Theme - "Dream"

Word Limit: 2200

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 9/08th by 11:59 PM Pacific

Voting begins Thursday, 09/09 , and goes until Saturday, 9/11 at 11:59 PM Pacific.

Optional Secondary Objective: Stream of Consciousness

This one will be tough. Stream of consciousness writing is a form of the inner monologue , and is characterized by a flow of thoughts and images. The purpose of the style is to lead the reader to an understanding of the emotional or psychological make-up of the character. Stream of Consciousness pieces are rarely grounded in such a way that they are understandable sentence to sentence. Instead, the piece begins to come together as the reader gains more insight into the character.

Submission Guidelines:

- One entry per poster.
- All submissions must be written during the time of the challenge.
- Using the topic as the title of your piece is discouraged.
- Keep to the word count!

Voting Guidelines:

- Three votes per voter. Please denote in your voting your 1st (3 pts), 2nd (2 pts), and 3rd (1 pt) place votes.
- Please read all submissions before voting.
- YOU MUST VOTE in order to be eligible to win the challenge.
- When voting ends, the winner gets a collective pat on the back, and starts the new challenge.

Writing Challenge FAQ

Playing to my strengths... if I can actually submit a decent piece this time.

This should be .

Yeah I saw "stream of consciousness." And thought, "welp Zeph should have it easy this time around."

Congrats again Crow!

CROW FINALLY WON! Congratulations!

Also, stream of consciousness... is that what I usually do?

Hopefully, I'll be able to actually write a story this time. I haven't been able to for about a month.

Congratulations!

This is what I have so far, but I decided to ditch it for now. Doesn't seem too related to the idea of 'dreams'.

There are pirates here, merchants farcasting from their rigs on the Indian Ocean. The usual set of goods from the fleshlabs in China, replacement organs and limbs, along with live dolls and pet-melds, half-cat half-dogs rutting in cages with winged rabbits and rats. Porn from America, churned out in great quantities from the slums of the Bible Belt, blond starlets innumerable and indistinguishable, along with child-farms based in Somalia and Romania, holographs of the merchandise floating in front of their windows, of young children pale and dark, boy or girl, whatever you want. And there’s more, memory sellers and dream vendors, narcotics, gold, diamonds and sapphires. It’s a filthy place. It’s all a heat-haze, a dream. I can de-sync and snap out of it, and face Seleucid as it actually is, a bare-bones desert city with Tower Iskandar rising in the distance. Prefab buildings three stories tall, all of them identical in shape and size, laid out in symmetrical rows on the desert landscape. It’s an ugly city, but when you sync in with the city’s network--one blink and it’s real, what it was meant to be, a jewel shining in the dark, neon signs blazing ruby-red in the air. Translucent peole mingling with those who are solid, net-cast shoppers passing by the city’s inhabitants. The vendors all staked out along the roads in implausible finery, period trappings, clad in robes and turbans or fitted out like old-time Crusaders or merchants, tight pants and all. And the smell, of cinnamon and toffee apples, sausages, sweat, coffee--it’s a filthy, wonderful place, and I’ve fallen in love with it, the city of Seleucid.

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Congrats Crow. Had a feeling your time had come.
dreams and streams eh?
The first thing that has come to me, is the one I'm going to stick with, and unfortunately doesn't look like it will work with the 2nd objective, but am quite intrigued as to what people will come up with.

If it's a dream, shouldn't it be stream of unconsciousness?

And yeah, chiming in to say I'm glad crow picked up a win. Even if he is an SEC fan.

Cyan said:

If it's a dream, shouldn't it be stream of unconsciousness?

And yeah, chiming in to say I'm glad crow picked up a win. Even if he is an SEC fan.

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Been to hollywood?

Cyan said:

If it's a dream, shouldn't it be stream of unconsciousness?

And yeah, chiming in to say I'm glad crow picked up a win. Even if he is an SEC fan.

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Hey, I tried to get into UCSD. They turned me down.

I've had three great ideas so far. And they've all been too Inception-esque.

back to the drawing board.

Looking at it, my idea could work with 2nd obj. But if I wrote the story in a Stream of Consciousness style; people will just not understand what I'm saying. East London slang and what not.

I might be first out of the gate, seeing as I'm not getting anything for the Poetry thread.

December the 2nd

Word count (312)


“You know I saw you in my dream once...”

She looked up at him, with her head slanted to the left, with a curious look examining his face. “You dreamt of me?” she innocently asked. He nodded, leaning back to rest on his hands. The rain the night before left that distinct scent and coolness in the air around – the grass was wet and somehow felt sharp because of it.

“When your mother and I realised we never wanted to be apart from each other, she would always ask how I pictured our children”. He paused for a moment, and when she noticed her father’s eyes wonder, she moved closer to focus her attention on one of the loose buttons on his shirt. “Strangely, I never dreamt of a boy; always a little girl. She would smile and role her eyes thinking that it was just me pandering to her own hopes of having a daughter. But I always saw you”. She glanced up momentarily at her father, still playing with the button, too young and naive to see the subdued pain in his eyes. He bit his bottom lip staring at her, with her new dress to mark the occasion, not knowing how to explain that whilst he saw his daughter in his wife’s eyes, he now saw her mother through her.

Bored already of her expeditions with the illusive button, she placed herself on her father’s lap and rested her back on his chest. The clouds were unusually dark that morning. He leaned back forward, and holding her right hand, he turned to the tombstone beside them.

“Do you think she dreams of me...?”

He felt a cold chill and looked at her – struck with emotion at the mere idea. He wrapped his arms around his daughter and rested his mouth on the back of her head, and kissed it.

Finally. I really liked that write up you did in your last thread. You're a decent writer, you should be in this thread a lot more...

Meus Renaissance said:

Part One


*The following is based on a Nat Geo documentary I recently discovered. I typed out what I saw and tried to make into an article.

From the stylish bordellos of Australia, to Europe where the disable pay for sex, where men are taped in futuristic cyber brothels, to the violence sex slums of Bangladesh; around the world prostitution bares many faces.

At the high end of the industry, prostitution comes packaged in luxury and style where some women, calling themselves ‘Escorts’, choose prostitution and claim to enjoy the work and its handsome financial rewards. Just a few kilometres from the iconic landmarks of Sydney harbour is Stiletto, a licensed brothel looking more like a four-star hotel with its impressive furniture, lights, water fountains, and beautifully made spiral stair cases. Stiletto oozes luxury as well as sex. It’s just one of many establishments open for business in most Australian states where prostitution was legalised in an attempt to regulate the industry and curve violence. “As soon as you walk in the door you can see the decor is absolutely beautiful. The ladies here are unbelievable!” explains one of the women. The mood is relaxed with well-dressed women and men drinking champagne next one of the pool tables. It becomes immediately obvious that the working conditions here at Stiletto exceed that of many working places. “We have a little area with loads of mirrors so we can place our bag down and do our makeup. We’ve got hair dryers, bathroom showers – we’ve also got a little gym at the back.”

