the tears were real. "Everyone wants the illusion of mystery. Mystery as game or as entertainment. No one cares about the real mysteries anymore. Son, go home. Write your books. Then put 'em somewhere where they can be found in another age. Thirty years, or maybe fifty. Maybe then. Maybe. Or maybe there won't be books or anyone left to read them by then."

SoftCopy Anthology: Facts of the Case

Publisher SoftCopy has just released an anthology of short fiction and art work titled My First Time, available in Kindle and I-Pad versions only (no print).

Included: my short story of love, pain and alienation, "Facts of the Case". Only $7.99, it includes work by 50 authors and artists, and the quality of that work is mad great.

Six O'Clock News

Honey Jones, cute female announcer on the six-o'clock news:

"Today scientists announced that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves." Video clip plays. Scientist in white coat standing in laboratory being interviewed.

"Dr. Jonas Sulk heads a team of scientists here at the Quantum Underground Essential Elements Research laboratory in Whiteout, Alaska. Dr. Sulk, what can you tell us about this breakthrough?"

"Our research here has led to conclusive evidence that reality, what we have until now thought of as external, concrete, empirical reality outside of ourselves, simply does not exist. We think. We dream. We shape our reality with our thoughts and desires and fears. Our work here has demonstrated that's the totality of our existence. Make of that what you will."

"What does this mean for us, Doctor? How do you think this will affect people?"

"Beats me. Go ask your philosophers. Better yet, ask your science fiction writers. If anyone has a clue, it might be them. Me, I've got to go shut down a cyclotron and clean up about two hundred slides."

Shot of anonymous university building. Honey Jones: "We found Dr. Hans Whitman at the city university's philosophy department. Conveniently, he was visiting with a colleague, Friar Milt Schwartz, when we asked for an interview."

Shot of academic in tweeds with arm patches and wool tie. "Dr. Whitman, what do you have to say about today's announcement by the QUEER Institute?"

"Well, Honey, we're still looking at the evidence, but it appears cut and dried. Our physicists here tell us it's irrefutable. So Dr. Schwartz and I have been talking over the implications. It's too early to issue any real public announcement about this, but I can tell you we're all pretty rattled by this development. It completely undermines our model of what's real and what's not, and therefore the value systems we are used to working with."

Friar Schwartz broke in. "Hans, wait. I can't agree with that. Look at it this way, Honey. You're sitting in a chair, right? Holding a microphone? Probably just like you did before this announcement?"

Honey: "Uh…yeah."

Friar Schwartz: "Does the chair or the microphone seem different to you now?"

Honey: "Um …I guess not. Not really."

Friar Schwartz: "So there you are. Our reality, or our _sense_ of reality, hasn't changed. Concrete or dream, it's all the same."

Dr. Whitman: "Milt, you're trampling my territory there, don't you think? I mean, that's a philosophical proposition."

Friar Schwartz: "C'mon Hans. Am I wrong?"

Dr. Whitman: "Well …no, I suppose you're right. But it's obvious, isn't it. Almost an apriori statement. A chair is a chair because it's a chair."

Friar Schwartz: "Yes, and …?"

Dr. Whitman: "Nothing. Nothing."

Honey: "Dr. Schwartz? Or is it Friar Schwartz? Or Father?"

Friar Schwartz: "Doctor is okay. I have a doctorate degree, just like Hans here."

Honey: "Okay. So how does this affect your, uh, practice, or teaching, or ... you know, whatever you do?"

Friar Schwartz: "Oh, it doesn't change anything. I teach and write about the human spirit and our relationship with God and ... like that. I can't imagine any of that changing."

Honey: "But …if everything we experience is a dream …I mean, does that mean God is a dream? Or part of our dream?"

Dr. Whitman: "Exactly. See, Milt, that's what I was trying to tell you before these folk showed up. Honey. You put it rather simply, but effectively that was what I was trying to get Milt here to consider."

Friar Schwartz: "Hans. It makes no difference, don't you see?. I mean, how concrete did we think God was before this announcement? He's not a dream, he's not physical the way we are - or were, excuse me - He's way beyond all of those definitions. My work continues as usual."

Cut to new face behind a desk: a haggard, middle aged professional who needs a haircut. Honey: "This is Dr. Larry Littleman, a psychologist at the Center for the Mentally Challenged, located here in our city. Dr. Littleman, would you care to comment on this morning's announcement by the QUEER Institute? About how nothing's really real anymore?"

Camera holds on Littleman's face for a long time as he says nothing and appears to grow more and more distressed. His clenched hands begin to shake. Finally, "Uh. Well. Uh. You know. It's changed some things around here. We're, uh .…We're, uh, considering it. That's all. Some people here are a little, uh, uncomfortable with this. I can't really talk about it."

Honey: "But sir, how is it affecting your patients?"

Littleman (increasingly nervous): "About the same as it's affecting the staff, I guess. We're …surprised. And a little ...." (There is the sound of a long scream in the background. Camera shakes.)

Cut away to Honey at news desk. "There you have it. People may have differences of opinion, but it looks like life goes on pretty much as it has. Some people, it seems, don't seem to be taking it very well. How does this announcement affect you? Drop by our web site and leave us a comment. This is Honey Jones for The News That's New. Now here’s Tom with the weather."

Analogies and Metaphors

Future Novelists... These are actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays (sorry, I'm posting without credit because they're source unknown.)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a thigh master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star crossed lovers raced across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resemble Nancy Kerrigan's teeth. (gee, sorry Nancy, wherever you are)

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

"Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a really duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

He was deeply in love when she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightening.

