I never quite get it right. I have all these idea, waiting to be transferred to the page. The only problem is that the ideas never evolve. One idea stays one idea. There’s no story following it, only a hint of a story. Dialogues, descriptions, all that, it never gets right. Then I have another idea, and another, but none are connected with each other. At the end, I have several documents, all stating one idea, some weak building around it and then a final marker.
That drives me crazy. I want to just for once finish one project. One successful short story would be apt for me, just something. I looked for inspiration in books, and I would spend hours reading, only to come out empty handed. The problem was that the idea I originally had looked too much like a plot in a book I would later read.
What I used to do was spend a lot of time finding an idea, trying to build a story around it. I had made many maps of other worlds, noted down people, kings and heroes. All together, the noting I had made and the little fiction I had written would together be enough to compile a solid novel. However, I could not combine them because they were different stories, different notes, contrasting messages, so I decided to try something new.
I stopped making notes, I stopped looking in the depths of my imagination for ideas. I sat down with my laptop, opened a Word page and started writing whatever came to mind. It worked in the sense that I actually wrote words. Sessions could last for a good couple of hours, then some more. Nothing I wrote was ready to be sent to a publisher, or be read by a friend, I knew that. The important thing was to just write and get things down. All the editing and what not could be made later.
The new strategy worked for me and before I knew it I was well into writing. Weeks passed, weather changed, even years changed. I was proud of myself. I had four drafts of complete novels saved on my hard disc, USB, CD and printed on paper. Three years work. What I needed to do now was edit. I started with a random novel. It was called “The first realization”. 356 pages described a boy who had a goal and was so determined to reach it that at the end, when he had reached it, he had lost friends, TV-series, he hadn’t even noticed the shifting of seasons. Playing on the green grass under a blue sky, carefree, was an old memory only lived as a child. A soft chair, a fireplace and a cup of hot cocoa was just the same. Old memories of a man who didn’t have any recent memories of anything. He had missed out on his life.
I prepared to start editing, hoping that the publisher would love the story and relieve me of the most hardcore editing. It still needed to be presentable though, so I started reading my own work. It didn’t take much time before I realized that the work described my own life. There on the page, with my own words was my own feelings, my own dreams, my own friends and not too late in the book my former friends. The ruin of the character in the book was, I realized, my own misery. The pursuit of the character had driven him to a lonely life, just as my pursuit left me alone. Three years was all my protagonist needed to rid himself of all that he loved in life, and three years it had taken me to be rid of the same. I woke up from a trance I had been in and first now I was aware of what I had let go.
I tossed away the manuscript. Pages fluttered nonchalant. How could they flutter so nonchalant? They were the cause of my newfound misery, and they simply fluttered like any normal pages. They didn’t flutter as dramatic as fit for such foul pages.
I now dreaded those pages, along with the pages of three other, complete manuscripts, and with a sudden, I couldn’t even recall what I had written on those other pages. The ones that lay nicely stacked, not tossed, not fluttering. I had to read them. What did I write? What other ailment could I project from my once stable life to these fragile papers? I didn’t pick the next at random. I deliberately reached for “The story continues”. A sequel to “The first realization”. Book number two in a trilogy. In this story, our fool was middle aged. He wasn’t married, he didn’t have kids, he didn’t even have his parent’s number. He had reached his goal, and it left him with a fortune. The fortune, however, the fruit of his work, didn’t grant him what he thought it would. He had now admitted to himself that his youth had gone to waste. He was nothing.
The bitterness I now felt engulfed me. It had started to eat at me. The fact that novel number two lacked any quality, the fact that a part of what I had wasted my life on didn’t even please me was harsh. It was a harsh fact that I had crashed into, been crushed into. My first work depicted me, the next work depicted a future me. What other pains lay in the final novel of the series? I tossed away “The story continues” and watched the pages flutter in the air as nonchalant as “The first realization”. Bitterness.
“Everything and nothing comes to an end”. I started reading. The character was no longer young, he was no longer middle aged. He was an old and bitter man. He looked older than he really was. He was angry. He had used up his fortune, he had forsaken the goal he had reached, just as he had forsaken his life. Bitter at the fact he cursed Oizys before trembling at the sight of Thanatos. Bitter at the facts he died.
I was now crying. The manuscript was beautiful. A tragedy was told in perfect harmony. I foretold my future in a most beautiful way. My last book was the last marker of my life. I glanced at the fourth book. I longed for it. The fourth book was without the personification of me. It was another story, a happy story I recalled.
“Bees and birds and daisies” was a story of another character. A happy boy, who then became a happy man and after many years he died happy. All his days weren’t happy though. he had seen misery, but he came to appreciate it as life later on. He had learned that not all things were worth fighting for. To be at peace was better. The manuscript was the last I had written, and in this manuscript I wrote about a boy I used to be who became a man I wanted to be but never was.
I once heard that a man can not handle all facts in the world. I had found the facts that I could not handle, and upon this knowledge I lay dead on those harsh facts which I had crashed into and been crushed on. I lay dead on the harsh facts.