When a client arrives, one of the women goes to meet him at the sitting area where he inspects the Escorts offered and then walks with his choice upstairs to the second floor to one of nineteen themed large bedrooms. Before any money is exchanged, he is inspected for STD’s and after clearing that, “the gentleman is asked how long he would like to stay for”. While the client follows instructions to shower, the Escort proceeds to bank the money with the brothel cashier. “Once we’re back in the room, we have a little chit-chat and then...the magic happens I guess you could say”. Escorts here might have sex up to ten times a shift, some costing up to hundreds of dollars each time. This leads to many of these women earning on average the equivalent of $170,000 US a year, putting them in the top 10% of Australian earners.

Women are often unwillingly driven or sold to prostitution, but for ‘Samantha’, and other Escorts like her, it’s simply a matter of choice she argues. “I think a lot of people get this picture that we stand on roads doing it for a drug habit, or that we’re single mothers trying to make ends meet, but that’s not it at all. We’re all quite intelligent and we do it for a reason – we love it, we’re good at it and we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t”. Some, like Assistant Professor Jill McCracken, believe job satisfaction comes from control over their work. “I do believe some women enjoy being sex workers, because they’re more in control and can set the boundaries of the service they provide. High-end sex workers are more likely to have an amount of control and hence are more likely to enjoy their work.”

Samantha’s choice of profession will always be controversial, but is that controversy based only on the idea of providing sex in exchange for money? “Women are not participating in ways that have been dictating to them by gender norms. What is scary to a lot of people is seeing women turning sexual notions, traditional sexuality, upside down. In some regards, the stigma against high-end prostitutes is stronger than street sex workers. Often people may think if you may end up on the street, it wasn’t of your choice so we’re not going to judge you as harshly whereas if you’re high end – you’re beautiful, smart and yet and so if you chose this then it indicates something about your character or morals”. ‘Samantha’ understands this depressing reality all too well, giving her interview with her face blurred out and using an alias. “The only people who what I do are my best friend and her husband. To my family, I’m just actually working as a nurse. This is one thing you don’t want your parents to find out”, she admits.

Women who sell sex are considered tainted and men who buy it are considered sleazy. But when a disabled person pays for sex, some believe it is no longer a taboo. Asther Philpot is one of six million disabled people in Britain. Born with arthrogryposis, Asther is confided to a wheelchair for life. “ I've got limited movement in my arms and legs. I can’t feed myself. Basically, I’ve got to be cared for 24 hours". Despite that, he’s learnt to cope with his disabilities and edits his own documentaries whilst holding a pen in his mouth with a rubber tip to press on the keys on his keyboard. But Asther has difficulty establishing a meaningful relationship or even sexual partner. Having no luck in finding love, he instead buys sex. On one afternoon with his father beside him, they browse the Internet for brothels outside his shores (prostitution is illegal in England). “Phoaw! She’s hot, I hope she’ll be there”, he says looking at professionally done photographs of some of the women in a Dutch brothel. His father makes a note of her name along with others on a piece of paper. It’s not a trip most father and son’s take together, but Asther and his understanding father/carer are planning a unique trip to the Netherlands.

The question is, does his disability change the rules or is prostitution morally wrong regardless? Professor Sheila Jeffrey’s doesn’t believe a mother would take her disabled daughter to a male prostitute. “What it’s all about is what we called the Law of the Male Sex Drive. It is considered that men must have sexual access to women, and women must be listed to make sure this is possible”. “Many parents with kids with disabilities don’t even realise they have feelings for a romantic relationship or even desires for sex”, Asther adds whilst driving towards to the port to catch a ferry to mainland Europe. “It’s been a while” he says, reassuring us that he is excited with an expressionless face. There he will meet a small group of women sitting around a couch, sipping glasses of champagne, whilst with his father behind him – he scans them unable to hide his gleeful smile. The owner, a woman herself, walks over to him privately. She seems friendly and warm; in fact this brothel is one of many that cater to the disabled. The Dutch are both receptive and sympathetic to disabled people in this context – with government grants offered to them that would pay for sex at least twelve times a year. She unknowingly leans forward down to him and asks if he knows which girl he’d like. He nods, slightly embarrassed. He chooses a tall slender black woman and they both walk down a hall leading to their room – unknown to Asther at that moment, the rooms he passes in the hallway are occupied. His father sits at the table and waits. When his son comes out, the change in his mood is obvious for all to see in the massive smile on his face. “I feel recharged!” he says happily.

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Meus Renaissance said:

Part Two

On the banks of the river Padma in Bangladesh, Maya stares across the water towards her former home. This mighty river symbolises Maya’s separation from her family and her past life. It reminds her that she can never return for she is a Khanki. Trapped in the sprawling brothel town named Daulatdia, Maya shares no love for the place she has lived for most of her life. “Life here is bad. I’ve been here since I was a child and people don’t come here to do good business – they’re only here to have sex with prostitutes and so it’s known around as a bad place”

In the background, trucks laden with goods for Dhaka line up for days waiting to cross the busy river. This giant traffic jam spawned Daulatdia, a road-side sex slump of over two thousand shacks each housing a prostitute. The women here service thousands of men per day for the equivalent for $2-4 US a time; although Maya shakes her head resigned to the fact that she often lives on less. “I try to get what I can”. Maya is around five foot ten and sits on the edge of her bed wearing a pink saree and walks around during the day with a tired face. But today she’s speaking keenly to the camera and her face seems more radiant as she streams her conscious thoughts. It’s only when her eyes search the lower corners as she’s thinking do you get a glimpse of how red they are – a sign of her long nights. In a country where nearly 60 million people live on less than $1 a day, many of these women see prostitution as an economic necessity. In fact the law allows unemployed women over eighteen to apply for permission to work as a prostitute. Although legal, Bangladeshi society still treats these women as outcasts. The Anthropologist professor H.KS Arfeen explains “prostitution is a taboo; it is also a highly stigmatised one. It’s closely related to the notion of ‘purity pollution’”. The concept of purity and pollution come originally from Hindu culture – of which Hindu’s make up the second largest community in Bangladesh. Whatever her religion or background, when a woman turns to prostitution she becomes forever tainted. “And as a result, a prostitute becomes polluted all her life – even her children and even the vicinity of where she lives” he adds.