Falling

Did I put on a parachute? Do I even have a parachute? This, I think, I don't really want to know. To know the answer is to defeat the purpose of the moment, which is to jump. Jump without knowing, and more importantly, if possible, without caring. I'm holding on to something. I look: it's a metal handle welded to a rib that curves around the fuselage of this airplane. It's strong, utilitarian, useful; the opposite of almost everything else in my life. It's one of the reasons I'm here. To find, and to grasp, something irrefutably solid and immovable, the purpose of which is single-minded: to give steadiness to someone like me when he needs it.

Reminded of the airplane, I become aware of the noise and the vibration. I look up and see an open door. Next to it, a man dressed in a brown jumpsuit and bright red helmet and gloves and goggles. And parachute. He is pointing at me and waving his hand to come forward. I realize I've just woken up from a dream - that I fell asleep while the plane climbed to jumping altitude. And I know I must have a parachute on. My hand slaps down over an oval clamp over my belly button; yes, of course I do. Still, the tiniest part of me wonders, how would I know if I'm awake, really? and I get up and stumble forward toward this young man and I stop next to him - waiting for instruction? - and he motions me on forward, into the mouth of the open door. My hands instinctively reach up on each side and grasp the frame and what do I find? Two more of those fine, reassuring metal handles, sized and placed exactly as needed by someone standing in this door, facing outward, ready to die.

I turn my head to the right to see his face and before I can glimpse his eyes, I feel his hand on my back and a push and the metal handles fail me, or I fail them, and I'm out. Falling.

Have I done this before? I seem to remember doing it, yes, or else I remember dreaming that I did. Then I remember that once, on a cold day drinking juniper tea from an incredibly fragile teacup handed me by a small brown woman with no teeth and a bright red scarf hiding her hideous hair, I wrote a little poem in which I floated like this, and remembered floating like this, and down I floated, wind whipping as if punishing me for something, eyes full of tears despite my goggles and unspoken apologies, arms extended in surrender, glimpsing something like the earth and trees and water and sand turning below me, turning slowly, then quickly, tumbling out of sight finally, and my thought at that moment, my final thought, was, I remember remembering a dream that became a poem that became life that became ....

#fridayflash: Gratitude Pill

Herr Docktor Franz Kelling, considered a genius in the pharmaceutical biochemistry world, was anything but when it came to his home life. He lived alone with his fourteen year old daughter Kara. Alone because his wife had left, fed up with both of them. Consumed with work, Franz spent little time with his daughter, and when he did, he found her increasingly angry.

"You're never here and when you are, it's 'Kara do this, Kara do that, Kara do the dishes, Kara take out the trash!' You can't be around me without telling me what to do!"

"But ... but!!" he sputtered. "I'm your father! I feed you and house you! You should be grateful. You must do as I say! You WILL do as I say!"

"OH!!" Kara stomped off to her room and refused to come out.

Being a scientist, Franz naturally started thinking about some technological fix to this drama. "I wonder. What if I make a pill that makes people grateful? I might have to slip it to her in her meal, but ...."

Within a few weeks, he had it. A small pill that lasted for a week or more. The Gratitude Pill. He couldn't resist patenting it and when he did, his institute found out. "Franz, this is brilliant work, but why did you not tell us you were working on something so fantastic? The public will claw down our doors to get this! And of course, since you did the work here, you must share the patent with us."

The institute rushed testing and approval and got the pill on the market in record time. They were right: the world was stunned: a pill to make people feel grateful? Wonderful! It would change the world! It was very possibly humanity's salvation. Who would lie or steal or kill or wage war for that matter, if they felt grateful to their neighbors? It outsold any other pill ever produced.

Then the side effects kicked in. Everyone who took the pill for more than a few weeks (most of the world) began to feel terribly guilty. Guilty for all those years they had failed to be grateful. Guilt, naturally enough, quickly became resentment. Some dealt with it by ignoring their friends and loved ones for as long as they could. When they began to feel guilty about doing this, they once again turned to the Gratitude Pill. And so the circle turned. Others dealt with their guilt by buying and showering their friends and loved ones with presents. This resulted in a world wide spending spree that so pumped up the world economy that when their friends, feeling guilty themselves, returned the gifts, or just dumped them on the doorsteps of local charities, the world economy deflated like a punctured balloon. The national economies spiraled down into recession and unemployment. When things got unbearable for people, they either killed themselves, or spent what little they had to buy Gratitude Pills. And so the circle turned.

Franz, not insensitive to all this, decided to create a solution to this problem. He promptly invented a No-Guilt pill. Predictably, there was instant world-wide demand for this. It was all the factories could do to turn them out by the billions.

Franz's institute was by this time fantastically wealthy. They showered Franz with bonuses in addition to his patent earnings. During this time, Franz learned that wealth was no solution to his problem with his daughter, who had adamantly refused to take any pills of any kind, and who sensibly inspected her meals before eating.

The side effect of the No-Guilt Pill, of course, was a world wide wave of criminality.

Franz was appalled when they came for him and charged him with masterminding and amplifying crime around the world. His institute discharged him and claimed no knowledge of his work or intent, and thus saved itself, however feebly.

Franz's daughter came to visit him in prison. "Hello father. I just wanted to tell you in person that I'm off to see the rest of the world now that you're no longer around to imprison me in our home. And to say thanks for the money I've inherited, and for going away to jail so I can lead my own life. For all of that, I'm just terribly, terribly grateful!"