I recall being about eight years old and getting it into my head that maybe, just maybe, I could write a novel. I sat down and started writing a scene about rugged adventurers meeting in a dusky tavern, gathering to the call of a wizard who had the need for some assistance on a dangerous quest. I knew I needed to describe the environment so that my readers could understand where this was. It was a tavern. What was in a tavern? Well, I had to begin somewhere, so I started to describe the chair by the door, the grain of its wood, the scratches and the stories they told, the dancing shadows of candlelight and drunk farmers playing on its stillness.
Three pages later and all I had was a fucking chair.
I am making a map of novel writing, and while in the valleys of realistic characters it says, “here be dragons” in the wasteland of descriptive scenes it warns, “this way lies madness and death!”
But you won’t beat me. Sure, I am not the chest-beating champion who guffaws in the face of your monstrosity, but I am the one who plays the fool until I see where to cut. And yes, that means I know how to take a beating.
I feel those beatings in the morning, lying in bed. The blankets gathered upon me look like intricate landscapes I wish I could shrink down into and explore. There’s a curl in the fringe of the sheet that makes a cave where I am sure I would enjoy spending an evening, an evening away from the beatings, in the healing darkness of withdrawal.
But these havens are too distant for me to reach, too small. My body is a giant amongst them and was I to move to enter and explore, they would be crushed by my magnitude. And so I am still, just looking for this one brief moment at this tiny world that is free from the beatings, free from the need for strategy, the need for cleverness. A world where I wouldn’t have to be so patient.
Three pages later and all I had was a fucking chair.
I am making a map of novel writing, and while in the valleys of realistic characters it says, “here be dragons” in the wasteland of descriptive scenes it warns, “this way lies madness and death!”
But you won’t beat me. Sure, I am not the chest-beating champion who guffaws in the face of your monstrosity, but I am the one who plays the fool until I see where to cut. And yes, that means I know how to take a beating.
I feel those beatings in the morning, lying in bed. The blankets gathered upon me look like intricate landscapes I wish I could shrink down into and explore. There’s a curl in the fringe of the sheet that makes a cave where I am sure I would enjoy spending an evening, an evening away from the beatings, in the healing darkness of withdrawal.
But these havens are too distant for me to reach, too small. My body is a giant amongst them and was I to move to enter and explore, they would be crushed by my magnitude. And so I am still, just looking for this one brief moment at this tiny world that is free from the beatings, free from the need for strategy, the need for cleverness. A world where I wouldn’t have to be so patient.
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