Daulatdia’s entire economy is based around the selling of sex, and although girls of all ages line up and entrench themselves on either side of the narrow street paths between the shacks, it is the pimps and madams that run the town whilst shadowy gangsters pull the purse strings. Despite the women around here being considered impure, Daulatdia has its own internal caste system. At the bottom are the Chookri’s; young girls who’ve been sold to Madams as a sex slave. At the top are the Madams, or Shordani’s, that own the Chookri’s and the one room shack which the girls rent to sell sex. In between are girls like Maya who have won their independence.

The next afternoon we see a man approach Maya and her taller female friend whose keeping herself cool with a small wooden folding fan. Maya starts swinging her arms backwards and fowards, rubbing her eye and trying to hide an embarrassed smile. Her friend behind her looks at the camera with a wry smile realising the awkwardness of the moment; the man is asking for a price. He finds the situation humouring but isn’t put off by the camera. With one hand on his hip, he seems confident and focused solely on Maya who doesn’t look towards us at any moment. She wipes her hands on her skirt and tightly presses her lips; she’s uncomfortable. On a busy day Maya might see up to ten clients and earn over $20 but some days are slow and so she must pay inflated prices for food, rent and electricity. When she misses a payment she’s vulnerable to fines. “Some days I can’t pay anyone and so they come back when I can and demand double. When I go to bed to sleep, I constantly dream about leaving this place. I think to myself – maybe if I had enough money I could establish enough money and open a shop. But it’s so hard to earn money”, she says fighting the tears that are breaking her voice. She eventually wipes her wet eyes. We see her today with that client and she eventually nods towards a path behind her – she takes his hand and they walk away to her shack.

Unlike the Escorts in Sydney, Maya yearns to leave this life behind. “My father died soon after I was born, but my older sister told me that if he were alive he’d had never allowed this to happen. His dream was that all his girls would go to school and be educated. But my mother was poor and couldn’t continue my education or feed me...” Unable to continue with the story on camera, she finally breaks down. When she was ten years old, her aunt took her to Daulatdia and sold her to the highest bidder. “I remember going to a house and was given food. They mixed some drug to the rice and I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, my aunt was gone and told me that I now belonged to them”, she adds. Maya was sold to a woman called Rasheeda – a former prostitute turned Madam. Rasheeda is shorter than Maya and larger. She combs her long black hair in front of a mirror on a cabinet filled with countless clothes and sarees, although her evident self-beautifying doesn’t hide her wrinkles, stretch marks or weathered face. She reasons, “I run a prostitution business. I am a house owner. This place belongs to me, and I have some girls here that work in my business” as she leans back on her chair. If anything was lost in translation, it was certainly not her obvious pride. According to Maya, she was purchased for $5000. Rasheeda prefers to call it an “investment”. By the time she had paid back the investment, plus some profit for her Madam, Maya was eighteen (the legal age for prostitution). Unknown to her, most would define her situation as enslavement and not prostitution. She’s been forced to sell her body for more than half her life and without an education or qualifications; it’s unlikely she will ever be employed by anyone other than those who want to take advantage. “At first, I would refuse going with them. I begged them. But then they would beat me and rape as a punishment”, she recalls with a shrug of her shoulder. Qurratil-ain-Tahmina ‘Miti’, an author who commentates on sex slums like this, isn’t surprised by Maya’s resigned look. “If the girls that are brought into these brothels refuse, they are gang raped, tortured and starved of food. Eventually, they give in”. Rasheeda dismisses this, “I heard that there are some Madams that torture their girls. That is not my business. My business is to only look after my girls and to look after my girls.”

Unsurprisingly perhaps, sexually transmitted diseases are rife in places like Daulatdia. A survey taken in 2002 found the rate of syphilis there to be as high as 40% (of those that agreed to the tests) as many clients refuse to wear condoms. “These girls are not in any position to negotiate with a client”, Qurratil-ain-Tahmina points out shaking her head, possibly aware of the fatal consequences for them. But Maya’s life isn’t all doom and gloom; there are pieces of hope on these squandered alleyways. She has friends, a surrogate family of other sex workers and even a boyfriend (known as Baboos). “We are just like husband and wife. We live together and I love him, but I don’t know if he loves me or not”. Baboos are not pimps but all too often it is the money of these girls they are after. A smiling ‘Miti’ explains, “A Baboo would say – I’ll marry you and set you with a home – and as soon as her money is spent she is thrown back to the brothels. Every girl knows it, but still, every girl gives it a go with the hope of finding respite in the form of love”.

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source.

Ashes1396 said:

Finally. I really liked that write up you did in your last thread. You're a decent writer, you should be in this thread a lot more...

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Thanks man. I don't feel that I'm a natural writer though. My strengths, and weakness, are all circumlocution and imagery. I enjoy the challenge of being descriptive but I've yet to learn how to structure my writing.

Meus Renaissance said:

Thanks man. I don't feel that I'm a natural writer though. My strengths, and weakness, are all circumlocution and imagery. I enjoy the challenge of being descriptive but I've yet to learn how to structure my writing.

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I'm backing out of negative criticism slowly, but the other's will have decent enough pointers for you.

Ashes1396 said:

I'm backing out of negative criticism slowly, but the other's will have decent enough pointers for you.

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Send all that negative criticism my way. Be as harsh as possible.

Irish said:

Send all that negative criticism my way. Be as harsh as possible.

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o.0

You beat yourself up too much. You needn't do that to yourself. And focusing purely on the negative can have the opposite effect of what the point of criticism is.

Irish said:

Send all that negative criticism my way. Be as harsh as possible.

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You could have said that in one sentence.

I have an idea and I'm running with it like the four winds yet this time I can feel some sort of dappled sun-light peeking through a midnight horizon.

Good shit crow! I think I might have trouble with this theme. I think I'm tapped out on dream ideas.

All right. I've been lazy enough for the past few months. It's time for me to really buckle down and get started on my grad school application process. Again. Back to the editing, editing, editing, begging for proof reads, editing, editing, editing, etc. fun.

Neorxnewang
Word Count: 2180

The still painting never changed, forever a tabula rasa that, if it were given speech, could possibly provide an ultima ratio civis, but there was nothing on the page and the paper was dry. A frame without a border without a name without a clue, a man without a destination without a face without a soul.

Always the same conclusion to the same dried up story yes and if I could provide more fluffy cloud prose to brighten up your saccharine sun-shot day I would but I can't so I won't. Each night, I'd be staring into this portrait willing a life into it, willing something to exist, but even in your dreams sometimes you can't play the Heavenly Father. Your mind's a border, an eccentric squiggly-line zooming all over the place in some stretched-out rubberband circular snake, and when you color it in you can't help but try and exit the lines, 'cept someone slaps you in the face and says, “Where's your head at?”

So when I can't take this subconscious paintbrush and try and whisk some paint batter into the abyssal hole that is this portrait I sit down and pout like some disobedient child slapped too many times upside the head.

What's stopping you, little child? You have the brush, paint some life.

I try and force the brush to the paper and it turns into a dagger and stabs a hole straight through, then my hand slips and the dagger cuts a wide swath of furious futility through the medium, through my heart. I turn around and look downtrodden at a piece of armor sitting upon a throne. Everything's all black and white, and the armor's dented maybe and the metal's all rusted but the best part about it is that there's no head to the armor. It's a fucking piece of metal suit with no head.

The headless fucker's always staring at me, mocking me. The room's a cage and he's my only friend. I often imagine that I have conversations with him, pointless fucking one-liners that say everything and nothing and all that lies in-between; the kind of worthless shit you say when you're talking to your parents (you know, “Mmm hmm”, “yeah”, “okay”, and all the other window-shopped responses).

“What are you staring at?” I ask the man-with-no-head.

“Why, your countless hours you spend trying to make this painting work. The longer you spend, the larger the frame gets. It's all so funny.”

“Yeah well if this fucking paintbrush wouldn't stop turning into a dagger and tearing at the paper maybe I'd get somewhere, and maybe this all your fault you headless bucket of shit?”

As if clipping his response out of an old newspaper never read, he would give me the same old mirthless laughter that rang through the small room that seemed to get smaller each night. Did I mention I have claustrophobia? Maybe just a fucking splash of it.

Once more I turn to the painting and it's still just as empty and devoid of life as before. Is there a panacea for this illness or am I just dreaming?

----

The morning sun doesn't feel too great anymore. It used to push through the slits of my blinds and criss-cross me like the stripes of a zebra but now they feel like jail-cell bars from a well-lit prison and instead of a douchebag security guard staring at me in the face with a club in his hand it's the motherfucking all-giver of life mocking me for my stupid human life.

Fuck you.

Probably the weakest response pulled out of a vending machine at an arcade, right after you spent twenty minutes trying to get the claw to scoop up the slightly large panda bear. I scrambled out of bed, wiping the sleep from my always-drowsy eyes, slapping my cheeks lightly to wake myself up as I put coffee in the machine. I'd watch the sepia-tone liquid drip and drop and each minute I'd be waiting for it to finish so my day could begin. A two-pair of toast pops up, screaming “Hello!” with its invisible mouth sizzling out of the toaster.

But not even buttered toast fresh from my newly-bought toaster or the shit coffee made with my once-a-basement-dweller coffee machine could give me a zing that injected some fucking adrenalin down into the crook of my spine. Every morning felt like some leech attached to the dopamine in the back of my brain, slowly feeding and gorging and swelling up so fat on all my pleasure that it weighed me down like a tumor never excised.

“What am I doing?” I'd ask myself, over and over again. The words, the words, the fucking words and the little grim-reaper scythe with its friendly partner-in-crime dot that accentuated its interrogative tone.

I work at a newspaper company you see; we're kinda dying out because the Internet makes us as obsolete as a VHS tape or a gramophone found in your grandparents' closet collecting dust like a magnet. Our headlines are just as poignant as ever, we're always breaking news stories and asking the 'tough' fucking questions but ultimately you're one against a billion people who can upload it to their run-of-the-mill blog faster than you could send it to a copier. My boss, you see, this old hardass, he won't let me leave. He threatens me, saying if I quit he'll spin it as if I was fired.

Because all I wanna do is move away and write a book or a short story. I'm tired of the demands of making a quick buck on an antiquated system for an antiquated company. I want to crack my knuckles so loud it ruptures the building in half, then when everything's demolished and the people are all non-existent underneath tons of accidental rubble I'll be sitting content with my laptop, creating a story that spins heads and takes names.

I want to write something that would make a person double-take, as if the first glance weren't enough to fill the apartment of their brains, so they have to telescope their eyes once more in my direction and this time I'm an enlightened Buddha who just got done telling his fellow citizens about racism in Africa.

The end result's the same, my fingers seem to fail to puncture a key, and the document remains immaculate as a newborn kitten. Today, though... I can't quite put a finger or a phrase to it, but I have a strange feeling something's gonna change.

My eyes lazily drift upward from my table and I see you. This lone individual in a sea of faces where the real-life world of facts and microwaved solutions disappear and all that remains is an infinite space where dreams could be made. Something about you made the gravity change, made me feel lighter than a balloon ostracized by a kid's unobservant loosening grip.

Because with us we're not just an everyman or an everywoman we're everypeople, you and I, and you just happened to walk over to my desk with a smile that could rip Heaven out from its palace.

Just 'cuz I'm infatuated doesn't mean I should sit there with my mouth dropping downwards like some obsessed teenager drooling over their favorite celebrity (specifically the nude picture they just found on some spam site).

“I was wondering if you needed someone to interview for the recent homicide? I saw the woman entering the hotel.” You said to me, all straight-forward no-nonsense scimitar-to-the-bullshit.

“Uhhh... um...” These are responses, yes, now stop being a fucking tool and say something worth someone's precious ears.

“Y... yeah, sure. Just sit down here and I'll ask you some questions.”

I motioned to a chair on the opposite side of my desk and you kept looking at me almost inquisitively like, Who's this douchebag who looks like he spends all his time at home doing the five-knuckle shuffle to some lewd perverted porn fetish no one's ever heard of? And all I can respond with my hand-drawn comic dialogue bubbles is, Necrobestiality, duh.

But I'm not being serious. In fact, I should be serious, because I have a job that will go nowhere but it pays the current bills that always seem to get higher per month.

“Well... what time did you see her enter?”

“Hmm...” You look upwards and your eyes swirl around as your thoughts try to shoot an arrow at an answer, and I'm waiting, hanging on the cliff of your next utterance trying not to fall off.

“Around nine-thirty. I remember because I checked my phone for a text from a friend of mine, and when I looked up I saw this strange woman. She must have been on drugs or something, because she looked like she was mumbling to herself.”

“Really... ? Drugs... ? That gives us an interesting angle. Could play it up as something a little more than a homicide case.”

You smile at me again, and we continue some discussion I can't remember because all I wanted to do was get to know you better. You stood up from my desk and turn around and I swear you winked at me, just the slightest twitch around your eye.

And then a card slipped out from your fingers. A number was etched on there and I swore I could read a name; I'll just call you Instant Magic like a spy that could infiltrate any base and get their secret intel without them ever noticing.

Remember, we're everypeople without a need for a label. I can't give you a name and you probably won't know mine but you've given me a carving into the rock-face I'm climbing up that I can grab a hold of with my hand. I can see the top and it's craving me, calling for me like a cheap hooker and all I want to do is keep going.

----

The dream's all happening over again, but I can change some of the characteristics or give it a new profile on its social networking page. Fill in some quotes like, “I think, therefore I fuck” or something even more clever like, “We were horny, homosexual, haggard, but at least we were alive.” I'm thrice-more in front of an empty painting. The paintbrush feels heavier this time, as if my mind had given it some tangibility, a real feeling of weight that grounded it in this no-place fantasy world of cages and talking armor.

My hand starts to press the brush into the paper, drenching it in colors of paint all melange and it begins to live a life of its own making some bigger picture out of something so small. For some reason I find myself drawing a lone tree in the middle of a meadow surrounded by houses, and there's people around the tree and sitting outside the domiciles; the tree's not quite in full bloom because it's just found its meaning and reason for vitality, and I feel like I can speak for the people and give them all some individual unique piece of a sentence to blurt out into the universe.

Flying through the painting with a brush that can change color of its own will, of my own will, I found that it became something with existence. No longer was it something dead and lifeless and no longer did I want to rip it to shreds with a dagger made of sedentary loneliness. When I was finished, I could feel the emotions and all the colors swirled together into something absolutely gorgeous. The border no longer mattered because in my tantrum I had painted on the walls.

The whole room became my painting; the whole dream world became my easel. All that was left was the armor. With everything in color, I looked forlornly at the rusted metal.

“Did you accomplish your goal?”

“Not quite.” I responded to the man-with-no-face suit of armor.

“What's left?” It asked, curiously, and I could almost envision some kingly man with a rugged, weathered face that had seen centuries of war and the stupidity of man looking at me all puzzled like.

“This is just the first step, ya know? I have to do something out there.” I pointed some direction, outside this confined space.

“You sure you can do it? I've spent too long watching you suffer.”

“I think I can do it this time. I think I can stop being a little bitch.”

The last word seemed more emphasized than the rest, and with it I blinked; when my eyes peeked out underneath the skin folds the armor was gone.

All that remained was a man – myself, with a pen and paper in his hand.

I'm a painter in this world, and a writer everywhere else. But in the end I am just a man who found the slightest sparkle of inspiration, all colors in a monochrome reality.

ronito said:

You could have said that in one sentence.

Click to expand...

Damn... just... damn. :lol

So far I'm drawing a blank for my own topic. Darn you, curse, darn you.

huh! forgot about that. I'm having the opposite problem, I've got a few ideas lined up for this thread, and I've written at least one half of the story that I think I'm going to enter. But I'm doing all this when I'm failing hard at trying to come with something for the poetry thread. *

Ashes1396 said:

huh! forgot about that. I'm having the opposite problem, I've got a few ideas lined up for this thread, and I've written at least one half of the story that I think I'm going to enter. But I'm doing all this when I'm failing hard at trying to come with something for the poetry thread. *

Click to expand...

Yeah... I actually finished my story but I haven't written shit for the poetry thread. Go me. :lol

Missed the link to this thread. I may give this a shot.

crow, I want you to know that I really REALLY want to contribute, I owe it to you. But I just got the flu and it's kicking my ass every which way til Sunday. So I might not make it. But I shall try.

Even though I haven't been participating...well done, crowphoenix =P

So It's Connecting Now

(around the earthly cycle whatever you called it yesterday)

But He said no. I don't know why. He said no then no (and no). He said "No" so many times there was sort of No thing. It was -- I can't describe it. It was just a creature, a No Thing. I patted the No thing there and there and there until it said yes.

Noo. I don't think it said yes intentionally . It said yes because that's the first thing that comes to mind. Do you want a cola fizzy sweet? Yes. Do you drive cars? Yes. Do you die and come back alive again twice, then die then go to heaven once, then die and go up the karmic ladder several times before dying completely? Yes. So he said yes in that way.
The brick tower had a point (It was made up of bricks, and if you looked at them you would see that they were arranged all typically-brick like, like a grid, but with all the rows messed up and jangled so it doesn't align, it's satisfying when you put it on paper).

The No Thing did not say yes when I asked him that question.
The question went like this. I, for once, thought before thinking. I didn't just spurt out the first thing to come to mind. I did all that abdominal breathing, breath in through nose hmmph hmmph hmmph, -pause - mpmphmpmphmphmphmp -exhale- aaaaaaaaaah. Then I looked at No Thing with my soul all aligned Buddhist-like and asked that question:

"sdfpsdpfsidfoi02r923f2fd?"

Lucky I did the abdominal breathing stuff, otherwise before No Thing answered I would have butt in. I have a habit of butting in, everyone says so. I ask them things like "What do you think of so and so" and they're like "A-" and then I go

"Yes I know but what do you REALLY think," and they're like "Buh" and I slap my hand their knee and go. "Okay. We're two honest people here."

And they're like "Cu-"

And I go "Okay. I don't think I can hack this anymore" and I walk out the door thinking why people just aren't honest and then they think (I KNOW THIS) that I never let them finish. If it were No Thing, before he'd say yes I'd butt in, which is a justified butt-in because he says yes anyway but STILL. I did not butt in and let him answer, and boy, was I thankful for it. So I asked:

"sdfpsdpfsidfoi02r923f2fd?"

And he replied:

"But the thing is."

I was ecstatic. I jumped up and hit the light bulb and smacked it and glass went everywhere, so for the next few days we had to plant encyclopedias all around the bedroom floor and navigate the room by jumping from one to the other. We had "The Dorsling Kindersley Encyclopedia About Animals" on the floor which let us get to the book case, and I jumped on it and fell, and No Thing and I agreed that the encyclopedia did it to us on purpose, because it was jealous that I was looking for other books and that I had used it to step upon. Unfortunately, it ended up cutting its nose to spite its face, because when it tossed me onto the floor like that, I fell onto one of those light bulb shards and cut my hands, and blood went on the book, it was just a little blood but enough blood to stain the "En" and "Pedia" part of the title. So now it was "The Dorsling Kindersley Cyclo About Animals."

Oh, but I am not bitter. I am not a council estate parent. Or, I don't hold grudges because my mind is not built that way. So No Thing and I said to the Dorsling Kindersey Cyclo, "See, you should never do something out of anger, because it'll get you in the end."
We agreed to fix it.

"What do you think a Cyclo About Animals would be like, No Thing," I asked him.

"Yes," said No Thing.

I sighed and had that teary feeling. Like, you feel you're about to cry but you're not. It's that little itchy sensation above your cheeks. Because it was like we had backtracked. I felt the urge to go back to myself, to interrupt (There was no-one speaking to interrupt at that PRECISE MOMENT, but I entertained the idea of asking a question JUST to interrupt it), but I said no. So I decided that I could not deal with two babies, Cyclo About Animals and No Thing, so No Thing would have to go away.

"Would you get out of my sight and never come back again?" I said.

"Yes," said No Thing andnd tottered out of the room. He poked himself on some glass in the process, and yelped little pain-filled: "Yes" (Which I found embarassing), but I said
"Get out of my sight" and he said yes and quickened the pace.

So I was left with Cyclo About Animals, who was traumatised by the recent argument and I said, "No, No Thing has had his chance. Today is about you." So I thought how we could make Cyclo About Animals what it said on the book, so when the inevitable time came when he has to go to a charity shop that he would be bought, because it must be awful being charity shop books or second hand books which are stained with soup and curry and sauces, giving the phrase 'page-turner' a new meaning because you're speed-reading in order get away from that potential poo smear in the top right corner. I flicked through Cyclo About Animals and read through the content that was now invalid. It went like this:

Zebras
Zebras are stripy horses that trot along, some stripes are black and zigzaggdical, and some stripes are white and zigzaggdical. They eat grass. For Zebras in media, see The Lion King. The Zebra in The Lion King looks appetising, and has inspired Zebra cuisine in the arctic. Zebra glazed with honey and sprinked all quaint like, sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle nuts -- a favourite in many a! many a! country. Their natural habitat is the plains and the savannah and where all the predators can eat them. Again like Lion King.

"Yeah, it's a pity," I said, shaking my head. "It's a pity all of this is gone to -- BUT! But we'll fix it, Cyclo About Animals. We'll fix it, let's just move to another room."

So we did.

"So, what would Cyclo About Animals contain. In one sense," And I bit my lip and giggled -- yes, giggled to myself because I was being all logical and making sense for once. In column A and column B and all of that, oh, look at me. "In one sense, Cyclo could be considered (look at me using long words) a shortened colloqialificationised version of Encylopedia. So the silver lining is that you can still contain your encyclopedia stuff, but we'd just have to colloquialify it. Right."

So I went into the cupboard and got out all my pens and tippex, and opened Cyclo About Animals, and went to the Zebra page again. I added a few 'yo's' there (They eat yo yo grass. For Zebras in yo yo media see yo yo The Lion King. Zebra glazed with yo yo honey and sprinked all quaint like, sprinkle sprinkle yo yo nuts). I dropped a few bras' "Ze delicacy" and a few "Zes" Bra glazed with honey. Then I slapped myelf in the face (and got tip-ex all over it) because I could have went for the Northerner thing. Because they're always talking about up north and. Put t'table on t'market. Don't cross t'zebra crossing until you're sure that t'driver has seen you. Otherwise you're gonna be run over like t'zebra that was there in t'first place.

But Cyclo About Animals didn't like it. He said,

"Yeaaas, but...you seee, and. Weelll. As an encyclopedia I considered myself educated and such things of that matter, etcetera, shifting the paradigm, video games have much worse stories than the worst novel or television show, etc, so I do not like that slant you have taken"

"Mm," I said. Abdominal breathing. Hmmmmmmmm. Hooooooooo. Hmmmmmm. Hooooo.

"So fix me in some other way."

What? As if I owed him this! I had been enduring the pain from the splinter all this time. The nerve! Hmmmmmm. Hoooooo. I got up and went for my plan B which I had ALL this time. I went in the cupboard and got out all the stuffed animals that I had rolled around with as a child, and arranged them in a circle.

"This would be a Cyclo of animals, maybe?" I said. DK's Cyclo of Animals looked at the animals in a circle and said, "So?"

I looked at the circle of animal toys. Fluffy the Hen. Gertrude the Cheetah. Obifame Onukawunde the Spider. Zhang Xi the Alligator. Husam Khan the Kangaroo. I saw his point. But then! Cycle! Cyclo! I did the circle motion again, but quicker!

"The Earth doesn't spin that fast," said DK. "And cycle is not cyclo."

"Cyclone then," I said. I tried to move the animals in a circle, by shifting one left a bit, then the other next to it. You know.

oo
o o
o o
oo

And with the arrows in that direction. But I couldn't do it nearly as fast enough as to make a cyclone.

"Cyclone! But -- yes, I know what you're going to say. Cyclo, not Cyclo. But but, Cyclo is like a shorter colloquiaszislised version of Cyclone!"

I picked up Obifame Onukawunde the Spider and said one 'yo' before coming to my senses and putting him down very quickly.

I was well and truly stumped.

"Well?" said Cyclo of Animals. "Quick, I am having an existential crisis! Who Am I, Where Am I! Hurry! What have you got?"

The pain of the glass shard did not compare to the pain I was feeling now. I looked at Cyclo and said, "No Thing."

"Yes?"

No Thing came through the window -- oh, you should have seen how happy he was. That kind of -- it's just happiness, you know. That inner, scrunchy gajooly, inner gagaga I want to just spray it out of my soul-pores happiness. And you know what? So was I.

"No Thing!" I said, standing alert. "Do you have the solution to Cyclo's problem?"

"YES." said No Thing, and then paused for a second. He grabbed a marker, glanced at the

oo
o o
o o
oo

formation of animal toys, then added ps on the end of Cyclo on Dorsling Kindersley's Cyclo of Animals. Then opened the book and scribbled one eye out of each animals and many many eyes on some insects -- which was uncomfortable because I have an insect phobia but I got through it through abnominal exercises. Then we got to the Zebra page aain which was difficult because the photo was taken of just one side. We were gonna skip it, then Cyclo of Animals said,

"My readers are very skeptical -- have discerning eyes. I can see a lot of mail being sent to the publishers pointing out that a page of encyclopedia has somehow slipped into this book of Cyclos that they spent a hundred pounds on. And debate and furore is good, but I'd rather it be over the in-depth information found in my insides. The Cyclo part, basically."

"Yes," said No Thing. So No Thing wrote this:



Another tip was added that if you speak to zebras you have to stand adjacent. Like rabbits -- they can't look straight forward! Rabbits and other animals with eyes at the side of their heads have three heads. The blank head, which is the one without an eye, which is the one we look at by default. But it's useless unless you can telepathically communicate with the rabbit! That's why the rabbit is puffing its nose up and down because the receive signal is set to ON, but most people can't send telepathic waves, you see.

The rabbit's thinking

"Receiving! Receiving! I'm not getting an-- receiving! Receiving! Oh, is that – Receiving! Receiving"

Then it gets so frustrated that it turns around and splashes its number one in your face.

(So on a day to day basis, stand in front of its left head and right head)

I was so pleased with Cyclo that I almost lost myself in joy. But both joy and misjoy are suffering, so I did abdominal breathing again, and I had done it so many times that I was able to look into myself. Then having looked in myself, I looked out again at No Thing and smiled. So I asked:

"dsfsdf9sd-fgi-rt23r23?"

"Yes," said No Thing. And I smiled at him, and I Knew.

Ashes1396 said:

huh! forgot about that. I'm having the opposite problem, I've got a few ideas lined up for this thread, and I've written at least one half of the story that I think I'm going to enter. But I'm doing all this when I'm failing hard at trying to come with something for the poetry thread. *

Click to expand...

Man, I haven't had a single idea for either thread the last two months. I merely posted something because I felt as if I needed to and that saddens me.

(I could have sworn I posted this once but it doesn't seem like I did.)

Holy hell! Scribble's back! Welcome back, man.

ronito said:

crow, I want you to know that I really REALLY want to contribute, I owe it to you. But I just got the flu and it's kicking my ass every which way til Sunday. So I might not make it. But I shall try.

Click to expand...

I'd rather you rest up, man. Believe me, I plan on winning more of these.

Irish said:

Man, I haven't had a single idea for either thread the last two months. I merely posted something because I felt as if I needed to and that saddens me.

(I could have sworn I posted this once but it doesn't seem like I did.)

Click to expand...

Time to go back to your roots. I want a story set in Ireland and I want it now.

Whoops, don't think I'll make the deadline due to a camping trip. Have fun!

And here I was excited over how you'd handle this theme. Ah well. Have fun, man.

And now I've followed Ronito into the lands of sickness. Luckily, I'm just barely inside of its borders, but enough that I'm feeling lazy. I think I'll be able to pull something together, but I doubt it'll be all that polished.

________________________________________________________________________


All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

T.E. Lawrence


“Pusher” or “This is the life is it.”
wc: 1341


Amirox rolled down the side window and yelled out at Charlie who was spray paint grafitting on the front of a garage door. “Hey Charlie, blood. Long time no see.”

Charlie looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Cool brov. You?”

“New ride, cool wifey; the monies are flowing; it's all good. How's the old man?”

“Don't know. I'll ask him when I drop dead myself. You mean my grandfather you muppet.”

The friends laughed in unison.

“He's in remission. Funny, he asked about ya only the other day. ”

“What'dya tell him.”

“Oh you know. This and that. Once a plonker always a plonker I said!”

Amirox parked the car. “Fuck off!” he sniggered.

“How much was the Fiesta?”

“1G. It's alright. The Mrs likes it...”

“How's your kid?”

Amirox got his phone out and showed the most recent photos of his two year old, Ben Jani. “He's a noisy little bugger. I'm glad I don't have to live there. Oh, btw, Fiona is definitely going to uni. We're looking at how we're going to look after the little tyke when she goes.”

“Going to leave him with the grandparents?”

Amirox nodded. “What the fuck are you drawing motherfucker? Looks like a freemason eye?”

“This. This -as is written below the eye- means open your eyes. It's for everyone who passes by.”

“What is this... new helf n' safty shite?”

“Naah. It's power to the people, brov.”

“This is you leaving your tag on the world is it?”

Charlie stopped working and paused to reflect.

“Whatchya thinkin?” Amirox asked.

“Hmm.... Maybe you're right. And here I thought I was just spittin' the truth.”

“What truth?”

Charlie put his spray can down. “How can I explain this... Say you go into a baker, yeah. The first thing that hits you is the sweet smell of bread and cake being baked, yeah. Lovely smell of dough in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Stay in there for a few minutes and you get used to it, right?

“Yeah”

Charlie spread his arms out.

Amirox looked at Charlie, but this time he took notice not only of Charlie, but of Charlie as a part of everything around him.

Later, that day Amirox passed by another of Charlie's sketches. It was a drawing which consisted of several security cameras aimed at the high street. He wondered what it meant, though he had a frank idea. He parked on a single yellow line, and got out of the car. He walked off the high street and into a side alley.

A bulgy little woman in her thirties crossed to the other side of the road. Amirox muttered, fucking racist, under his breath. The woman looked over her shoulder and gave him a dirty look.

“My boyfriend's Jamaican! Scaggy.”

Amirox smelled his jumper underneath his jacket. He couldn't smell a thing. He walked on through to a road that led onto Berner Estate. He spotted some syringes on the floor. Amirox looked up to see where the nearest camera was. He sat on the kerb and looked at the shop across the street. Charlie had written a message in clear English.

“Big Brother ain't here.”

Amirox got up and wondered what it all meant. Amirox sort of knew why they had so many ccctv cameras or at least the given justification for them. It was to cut crime of course. So why didn't they have them here? What were they protecting on the high street that wasn't here? Did Charlie want camera's aimed at private houses? Amirox didn't the think the locals would be to happy. Or was he saying the police placed a higher priority on protecting commercial prospects?

Oh Charlie, Amirox thought, a smile lit up in his eye, you and your conspiracy theories.

Amirox walked back to his car. As he drove round his old estate, he wondered what exactly the point of Charlie's art was. Even if he was near enough target wise, what was the average person expected to do?

Amirox looked at burnt-brick-coloured run-down house after run-down house. He spotted a youth climbing into the top window of one particular house. Amirox laughed. “How am I suppose to know why that kid is climbing into that window. It could be his own house for all I know.”

He lost interest then. He'd grown used to the inquisitive eye. The smell of baked bread. He skim read Tower Hamlets like he would a dull book. Not that he had literally read much. Charlie was different. Charlie had always been different. Amirox remembered back in their secondary school days, when the new teacher, their fifth English language teacher that term, could not hide a surprise yelp that Charlie was reading, 1984, by George Orwell. Charlie had had looked back at him with scorn. He said nothing even though Amirox fully expected him to.

“I don't understand what you want from me Charlie. I don't understand what you realistically expect from me,” Amirox thought having parked his car. "What is the point of it all" He gave his girlfriend a quick peck on the lips, and picked up his son, relieving his kid of a clear plastic bag containing fine white powder. And in that moment all became clear.

Whilst Fiona, his girlfriend talked about her day, Amirox thought about the state of his girlfriend's flat. It was a plush flat in a run down estate. It certainly didn't look it from out front.

After sex, Fiona asked where Amirox's head was at. She skipped into the en-suite shower.

“What would happen babe. If like you didn't go Club Whites.”

Fiona poked her head out of the cubicle. “Is this my boy asking me to quit stripping?”

“Na. Up to you babe. But I took my head for spin today like. When the fuck did it become okay to be a pusher?”

Amirox listened to sound of the shower's powerful spray, whilst Fiona rubbed soap on her self.

“You're not a bad person Amirox. You don't push to kids or nofink.”

“I'm a dealer Fion'. My friends are trying to do something in this shithole, and I'm laying it to waste. And for what? A quick buck for this little tyke?”

Fiona stepped out of the shower and reached for a clean towel on the bed.

“It ain't even 'bout being good or bad or evil. I used to look down on all the other dealers you know, cheatin' their other halfs, getting blowed by pretty little posh skanks for some ganja. I thought, na, I'm good to my gal, the mother of child. I'm dealer Fion'. The worst thing is that I only remembered that when I entered the door into this nice little place you have and saw my kid with a packet of the white stuff.”

Fiona set about pacing. “I guess we could live on the dole, for awhile. I've money left over, if we be clever about it, it could last. And I could get a student loan...You gonna quit today? If you do I will. I mean this was always going to be temp for me. I don't want my son to know that there was once a while where his mother use to be a stripper." Fiona sat beside Amirox a little breathless. "So are you going to quit?”

Amirox lay back on the bed, very seriously addressing the situation. He knew what it was like to be a quitter. Especially a dealer. It was fucking hard. “Nah. But the dream is now there though...”

Fiona called in sick and lay beside Amirox, with little Ben in between them. She could see a change in Amirox. She never knew him to be a deep thinker.

“What're you thinking?”

Fiona grabbed his hand.

“'bout the whole retirement thing. Quittin' ain't enough, I'm thinkin'. Na, not by a long long ting. I'm gonna fuck it up for everybody.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“I'm gonna be the biggest fucking snitch there ever was, aren't I? The biggest fucking snitch there ever was.”




________________________________________________________________________

Timedog is out? Ronito is ill? crowphoenix is just about holding on? what is going on here? I thought this was an excellent theme. Authors, poets, and dreams? it's like a match made in heaven isn't it?
How very unfortunate the set of events are, crowphoenix. Or well, I still think it's an excellent theme and a good secondary objective.

Crush (333)

Tara. Met her at a bookstore one rainy night. Her boots were to die for. Unfortunately our lifestyles didn't mesh: she was a party animal while I was more straight-edge.

Kirsten. Hair of various shades, but was blonde when I met her. Never did ask her what her natural colour was. She expected too much out of me, and I wasn't going to change for her. I like being ordinary, thank you very much.

Jennifer. Brunette, tall and athletic. Her job led to some trust issues though and she was always out of town for various reasons. We don't see each other much anymore but we parted on good terms.

Lindsay. My love of redheads and freckles began with her. Not sure what happened, but I couldn't convince her to keep a good thing going. She dyed her hair, tried to remove the freckles (bleach or something), and then it was all downhill from there. I felt a clean break was the best solution, but sometimes wish I'd done more though.

Ziyi. Exotic and dignified exterior that masked martial arts training. Thankfully she never practiced on me. Sadly she was forced into a loveless marriage and ended up doing irreparable damage to us and others. I won't get into details, but I wish her the best.

Marisa. If only I'd met her ten years earlier, but she really aged well. One of my "what-ifs".

Kate. Her accent and killer physique won me over. To this day I wonder if I should've gotten to know her better, but she had her eye on a co-worker for a long time. Maybe I was better off being ignorant, because I never knew what she saw in him.

Alison. I know her innocent exterior is a facade, but it seems a little too obvious to me. Shapeless clothing doesn't work on me when I've seen her in less. Not sure how I feel about my buddies all lusting after her, though. I prefer exclusivity.



Yep, still single.

I *want* to enter this challenge, but I just can't sit down to write for the life of me. I can't even capture an idea.

Irish said:

I *want* to enter this challenge, but I just can't sit down to write for the life of me. I can't even capture an idea.

Click to expand...

Writing is work sometimes. Hope you pull through.

Irish said:

I *want* to enter this challenge, but I just can't sit down to write for the life of me. I can't even capture an idea.

Click to expand...

You can do this we're all counting on you believe in yourself the power was within you all along!

Come on, Irish. You can do it. I'm sick, and head is all fogged and dizzy, and there's a cat in my lap, and I forgot where this was going.

crowphoenix said:

Come on, Irish. You can do it. I'm sick, and head is all fogged and dizzy, and there's a cat in my lap, and I forgot where this was going.

Click to expand...

crowphoenix said:

Come on, Irish. You can do it. I'm sick, and head is all fogged and dizzy, and there's a cat in my lap, and I forgot where this was going.

Click to expand...

It's not you, it's me... wait, what?

Nah, I've been out of it for a few months. I actually love the topic and secondary. Maybe once I start up these English classes at the end of the month I'll be in the mood to write again. I can't be a janitor for the rest of my life, so school it is.

Irish said:

It's not you, it's me... wait, what?

Nah, I've been out of it for a few months. I actually love the topic and secondary. Maybe once I start up these English classes at the end of the month I'll be in the mood to write again. I can't be a janitor for the rest of my life, so school it is.

Click to expand...

Don't knock Janitors. Will Hunting was a janitor.

You're too harsh on yourself, Irish. Just write, and have some fun. It doesn't matter how you do. We all have our taverns and donkeys.

crowphoenix said:

You're too harsh on yourself, Irish. Just write, and have some fun. It doesn't matter how you do. We all have our taverns and donkeys.

Click to expand...

I know where the donkeys live, but does anybody have a map to the taverns?
If you remember the title, a quick search might bring it up. Have to keep up with the thread lore, I feel.

Ashes1396 said:

I know where the donkeys live, but does anybody have a map to the taverns?
If you remember the title, a quick search might bring it up. Have to keep up the thread lore, I feel.

Click to expand...

Noooooooo...

The funny thing is it's actually a pretty good story.

The Irish author Emma Donoghue, at 40 is the youngest writer on the Booker shortlist, and has been installed as 9/4 favourite to win the prize by Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, for her novel about a mother and son who shield themselves from the world by confining themselves to a small room.

I've got three years short of twenty years to perfect my craft. I want to make that list. In a thread about dreams, I thought I might as well state this.
Irish, dude, why not just write something crappy; don't you thrive on negativity? write about negativity, at the very least comment on the human condition or something as blasé as that.

edit: cheers Cyan.

I hope to go to grad school. I hope that while there, I can get an internship at a publishing house. As for my writing, I hope that I can one day write a story that makes the lady that got me into writing have a 'hats off' moment. I don't really want to be a great writer, like a Shakespeare. I want to be a Pratchett. I want to write fantastic characters that people will love.